The Accordion Incident

Julianne pulled into the bookstore parking lot at four forty, which gave her twenty minutes before the place closed for good. Twenty minutes to say goodbye to the only independent bookstore in the county, after she'd already spent eleven circling the block because she couldn't find a spot. Small towns! You'd think they'd have parking.

She was sixty-one, and she knew this because she'd had to say it out loud twice this week already. Once to her dentist, once to the online dating app that kept asking her age like it didn't believe her. Sixty-one, never married, curator at the county historical museum, and owner of a 2009 Corolla with a battery that seemed to have a mind of its own. Not that she knew about the battery yet. Give it twenty minutes.

The bookstore was packed, which was sad in the way that only a going-out-of-business sale can be packed. Everything forty percent off. Everything must go. She grabbed a coffee table book about covered bridges she absolutely did not need, and then she saw him.

He was by the discount table, holding a book on plumbing diagrams like it was a rare manuscript. Tall guy, thirtyish, work boots, a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and forearms that suggested he lifted heavy things for a living. His profile photo had not done him justice. His profile photo had been taken at what appeared to be a county fair, and he'd been holding a turkey leg.

"Harley?" she said.

He looked up and lit up as if a porch light had turned on. "Julianne! Hey! You found the place!" He looked around at the deathly sale shelves. "Well. Sort of."

"I've been coming here for thirty years," she said. "I had to see it out. What are you reading?"

He looked down at the book like he'd forgotten he was holding it. "Oh. This. Um." He flipped it over, then flipped it back. "It's called Plumbing Diagrams of the American Midwest, 1940 to Present, and I swear I did not come here for it."

"Then why did you come here?"

"Because of you, obviously." He said it fast, then went red. "I mean. I mean that came out weird. I put it on my calendar. I've been looking forward to it all week. But also I have an ulterior motive and it's embarrassing."

Julianne leaned an elbow on the discount table. Now this was interesting. "Ulterior motive? At a bookstore closing? What could you possibly need from a dying bookstore besides books?"

"Okay, so." He set down the plumbing book, picked it up again, set it down for good. "You know from my profile that I'm in a polka band."

"I do know that. Polka Wagon, it's called. I looked it up and everything. You were the best dressed at the Harvest Festival, according to one very enthusiastic Facebook comment."

"Mrs. Kowalczyk. She's a fan." He rubbed his thumb along the edge of the discount table. "So, this is the situation. Our accordion player, Bo, broke his wrist Tuesday. Fell off a ladder cleaning his gutters, which, at sixty-eight, Bo really should know better. And we've got a wedding gig in three weeks and nobody else who can squeeze a box."

"That's terrible. Is Bo okay?"

"Bo's fine, Bo's thrilled, he gets paid to sit around and watch game shows for six weeks. The problem is me. I play second accordion, but I'm the backup, the understudy, the guy who carries the cases. And I own an accordion, but it's a student model, a real piece of junk my uncle gave me, and it wheezes on the bass side like an old dog." He took a breath. "And separately, I came here to sell my grandfather's concertina to the bookstore."

Julianne blinked. "To the bookstore."

"The bookstore buys used stuff. It says so right on the sign. Records, instruments, books, whole estates. Or it said so. Past tense, I guess, since..." He waved a hand at the empty shelves, the going out of business banner. "And I got here at two and the guy at the counter said they stopped taking consignments last month."

"Oh no."

"So now I'm just standing here holding a book about plumbing diagrams because it was near the register and I panicked." He laughed at himself, and it was a good laugh, big and unguarded. "I'm an electrician. I fix wiring. I do not panic. But I need four hundred twenty-five dollars by tomorrow morning for a part, a whole breaker panel for a job out on Route 9, and my grandfather's concertina is worth four hundred twenty-five dollars to somebody, and now that somebody is going to be an online auction and the auction takes a week and I'm just..."

"Breathing," Julianne said. "You're just breathing. It's fine."

"Sorry. You came here for a nice solemn goodbye to a bookstore and I'm having a financial crisis next to the covered bridges."

"I also bought the covered bridges book, so my judgment is not impeccable either." She held it up. "Also, why does an electrician need a breaker panel by tomorrow morning? Don't suppliers deliver?"

"Not on Fridays, not out to Route 9, and not when the job starts at seven a.m. and the homeowner is a retired school principal who will call the county on me if I'm late. I've been meaning to buy this panel for two weeks and I kept putting it off because it's four hundred dollars and I just paid for Bo's get-well flowers, which sounds nice but Bo is the kind of guy who checks the price of the flowers."

Julianne was laughing now. She hadn't laughed on a date in six years, and here she was, laughing in a dying bookstore next to a man holding plumbing literature. Her last date had been with a curator from the art museum, a soft-spoken man who transferred to another museum and never called again, and that was six whole years of museum galas and single servings of lasagna and a vibrator with a worn-out motor. She'd matched with Harley because his profile said he played polka and she thought, well, that's either a green flag or the most interesting red flag of all time.

"Look," she said. "Where do you buy the panel?"

"Kessler's. Plumbing and electrical supply out past the grain elevator. It's kind of a warehouse situation."

"I'll drive you."

"Absolutely not, I'm not taking the date to an errand."

"Harley. My car has been making a sound for a week. If the date continues past this parking lot, it continues in your vehicle anyway. At least this way you get your panel and I get to watch you buy it. I like watching competence. It's the whole reason I date tradesmen."

"You date tradesmen plural?" he asked, grinning.

"I dated one curator in 2019 and he was terrible, but the competence part was real."

"Fair." He checked his watch. "Kessler's closes at six. We got time, if your car cooperates."

Her car did not cooperate.

* * *

The Corolla turned over twice, made a sound like a disappointed donkey, and died right there in the bookstore parking lot with the covered bridges book on the passenger seat and a polka man leaning in her open door.

"There's your culprit," Harley said, pointing at the battery with a confidence she found genuinely attractive. "Terminals are corroded and the battery's got no juice left. That thing's original, I'd bet money. When'd you buy the car?"

"2010."

"Yeah, that tracks." He straightened up. "Okay, so you're not driving anywhere tonight. I've got jumper cables in the truck, but we'll do that after, in the light. In the meantime, you ride with me to Kessler's."

"Cables?"

"Electrician. I own more cables than friends. Is the ride okay? I know this is a lot for a first date. Car died, errand, plumbing warehouse."

"Harley, I've sat through four fund-raising galas this year. A plumbing warehouse sounds like a cruise."

"Then you haven't seen the plumbing warehouse," he said, but he was smiling, and he held her car door while she gathered her purse and her absurd book, and she thought, well! Six years and the first man to hold a car door for her is a polka electrician with a cash flow problem.

* * *

Kessler's was exactly what he'd promised, a cinderblock warehouse that smelled like pipe dope and sawdust, aisles of PVC stacked to the ceiling, and a counter where a man in his fifties with a magnificent gray mustache was already waving.

"Harley. You're here on a Friday night and you brought a woman? Who died?"

"Josiah, this is Julianne. Julianne, Josiah. He saved me from a house fire in 2015, long story, and he's been insufferable about it ever since."

"Ma'am." Josiah shook her hand with genuine ceremony. "Your fella here, all he does is work and polka. You're doing the Lord's work."

"We're not, um." Julianne felt herself blush like she was thirty-four instead of sixty-one. "It's our first date."

"Even better," Josiah said. "So, Harley, the panel's in back. Four twenty-five, since you waited two weeks and Kessler's raised prices, don't look at me like that, I don't set the prices. But hey, since you're broke and desperate, I got a proposition."

"I'm listening," Harley said, in the voice of a man who already regretted it.

"You know the floor model in the office? The Hohner, the pretty one, the red one I keep behind glass because customers keep touching it?"

"The accordion, yeah."

"My nephew's wedding is in three weeks. Big Polish family, you know how it goes, they want live polka or they want a DJ and nobody wants a DJ. Bo told me your band's got an opening. So here's the deal. You borrow the Hohner for the wedding, you play the gig, and I knock fifty off the panel, and you pay me Monday when the principal's check clears. And the Hohner comes back after, no scratches, or you're buying it off me at my price."

Harley stood there doing math with his face. Julianne watched him land on it.

"Deal," he said, and stuck out his hand, and Josiah