Jerm was in the kitchen cooking French onion soup. Max opened the fridge and saw two tall cans of Miller High Life, a six-pack of Michelob Ultra with one missing, and two New York strip steaks.
“What’s the occasion?”
Jerm laughed and continued stirring the pot on the stove. His wifebeater was stained and too short to cover the bottom of his belly.
“Yesterday—” He turned to Max.
“Yo! What happened to your face?”
Max cracked open a High Life and shrugged.
“Fucked up this bitch-ass nigga at work today. Bill made me take off till next Monday as punishment.”
“That’s fire. Did you knock him out?”
“Practically. I caught his jaw, and his knees wobbled. Shoulda hit harder, but I didn’t want to catch a case.”
“Big Bro got hands! Cheers!”
“What’s up with the steaks?”
“I walked to Johti’s yesterday to buy a Backwood, and he upsold me on a Delta-8 CBD dropper.”
“That fake shit?”
“Well, yeah, but not really.”
Jerm waved the stirring spoon, splashing the yellowing linoleum on the side of the fridge, adding to the mosaic.
“So, I figure Johti’s a lightweight. They don’t smoke Runtz in Tibet.”
“I think he’s from Nepal.”
“Yeah. So, he tells me, ‘Berry strong. You take half. Berry strong, I’m telling to you.’”
Jerm’s head wobbled side to side as he imitated Johti, who’s from Pakistan.
“So, I took a full dropper last night an hour before bed, and I started hearing whispers in the white noise from my speakers. Then I was seeing lights and shapes in the dark. I thought this nigga gave me acid.”
“So, you bought steak and girl beer?”
Jerm’s expression dropped.
“It’s not girl beer. It’s low-carb.”
“My bad, Chef, continue.”
“I had some scary thoughts about my health and weight. Give me a break, dude.”
“You’re fuckin’ beefed up, dude, like Tank Abbott.”
“Pshh, that’s the goal, man.”
Max moved to the couch, chugged half his beer, and plucked lint from between his toes. The house was quiet for a change. Wind made the oak tree creak. He began rolling a joint, pinching out tobacco from a cigarette and mixing it with the weed. He licked the sticky strip and twisted the spliff tight. While sealing it with a lighter, his flip phone buzzed. It was Julia. He opened it and saw a pixelated photo of her standing in front of a hotel mirror. Her ass was propped on the sink, hands covering her small tits as she twisted over her shoulder to take the photo. She wrote, “Miami is alright, but maybe you could make it better…” A long string of numbers and letters followed. The Google Maps link to her hotel had devolved into a scramble of cryptic data, like a spy’s coded message. Such is the problem of sending coordinates to a flip phone.
Max squinted at Julia’s photo. She looked ripe and ready.
Max stood and said, “I’m gonna take a shit.”
Jerm kept stirring his pot, not looking at Max.
“Cool.”
After Max jerked off, he immediately deleted Julia’s message and blocked her number without responding. Her eagerness now disgusted him. He was glad to be rid of her.
After a shower, Max used the ab roller and did V-sit-ups in his room, then read a passage from the Hagakure. His interpretation: What a man does in leisure defines how others see him.
Jerm sprayed himself with a lethal dose of mosquito repellent and went out back to grill the steaks. Max followed behind, shirtless and unsprayed, the spliff dangling from his mouth. He knew mosquitoes preferred Jerm’s blood, even if he was doused in DEET.
Steaks sizzled on the propane grill. Max passed Jerm the spliff.
“Shit, I’d be fighting at work every week if it meant a vacation.”
“You need a job first.”
“Keep dreaming, bro. Soon I’ll be at Rolling Loud gettin’ my weiner sucked.”
Max still hadn’t told Jerm about their dad. He wasn’t sure if he would.