The Music of What Happens(17)

“Knew it.”

“Yeah, it changes. Like now, we live in maybe the mountains. Near a city because people are cooler in cities, but we’re in a cabin in the mountains, and I write poems and I’m famous somehow, I don’t know. Maybe I write books too. And he’s in finance or something like that where he’s on the computer all day making money, and we design the place so it looks, I don’t know, kind of like this. Like a speakeasy, maybe, and we get our living room featured in some national magazine, and we throw these amazing parties.”

“Oh Jordan,” she says, and her smile is just blissful. “Do all that. Really. Do it. Don’t let people tell you that you have to be anything other than what you are. You’re really such an amazing person, you don’t even know.”

I choke up and have to look away, because am I? But Mom thinks I am, so that’s cool.





You know that feeling you get when you have no idea what you’re doing, like in calc, and then you see your teacher pause while trying to solve an equation on the blackboard, and you realize very quickly that she doesn’t have a clue either?

This is how it feels when I arrive at Jordan’s place at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday. It’s allegedly our fifth day out. In our first four days, I’m guessing we have made two hundred dollars. Well, not made. Not including expenses. Just taken in. I’m the cook; I know how many orders we get. Whatever we’ve banked, it ain’t great. And it’s not including the money he is supposed to pay me, because to this point, I haven’t been paid. On the way home yesterday, he said, “I know you’re owed money. So far we haven’t made as much as you’re owed. I don’t know what to do about that.”

I didn’t reply, and half of me thought, I’m getting fleeced; get me the fuck out of here. All this damn sweating, all this time spent in hell, and nothing to show for it. Cut your losses. And the other part, probably the part of me that Mom raised, has no quit in him. So I’m back here, a day later, hoping we finally take in some money so I can get mine.

Jordan starts loading the truck from the refrigerator and freezer in the garage, and I guess I’m supposed to just go ahead and help, as usual. But instead I just sit on the dirt of the front yard and watch. Watching Jordan move is just — he’s graceful. The way those long, thin limbs break through the air, so effortless. What I wouldn’t give to move like that, to not be so bulky.

For once, I don’t get up and go, take over. I sit and watch. It’s all I can do. This is just … Mom says insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If that’s the definition, then we are being insane.

After a few minutes, he notices me. Jordan is not the most aware person of all time.

“What?” he asks, and he comes and stands in front of me, his hands on his skinny hips, his red T-shirt hanging off him like his upper body is a coat hanger. His lean chest pulls the shirt in.

“Naw, man,” I say. “Naw.”

He frowns. “So you’re quitting? Is that what’s happening here? Fine. I mean. Great.”

“Naw,” I say again, shaking my head. “Naw.”

He kicks the dirt. “What the fuck does ‘Naw’ mean in this case? Don’t just ‘Naw’ me.”

I smile despite myself. It’s not normal to be pissed, and at the exact same time think there’s something freakin’ adorable about this dude getting all angry. I don’t know why. It just is. “You got any incense?” I ask.

“What? No. Why would I have incense?”

I hoist myself up. “Get me like a match, then. We’re doing a food truck exorcism. We gotta get rid of whatever fucked-up demon is dooming this thing.”

He stares at me. I smile a bit. He doesn’t. He takes a deep breath. I watch him. He goes inside.

I sit there for a while, unsure if he’ll ever come out. It’s not like we have this killer connection, me and Cute Emo Dude. We’ve been on a food truck alone together for four days and our conversations have been entirely limited to food-related stuff and the fact that it is hot. That is about it. It’s sucked so far, a lot. When he gets bored, he opens a journal and writes whatever in it. When I get bored, I crush candy or play Madden on my phone.

Then, after about two minutes, Jordan comes back out with the stump of a lit red candle in his right hand. He walks over to the truck and I follow him.

“Oh Gods of the food truck,” he says. “Get the fuck out.”

I crack up, and he does too. I say, “Get thee behind me, Food Truck Satan.”

He waves the candle around and then runs up and down the aisle. “You have no business here,” he says. “Git.”

“Git,” I repeat.

He pulls up a crate and sits on it. Then, as if he has a new idea, he pulls up a second crate, right next to the first one, and he taps it for me to sit down there. I do.

He says, “This food truck has impacted me in the following ways …”

I laugh at the unexpected shift. This guy is so … something, and I’m not used to it. “This is now a food truck intervention?” I ask.

He nods. “You have made me lose five pounds in pure water weight,” he says. “These are pounds I cannot afford to lose.”

I have to really push my brain to come up with something good. “Because of you, I have begun to think I might not be the great chef I thought I was,” I say.