Manny Ruiz is 57, makes his living restoring vintage typewriters out of his garage in northeast Portland, and has not willingly attended a neighborhood event in 12 years. The only reason he’s at the August block party is his granddaughter Lila, home for the summer from community college, who texted him three times in 20 minutes begging him to try the salted chocolate chip cookies she’d baked for the bake sale. He’s leaning against a splintered oak tree at the edge of the crowd, lemonade sweating through the paper cup in his hand, scuff mark on his left work boot from the 1952 Royal he hauled off a curb that morning, when he spots her. She’s behind the pickle stand two folding tables over, linen button-down unbuttoned two notches at the collar, silver hoops catching the late afternoon sun, streaks of gray threading through her dark brown hair. He’d recognize her anywhere—he stared at her name on divorce filings long enough, when he was sorting through old paperwork last winter, the ex-wife of the realtor who left her for Manny’s own ex-wife back when he was 45.
He tries to slip around the tree, head for his front door before she sees him, but she waves, calls his name loud enough over the classic rock playing from the portable speaker that two people turn to look. He has no choice but to walk over, boots crunching on scattered popcorn kernels left by the group of kids running around with water guns. “I knew that was you,” she says, grinning, wiping dill brine off her hands on the frayed hem of her jeans. “Found your toolbox by the fence last week when you were trimming hedges, saw the M. Ruiz engraved on the handle. Neighbor told me who you were.” When she hands him a pickle slice on a paper plate, their fingers brush, and he feels the rough callus on her index finger from the raised garden beds he’s seen her tending at 6 a.m. most mornings. He’s split right down the middle, half of him hot with the old, dull anger he thought he’d buried years ago, the other half leaning in to the faint smell of coconut sunscreen and garlic dill clinging to her shirt. She doesn’t dance around the elephant in the room, either—she snorts, nods at the group of retirees taking selfies by the bouncy house, says “I saw our exes posted that picture of them on a cruise in Aruba last week. Looked like they were both wearing matching fanny packs. Serves them right.”
He laughs before he can stop himself, a loud, rough laugh he hasn’t let out in so long his ribs ache a little. They drift away from the table, lean against the side of a parked pickup truck far enough from the crowd that they don’t have to yell over the music. She keeps standing closer than most people do, close enough that he can see the faint smattering of freckles across her nose, the tiny scar above her left eyebrow from a bike crash when she was a kid, she tells him. She doesn’t look away when he catches her staring at the scar on his jaw, the one he got playing JV football senior year, and when she gestures at his hoodie to point out a burr stuck to the sleeve, her knuckles brush his chest. She asks him about the typewriters, says she saw his Instagram posts of the ones he restores for local poets and high school writing classes, thinks the work is the coolest thing she’s seen in years. He finds himself rambling about the 1930s Underwood he’s fixing up for a kid in the neighborhood, how he loves the weight of the keys, the way each typewriter has a sound all its own, no two clacks the same.
The first firework goes off with a boom right as he finishes talking, painting the sky pink and gold, and everyone turns to look up. A kid holding a snow cone runs past, slams into Manny’s side, and he stumbles forward, his hand landing on her waist for a split second before he yanks it back, stammering an apology. She doesn’t step away. She leans in instead, so close her hair brushes his shoulder, so he can hear her over the crackle of the fireworks, says she found an old Royal in her dad’s attic after he passed last spring, has been looking for someone to fix it, didn’t want to ask anyone but him. She says she knows it’s weird, that they’re tied together by the two people who blew up both their lives, but she’d rather ask the guy who doesn’t post insufferable Facebook reels about his “perfect second marriage” than some stranger on Craigslist. He says yes before he even has time to overthink it.
The last firework fades to smoke, and the crowd starts packing up coolers and folding chairs, kids yelling as they’re herded to cars. She shoves a full jar of dill pickles into his free hand, cold glass sweating through his jeans where it presses against his leg. “On the house,” she says, grinning, tucks a stray piece of grass that got stuck on his hoodie sleeve off with a quick, soft brush of her fingers against his wrist. “Come over tomorrow around 2. I’ll make iced coffee. The good stuff, not the powdered crap they were serving here.” He nods, doesn’t trust himself to say anything without sounding like an idiot, turns and walks back to his house. He holds the jar tight the whole way, the cold seeping into his palm, can still feel the faint pressure of her fingers on his wrist, and for the first time in 12 years, he doesn’t spend the walk home replaying the day his wife left.