Rico Marquez, 52, ran a vintage fishing reel repair shop out of a 200-square-foot nook on Astoria’s boardwalk, the air always thick with machine oil and salt, walls lined with dented Penns and Shakespeare reels people dragged in from attics, garage sales, even shipwreck salvage. Eight years prior, his wife packed a duffel and left for Maui with a commercial fisherman she’d met at his shop, and he’d buried himself in work ever since, stubbornly turning down every set-up local waitresses and church ladies tried to arrange, convinced any interest was just pity for the guy whose wife bailed. He drank PBR at the Sand Bar every Thursday after closing, sat in the same scuffed wooden stool at the end of the bar, never talked to anyone unless the bartender asked how his week went.
That Thursday, the place was packed, the usual crowd of fishermen and dock workers mixed with tourists in from the food truck rally out front. He was wiping smudged reel grease off his knuckles with a bar napkin when she sat down two stools over, and he caught a whiff of jasmine lotion first, sharp and sweet over the bar’s usual scent of fried onion rings and stale beer. He glanced over, and recognized her immediately: Lila Hale, wife of Tom Hale, the city councilman who’d rammed a 30% boardwalk rent hike through two days prior, the hike that would put Rico’s shop out of business by the end of the year if it didn’t get reversed. She wore high-waisted raw denim jeans, a faded Pearl Jam t-shirt, red flannel tied around her waist, silver hoops that caught the neon Coors Light sign light when she turned her head to order a margarita, extra salt on the rim.