Slider: Chapters 42–49

Papa Pigorino’s Pizza Emporium
Home of the World-Famous Pigorino Bowl

The sign is festooned with American and Italian flags.

In front of the stand, about fifty feet away, right in the middle of Walnut Square, a forty-foot-long table decorated with red, white, and green bunting sits atop a four-foot-high stage.

Emily shows me a coupon. “They were handing these out at the Grandstand.”

He is wearing a neon-yellow-and-orange Hawaiian shirt beneath a loose camouflage pocket vest. A pair of baggy green cargo shorts completes his ensemble.

I am standing a few feet away, paralyzed. The Gurge. My nemesis. What is he doing here?

“Tortoise and the hare, son. Ten minutes is a long time. Virgil’s got jaws, but he’s got no heart. That boy is gonna crash and burn one day. Maybe this is the day. Keep an eye on him, though. He’s got some tricks up his sleeve, and they ain’t all kosher.”

The Gurge turns to Egon Belt and feigns surprise. “Egon Belt? Aren’t you getting kind of old and decrepit for this?”

“Egon Belt? Aren’t you getting kind of old and decrepit for this?”

“Virgil, I do not believe the word fair belongs in your vocabulary,” Egon Belt says in a relaxed drawl.

The Gurge returns the bottle to his vest pocket and attacks his pizza with renewed vigor.

It takes several breaths, but I manage to reverse the impending Reversal.

The Gurge is inhaling slices at a staggering rate.

My stomach is still throbbing from his underhanded punch.

I don’t bother to look back as I hear the sound of forty slices of masticated pizza reversing course.

I don’t bother to look back as I hear the sound of forty slices of masticated pizza reversing course.
The Gurge has regurgitated.

He is sitting on the ground with his back to a trash container looking dismally pale and miserable.

Back in the twentieth century, you could buy ipecac in any drugstore. It was used as an emetic—something that makes you throw up.

As much as I want to hear about Jooky, my first priority is to get Mal out from under the table before it collapses completely. I coax him out by promising him kohlrabi.

“I’ll be seeing him tonight. He’s coming over for dinner, all the way from Rockford. Poor boy, he’s been under the weather the past few days, so I’m making him my famous chicken soup.”

At one point, as I’m explaining how I think the AutoBuyBuy bidding was rigged—how the mystery bidder stopped as soon as I hit my limit—she interrupts me.

“I can see how Virgil turned into such a reprobate,” she says. “Letting his mother pay for his misdeeds.”

“I can see how Virgil turned into such a reprobate,” she says. “Letting his mother pay for his misdeeds.”

“You’re an idealist, son. I admire that in a young man. But I’m not going to take your money. I saw the way you put down those last two pizzas. The great Kobayashi himself would have bowed down to you. Fact is, if Virgil hadn’t pulled his little stunt, I think you might’ve passed up the both of us. How many slices did you eat?”

He starts every sentence with the word “Basically,” as in, “Basically, the military-industrial patriarchy is our species’ suicide mechanism.”