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.
Him: “I have had to deal with the public, and the public sucks.”
Me: “I have had to spend time with a guy who hates me.”
Him: “I have had to spend time with a guy who thinks I’m a big loser.”
We look at each other. He cracks a smile, so I do too.
Him: “Food truck, are you willing to accept the help we’re offering you today?”
We sit for a while, as if waiting for the freakin’ truck to say something.
“Did you hear that?” he asks. “I think he said yes.”
Then I stand. “I think so too. And not just because I need this to get better, because you can’t pay me the money I’m owed if we don’t. Though that is a factor.”
“Sorry,” he says. “Really.”
I shrug as if it doesn’t matter, but it does. “Okay,” I say. “Okay. You ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“You trust me?”
“Not sure. What’s the plan?”
“You gotta trust me, dude,” I say, and Jordan looks me up and down, up and down. Deep, dramatic breath.
“Fine. I trust you.”
I blow out the candle and start carrying back the stuff Jordan took from the fridge, and he helps me. When we’re done, I get in the driver’s seat and he sits on his crate in the middle again, and with the door open, I drive us the mile north to my house.
Max opens his front door and the first thing I notice as we walk in is a blue spandex–clad ass, staring at me.
“Company,” Max says, and the blue spandex–clad ass doesn’t move.
“Well company is going to have to put up with my butt as a welcome because I’m in Downward-Facing Dog for another five breaths,” the voice says, and I surmise that this is Max’s mom. She has a slight Mexican accent, which Max doesn’t have.
I want to say that Downward-Facing Dog should be called Upward-Facing Ass, but Max and his mom probably wouldn’t find that half as funny as Kayla and Pam would.
As we walk in, the second thing I notice is that Max basically lives in my house, only reversed. Their sunken living room is to the right when we walk in instead of the left, there’s a dining room straight ahead, and while our open family room and kitchen combination is straight ahead and to the right, theirs is to the left. The biggest difference is that where we have a dining table, his mom has a little yoga area, with one mat she is currently hovering over and several comfy-looking pillows next to her, two rolled-up mats against the wall. And whereas our kitchen is stuffed to the hilt with boxed treats — on every counter, stacked on the refrigerator — their counters are neat and clean.
“You should be at work, Maximo,” his mom calls from the other room as Max opens the fridge. It is stacked. Vegetables, fruit. Dairy. I almost take a picture to send to my mom, so she can see what a real refrigerator looks like.
“That’s my mom,” he says to me, and then he yells out, “Raiding the fridge for the truck.”
“The hell you are,” his mom yells, and I hear her footsteps approaching. “Oh … hi.”
Max’s mom is wearing a red Diamondbacks T-shirt. She’s short — like half Max’s height — and her black hair hangs long down her neck, a bit frizzy. Sweat has beaded on her forehead and she wears a cream-colored clip on top of her head to keep the hair out of her eyes. She smiles, and I see where Guy Smiley got it from. Same exact smile, which almost cracks me up because on her, it looks gigantic.
“Is this your coworker?” she asks, and she sticks her hand out at me.
“Hi,” I say, and I shake her hand. “Jordan.”
“Ms. Gutierrez,” she says. “Now what’s this mistaken idea you have about you two raiding my refrigerator for food truck ingredients?”
Max points into the fridge. “We have no money and just about nothing to cook.”
She winces. “No money and nothing to cook?” She looks me over like she’s sizing me up and I cross my arms in front of my chest. Then she walks over to the couch, which faces the fireplace we never use in our house. Instead of a fireplace, they have an entertainment center, with a huge TV hanging in the middle of the wall. Ours is against the far wall instead. They have a love seat in that spot.
“Sit,” she says. “Gotta get ready for work but first let’s have a chat.”
I tentatively sit on the love seat, and Max sits next to his mom. I’m not so sure I’m ready to be reprimanded by my coworker’s mom.
“So talk to me,” she says. “Sounds like your truck is not going so good.”
I look down at my skinny knees. “No, ma’am. It was my dad’s. He died a few years ago. My mom got the idea to take it out finally and we did on Saturday for the first time. My mom freaked, she hired Max to take her place, and we’re just … doing our best, I guess. I honestly have no idea what I’m doing.”
She studies me for a bit. Finally, she says, “Ah. And is this legal? You guys being out on a food truck together with no experience?”
I say, “Um. Well, the truck is legal.”
“Do you need a food handler’s permit?”
I study the Native American rug under my feet. It’s turquoise and tan.
“Do you?” she asks again.
I shrug.
“Did your mother have one?”
I shrug again.
Ms. Gutierrez frowns. It’s a powerful frown too. Like it makes me want to get up, walk out of this house, and never turn around again.
“Jesus,” she says. “This is illegal, Maximo. I won’t let you do this. I can’t.”
“Mom,” he says. “Stop.”