Slider

by Pete Hautman

  “I told her,” HeyMan says.

  “You did?” I shouldn’t be surprised. HeyMan has a big mouth.

  “I know all about your fabulous investment,” Cyn says, still not looking at me. “Pretty dumb.”

  “Yeah, I know. Thanks.”

  “Are you gonna show it to us or not?” HeyMan says.

  Reluctantly, I open the envelope and take out the Certificate of Authenticity. HeyMan and Cyn look it over.

  “Where’s the dog?” HeyMan says.

  I remove the half dog from the envelope and unwrap it. The three of us stare down at the mummified thing.

  “Wow,” HeyMan says, poking at it with his forefinger. “It’s even got a little smear of dried mustard on it.”

  “Careful,” I say. “It’s fragile.”

  “Did you really pay ten thousand dollars for it?” Cyn asks.

  “Two thousand,” I say.

  She looks at HeyMan. “You told me ten!”

  “So I exaggerated,” he says, not looking the least bit embarrassed. “Any BuyBuy bids?”

  “Not even one.”

  “That’s kind of weird. You’d think whoever was bidding against you before would try again.”

  “Unless he doesn’t know about it. Maybe he’s on vacation or something.”

  “Didn’t you wonder why the person you were bidding against stopped bidding at exactly nineteen hundred and ninety dollars?” Cyn asks.

  In fact, I hadn’t. “I guess I just assumed that the other guy limited himself to two thousand dollars. It’s a nice round number. Unfortunately for me, I got there first.”

  “Still . . . kind of an odd coincidence,” she says.

  “She’s right,” says HeyMan. “What if the other guy bidding was actually the seller trying to jack the price up?”

  “You can’t bid on your own stuff. The site won’t let you. I tried.”

  “Yeah, but don’t forget — you asked me to bid it up for you. Maybe he had a partner.”

  “Um . . . yeah . . . but . . . there’s no way the other bidder could know how high I was willing to go.”

  “Unless he hacked your computer,” HeyMan says.

  “Or hacked BuyBuy,” Cyn says.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I say.

  “Neither does paying two grand for a hot dog,” HeyMan says.

  We all contemplate that.

  “Either way,” I say after a moment, “if I can’t come up with two grand, I’m dead.”

  “You gotta win that contest,” HeyMan says.

  “Yeah, but first I have to win the qualifier. And then I have to win the Pigorino Bowl in August.”

  “So what’s the problem?” HeyMan says.

  “For one thing, I need fifty bucks to enter the qualifier, and I’m pretty much broke.”

  “Oh,” he says, taking a step back.

  “I can lend you the money,” Cyn says. HeyMan looks startled.

  “Seriously? That would be great! Tell you what, if I win, I’ll give you a cut.”

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Cyn says, but I can tell she likes the idea.

  “Ten percent,” I say.

  “Hey . . . what about me?” HeyMan says. “I got fifty bucks.”

  “Yesterday you said you didn’t.”

  “Yesterday you said you wanted to borrow it. I have a policy against lending money to friends.”

  “No you don’t.”

  “True. But yesterday I did.”

  “So now you want to lend me fifty bucks?”

  “No! I want to invest it.”

  Cyn bops him on the top of his head with her badminton racquet. “My idea,” she says.

  “Can’t we both invest?”

  “He only needs fifty,” Cyn says.

  All of a sudden everybody wants to give me money. I say, “Look, I can sell some stuff if I have to. Hay’s right. Borrowing money from friends is never a good idea.”

  “It’s not borrowing, it’s investing,” HeyMan says.

  “Either way, I have to think about it.”

  They both look at me, then at each other. Cyn shrugs and goes back to bouncing the birdie on her racquet. HeyMan looks hurt.

  “I thought we were the Three Musketeers,” he says.

  I give him a few seconds to think about that, and then I say, “Okay. You can both invest fifty. Because I need money for training, too.”

  “Training?” HeyMan asks.

  “Yeah. As in food.”

  I stop by Pigorino’s to pay my registration fee. Vito, who works the counter most days, takes my money and scrawls my name on a list posted on the wall behind him. I boost myself up onto the counter and lean forward to read the names of the other contestants. There are five of them so far. I know three of them. Jake Grossman is a Pigorino’s regular and the nose tackle on the Vacaville High football team — a big guy who can demolish a sixteen-incher and have plenty of room left over. The twins Tim and Tommy Fangor are on the list — also big guys. The Fangor family owns a big dairy farm and creamery just south of town, where Papa Pigorino gets his mozzarella. I’ve never seen them eat, so who knows? The other two names are unfamiliar.

  “Hey,” Vito says, “get off my counter.”

  I slide back down. “I need a pizza, too,” I say.

  “You always need a pizza,” he says.

  “Make it two,” I say. “Pepperoni.”

  It’s time to start training in earnest.

  I’ve never actually eaten two entire pizzas in one sitting before. As I sit in the booth and wait for them to cool, I try to figure out how many slices I can eat in ten minutes. A few days ago I managed to down one in under four minutes, but could I keep up that pace? Or improve on it? Joey Chestnut could average fifteen seconds a slice. . . . I do the math. At eight slices per pizza, Joey could demolish these two pies in four minutes.

  I touch the center of one of the pizzas. Still too hot.

  A stocky, older guy with a neatly trimmed gray beard is standing at the counter talking to Vito. He’s wearing a new-looking John Deere feed cap and a pair of crisp dark denim overalls over a chambray shirt that looks as if it’s been starched and pressed — a farmer all duded up in his go-to-town best.

  My pizza is reasonably cool, so I set the timer on my phone, press start, and dig in. I eat the first slice normally: one big bite at the tip, then two more bites on either side, then turn the crust on end and devour it in three bites. I demolish the second slice in six bites, then take a gulp of water. For the third slice, I shift tactics, folding it with one hand and eating it in five bites. It goes down a little rough — the bottom of the crust is dry — so I switch to a reverse fold, with the cheese on the outside. Now I’m onto something.

  Five, six, seven, eight slices. I peek at the timer. Two minutes, fifty seconds. I hit the second pie.

  The first slice sticks halfway down. I have to gulp extra water, then stand up and do the Joey Chestnut jump, straight up, then land hard on my heels. Four jumps and it breaks free. I grab another slice and stay with the reverse-fold, bite, bite, bite, bite system.

  I’m slowing down. My jaw hurts, and my hands feel as if I’m underwater. I press on, thinking, Where’s the zone? In the slider contest, I hit the zone and became an eating automaton. Pizza is more technical — every bite is different.

  Getting down the last slice is like eating a slab of greasy cardboard. I can hardly bear to chew it, and when I try to swallow, it stops at the back of my throat and refuses to budge. I stand up and do the Joey Jump, but it doesn’t work — I have to cough it back into my mouth and chew it a few times and drink more water. Finally, after a few more Joey Jumps, it goes down. I check the timer.

  Seven minutes and thirty-two seconds.

  I sink back into my seat, feeling defeated.

  “You got fast jaws, son.”

  I look up. The old guy in the coveralls is standing behind me.

  “But you got to learn to pace yourself.”

  I try to say, Yeah, rig
ht, but all that comes out is a wet belch.

  “The real champions, they come from behind,” he says.

  I want to say, What do you know about it? But that last slice is still oozing its way down my esophagus, and I don’t want it to reverse course.

  “Order up,” Vito calls out.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” the old guy says. “You’ll get the hang of it.” He goes to pick up his order and takes it to the booth across from me. I stay where I am, unable to move, and watch him carefully separate the slices of his plain cheese pizza, then get up and go to the restroom. He comes out a minute later, still drying his hands on a paper towel. He sits down and tucks a napkin in the collar of his neatly pressed shirt, looks over at me, and winks.

  On an impulse, I reset the timer on my phone and wait for him to start eating. As soon as he lifts the first slice, I hit start.

  At first he doesn’t seem to be in a rush, chewing and swallowing each bite, dabbing his mouth with his napkin and sipping his coffee every slice. But there is a machinelike regularity to his eating, an unhurried, graceful ballet of mass consumption. It’s weirdly relaxing to watch. I don’t take my eyes off him the entire time, and when he finishes the final slice, I am so entranced I almost forget to stop the timer. When I look at the number I can’t believe it.

  Three minutes flat. Only ten seconds longer than it took me to eat my first pizza, and he hadn’t even been trying.

  He sips his coffee with a satisfied smile, then takes out his wallet, leaves a tip on the table, and nods to me.

  “Later, Vito,” he says as he heads for the door.

  “Who was that?” I ask Vito.

  “Egon Belt.” Vito jerks a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at the list on the wall. “He just registered for the qualifier.”

  My heart drops into my already-overfilled belly.

  Egon Belt!

  You may not know who Egon Belt is, but I sure do. Ten years ago, Egon took fourth place at Nathan’s. And he still holds the Deep-Fried Cheese Curd record: six pounds six ounces in ten minutes. But he hasn’t been active lately — I figured he’d retired.

  I sit there in the booth for a long time, thinking. Do I even have a chance? Belt is a pro — he’s been eating fast since before I was born. And the way he ate that pizza, almost leisurely, without cramming slices into his mouth, without any fancy folding or dipping in water or doing the Joey Jump. How fast could he eat if he was really trying? My mind is boggled. There is no way I can beat him in the qualifier.

  I stare at the pizza crumbs on the trays before me. I look over at the table where Egon Belt was sitting. Not a crumb.

  But I beat him. I downed my first pizza in two minutes fifty. And mine was pepperoni. Belt’s was plain cheese. I can do this.

  “Hey.” Vito is leaning over the counter, looking at me. “You okay?”

  I nod. “I was just thinking . . . what’s Egon Belt doing in Vacaville?”

  “He lives over in Halibut.”

  Halibut is only ten miles away. I didn’t know Egon Belt was from Iowa.

  “He comes in every now and then,” Vito says.

  “He sure ate that pizza fast,” I say.

  Vito nods. “He’ll probably win this thing.”

  I feel a spark of anger. “I ate my pepperoni faster than he ate his cheese,” I say.

  “Yeah, but you practically busted your jaw doing it. Egon wasn’t even trying. I heard he ate ten pounds of cheese curds in six minutes.”

  “It was six pounds in ten minutes.”

  Vito shrugs. “Still, that’s pretty impressive.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll see who’s impressive.”

  Egon Belt might be bigger and more experienced, but I need to win. I slide out of the booth and stand up straight. Well, almost straight. There’s a lot of half-chewed crust poking at me from inside. Vito says, “Hey, I forgot to give you this.” He’s holding out a sheet of paper.

  The page is covered with small print.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “A waiver. Since you’re underage, you got to have one of your parents sign off on it.”

  Great. Another parental negotiation.

  I’ve got a lot of work to do if I’m going to beat Egon Belt, and I have only nine days to do it. I think about going back inside and ordering another pizza, but my funds are limited, and I don’t want to deal with Vito’s negative energy. Besides, there are better things than pizza for increasing speed and stomach capacity. On my way home, I stop at Four Seasons and invest in some training materials.

  The great Kobayashi trains by eating huge bunches of whole grapes. Joey Chestnut drinks gallons of water. Jooky Garafalo swears by iceberg lettuce. But from everything I’ve read online, the king of stomach-stretching is raw cabbage.

  I dump the grocery bag on the kitchen counter. Mom is at her desk in the study, paying bills or something. I feel a twinge of guilt, even though her Visa bill hasn’t shown up yet. I go upstairs to check on Mal. He is lying on his back across his bed, head hanging over the edge, snoring. I go to my room and wake up my laptop. No BuyBuy action. I open the manila envelope and take out the Jooky dog and the Certificate of Authenticity and stare at them, feeling like the biggest idiot on the planet. After a time, I put them back in the envelope and stuff it in a desk drawer and go downstairs.

  Mom is standing at the counter, staring at the four heads of cabbage.

  “That’s a lot of cole slaw,” she says.

  “Mal’s sleeping,” I report.

  “Your father hates cole slaw. Why did you bring all this cabbage home?”

  “It was on sale,” I said. “You don’t have to eat any.”

  “Is this some sort of school project?” she says hopefully.

  “Mom, school’s been out for three weeks.”

  “You’re planning to eat all this yourself?”

  “I like cabbage,” I say. I really don’t.

  She shakes her head and walks off. A few seconds later I hear the back screen door slam. She is going to work on her rose garden. That’s one of the things she does when she doesn’t want to deal.

  I confront the cabbage. The outer leaves are kind of grody-looking. I peel them off, cut one of the cabbages into six wedges, sit down at the counter, and begin.

  If you ever feel the desire to be completely and utterly miserable, I recommend two pizzas followed by an entire head of raw cabbage, eaten as quickly as possible.

  Mom comes back in and finds me lying on my back on the floor. She looks at the cabbage shreds on the counter, then back down at me.

  “Oh, David,” she says. “What have you done?”

  “Practice,” I manage to gasp.

  The next day, I visit SooperSlider. I give my order to a towering, acne-speckled server. I think he’s one of the guys on the Vacaville High basketball team.

  “Two SooperSacks and two strawberry SooperSlurps, no ice,” he repeats after me. “To go.”

  “Not to go,” I say. “I’ll eat them here.”

  He gapes at me, blinking. “Uh, you know that there are twenty-five sliders in a SooperSack, right?”

  “Yeah, I know.” I hand him my gift card.

  It takes them ten minutes to fill my order. I carry the SooperSacks to a table, open the bags, and line up the sliders, five rows of ten. I set the timer on my phone. I feel like I’m sitting at Food Command Central.

  Ready phasers.

  Fire.

  After my experience at Derek’s fraternity, I’m practically a pro. I unwrap one slider with my left hand while shoving another into my mouth with the right. Almost immediately I find my rhythm. I am in the zone. I sense that people are watching, but I don’t look at them. The sliders flow — I am a python swallowing a goat.

  By the time I finish, ten minutes and six seconds later, a crowd of customers and SooperSlider employees has gathered around. Their reactions range from disgust to amazement. The manager, Mr. Dhoti, comes over and introduces himself. He is a short, spherical man wearing a
red-and-white-striped SooperSlider tunic over a bright yellow shirt. He has a huge round bun-colored forehead, a double chin that hangs like a full hammock beneath his regular chin, and small features squished into the middle of his face. His head looks like a giant hamburger. He gives me a paper SooperSlider crown — what preschool kids who finish their meals usually get — and the crowd breaks into applause.

  The SooperSliders do not produce the digestive-tract drama of raw cabbage, but I’m still pretty uncomfortable. Halfway home, which happens to be the miniature midtown meadow occupied by Vaccie the fiberglass cow, I have to stop and lie down on the grass. I call HeyMan.

  “’Sup?” he says.

  I groan, staring up at Vaccie’s udder.

  “Dude?”

  “I can’t move. Help.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Under Vaccie’s udder.”

  “I’m up at the Mall with Cyn and her mom.” The Mall is an outlet store on the freeway, a few miles north of town. “Cyn helped me buy a shirt.”

  “Why?”

  “She says I need a new look.”

  “You don’t have a look.”

  “Well, I do now. Why can’t you move?”

  “I ate fifty sliders in ten minutes,” I say.

  “Dude! That’s got to be a record!”

  “It’s not,” I say. “Joey Chestnut did a hundred and three Krystals in eight minutes.”

  “What’re Krystals?”

  “Krystal burgers. They’re like SooperSliders, only we don’t have them in Iowa.”

  “Do you really need help?”

  “Hang on.” I roll over onto my hands and knees and slowly rise, grabbing one of Vaccie’s teats to steady myself. Everything stays down. “I think I’m okay,” I say.

  “Good. I gotta go try this shirt on. I’ll call you later.”

  “Later.” I disconnect and stagger toward home, wondering what’s going on with Hay and Cyn.

  At least my training is going well.

  My parents are officially Very Concerned.

  When I got home from SooperSlider, I oozed upstairs and crawled into bed for three hours and refused to come down for dinner. Mom came upstairs and looked in on me to make sure I wasn’t dead or something.