The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg Page 0,54
down. My teeth break through the crust and into the flesh, which is hot and juicy, and immediately the juice sprays my upper gums and then down onto my tongue.
“Oh my God,” I say, even though my mouth is full.
Max beams at me. “Right?”
As I chew, the warm liquid — is it frying oil? Is it chicken juice? Why don’t I care? — fills my entire mouth. “Food of the gods!” I exclaim, chewing.
“Yes.”
I pause to enjoy the experience, and once I swallow, I say, “How did I not know about this? That chicken fingers are, like, starter chicken. Is it a different animal?”
He cracks up. “Better on the bone,” he repeats, and something about the way he says it is so freakin’ sexy, and first I avert my eyes. And then I sneak a peek back at him, and his eyes are staring right into mine. My heart pulses and my cheeks heat up. I hold his gaze. It is the visual equivalent of a mouth full of perfect, fried, on-the-bone chicken.
“So now we do something you want to do,” Max says, and I laugh, because, like, what do I like to do? This, obviously. But before Max, all I tended to do was stuff with my wives, and a lot of that was mall-related. Plus it’s eleven at night, and I should be home by now. If I had a mother who noticed things, I should have been home hours ago.
Fuck it. I don’t want the best day ever to end, so I rack my mind for any semblance of a fun idea. It makes me think of hooligan do-gooders. Which, when I tried to explain it to Pam the first time, she said, and I quote, “Flat-out no.”
Can I convince Max? Is it possible if I tell him this will be the thing that puts him over the edge and makes him vow never to hang out with me again?
That sort of thinking has not been useful today, on this best of all days. So I just tell him.
“I’ve always wanted to be a hooligan do-gooder.”
“A wha?”
I swallow. “Hooligan do-gooder. We combine the chaotic energy of hooligan culture with do-goodery — acts of kindness. We see what is wrong with the world and we aim to make it better. Through hooliganism.”
Max is smiling that wide smile again, and he’s shaking his head.
“Okay then,” he says as the waitress comes over and asks if we want yet more sugar water. We definitely do, so she takes our glasses.
“You’re going to leave me here,” I say.
He laughs, and there’s something about his laugh that makes me laugh too.
“If I left you here, who the hell would translate into normal and understandable what the hell a hooligan whatever is?”
I take another bite of chicken and try to formulate this somewhat amorphous idea from last year and put it into understandable words.
“Hooligan do-gooder,” I say. “So what if, instead of stealing pets from people, which would be actual hooliganism, we stole lonely people and gave them to pets? Maybe not steal, but like if we found a lonely person, we could do a home invasion, kidnap them, and drive them to the local shelter? They’d be afraid for their lives, sure, but then we’d take off the blindfold and they’d be around all these adorable dogs. We’d say, ‘Adopt one of these, or we’ll kill you.’ ”
He pours a whole river of syrup on his waffles, which are covered in chicken crumbs. “That would be, um, creepy.”
“Well, yeah. And they’d be super disoriented, but in the end, they’d realize we’d given them a reason to wake up in the morning. Through hooliganism.”
Max takes a bite of waffle, licks his lips, and rolls his eyes. “You are so weird.”
“True,” I say, starting in on my wing, which is harder to eat as there is far less meat on it.
“So like is there a real-world, eleven p.m. example of hooligan do-gooderism? ’Cause I’m not down for kidnapping.”
“Do-goodery,” I correct, taking a bite of crust that is so salty and perfect that I almost ask him if we can skip the hooligan do-goodery, which will never come close to topping this moment, but the waitress comes by with our drinks in to-go cups — hint hint — and tells us they’re closing up for the night. “And yeah. I have an idea.”
I blot my mouth with a napkin and try to come up with something actually doable on the fly that would be fun.