Elias Voss, 53, vintage typewriter restorer, hunched over a rye old fashioned at Moe’s Tap on a rain-soaked Tuesday in southeast Portland. The city had dropped its last remaining bar mask mandate three days prior, and the room hummed with that awkward, giddy energy of people still relearning how to sit close, how to talk without fabric muffling half their words. He’d been coming here three nights a week for eight years, ever since his wife packed her bags for a marketing job in Manhattan and left him with a garage full of broken typewriters and a rulebook he’d scribbled on a scrap of cardstock: no small talk, no dates, no letting anyone step foot in his workshop unless they were dropping off or picking up a machine. He’d followed it perfectly, until the door banged open and the woman who lived in the apartment above his shop stumbled in, soaked to the bone.
Her name was Lila, he remembered that much from the building lease paperwork, though he’d never spoken more than three words to her in the six months she’d lived there. He’d deliberately crossed the street when he saw her coming, had pretended to be on a work call when she knocked on his shop door once to ask if the building’s hot water was out. The only empty stool in the whole bar was the one right next to him, and she squeezed into it without hesitation, her cold, rain-damp wool coat sleeve brushing his bare forearm hard enough to raise goosebumps. He smelled lavender hand lotion and wet asphalt, and he shifted away automatically, his jaw tight, annoyed at the way his heart skipped a stupid, out-of-practice beat. She knocked her knee against his under the counter when she leaned forward to flag the bartender, and she mumbled an apology, her smile warm, her eyes crinkling at the corners like she knew exactly how hard he was trying to pretend she wasn’t there.
They made small talk first, against his better judgement. She said she worked at the downtown public library, ran the vintage print archive, and she’d dropped off a 1951 Royal Quiet De Luxe at his shop the week before, under a fake name, because she’d heard he was picky about who he took work from. He froze, because he’d been working on that Royal the night before, had found a crumpled, pressed violet tucked in the space between the carriage and the ribbon spool, had stuck it in the inner pocket of his leather jacket for no reason he could name. He pulled it out now, the petals still soft, still faintly purple, and laid it on the bar between them. Her breath caught, and she leaned in closer, their shoulders pressing together now, no space left between them, and he didn’t shift away this time. She told him she’d been trying to work up the nerve to talk to him for months, that she’d seen him through her kitchen window fixing typewriters on his back porch at sunset, that he always looked like he was carrying a weight he didn’t want to put down.
He didn’t know what to say at first, so he told her about the typewriter, how he’d replaced the worn rubber feet, how he’d polished the metal casing until it shone like new, how he’d typed a quick test line on a scrap of notebook paper and kept it because the font was his favorite, sharp and clean, no frills. She laughed when he admitted he’d thought the person who dropped it off was some suburban mom who’d found it in her grandma’s attic, and her laugh was loud, bright, unapologetic, and he realized he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed with someone who wasn’t the bartender making a dumb joke about the local minor league baseball team. When she finished her gin and tonic, she twisted on the stool to face him, her knee pressing firmly against his now, no accidental bump, no apology, and she asked him if he wanted to come up to her apartment to see the rest of her typewriter collection, a dozen or so machines she’d picked up at estate sales and thrift stores over the years.
He hesitated for exactly three seconds, every stupid rule he’d written for himself screaming in the back of his head, every part of him that had spent eight years hiding from any kind of connection screaming that he was making a mistake, that he’d get hurt again. Then he looked at her, at the violet tucked behind her ear, at the rain drops still clinging to the ends of her curly brown hair, and he nodded. They walked the two blocks back to the building in the pouring rain, he held his leather jacket over her head, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder the whole way, the rain soaking through his flannel shirt, cold against his skin, but he didn’t care. When they got to her door, she turned to face him, her hands on his chest, and she kissed him soft, slow, he could taste the gin and the cherry lime garnish from her drink on her lips, warm and sweet.
She fumbled with her keys for a second, dropping them once on the welcome mat, and he laughed, a real laugh, deep in his chest, and she laughed too as she picked them up and unlocked the door. He stepped over the threshold behind her, glancing once at his shop door across the hall, at the half-finished typewriters on the workbench he could see through the front window, at the quiet, small, lonely life he’d built for himself over the last eight years. He kicked the door shut behind him, the sound of rain drumming against the fire escape drowning out every last quiet, stupid excuse he’d spent eight years rehearsing for why he didn’t deserve this.
