Manny Ruiz, 51, makes his living restoring vintage motorcycles out of a cinder block shop on the edge of Tucson, grease permanently crusted under his fingernails and a thin scar snaking up his left forearm from a 2020 carburetor explosion. His only regular companion is his 22-year-old apprentice Javi, who’d threatened to hide every last one of his metric socket sets if he didn’t leave the shop for the neighborhood summer block party that night. Manny hated block parties, hated the sad, tight smiles neighbors shot him when they thought he wasn’t looking, the ones that remembered when his wife left him for a part-time bike salesman he’d hired fresh out of high school 12 years prior. He’d sold the house they shared shortly after, moved into the back of the shop, slept on a cracked leather couch pushed up against a rack of used engine parts, and answered his front door so rarely the mail carrier left packages propped against the tire of his own 1972 Harley parked out front. He’d planned to nurse one Modelo by the taco truck for 45 minutes then sneak out, no small talk, no questions about how he was holding up.
He was reaching for a second al pastor taco when someone slammed into his side, cold crema from a plate of elote splattering across the thigh of his worn work jeans, the same pair he’d worn kneeling over a 1969 Triumph all day. He cursed under his breath, looked down, then up. She was in a thin yellow cotton sundress, chestnut hair pulled back in a messy braid streaked with a single strand of gray at the temple, cheeks pink from the 90-degree dusk heat, apologizing so fast the words tumbled over each other. Before he could tell her it was fine, she leaned in, dabbing at the crema with a crumpled paper napkin, her forearm brushing his thigh through the soft denim, the sweet, heady scent of jasmine shampoo mixing with the smoky grilled pork from the truck and the sharp tang of lime sitting in a plastic bin on the counter. He froze, hadn’t been that close to a woman who wasn’t dropping off a bike for repairs in more than a decade. His eyes caught the tiny black tattoo of a 1970s Honda CB on her left wrist, right above a dented silver men’s watch that looked too big for her.
She noticed him staring at the ink, grinned, and said she’d inherited a 1978 CB750 from her dad when he passed earlier that year, moved into the pale blue bungalow three blocks from his shop three months prior, and knocked on his front door three separate times asking if he’d take a look at it, only to get radio silence every time. Manny flinched, he remembered those knocks, had assumed it was either a salesman or a neighbor bringing over a pity casserole, so he’d cranked his classic rock radio and ignored it. He mumbled an apology, said he was terrible about answering the door when he was mid-repair. She teased him that she’d figured he was either on the run from the law or a full-time hermit, turns out he was just a little rude. He laughed, a rough, rusty sound he hadn’t heard come out of his own mouth in months. They stood leaning against the taco truck fender for 20 minutes, talking, their elbows brushing every few minutes when one of them reached for a napkin or a lime wedge. He found himself telling her about the carburetor explosion that left the scar on his arm, about the Triumph he was restoring for a retiree in Phoenix, even about the leather couch he slept on in the shop, and she never shot him that pitying smile he hated so much. She just nodded, asked follow up questions, laughed when he admitted he ate 90% of his meals from that exact taco truck.
The song ended, the band shifting to a faster ZZ Top track, a group of teens sprinting past them chasing a golden retriever that had stolen a paper plate of churros off a folding table. She stepped back, still holding his hand, and said she had the CB750 parked in her garage a block over, if he wanted to come take a look at it tonight, no pressure, they could just drink sweet iced tea and talk about carburetors if that’s all he was up for. He nodded, grabbed his beer off the counter, didn’t even bother to wave at Javi, who was across the lot grinning at him like he’d just won the lottery. They walked down the dark residential street together, the sound of the band fading behind them, the warm desert air sticking to his skin, fireflies flickering in the sagebrush lining the front yards they passed. When she reached for his hand to tug him across the street toward her pale blue bungalow, he laced his calloused fingers through hers without hesitation.
