The Music of What Happens(60)
“Uh, sure,” I say, as casually as I can, while my mind is screaming: HE WANTS TO DRAW ME! HE WANTS TO DRAW ME!
The other food truck folks have all sorts of comments for us when we arrive at the Gilbert Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning and unveil Poultry in Motion.
“Did a fifth grader paint that?” Burrito Truck Guy says.
“You changed your name? Did you do a DBA form with the state?” asks Popcorn Guy.
The lady from Chip’s Potatoes says, “You should have hired a pro.”
Max and I just look at each other and roll our eyes.
“Everyone’s a critic,” I say as we do our prep work.
“We’re getting so many hits on social media right now,” Max says. He announced the name change last night. “We’ll outsell them all combined.”
I have to stay busy cutting lemons so that I don’t attack Max then and there. I am so, so, so ready for us to do more. We make out a lot, but for a dude bro, Max has been pretty slow to take it to the next level. I figured he’d be the fast one and I’d be slower. But on the couch yesterday, when I started bringing my hands lower, he stopped me. I know he says he’s into me but maybe he’s lying? Maybe it’s just words so he doesn’t hurt my feelings? I dunno.
And we do outsell everyone. Max’s cloud eggs and bacon is a huge seller, and my lemonades do a brisk business too. We get into one of those rhythms where we’re just flying around the truck, doing our thing, and time is going by and we barely even feel the extraordinary heat of the grill and the outside combined.
Also we talk dirty. It’s an idea I came up with while we painted yesterday. I told him that Pam, Kayla, and I used to text “Ride the light-rail” when we meant doing sex stuff. Just in case Kayla’s dad, who can be a little nosey, got a hold of her phone. He’d probably wonder why she had so many long conversations about whether she was ready to take the light-rail to Phoenix with Shaun from Chess Club. Max thinks it’s a funny idea.
I start it. “You give any thought to riding the light-rail?”
He totally cracks up while scraping off the grill. “Um. Yeah. It has, um, crossed my mind.”
“Me too. I’m trying to be a gentleman. But I really want to try the light-rail.”
I go back to take the next order. An older white guy with a ponytail orders one and one — a cloud egg with bacon and a lemonade — and as I take his money, I call back, “One and one all day. How many times have you ridden the light-rail?”
Max yells up from the grill, “Once.”
“Once more than me,” I say as I hand the guy back his change. “Was it … fun?”
“Not really,” Max says. “I mean, it should have been. Got in the wrong car.”
I have no idea what that means, so I yell back, “Lots of homeless people?”
Max cackles. “Hella homeless people.”
The ponytail guy says, “I love riding the light-rail. I’m kind of an aficionado.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, and below the window I kick Max’s foot and he kicks mine back. “What’s your favorite part?”
He grins. “Trying to get away with not paying,” he says, and it takes everything I can to not die laughing.
Max turns around and smiles at the guy. “You ride with friends or alone?”
“I mostly travel alone, I guess.”
“Been there,” I say, and Max and I laugh and the guy laughs in that polite way people laugh when they don’t know why something is funny. I feel kinda bad for making fun of the guy, but yeah, when he leaves, I have to whisper, “As a first order of business, cut off the ponytail. Then someone might want to ride with you” to Max, who elbows me in the ribs.
The next person in line is a middle-aged Latino guy with a clipboard.
“You got a license to run this thing?” he asks.
“I do I do,” I say.
He pulls his wallet out of his pocket. “Food inspector,” he says. “Can I come aboard?”
Max hears this, and he says, “Can you give us a minute to get through this line?”
The guy frowns. “No. Got a call this morning. If you’re not doing things by the books, I’m here to shut you down.”
I think, Who the hell would want to shut us down?
He comes on and inspects our food prep area. He makes a few marks, and I try to see what he must be seeing. I have cut-up lemons I haven’t thrown out yet, and some prickly pear cut open and ready to go on the counter next to the blender.
“You wash this after every use?”
“Yes,” I lie. Since there’s only one kind of lemonade, I tend to wash it once every few hours. Maybe that’s not enough? Shit.
He makes another mark, and then he observes Max and the grill.
“Separate areas for the eggs and the bacon?”
“Yes, sir,” Max says. I’m not sure, but I think this is a lie. Luckily, there’s no major mess on the grill right now, nor are there any grill markings that would betray Max’s story.
The guy looks at the four rows of chicken breasts next to the grill. “How long you keep these out before you grill them?”
“Less than fifteen minutes,” Max says, and he pulls out a meat thermometer and stabs into one of the breasts. He turns his head sideways and reads it. “Thirty-nine exactly. Which is two degrees under what’s allowable.”