He shakes his head.
“It’s really hot, first of all. The AC doesn’t work so we just have the ceiling vent, and the grill is on. It’s nasty hot.”
“I like heat.”
I give him a dubious look, because we both know I don’t just mean hot. I mean Phoenix summer hot. Yesterday it only got up to 104, and by the time I got home I’d lost five pounds of water weight. What’s 115 going to feel like?
“No, really,” he says. “I thrive on it.”
“I’ve never cooked anything that’s on the menu.”
“I cook,” he says. “And I like challenges.”
I laugh and shake my head. “There’s challenges and then there’s … this. Have you ever cleaned out a fryer? Because I did yesterday for the first time, and it sucks ass. I still smell like grease.”
“Do you want this to work?” Max asks.
“What? Yeah.”
“Then stop trying to talk me out of it. I want this job. I want to make this happen. I like challenges. Okay?”
“You’re crazy.”
He scratches his neck. “Good pep talk, boss.”
I roll my eyes and stand up, and he stands up too. “Jesus. Am I the boss?”
“You have the most experience.”
I say, “By a day,” and then I walk over to the truck, which is sitting in the driveway in front of our garage. “You know how to drive a truck? Because I don’t. I don’t even have a driver’s license, and I am not getting behind the wheel of this thing. Nonnegotiable.”
“Dude,” Max says, shaking his head. “Dude.”
Once we get everything loaded and secured — the counters have little lips so that the plastic trays holding raw chicken breasts don’t fly across the rickety truck every time it takes a left turn — Max slams the passenger-side door closed, plops down in the driver’s seat for the first time, and turns on the ignition. The truck buzzes to noisy life and it feels stuffy almost right away; no airflow, no AC. I remember it from yesterday, when Mom cursed the whole way to Gilbert. I sit near the front on a cooler that we’ve filled with bottled waters and canned sodas that we didn’t sell yesterday.
“Dude. There’s no speedometer,” Max says. It’s a truck my dad bought used about the time I was born, when he switched over from construction work to Coq Au Vinny, and at the time it was old. Now it’s a relic from another era entirely, with dark wood paneling throughout. You could have a groovy ’70s party in this thing for sure.
Max puts the thing in reverse and we slowly creep back out of the driveway. I can’t see behind us, and Max is stretching his neck to the side like he’s not seeing much behind him either. He stops the truck.
“Dude. The side window is all clouded up and I can’t see the side-view mirror.”
“How about the one on your side?”
He laughs. “What one on my side?”
I crane my neck. “Oh,” I say. There is a mirror holder thingy, but no mirror in it. “Sorry.”
“This thing is a death trap,” he says, and he steps over to the passenger door and slides it open. The warm breeze comes in and actually it feels better than it did a second ago. “Now I can see,” he says, and I think, Sure, okay. We’ll drive with the door open. What could possibly go wrong?
He backs out of the driveway slowly, puts the car in drive, and we sit there, motionless.
“What the hell?” he asks.
He fiddles with the stick and we jolt into motion. He laughs.
“Actual drive is between neutral and drive,” he says.
“Good to know.”
“Also you don’t have turn signals. I hit the signal and nothing happens. Death trap, dude. Death trap.”
At this point, I’m thinking maybe death would be okay. Every time he says something about the truck, it punches me in the gut. Because this was my dad’s pride and joy.
At the market, we set up between a smoothie truck and a burrito truck. I stand and carry out the whiteboard menu and put it where it was yesterday. I go around to where my mom turned on the generator yesterday, and I curse myself for not asking more questions before she sent me back out without her. I have no idea how to turn the power on, actually.
“Hey Max,” I say, and he comes around to the side of the truck and stands next to me. He’s a good-looking guy, no question. All bluster and confidence while I’m whatever the opposite of that is. Apologies and embarrassment. Awkwardness and sorrow. First dead in a zombie apocalypse.
“So how does this thing work?” he asks, and I laugh, because it’s such a basic question. I should know. I don’t.
He rolls his eyes. “Jordan,” he says. “Really? You have no idea how to turn on the power?”
I shake my head.
“What the hell did you do last night?”
I shrug. “Hung out with friends?”
He sighs. “I actually watched some videos. You know. To prepare because I don’t have a fucking clue how to run a food truck. Didn’t occur to you to do anything, huh?”
It didn’t, actually. I guess I’m not a details person. Until I was twelve, I thought that if you put chicken in a fryer, it just sprouted crust, like no need to add coating, just some magical process. Details. When I started jerking off, almost every time I’d get close to cumming I’d realize I hadn’t locked the door, and my mom loves opening doors. Details. Thank God she never caught me, or I would have had to gouge my eyes out.
“Jordan,” he says when I don’t say anything.
I turn my head toward him. “What?”
“Are you on drugs? No offense, but it’s fucking hot out here, and the truck needs power, and it’s not gonna turn itself on. And you have to tell me what you know, and you’re not telling me stuff. Or responding to stuff. I mean. It’s cool if you are. Just tell me, dude. We have to communicate.”
“I’m not on drugs,” I say, gruff. “Jesus.”
“Well then maybe tell me what you know? And like how much I’m gonna get paid? And do I need a license to be on a food truck? And how do we do this?”
I suddenly hate Max with a passion.
“I don’t know anything,” I say. “Okay? Nothing. And I don’t know how much you’re gonna get paid.”
He screws his face up. “You are the single worst boss anyone in the world has ever had. You don’t know what you’re paying me? You don’t know whether we need a food license? What the fuck, dude? Let’s just get out of here. Damn.”
He walks away from me, and all the blood leaves my face, because the reality hits me. Of course we’re not going to make this work. You don’t just make a food truck work without knowing stuff like how to turn on a food truck. I’m an idiot. I sit down in the grass on the side of the truck, and I pull out my phone. I look up how to start a generator on a food truck. I see some diagrams. A lot of them are for newer trucks that have buttons this one doesn’t have. There was just this handle. I see one with a handle, and it tells me to flip a switch in the back and pull. I stand up, approach it like I’m approaching a horse I want to ride, and follow the directions.
It whirs to life.
I walk around to Max, who is sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at me. “You figure it out?”
“I did,” I say.
“What else can you figure out?”
I feel like I’m being yelled at by a teacher, and I hate it. But I take a deep breath and figure that I have two choices. One of them is far worse than the other.
“We’ll make it work,” I say. “C’mon. Help me out.”
Thirty minutes later, against all odds, I have our credit card system up and ready and Max has set up the food we have, which is, admittedly, not much. All we have are chicken breasts, some shredded cheddar cheese, and some bins of chopped lettuce, tomato, and onion. And some rolls. Not fancy ones, either. Just like off-brand Wonder Bread. I go out, open up the ordering window, and I yell back, “Here goes nothing.”
Max grunts at me. I’m like, Fuck you, asshole. I’m doing the best I can, okay?
No one comes. Part of that, I guess, is that it’s 8:15 on a Sunday morning, and our menu consists of:
Chicken Parm Hero
Chicken Fingers with Marinara Sauce
Grilled Chicken Breast