The Other Side of the Street

by Nicole Thorn

  “Dammit,” Jay said.

  I agreed with him. “If they’re going to be here early in the morning, they’re going to cut into a lot of our profits.” We did our best business before they arrived.

  Helen, seeming to know what we discussed even though she couldn’t have heard us, smirked and turned back to her customers. Meanwhile, Stanley kept poking his head out of the window to talk to the customers. He looked like he could use an ice water.

  “Forget them,” Sam said, coming out of the RV with one of his tables. “Let’s get everything set up. I can get people to come over to our side of the street. Come on.”

  I couldn’t think of anything better to do, so I grabbed the bottom of the table and helped Sam. At this point, all three of us had committed.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jay

  “Leeeeet’s get ready to… BUMBLE!” Sam shouted at the top of his lungs, bursting out of the RV in my bee suit. He had that damn megaphone even though we’d banned it. We’d also mostly banned the suit, but he ignored us.

  Hammy stood next to me, watching Sam shoot out to the edge of the road and dance, trying to entice people over to our side. Hamilton pinched his brow, sighing repeatedly.

  “Are you thinking about how you used to date that guy?” I asked.

  Hammy looked up, bleary eyed. “You’re way cuter in that bee costume than he is. At least you aren’t loud.”

  “I know when to shut up.” I rubbed his back, then patted his shoulder. “Aren’t you glad you found me?”

  “You have no idea.”

  I got a quick kiss before I went back to staring at the people across the street. It was nigh noon, the sun was blazing down on us like the Devil himself wanted to say hello. It would only get worse. It would steadily get hotter until three or four in the afternoon, and people would refuse to get out of their cars around then. We needed an edge if we wanted to do better. Or at least, if we wanted the food truck to do worse. I would have been happy with worse.

  Helen stood outside of the truck, decked out in Hawaiian clichés. She’d gone full coconut bra with a bikini top under it, a hula skirt, flowers in her hair and around her neck. She even sang in Hawaiian… probably. It sounded like mush to me.

  Stanley poked his head out of the truck long enough to take a look at his wife. He let out a sigh, glaring out at the people around him next. He took orders, counted money, and served the food he cooked. It looked like it had aged him ten years in the last month.

  I stared at my spot across the street, remembering the millions of times I’d pulled a wagon all the way from home. Until I had the means to drive. I would plant myself there and stay until the sun went down. Now, without thought, these people had come to take it from me.

  “I have an awful idea,” I said to Hammy. “Do you trust me?”

  He stared. “Um, in theory.”

  “I can work with that.”

  I got my phone out and started texting Beatrice’s friends again. After our last encounter, they’d all given me their numbers. I really had no idea why, but they insisted I had them. Paul had said I was funny, and Rachel said to ask if we needed help again. I needed help, and I hoped they would be willing to give it in exchange for free food.

  After I’d summoned the two of them and Angela, I went up to the bee man singing into a megaphone. I put my hand on his shoulder, unable to speak louder than he sang.

  “Oh, the OG bee himself,” Sam said, lowering the megaphone. “You see this garbage over here? They added to the menu.”

  I looked to see what Helen had scrawled out onto the chalky menu. I had to squint to see it, but it advertised their fresh, raw fish.

  “Ohh…” I said, my eyes going wide.

  “Yeah, I know. Who wants raw fish when it’s a hundred and fifteen outside? Only a madman, really.”

  “Um, aren’t you only supposed to have that with sushi or something? Like, there’s a proper way to do it, right?”

  “Right,” Sam said. He handed me his megaphone and pulled his arms into the costume, leaving floppy wings at his sides. He then pulled his arms out of the top, his phone in hand. “This feels tweet worthy, don’t you think? Let me just snap a sick pic of this bad boy.”

  I watched him take a picture of the menu, and then Helen dancing beside it. He posted it, and I couldn’t even count all the hashtags he added. Honesty, I barely understood how he did all this. But I trusted he would do it better than anyone else.

  “While you have that out…” I said, pointing to the phone.

  After my plan had been hatched, we quickly loaded up the RV and Sam went inside to change out of the costume. We wouldn’t bend on the twenty-minute rule in the summertime, and he didn’t push back. Once he changed, Sam helped us get the last of our things inside. I cast one last look over to Helen, who grinned smugly as she hula-ed. I smiled too, then got into the RV.

  Helen had brought dishonor to my entire business. For that, I needed to destroy her.

  Hammy parked right beside her, thirty feet from my original spot. It called to me, wanting me home. I would be there soon. I just had to smite an enemy first.

  “What are you doing?” Helen asked as we got out and started putting our table up. She had her hands on her hips, glaring at us like we’d burnt down her crops.

  “The sun was getting in my eyes,” Hamilton said, shrugging as he set out jars of honey. “Thought we could use a change of scenery.”

  I thought I heard the woman growl. “You think this is going to help you? It’ll just bring everyone who stops over here, and they’ll see that we’re better and come over before they even get a look at you.”

  I smiled. “There’s a pretty clear flaw in your logic.”

  “Is there?”

  “Yeah. Your food sucks, you asshole.”

  Hammy let out a sputtered laugh before he kissed me on the cheek.

  Helen swallowed, her nails biting into her flesh. “We could always move across the way.”

  With utterly perfect timing, Rachel and Paul arrived, each in their own cars. Angela followed only a minute later, and Sam had another two friends on the way. They all parked on the side of the road, taking up the space Helen would have needed to move.

  Everyone crossed over to us, and greeted me. We happily gave out a sandwich to every member of our army.

  “Yikes,” one of Sam’s friends said, eyeing the menu over at the food truck. “Raw fish?”

  “It’s a delicacy!” Helen huffed, stomping her foot.

  The girl—Ally—made a face. “Is that what you think? Because I can see the thermostat on the side of your RV and that’s not the proper temperature you should store fish at.” She said it loud, letting the people in line hear. “I work over at the fish section of the store and we keep our refrigeration at thirty-three. Anything higher and you can invite bacteria and all kinds of nasty shit. One time, our freezer broke and we came in the morning, and maggots had already gotten their way inside. Have you ever seen a maggot eating fish?”

  I saw several people in line gag, staring at the menu with new eyes.

  “Oh, you guys have new sandwiches,” Angela said after a bite. “I had no idea. God, this tastes fresh.”

  Those gagging people started walking over to us, checking out what we had. Ally gave Angela a big smile, sliding up to her side and leaning in to speak over the noise of the new crowd.

  “How fresh?” Ally asked.

  Angela held the sandwich out to her, letting the girl take a bite. “Damn.”

  “Mm hmm.”

  The next hour rolled on, with our new army being as loyal as I’d ever seen anyone before. Every time someone would get lured into the food truck, one of our people would start a loud conversation about how there had been a recall on a certain kind of fish, or how someone they knew got worms from sushi only a week ago. It was wonderful, and people flooded our spot.

  “I heard that mad cow disease is coming back,” Helen said. Her version of the too loud voice meant to be ove
rheard, it was a little too obvious. I blamed the pleased smirk on her face. “Did you hear that, Stanley?”

  He grunted at her, too busy with customers to give her attention.

  “And did you know that if a bee gets its flower power stuff from an oleander and makes honey with it, it’ll poison the person who eats it?” Helen smiled again. “They’ll just up and die.”

  “Sure,” I said, not being afraid to engage. “Which is why I tend to my own personal garden, with flowers that are only fed with organic fertilizer and given no pesticides. Just good old-fashioned eggshells in the dirt to make sure the snails don’t come trying to eat the plants.”

  “That’s clever,” a woman said to me. “Where did you get that?”

  “My dad taught me, actually.”

  We struck up a conversation that ended with her buying two big jars of honey and a little bag of jerky for her girlfriend to snack on at work. I waved her off when she left.

  “I have an idea,” Rachel declared from Paul’s lap on the RV steps. “What if you guys did coupons? Sam, you know how to do all that social media stuff, right? I bet you could figure out how to get people to see that. Do like… buy a jar of honey and get half of a sandwich.”

  “That’s not a bad idea,” Hamilton said. “Or a free drink if you get a sandwich and a bag of chips.”

  “I can make those,” I said. “It would be easy to do some little cartoon for them. Sam, you know where to post that?”

  “I think I can figure it out,” he promised.

  The day only got hotter as it went on, and Sam threw on the bee suit again. This time, his friend Allen had on the jerky suit and they danced together as they tried to get people to come to us. I started getting nervous when Helen eyed the empty spot by the cars across the street. The plan would be a lot harder if they moved over. Stealing customers got a lot easier from only ten feet away.

  “I think she’s coming up with something,” I told Hamilton as we filled the cooler with new ice. “I don’t trust her snake like eyes. I want her to trip and fall and then choke on fish.”

  “Remember when we met? You were so sweet and gentle.”

  My cheeks got red. “I can still be sweet and gentle…”

  Hammy took a step to me, grinning as he put his hands behind his back. “Prove it.”

  I had no intention of kissing him, but then I ended up yanking him down by the shirt and sticking my tongue in his mouth. He must have had some kind of black magic or a love spell he’d put on me, because there was hardly a moment where I didn’t want to climb him.

  “We don’t have time for a meeting!” Sam yelled at us. “Can you keep it in your pants for ten minutes?”

  “It’s in my pants,” Hammy said against my mouth.

  I let go of him, since we needed to work. It steadily got hotter outside anyway. Make out sessions would need to wait until we went somewhere with air conditioning and a bed I could shove Hamilton down on.

  Helen messed with her temperature gauge on the back of her truck. She frowned, staring up at the sky like it did something cruel to her. Her face looked red all over, and I looked closer to see that her whole body actually looked red. Thanks to the costume, she’d been burned in a ridiculous pattern.

  I waved at her with my free hand as I sprayed my arms down with another coat of sunblock. I took no chances in the official state of sun related cancer. It had been the only way my mother allowed me to go outside as a kid.

  “Stan,” Helen said, opening the door on the side of the truck. He had been running around but stopped to listen to her. “The sun is beating down on the unit here. We need it colder.”

  He sighed, flipping something on a grill. “I have too many orders to just up and move to the other side of the street.”

  “Well, find a lull, because the truck can’t take this. We need it way, way colder to keep the fish fresh.”

  “Gosh then, Helen. Maybe we shouldn’t have raw fucking fish in the truck then.”

  Our group sounded like a studio audience, oohing and awing all over the place. Helen had nothing but hate for us as she glanced our way again.

  “Damn,” I breathed to Hammy. “They’re going to move. What do we do?”

  He thought about it for a moment, then blinked. “Give me ten minutes.”

  He vanished, leaving me.

  I checked the temperature, seeing that we pushed one twenty. It was four in the afternoon now, and about the time the dinner rush started. People would be getting off work soon, looking for something fast that they didn’t have to cook.

  “The truck can’t take it,” Helen complained to her husband again. “It’ll break the unit.”

  “We spent too much money on it for us to let it break,” Stanley said. “Leave it alone.”

  “We can’t. The fish…”

  “Leave it,” he said. “Give me two minutes and we can switch to the other end. Okay?”

  I looked over at all the cars parked there, seeing how an abundance of massive trees provided shade in the only remaining spot they could have had. If they moved, they could get the whole dinner rush from us.

  Right when my stomach started threatening to have me doubled over, I saw it. I saw my baby, proud and now green as it pulled up to the dirt road. An ugly, ugly lime green that my truck should never have had to be.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  Hamilton appeared beside me as the truck parked, along with another couple behind it. One, a van, had four people in it. “You left your phone in the RV, and you still had the mechanic’s number in there. I texted his kids and offered them all half off for a favor.”

  The food truck no longer had a reasonable place to park after the new cars showed up. Alex had come too, and his teenage sons crossed the street with him. I hadn’t seen them since I’d handed off my truck in exchange for more cash than I’d ever had in my hand.

  “What do you think?” Alexander Jr. asked me, gesturing to the truck. “I’m a fan of lime.”

  “I can see that,” I said. “It looks… great.” It didn’t look like mine anymore.

  The youngest boy—Josh—put some money down on the table. “A jar of your finest drinking honey.”

  Hammy made a face. “Um…”

  “He’s, he’s gonna drink it no matter what you say,” Alex sighed. “We have this conversation a lot.”

  We had a lot of hungry mechanics to feed, so Hammy didn’t bother fighting him on it. I felt like I could smell the fish from the food truck, but I ignored it so we could feed the masses. We had a good chance of selling out before the night was over.

  “Ah!” I heard from Rachel as some hacking sound erupted. When I looked over, I saw someone doubled over and emptying their stomach onto the ground. Then another person saw it and did the same thing.

  “Oh my god,” Alex said. “Jesus Christ, what the hell is happening?”

  “Raw fish,” Sam declared.

  “I told you!” Ally said. “You have to keep that shit on lockdown! You’re going to kill someone, you dumbass!” she shouted at Helen.

  It became a symphony of puke. One by one, people would go down. I didn’t know if seeing it caused a chain reaction, but it turned a flood of hell the likes of which I hadn’t ever seen. I wished I could have gone back to the innocence of the morning.

  Sam started taking pictures, posting them with even more hashtags. “Should we call an ambulance?”

  The food truck door flew open, and Stanley stormed out of it as his wife yelled at him. He threw his apron on the ground so hard that dirt plumed around it. “I’m done!” he shouted. “I am done!”

  “Stan,” Helen said, her hands on his shoulder. “No, no we can fix this. It’s our dream!”

  “My dream is to not get sued, Helen! I’m fucking done. This is over.”

  His wife’s eyes welled up with tears as she stared up at him. “But… our dream.”

  Something about her face seemed to pop his anger bubble in an instant. He softened, taking a deep breath. “
Baby, this wasn’t anyone’s dream. You got bored and decided I would look hot in an apron.”

  “You do,” she sniffled.

  He used the edge of his sleeve to wipe a tear off her face. “I know. But nonetheless, I’m fucking finished. I can smell nothing but raw fish and vomit, and I want to die.”

  Helen hung her head. “Our dream…”

  He rubbed her shoulders, pulling her close. “Okay, so we get a new dream. Remember back when you were talking about getting a Tiny House?”

  She perked up. “Yeah.”

  “Well, it was so we could travel. Let’s travel then. We can drive around the country and do nothing but eat and have sex outside. Ya know, like god intended.”

  She gasped. “We can have a baby!”

  The man went pale, saying nothing.

  “But the truck… It was more than a quarter million with all the upgrades and equipment. I sold my doll collection for that.”

  He blinked, then turned and pointed to Hamilton. “You, hey, you.”

  Hamilton pointed to his chest. “You got something to say to me?”

  Stanley then pointed at the RV. “I’ll take that piece of crap off your hands for you. You kids want to stand around in the hot sun all day, fine. You give me that RV and you can have the truck, even stevens.”

  “That was a good show,” Rachael said behind us.

  I looked to Hamilton, almost blanking on what to say. “That truck is new.”

  “Very new,” Stanley said. “We got it decked out with so many bells and whistles that her dad’s credit card almost cried. Come on, we can make a deal right now. You in or out?”

  Hammy nudged my arm. “Well, what do you say?”

  “It’s your RV.”

  “But it’s our business. If we do this, then we’re really in it. It’s you and me, Jay.”

  I smiled, even though puking customers surrounded us and we would probably all get arrested soon. “Then I guess it’s you and me.”