“Rami.” We turn to see Hector at the ice cream truck window. He motions for Ramiro to come over. He bends down while Hector whispers in his ear.
Ramiro smiles wide at us and shrugs. “I don’t see why not. Hector would like to share. Do you all want to stick around for some ice cream?”
“We don’t want to impose,” Rocky Horror says as Hector turns back and starts talking with the Kid, Taylor, and Jamar.
“I think the imposition would be telling Hector no. And you don’t want to disappoint him, do you?” Ramiro puts a hand to his chest as though scandalized by the thought. He gives Rocky Horror a playful nudge. “I’m playing with you, sweetie. He’ll be sad, but he’ll get over it.”
Sweetie?Is... Ramiro flirting?
Rocky Horror lets out a loud laugh and nods. “Well, we’d be happy to stay and maybe also share our food with you?”
He turns to me, the inflection at the end of his sentence making it clear that he knows we don’t have enough food, but also if we’re getting free end-of-the-world ice cream, it’s a fair trade, right? I nod.
“No need!” Ramiro dumps the mixed ice cream into a soft-serve machine bolted to the wall of the truck and turns it on. He hands Rocky Horror the dirty bowl, then opens the other side of the freezer and takes out a few cans of food. “You’re our guests this evening. We rarely get visitors in our truck, and between you and me”—he means Rocky Horror and him, because I have quickly become the invisiblethird wheel in this ice cream truck of love—“I’ve missed hosting dinner parties.”
Oh, definitely queer. Welcome to the group, Ramiro.
Hector spends most of the night talking to the Kid and Jamar about Pokémon. He knows the names of every single Pokémon and has a notebook he’s drawn most of them in. I try to take part in the conversation at one point—if only to give Rocky Horror and Ramiro a moment to flirt in peace—but it quickly goes over my head, so I ask Cara to help me change the bandages on my arm.
Soon after dinner—and dessert—the Kid and Hector both fall asleep. Henri-Two is still awake—probably wired from her first taste of ice cream. The look on her face almost made this whole trip worth it. The rest of our group enjoys the remaining ice cream by the fire.
It’s cold and very sweet, but it’s been so long since I’ve had real ice cream, I can’t even tell it was made with imitation vanilla extract and powdered milk.
“It’s because of all the sugar,” Ramiro says after I tell him this. He shakes his head, looking over to Hector in his sleeping bag by the fire. “I should have reminded him to brush his teeth when I saw him getting sleepy.”
Henri-Two finally crashes, and Amy turns in for the night with her.
I’m finishing the stale ice-cream cone—my second, and honestly just as amazing as the first—when I decide to come clean about the last time we ran into Ramiro and Hector. How we heard their music through the small town in South Carolina and we thought he was probably an ax murderer.
“I’m sorry!” he says, wiping the tears away as he laughs. “It’s for Hector. When I’m in the truck, sometimes he wanders, and I play the music so he doesn’t get lost. Oh, speaking of.”
He jumps up and goes to the truck—which has been running since before we arrived. The soft-serve machine was running off the battery, but he keeps the freezers switched off and uses them as storage. The truck is diesel, and Ramiro showed us the pump and hoses secured to the top of the truck that he uses to pump the tanks at gas stations.
Apparently, Ramiro and Hector have been driving from Cabo San Lucas all around the country. Ramiro owned the ice cream truck and always said he’d take Hector to America for a vacation, but life kept getting in the way. Then Ramiro and Hector were the only ones in their family left after the bug. So they decided not to stay in Cabo, and went on their road trip instead.
Ramiro cuts the engine and lights and rejoins us.
We throw more wood on the fire and talk. All of us sharing stories about our lives one by one, except for Taylor, who fakes a yawn and excuses herself. She wraps her body in her sleeping bag and lies by the fire with her back to us.
Taylor has always avoided talking about her family in the before times. I honestly can’t blame her. It’s hard talking about life before.
“How old is Hector?” Rocky Horror asks.
“Thirty-two.”
He nods. “I had an older brother with Down syndrome. He died before the flu. Maybe twenty years ago?”
I turn to Rocky Horror, fascinated. I never knew this about him.He’s never talked about his family from before; I always assumed it was because there weren’t any happy stories to tell about them. But the look on his face says this story is a happy one.
Ramiro scoots his folding chair over to Rocky Horror and takes one of his tattooed hands. He says something quietly in Spanish that I don’t understand, but it sounds comforting. Then he adds, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“It’s okay, I’ve had enough time to grieve him. But more time to remember him.”
Ramiro nods aggressively. “I love that outlook. What was his name? What was he like?”
“Vinnie—well,Vincent. I called him Vinnie. And he was the only one in my family, I believe, who truly loved me. I told him one day, I asked him to use my new name. He asked why, and I told him it was because I never felt like the person our parents had named me. I said I was a boy.” Rocky Horror’s eyes flit over to Ramiro, then down to Ramiro’s hand holding his before rising to meet mine.
I’m as surprised as he seems to be. It’s almost like he didn’t expect to say that out loud just now. Rocky Horror never hid who he was when we were in the Keys, but on the road—even with the Nomads—he was reluctant to trust too easily. This must have been an accident, but he’s never slipped before. I wonder what that means. But after a brief pause, he continues.
