“We need to celebrate,” Steve announced.
“Yes, we do!” Bick exclaimed. “We own a food truck!”
“I’m talking about my dogs,” Steve said. “My smart little papillons completed their therapy training. Gracie and Jerard are now certified canine therapists.” Steve reached down to scratch them behind their ears.
Steve and Bick were on the A train heading downtown to the dog-sitter. The sitter was looking after Oliver, Gracie, and Jerard while Bick and Steve went to pick up the truck.
“Congratulations, I guess,” Bick said. “What about our new business venture?”
“I already ordered business cards for the dogs,” Steve said, ignoring the question.
“Business cards for your dogs?” Bick guffawed loudly over the noise of the subway and rolled his eyes.
“Yup,” Steve said, trying not to sound defensive.
Until recently, Steve’s plan was to turn Gracie and Jerard into Instagram influencers. After all, his dogs loved showing off in front of the camera. But after they mastered the Go in a circle! Dance! Dip! performance, Steve lost interest and the Instagram idea fizzled.
Bick had been quick to criticize.
“To be Instagram celebrities, you have to know a lot more than one trick,” he sneered. He doubted that Steve would now have the self-discipline to turn his papillons into respectable canine therapists.
As the train lurched south, Steve pulled a bag of dog treats from his pack.
“Check out these vegan dog chews.” Steve handed one to Bick. “Our doggies will love them. I’ll leave this whole bag with the sitter.”
“Where did you find them?” Bick asked.
“In that little pet store on Amsterdam Avenue. If I had waited, though, I would have bought them at the 99 Cents store.”
“Waited? Why would you have waited?”
“Because at the 99 Cents store, they would be 99 cents.”
Bick looked confused. “So then, why didn’t you wait?”
“Because I wanted to buy them before that.” Steve was getting testy.
“I’m not trying to be difficult, but right now I can’t figure out this conversation,” Bick said.
“Well, how should I say it differently?” Steve asked.
“Well, you should say that you should’ve waited to buy the vegan dog chews at the 99 Cents store.” Bick raised his voice a notch.
The argument was getting loud and a fellow passenger reading across the aisle raised her eyebrows at the ruckus.
“But I wanted to buy them before that. I didn’t want to wait.” Steve raised his voice a notch.
“Then why did you bring up the 99 Cents store in the first place?” Bick was now shouting above the grinding noise of the train.
Steve glared at Bick. “This is stupid. Let’s just forget it, okay?”
As the A train screeched into the Canal Street station, the two sullen men and their dogs exited to the street.
Suddenly, Oliver pulled to the curb and squatted.
“Ollie! Whew!” Bick grimaced. “That’s one for the record books!”
Oliver, a twelve-year-old bulldog, had frequent bouts of gassiness and loose bowels.
When they got to the sitter’s apartment, Gracie, Jerard, and Oliver were delighted as usual to see her. Stout, with a no-nonsense air of affectionate authority, she indulged her three charges with multiple outings and generous treats throughout the day. The dogs loved her.
After a minute of chitchat, Steve handed the sitter the bag of contentious vegan dog chews, and he and Bick left to go to Queens to pick up the truck.
* * *
“I had to do something, ahh, slightly illegal to get us a food-vending permit.” Bick had delayed telling Steve this unsettling bit of information.
“What do you mean, slightly illegal,” Steve asked with raised eyebrows.
“Well, when I found out how long the waiting list is to get a food vendor permit in New York—it can take years!—a guy mentioned that I could rent his.”
“A guy? What guy?” Steve asked. “And what do you mean rent?” He raised his voice to be heard above the racket of the E train.
“You don’t need to know the details,” Bick said. “Obviously, we don’t have years to wait. So, it was either rent his permit or buy one on the black market—also expensive.”
“You mean we might be arrested? I think I’m going to puke,” Steve hollered. “What the hell have I done?”
“Calm down. For chrissake grow a pair, will you? This is the reality of doing business in New York.”
Bick was not going to be denied his chance to become a celebrity chef. He might as well have proclaimed his outsized ambition on a Times Square billboard.
* * *
“I ignored everyone’s advice,” Steve confided to his sister. “And now I’ve signed my life away to go into business with Bick. We picked up the truck this morning.”
“I’m speechless,” Jessica said. “Well, not really. But, wow. I didn’t think you’d go through with it. I hoped you wouldn’t go through with it.”
“It’s too late now,” Steve said. He heard his sister sigh loudly over the phone. “Anyway, it will be better than that bright idea of his, a year ago. Emulsions R Us, his online salad dressing business, which lasted about a cup of coffee. Thank god I had the good sense to avoid that catastrophe.”
“Yeah, you dodged a rancid bullet there, Stevie.”
“I do have other exciting news,” Steve said. “Gracie and Jerard are now certified therapists!”
“Congratulations. Wow! You have a lot going on.”
“Yeah, well. Right now, I’m on my way downtown, bringing the dogs to a nursing home. The director told me she loves papillons and can’t wait to meet Gracie and Jerard. With any luck, we’ll be going there for regular visits.”
“Well, good grief and good luck,” Jessica said.
“I gotta go. We’re at our stop.”
“Remind me to tell you about my new yoga class,” Jessica said.
The residents of Liberty Nursing Home went bonkers for Gracie and Jerard. For 45 minutes, the papillons were cuddled, petted, snuggled, and adored. Gracie and Jerard lapped up the attention while Steve handed out their business cards. Gracie and Jerard carried the cards in special pouches attached to their collars.
“Paws for Love. What a great name for your business,” an elderly resident said.
“That’s so cute!” smiled a tiny white-haired woman named Melva. “May I have a card for my sister-in-law? She could use some canine therapy.”
“Purveyors of love are always welcome here,” the nursing director said. She hugged Steve and invited the three of them to return for weekly visits.
* * *
The grand opening of Mr. and Mr. on Wheels was planned for June fourth. Bick and Steve had about two months to get the truck ready, which was now parked at a rented space in Queens, a commissary lot for food trucks.
“Well! Let’s get to work!” Bick said.
The old stainless-steel countertops were mostly in good condition. Steve said he would try to polish out the scratches.
“Well, it looks like we’ll have to order a new cooler,” Bick announced. “And we’ll have to disinfect everything.” He motioned to Steve to come and look at the refrigerator.
“Oh, shit!” Steve yelled. A family of mice had taken up residence where the compressor was housed.
The circuit panel and wiring would also need to be replaced.
“The rewiring will cost plenty,” Bick said. “But we can’t take chances with safety.”
“I’ll tell you what,” Steve said. “You deal with the mice. And instead of hiring a professional sign painter, I’ll paint our business name on both sides of the truck. It’ll save us money.”
Bick grimaced. “I’m not sure I like that idea,” he said stretching out his words with hesitation.
“Why not?”
“Well, frankly, if our truck looks amateur, people will assume our food is amateur. Plus—and I hate to bring up a sore point—your spelling leaves a lot to be desired. I will have to stand and supervise while you paint. And I don’t have time for that.”
“Basically, you’re worried that I’ll do a shitty job,” Steve said. “Well, I refuse to deal with the mice.”
Neither the sign painting nor the mice were discussed further that day.
At the next opportunity, when Bick left the truck to attend to a long list of errands, Steve got to work painting. Before long, Mr. and Mr. on Wheels appeared in a colorful script on both sides of the truck. He was just wrapping up when Bick returned.
“Wow,” Bick said, skeptically examining Steve’s work. “Wheels is even spelled right.”
He couldn’t resist the snarky comment, then admitted Steve had saved them money.
One day when Bick was waiting for the electrician to show up, Steve volunteered to do the next set of shopping errands. The list never seemed to get shorter.
Bick told Steve to buy a chalkboard. “And two fire extinguishers. A regular one and one for grease fires.”
When Steve returned, Bick had placed a gallon of hand sanitizer on the countertop.
“This is a good time to discuss biofilm,” Bick announced. He couldn’t help himself. He enjoyed pontificating about germs. “In this truck, our number one enemy is going to be biofilm.”
“I don’t remember anything about bifilm,” Steve said.
“It’s bi-o-film.” Bick enunciated each syllable. “And I’m sorry to bring up another sore point, but you need to start paying a lot more attention to personal hygiene.”
Bick produced an industrial-sized box of surgical gloves and placed it next to the jug of sanitizer.
“As you’ll recall from our food safety course, the use of gloves and sanitizer is essential.” Bick adopted a hectoring tone when he didn’t want to be challenged.
“For example, do you have any idea the number of germs living in the creases of your elbows?”
Steve, annoyed, stared at Bick. “I have. absolutely. no. idea. Bick. I couldn’t even begin to guess.”
“Millions,” Bick said. “There are millions of germs living in the creases of your elbows.”
“And how is wearing surgical gloves going to keep my elbows clean?” Steve asked. “And anyway, it’s 2008. Not the Middle Ages. I doubt an army of killer germs is lurking on me waiting to attack.”
“Never mind,” Bick said. “Here’s the electrician, finally. I need to go over the wiring with him.”
Steve had no interest in electricity and grabbed his camera to go outside.
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