Manny Ruiz, 54, has made a living restoring vintage campers out of his eastern Oregon garage for 12 years, ever since his ex-wife packed her bags and left him for a travel blogger who posted road trip reels for a living. His biggest flaw is that he’s made grudge-holding a part-time job: he still crosses the street to avoid the barista who messed up his order three times in 2021, and he’s spent three months ducking the couple that bought the 10-acre plot next to his, after the husband, a Portland tech bro named Liam, yelled at him for leaving a stack of rusted Airstream panels visible from their driveway.
He’s manning a tiny booth at the Deschutes County Fair on a 92-degree August afternoon, sweat sticking his faded Willie Nelson tee to his back, when he spots her. Clara, Liam’s wife, is carrying a crumpled paper plate piled high with fried green tomatoes, her cowboy boots caked in fairground dust, no makeup on, a smudge of barbecue sauce on her left jaw. He freezes, half-hoping she doesn’t recognize him, but she spots the 1972 Airstream patch sewn to his ball cap and beelines straight for the booth, the frayed hem of her cutoff jeans flapping as she walks.
Manny snorts before he can stop himself. He tells her tech bros couldn’t tell a lug nut from a light switch if you taped a label to it, and she laughs so hard a piece of fried tomato falls off her plate onto the ground. She leans across the table to grab one of his business cards, and her hand brushes his, and he feels the callus on her index finger, the same kind he has from sanding camper panels, and she says she refinishes vintage dressers on the side, sells them on Facebook Marketplace, has had to hide all her power tools in the back of the barn so Liam doesn’t throw them out. He’s been holding a half-empty warm root beer in his hand for 20 minutes, and suddenly it’s ice cold, and he can’t remember the last time a woman stood this close to him without asking him for a quote on a restoration.
The conflict nags at him, sharp as a splinter. He got a text from Liam at 8 a.m. that morning, all caps, saying he’d called county code enforcement to come assess Manny’s “scrap pile” of camper parts next week, that he wasn’t going to let Manny “ruin the neighborhood vibe.” He should tell her to leave, should go back to packing up his booth, should avoid this whole mess like he avoids every other unplanned thing in his life. But she’s asking him if he wants to walk to the beer garden with her, her treat, that the fireworks start in 20 minutes, and her eyes are dark brown, crinkled at the corners, and she’s not wearing a wedding ring. He stares at her for three full seconds, then shoves his stack of business cards into the pocket of his work jeans, locks the booth, says sure.
They walk side by side through the crowd, their shoulders brushing every other step, and she buys him a cold IPA from the beer stand, says she’s been trying to wave at him for three months but he always ducks inside his garage before she can get close. “I thought you hated all of us,” she says, grinning, and he admits he did, until 10 minutes ago. He leads her past the Ferris wheel, past the petting zoo, to the edge of the fairgrounds where his beat-up 1998 Ford F150 is parked, says the view of the fireworks is better from there, no crowds blocking the view.
