The Music of What Happens - Bill Konigsberg Page 0,76
those couple nights.”
“So we’ll get legal,” he says. “C’mon, dude. I’m not doing illegal shit. My mom would kill me.”
“Maybe just the thawed chicken? ’Til that’s gone?”
“Where would we go?”
“Well, wherever we go, it should be where no other trucks are,” I say. “And it should be legal. And you shouldn’t put it on social media, because they’re probably tracking us now.”
Max says, “Trampoline place in Tempe?”
I smile. “I knew you were a badass.”
He rolls his eyes. “We’ll see.”
It turns out it’s not that easy to just park the truck at a location in Phoenix in the summer and expect foot traffic. We park in the trampoline parking lot, which may or may not be legal, and lots of kids go in and out but almost no one stops at our truck. We sell a couple frozen lemonades to a mom and her daughter as they leave, but as far as chicken goes, we get shut out. I guess jumping up and down while eating spicy chicken is not recommended.
We close up and Max says we should try the escape room place in south Scottsdale. We get there, though, and there’s literally no place to park, as it is right on Scottsdale Road.
“We could do Zorba’s,” I say, pointing in the direction of the infamous dirty bookstore.
He laughs. “Good plan.”
“Can you think of any place where there would definitely be people?”
He gets on his phone and surfs around for a bit. Finally, he says, “D-backs game?”
Having never been to a Diamondbacks game, I have no idea if this is a good plan or not. But I’m getting desperate. I’m afraid we’re gonna waste hundreds of dollars of chicken if we don’t find a location in the next day or two.
So we park in front of Talking Stick Resort Arena, a couple blocks west of Chase Field, as the streets closer to it are cordoned off. We face the sidewalk and soon we’re doing a brisk business with people heading to the ballpark for an afternoon game, not wanting to eat the horrible food there — their words, not mine.
“Two habanero all day,” I yell back to Max, about an hour into our stay there. A police officer walks up.
“Do you have a permit to be here?” he asks.
I freeze up. “Do we need one?”
He frowns. “Yes you need one. Get moving.”
I nod, finish the order we’re on, apologize to the other people in line, and we close up and jet.
As Max drives east on Van Buren, back toward home, we try to look at the bright side.
“At least we sold some,” I yell up from my seated position on a cooler in the aisle behind him. My words are carried away by the open passenger-side door.
“I guess,” Max yells back, and I hear the words more clearly than I expect. That’s when I realize we’ve come to a stop. I look out the window. We are not at a light.
“Shit!” Max yells. “Shit shit shit.”
“What happened?”
“Poultry is not in motion,” he says.
Max has to turn off the truck as we wait to be towed. We sit there in the stagnant heat, watching cars go around us. Most of the drivers give us the finger as they go by. As if we’re just taking a rest in the middle of two-lane Van Buren Street.
“This is where the no-tell motels are,” Max says.
“You mean like hookers?”
“Yup.”
“Firsthand experience?” I ask, and he punches me lightly on the shoulder.
“Got some shit to figure out,” Max says, and I realize that this is karma. Our hubris. I celebrated too early. I have no idea what this will cost, but suddenly more money is going out than coming in, and who knows how long it will take to make the truck legal and drivable again.
“That we do,” I say. “Gotta look up homeless shelters for me and my mom.”
“Don’t say that,” Max says, but he doesn’t contradict my statement either.
A fairly accurate recording of the first-ever meeting of me and my Amigos and Jordan and his wives. In the style of a play, because Jordan is rubbing off on me.
Max: You made it! Hey!
Pam: Did you think we’d die getting here? Get struck by lightning? A meteor? Yes we made it.
Jordan: Chill. I think he was just saying hi.
Pam: Don’t tell me to chill. You chill. Bitch.
Max: Okay. So …
Kayla: Hi, sweetie. [Hugs Max] We have heard so much about you recently. Including the obvious lie that you are not doing the nasty with our husband.