The Music of What Happens(26)

The taste is, well, it’s pretty good. Mango-y. Sweet. Refreshing. Super cold. Max watches as I drink and I make an exaggerated show of enjoying it.

“Ahh,” I say dramatically. “Perfection. Imagine: I was able to blend lemonade and fruit all by myself, without testing it out at home!”

He gives me a dirty look, and I assuage him by offering him a sip from my cup. He pauses for a moment, and I realize that there is a sort of intimacy to sharing a cup. But finally he takes it, and I have to admit my arms tingle as I watch his Adam’s apple go up and down while he tastes it.

“That is some sweet shit, dude. How much sugar is in that lemonade?”

I shrug. “Frozen.”

“You know, we could have actually done real lemonade.”

I swallow, tighten my jaw, and — remembering how much I need Max — I try to keep things light. “We could do lots of things. At this point I’m just looking to make some money.”

I set things up so that we have a blender full of mango lemonade, ready to go. A real food truck would probably have two Vitamixes, one for each fruit. As it stands, I realize I’m going to have to hope people want the same one over and over, or else there’s gonna be lots of Vitamix washing.

Once I’m set up, I watch him tenderly place the egg yolks in the center of the white clouds, which look like marshmallow fluff circles. I have to admit that I’d totally order one of those. Max is a talented guy. Too bad he’s stuck with a slack ass.

“I told my friends that my truck mate is gay,” I say, after Max puts the tray of twelve cloud eggs into the oven.

He looks over his shoulder as he shuts the oven door. “How did that go?”

“They started to play matchmaker,” I say.

He laughs. “That’s so funny. Same as my friends. It’s like, what if every time two straight people met, we went around saying, ‘You guys are both straight! You should date!’ ”

I laugh too, even though I realize that this argument isn’t exactly fair. Straight people meet all the time. By the numbers, it’s rarer for two gay people to meet. Also I guess I kind of was asking Pam and Kayla, so it’s not like they overstepped. Still, I say, “Exactly. Of course, one of my friends was all ‘Don’t shit where you eat,’ which is a disgusting image.”

“True,” he says. “As if we’re a bunch of sex-starved pervs just looking for a willing hole.”

I laugh and blush at his use of “hole.” And also because, well, I am sort of a sex-starved perv looking for a willing whatever. But Max doesn’t need to know that.

When the eggs are ready, we put up our awning and open for business.

“Cloud eggs. Frozen lemonade!” Max calls, and even though being loud is way out of my comfort zone, I recognize that this is basically it. That my family’s future depends on the success of this food truck re-boot. So I start yelling too, and then I start coming up with clever slogans.

“Got frozen lemons? Learn to make frozen lemonade!” I yell, and Max snorts.

“Cheesy,” he says.

I shrug.

“Mango lemonade. Round the corner cloud eggs are made,” I yell, and this one just makes him say, “Stop. Please. Stop.”

“Hey, at least I’m trying,” I say.

We’re quiet for a while, and then Max surprises me.

“Our cloud eggs will make your dreams come true,” he says. “Come on and give a cloud egg a try, and tell me it didn’t change your life. It doesn’t change your life, it’s on the house.”

It’s not catchy, exactly, but onlookers stop and approach.

“Cloud egg? Okay. I’ll bite,” a woman says. “How much?”

“Seven,” Max says. “Get it with a frozen mango lemonade for ten instead of twelve.”

She raises an eyebrow and reaches for her pocketbook. “Sold.”

Max smiles that golden grin of his. “You won’t be sorry. One cloud egg coming up!”

I take the woman’s credit card, charge her ten, and then go back to the blender and prepare her a drink. The sugar smell of the concentrate is so strong that I momentarily worry. It was one thing when I was imagining feeding someone my creation; actually giving the woman a frozen mango lemonade brings out all sorts of butterflies in my chest and stomach.

Max hands her a small, red-and-white checked paper dish with the cloud egg regally sitting in the exact center, a fork lying at its side. I hurry up and hand her a see-through-plastic sixteen-ounce cup of mango lemonade.

“Lovely,” she says, and we stand at the window and watch for her reaction. She forks in some of the egg white, and her eyes go wide. “Oh my! The consistency is more marshmallow than meringue,” she says. “I wasn’t sure. And is that Parmesan I’m tasting in there?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Max says.

“I kind of love it!”

A line begins to form, and my heart soars. We have a hit! This is happening.

She takes a sip of the lemonade, and her expression changes in a different way.

“Is this … lemonade mix?”

“Um,” I say, my heart crashing into my shoe.

She shakes her head. “Now that is not quite so special,” she says, and she takes off the lid and pours the contents of the drink on the ground. A poodle pulls on its leash and comes to lick it up, much to the chagrin of its owner.