Deborah Halverson - Big Mouth

So, according to Lucy’s grand plan, establishing the base number this afternoon was step one, graph one. I could eat ten hot dogs and buns in twelve minutes. Make that ten HDBs. That’s what we eaters called them, HDBs. By Lucy’s calculations, I’d be eating fifty-four HDBs by the time I turned eighteen. Piece of cake!

As Lucy neatly plotted her numbers into a line graph, my eyes wandered across the rows of restaurant counters that lined the cavernous food court: China Town, Roberto’s Taco Cabana, Pie in Your Eye Desserts…You name the restaurant, it was here. And man, were they busy with customers. All around us, people scurried and weaved through the maze of tables, their red trays piled with food and drinks. A fine mist of deep fryer grease flavored the air, and the vapors of countless grills and ovens danced about our heads. The low grumble of a squad of industrial-sized air conditioners soothed me, like a waterfall in the forest.

I drummed my fingers as Lucy dipped into her apron pocket for her calculator. Man, that apron. Milk-chocolate-brown and shin-length, it had CHOCOLAT DU MONDE stamped on it sideways in huge, silver-foiled letters. She was a walking Hershey’s bar. No joke. The rest of her clothing just added to that image: Her long-sleeved shirt and creased pants were almond-colored, her clunky work shoes were a dark chocolate of the Milky Way Midnight variety, and even her hair was cocoa-colored. She was turning into the very candy she sold. Even from across the table, I could smell the lush cocoa scent she got after an hour or two of work. But even as bad as that apron was, a job that made you smell like a chocolate bar sounded like heaven to me.

“Hey, Lucy. Do I smell like ice cream?”

“Shhh.” She held her hand up like a stop sign. “Busy minds at work.”

“Sorry.” I rested my chin on my hand. How long does it take to calculate a few HDBs, anyway?

A few more minutes passed. Over Lucy’s shoulder I caught sight of a guy creeping low behind a short lady with tall hair. His head kept peeking out quickly, then darting back behind the hair tower again. Gardo. And he was up to something, as always.

When he was right behind Lucy, my buddy winked at me, then leaned his mouth down near Lucy’s ear. “Take off your shoes,” he hissed. “You can count higher that way.” He playfully poked her in the side with the corner of a pizza box.

“Gardo! You made me lose count.”

“I made you jump, too.” He laughed and high-fived me, then sat down next to me on the plastic bench.

I wagged a finger at him. “I expect a little more maturity from you, sonny.”

“How about a little maturity from you both?” Lucy muttered, straightening her Hershey’s wrapper, er, apron. She was kind of smiling as she said it, though.

Good ol’ Lucy. Always a sport.

She went back to marking the graph.

I took the pizza box from Gardo and set it on the table. “I was starting to think you wouldn’t show.”

“Hey, it’s crowded. I had to push my way to the counters and talk fast. I barely had time to get off a wink. You should be thankful I made it at all.”

“Oh, we’re thankful,” Lucy said without looking up.

“We are, ” I stressed. Unlike Lucy, I meant it. Gardo’s supreme flirting skills scored us the best free food in the mall. Not even the high school girls could resist him. We couldn’t risk him holding back because we were ungrateful. “Hey, hey. I see more donations there, Romeo. C’mon, fork ’em over.”

“What, these?” He held up a cardboard carrying tray with three shakes, then grinned. “You should be extra thankful I can work the magic at high speeds.” He jiggled the tray. “I scored a bull’s-eye every time, baby. Girls might as well have targets on their foreheads.”

Lucy whipped her head up. “Excuse me?”

“What?” He lowered the shakes and looked to me for a clue. “What?”

I shrugged.

Lucy narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean, what? ”

Uh-oh. Better batten down the hatches, Gardo. Tropical storm Lucy is starting to swirl.

“What you just said about girls,” she continued. “It was insulting.”

“What’s insulting? I’m not insulting. Shermie, am I insulting?” Gardo looked at me again.

This time, I didn’t even flinch. Shermie Thuff was no dummy.

Lucy started to say something but then just sighed instead. “Why waste my breath?” She went back to writing again. “It’s not like you can help it; you are a Libra. ” She said it like the guy had infantigo or something heinous like that.

Gardo mouthed “ PMS” my way, then spit his gum into the trash can by our table.

I eyeballed the Slimmy Jim’s pizza box he’d put on the table. There were about a million smells swirling around the food court, but I could clearly pick out the salty aroma of pepperoni wafting from the square box, along with the smoky perfume of crisp, browned crust and the subtle undercurrent of woodfire-smoked tomatoes and the…the… hmmm, I can’t quite place that smell…It’s kind of sweet…kind of…citrusy! “Ew! Is there pineapple on that pizza?”

“I swear, Shermie, you could be a bloodhound with that nose.” Gardo flipped open the box. I nearly shielded my eyes at the sickening sight of charred fruit infecting innocent pepperoni slices. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Maybe not, but that pineapple is out of here.” I started flicking off the greasy chunks. Warm, seared pineapple baked into cheese and tomato sauce was a terrible combination. No one cooked strawberries or plums into a pizza, why would they try pineapple?

My first pineapple flick went wild, though, pegging Gardo’s red Go, Plum Wrestling! T-shirt. “Sorry, man.”

Gardo retaliated by snicking a golden chunk back my way and cheering when I dodged it. Then he tilted his head back and lowered a shiny circle of pepperoni into his gawping mouth, letting the grease trickle down his chin. “Umm-umm!”

He might’ve loved pepperoni more than I did.

I folded two slices into a sandwich and bit big. In the Sherman T. Thuff Book of Good and Tasty Things, Slimmy Jim’s woodfired pizza ranked five stars out of five.

Across from me and Gardo, Lucy carefully capped her pen and tucked it into her binder pouch. When she clapped the binder shut, she looked pleased as pie. Another graph up and running. “Follow me, Sherman Thuff, and you will be a star.”

As if to celebrate, she reached into the front pocket of her Chocolat du Monde apron and fished out two truffles. “Tada!” She set the truffles next to the pizza box.

“Score!” I shouted. Add those beauties to the slightly green banana and the cup of Cookie Dough ice cream that I’d contributed, and we had a break feast.

Gardo motioned his head toward the notebook. “I see you’ve got Shermie’s road to glory all plotted out.” A half-circle of pepperoni fell from his slice. I snagged it before he did. “Hey!”

I grinned and chewed real big.

“Strategy is everything.” Lucy picked up the banana and started peeling. “Competitive eating is the up-and-coming sport of this century. It’ll be in the Olympics soon. If Shermie wants to be a champion eater, he has to do it right.” She swirled the banana in the soupy part of the ice cream. “Olympic gymnasts and swimmers start training when they’re babies. Shermie’s way behind. He’s got fourteen years of goal-less eating to make up for.”

Gardo slugged my shoulder. It smarted, but I didn’t let on. “You’re gonna kick butt, Shermie. But you do know that color-coded graphs will only get you so far, don’t you? You guys are forgetting something.”