Big Mouth (2 page)

“You’re a natural,” Lucy had said when I announced my new purpose in life. “Leos are born showmen, and your sun is in the tenth house. Plus you ate four hamburgers at lunch today, so I know you’ve got the appetite.”

Actually it was only three hamburgers. But we weren’t keeping track then, so it didn’t matter.

Lucy had done some research and found out that I couldn’t compete until I turn eighteen. But when I could, I’d hit the scene with a bang. The entire world would tremble when Sherman Thuff bellied up to the table. All I had to do was follow Lucy’s master plan exactly as she’d laid it out in her graphs. “Just leave the details to me,” she’d told me. “I may be a Cancer, but I’ve got Virgo rising hard.” Whatever that meant. I wasn’t going to argue with her; I certainly didn’t want to handle the details. Besides, she once told me that as a Leo, I wasn’t allowed to argue with her, and it had worked for us so far.

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.”

Lucy set her banana in the ice cream cup, then leaned back in her seat and crossed her arms. “And just what are we forgetting?”

“An image.”

“An image?” I said, a fleck of pizza flying out of my mouth. Lucy frowned as I wiped it up with a napkin. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, an image.” Gardo continued. “All famous competitors have images. Just watch ESPN and you’ll see.” Gardo knew about ESPN. He watched it every night, studying the sportscasters for the day when he anchors the highlight reels. He’s going to be rich and famous, too. “Fame is all about sponsors and advertising, and to them image is everything. We have to make Shermie bigger than life. We have to sell him to the fans.”

“We can make signs.” I swallowed before talking that time, so no pizza spray. “There’s some green paint in our garage from when Grampy moved in and made my dad paint his room. We can hang the signs around campus. We can even put my picture on them. People will notice that.” I smiled my cheesiest all-cheek Thuff smile.

“That’s not what he’s talking about,” Lucy said. “He wants you to dress up in some stupid costume, like that Gaseous Maximus guy. He’ll probably have you in a giant hot dog suit, dancing around like that old drive-in snack bar cartoon.”

“A dancing hot dog?”
Over my dead body.
“No way!”

“It’s not stupid,” Gardo protested. “And you won’t have to wear a giant hot dog suit. Quick, Shermie, who’s the most famous wrestler ever?”

“Easy. Hulk Hogan.” Of course I knew that. Gardo made me watch his WWE videos whenever we were at his house. I hated wrestling, but I didn’t complain because that’s what friends do for each other, they like the other’s stuff. At my house, he had to watch Galactic Warriors. The only ones running around in spandex shorts clotheslining each other on that show were the female aliens. “Hulk is the most famous ever.”

“You got it, Shermie. The Hulkster.” Gardo sat back and crossed his arms, a mirror image of Lucy. “Now that’s what I’m talking about.”

“Ahhh.”
I nodded slowly, like I knew what the heck his point was.

Lucy didn’t nod. “
What’s
what you’re talking about?”

Gardo leaned forward and talked slowly. “Hulk Hogan has been retired for years, but even people who don’t like wrestling know him.” He shot me a quick look when he said that last part.

Yikes.
I didn’t know he could tell I hated wrestling. “Gardo’s got a point, Lucy.” I nodded real hard. “Hogan didn’t wear weird stuff, and he is famous.”

“Well, he did wear feather boas sometimes,” Gardo admitted. “But what I’m saying is, it’s not about the costume. All the wrestlers have costumes of some kind but not all the wrestlers are famous like Hogan. It’s about having an extra-large personality. That’s what makes a guy famous. Hulk Hogan had it. Shermie has it.”

“People do like me,” I said.

“Sometimes,” Lucy muttered.

Gardo put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a manly shake. “Most of the time. And that’s his ticket. People remember him. We just have to figure out how to bottle that. Turn his personality into an official image and build his rep. You know, market him.”

I nodded vigorously. “Building is good. I like to build.”

“You like your ego stroked,” Lucy mumbled.

“Among other things.” I threw my crumpled napkin at her, but she batted it away easily.

“Don’t be crude.”

“This isn’t about Shermie’s ego,” Gardo said. “It’s about his image. Trust me on this one, Shermie, I’m a guy, I know these things.”

“And I’m his
coach.
” Lucy tapped her colorful binder. “You can’t build a house without a foundation. To be a champion, the first things Shermie has to work on are his eating skills. He has to develop a bite technique, learn to control his throat muscles, build his jaw strength…” She opened the binder and pointed to one of her graphs:
The Carr
t Ch
mp—Jaw Strengthening Exercises
“
This
is his ticket.”