Elroy Mendez, 67, has restored antique clocks for 42 years out of a 300 square foot shop in downtown Asheville, and he hasn’t deviated from his Saturday routine in 11 of those years: wake at 6:30, drink two cups of black coffee, walk the three blocks to the farmers market, buy a jar of sourwood honey from the beekeeper who sets up by the entrance, grab a fried green tomato sandwich from the food truck by the picnic tables, and be back behind his workbench by 9 a.m. He’s a lifelong perfectionist, the kind of man who labels every screwdriver in his toolbox by millimeter size, who hates mess so much he keeps a roll of paper towels in his back pocket at all times, who hasn’t so much as held hands with anyone since his wife left him for a retired ski instructor in 2012. He’d decided back then that relationships were just too unpredictable, too full of small, messy inconveniences that threw off the steady tick of the life he’d built for himself.
Late August humidity hangs thick over the market the day his routine breaks. The sourwood honey vendor is gone, out sick with a summer cold, so Elroy wanders further back than he ever has, past the booths selling hand-knit scarves and homemade dog treats, to the table stacked with jars of jam and bushels of sun-warmed peaches. He reaches for the last jar of peach habanero jam at the exact same time the woman next to him does. Their hands brush. Hers is cool, smudged with blueberry stain across the knuckle, calloused at the fingertips, and he yanks his hand back like he’s touched a live wire.
She laughs, a low, throaty sound that cuts through the bluegrass playing from the speaker on the next table over. She’s wearing a faded Willie Nelson t-shirt with a hole at the collar, cutoff denim shorts, cowboy boots caked in garden mud, and there’s a gap between her two front teeth when she smiles. “Sorry,” she says, leaning in just close enough that he can smell lavender and cut grass on her shirt. “I’ve been craving that jam all week. Guess we have the same terrible taste in spicy fruit spreads.”
Elroy mumbles something he can’t even remember, his throat tight. He hasn’t been this close to anyone who isn’t a customer handing him a broken clock in years. He offers her the jar, but she shakes her head, grabs a jar of blackberry instead, and says she’s got next week. They end up walking through the market together, her a half step ahead, pointing out the peaches she grows herself at the small nursery she just opened on the edge of town, asking him what he does for work. When he says he restores antique clocks, her eyes light up. She says she has a 1920s grandfather clock her grandma left her, stuck at 3:17 for the last 10 years, and asks if he’d come take a look at it.
His first instinct is to say no. He never takes house calls, never brings work outside his shop, never lets strangers invite him into their homes. But she tilts her head when she waits for his answer, sunlight catching the silver streaks in her dark hair, and he finds himself saying yes before he can overthink it.
He’s kicking himself the whole walk to her beat-up Ford pickup. He’s 67, has a bad left knee that creaks every time he bends it, wears reading glasses on a beaded chain around his neck, spends most nights eating frozen meatloaf and listening to old Miles Davis records. What could a 48-year-old nursery owner possibly want with him, other than a free clock repair? He almost bails when she opens the passenger door for him, but she leans past him to adjust the AC, her arm brushing his shoulder, and he can’t make himself walk away.
Her cottage is tucked between two oak trees at the end of a dirt road, the front yard overgrown with sunflowers and wild blackberry bushes. The grandfather clock is in the corner of the living room, just like she said, stuck at 3:17. He kneels down to pop the back off, his knee creaking so loud she snorts, brings him a glass of sweet iced tea laced with mint. She sits down on the floor next to him, their knees pressed together through their jeans, and doesn’t move away.
He fixes the clock in 12 minutes flat, adjusting a loose spring with the tiny screwdriver he keeps in his shirt pocket. It chimes soft, low, right on time when he winds it, and she turns to him, her face six inches from his, breath smelling like peach candy. “I saw you at the market three weeks in a row before I worked up the nerve to stand next to you today,” she says.
Elroy freezes for half a second, every rigid rule he’s built for himself over the last 11 years melting away faster than butter on a hot biscuit. He leans in, kisses her, and she tastes like peaches and mint and the sweet, sticky summer air. Her hand cups the side of his face, calloused fingers brushing the gray stubble on his jaw, and he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t overthink it, doesn’t worry about the mess or the schedule or the clocks waiting back at his shop.
They stay on the floor for another hour, talking about broken clocks and stubborn tomato plants and the time he accidentally dropped an 1890s pocket watch in a bucket of cleaning solution. She makes fried green tomatoes and pot roast for dinner, and they eat at the kitchen table while the rain taps soft against the windows. Later, they sit on her front porch swing, wrapped in a wool blanket, watching fireflies blink in the blackberry bushes. She rests her head on his shoulder, and he doesn’t stiffen up, doesn’t run through the list of things he’s supposed to be doing the next day.
He reaches for her hand, laces his calloused, clock-grease stained fingers through hers, and lets the crickets and the distant sound of a freight train carry the quiet for both of them.
