Manny Ruiz, 53, has run his tiny Austin antique typewriter repair shop for 12 years, and he’s got two non-negotiable rules he’s stuck to for the last eight, ever since his ex-wife left him for a client who dropped off a 1920s Remington for a full restoration. First, no talking to customers about anything that isn’t stuck typebars, cracked ribbon spools, or misaligned carriages. Second, no fraternizing with anyone even tangentially connected to the shop. He’s meticulous to a fault, hates messy, unplanned interactions, and spends most weekends camped out at the same shaded picnic table at the Mueller Lake beer garden, sipping lager, watching the dachshund races, and never saying more than two words to the bartender.
He shows up to the garden’s annual Oktoberfest pop-up on a crisp mid-October Saturday, dented custom stein in hand, already mentally mapping out the next three hours: two Oktoberfests, a smoked sausage, no small talk, home by 8 to tinker with the 1910 Blickensderfer he’s restoring for a local poet. His usual table is taken, though, by a woman in a faded Willie Nelson tee and linen overshirt, a giant soft pretzel on the paper plate in front of her, a smudge of terracotta clay on her left jaw. He recognizes her immediately: Clara Hale, 48, stepmom to his 22-year-old part-time intern Javi, who’s been out in Utah for a forest service internship since August. He’s waved at her a dozen times from the shop front when she dropped Javi off, never spoken to her, never even considered it, rule two looming sharp in his head.
She waves him over, yelling over the tinny oompah of the polka band that all the other tables are taken, and he hesitates for three full seconds before he walks over, sits down across from her. The smell of spicy mustard and smoked brats wraps around them, the table sticky with spilled beer, rough under his palms. She passes him a napkin when he sloshes a sip of lager on his work flannel, her knuckles brushing his wrist, and he feels a jolt shoot up his arm he hasn’t felt since before his divorce, notices the thick callus on her middle finger from throwing pots, the faint silver scar across her knuckle from a kiln accident she mentions offhand a minute later. She doesn’t wear a wedding ring, mentions she and Javi’s dad split amicably two years prior, no drama, just grew apart.
They talk for 45 minutes, first about Javi, then about typewriters, then about her pottery studio, and she leans in every time he speaks, holds his eye contact longer than strictly polite, her knee brushing his under the table when she shifts to watch a group of dachshunds line up for the final race, and neither of them pulls away. He’s torn the whole time, half his brain screaming that he’s breaking his own rule, that this will make things weird when Javi comes back to work at the shop in December, that he’s setting himself up to get burned again, the other half hyper aware of the sun catching the gold flecks in her hazel eyes, the warm, earthy scent of kiln dust and lavender on her shirt when she leans in close to point out a dachshund in a tiny lederhosen costume, the way she laughs at his dumb joke about stuck typebars so hard she snorts a little.
The polka band finishes a loud, raucous track, switches to a slow, twangy cover of Alan Jackson’s Chattahoochee, a song he remembers slow dancing to at his high school prom, and she tilts her head, grinning, holds out her hand. “You dance, Manny?” He freezes, every warning bell in his head blaring, then he puts his stein down on the table, wraps his fingers around hers. Her palm is warm, a little rough, she laces their fingers for half a second as they walk to the small patch of grass set up as a dance floor by the stage. He rests one hand on her waist, she puts her free hand on his shoulder, they sway slowly, not too close, but close enough that he can feel the heat off her arm through his flannel, the soft weight of her head when she rests it on his shoulder for a beat while the crowd cheers for the winning dachshund. He tightens his grip on her waist just a little, no one they know is watching, the sun dipping low enough to paint the sky pink and tangerine, the music soft in his ears.
When the song ends, they walk back to the table, she grabs her canvas tote bag, wipes pretzel salt off her jeans, looks up at him, the corner of her mouth tugging up in a half-smirk. “My studio’s 10 minutes from here. Got a cooler of grapefruit seltzer in the fridge, I can show you the mug set I’ve been throwing for Javi’s birthday, if you want.” He pauses, glances down at his shop keys in his pocket, thinks about the half-restored Royal sitting on his workbench waiting for him, thinks about eight years of quiet, empty nights alone, thinks about the way her hand felt in his. He nods, picks up his half-empty stein to drop it in the return bin by the gate, follows her across the sun-warmed grass to her beat-up blue Ford pickup.
