The Music of What Happens(25)

Zay-Rod jumps just about right in between us, and this time, while we are under, Zay-Rod succeeds in pulling down my suit.

“What the hell, dude?” I say when my face once again emerges from the salt water. “When in the world has there ever been two gayer straight dudes than you two? You can’t keep your hands off me.” I bend over and pull up my shorts. I can hear my mom laughing at the grill.

“You do have a nice butt,” Betts says, kicking his legs up and floating on his back for a second. “For a dude,” he says to the sky.

I wince and think about how straight dudes are all caught up in gay sex stuff. Like when I came out to my dad down in Colorado Springs over spring break. It’s okay to be gay, but real men don’t take things into their bodies. That’s what girls and women do; it’s what separates us. So when Betts does his whole “You got a nice butt” thing, I kinda want to strangle him a little. It’s straight supremacy.

Instead I grab a yellow noodle, submerge it in water, put my mouth on one end, and blow. Water soaks Betts, who interrupts his float, grabs the noodle from me, and beats me over the head with it.

“So when do we get to meet this new boyfriend of yours? You never introduce us to your boyfriends,” Betts says.

“You blame me?”

Zay-Rod laughs. “Truth.”

My mom approaches the pool. “First I’ve heard of this. New boyfriend?”

“The kid from the food truck,” Betts says.

My mother nods, like, That’s some information. I want to tell her no, like, Don’t worry, Ma. We aren’t dating. Guys like Jordan don’t date guys who hang with guys like Betts and Zay-Rod. This other part of me wants her — and them — to butt the hell out.

“Are the hot dogs ready?” I ask, and my mother rolls her eyes.

“You need to teach this boy how to communicate,” she says to my friends.

“Yeah, ask these guys for help. Good thinking,” I say.





The worst thing about Coq Au Vinny’s re-boot is the truck’s design. It would be so much better if we could just change the name so that people know what we are. As it stands, it’s Saturday morning at the Gilbert Farmers’ Market, and I’m concerned that no one in the world is going to come close enough to see our whiteboard, which contradicts the angry bird logo on the side of the truck.

How are they going to know about the frozen drinks and cloud eggs?

Cloud eggs are this thing we saw on Instagram, where you create like a baked meringue circle, put the egg yolk in the middle, and then bake it. I haven’t tasted one, but I’m intrigued. Someone online said it tasted like egg-flavored marshmallow. I can’t really imagine that.

“So here goes nothing,” Max says, cracking the first egg. He separates the whites from the yolks, putting the yolks in a small bowl. Then he starts whisking the whites to within an inch of their lives, and I stare at the whites as they slowly stiffen and form peaks.

“You’re amazing,” I say, and he snorts.

“That’s me. Max the Amazing Egg Whisker.”

“I couldn’t do it.”

“That’s something you should probably deal with. Who can’t whisk an egg?”

I ignore his dig and start in on my contribution. We convinced Max’s mom to part with her Vitamix, and I’m going to have two frozen drink offerings: frozen mango lemonade and frozen cherry lemonade. I have enough lemonade concentrate and frozen fruit to make a hundred lemonades. At five bucks a pop, that’s five hundred dollars net if we sell out, and it cost me just under a hundred bucks for the ingredients at Safeway. Not bad for a day’s work, and I figure if we sell out, maybe we can streamline the process and sell even more on days in the future.

I place my notebook down by the sink, aware that for the first time, I’m not likely to get much writing done today. I actually wrote some funny stuff and some poems last week. Then I start with the first can of concentrate, combining it with water to create sixty-four ounces of lemonade. I shake and shake and shake, and then pour myself a little bit. Real tart, real sweet. Not too bad. Then I pour eight ounces into the Vitamix, tear open a package of frozen mangos, and pour a quarter of it into the blender. I hit the button and watch the machine whir to life. I didn’t actually try it at home; it seemed simple enough, but as I watch the ingredients combine, I realize maybe I should have experimented. My lemonade looks frothy but watery.

“Hmm,” I say, stopping the blender for a moment.

Max walks over. “How did it work at home?”

I press the button again as an answer. He presses it off.

“Jordan. Tell me you tried this at home. I was doing cloud eggs all night last night.”

“Sounds like a real party,” I say, and I press the button again.

“Dude,” he says, shaking his head and moving away. “Dude.”

We’re falling into this routine, where Max is awesome and I’m a screwup. I can’t say I love it. I purse my lips and try to put it out of my mind.

I find that if I do half the packet of mango instead of a quarter and some ice — yes, I didn’t even think of ice, I’m that dense — my drink thickens up in about a minute on high blend. I wait until it looks sufficiently thick, stop the blender, and pour myself a cup. It’s bright orange-yellow, a color that would definitely catch my eye if I were walking by and thirsty.