I never dreamed that Papa Pigorino would actually do it.

A few months ago, I was sitting in a booth waiting for a pizza when Papa Pigorino himself walked in the door.

“Hey Papa,” I said.

He looked at me and spread his arms and grinned.

“Doug!” he said.

“It’s David,” I said.

“David! My favorite-a customer! How-a you-a doing?”

Everybody is Papa Pigorino’s “favorite-a customer.” Papa is a born salesman. He calls himself the Colonel Sanders of pizza, and he looks the part, right down to the white three-piece suit and the pointy little beard. Except his beard is black, and he’s only about five foot two, and instead of a tie he wears a heavy gold chain that he adds a link to every time he opens a new restaurant. There are twenty-three Pigorino’s, mostly in Iowa, plus one in Chicago and two in Omaha. But the Pigorino’s in downtown Vacaville is the original, and I’ve known Papa since I was a little kid — even if he doesn’t always remember my name.

“I’m doing good, Papa,” I said. “How about you?”

“We all-a got-a our-a problems.” He stroked his gold chain. “Business no so good.”

Two other things about Papa Pigorino: (1) he loves to complain about business, even though he sells tens of thousands of pizzas every week, and (2) his Italian accent is totally fake. Papa Pigorino’s real name is Elwood Gronseth. He grew up on a hog farm ten miles south of town.

“People no eat-a the pizza like-a they-a used to. Too many crazy diets.”

“Have you heard of the pizza diet?” I asked.

That got his attention. “Pizza diet? I like!”

“No crust, no meat, no cheese.”

“I no like.”

“Me neither. Hey, you know what you should do? Have a contest!”

“Contest?”

“Yeah, like Nathan’s Famous hot dogs. They get all kinds of advertising with their hot-dog-eating contest. And they sell more hot dogs than anybody!”

“That’s-a good-a for them.”

“You could do it with pizza. Whoever eats the most slices in ten minutes wins.”

Papa got this faraway look in his eyes. “Papa Pigorino, he is a-liking this-a idea.”

“It’s a great idea,” I said, not so modestly.

I hadn’t really expected anything to come of it, but now I’m looking at the poster and reading the small print. Every Pigorino’s in the country — all twenty-three of them — is having a qualifier contest on the Fourth of July. There’s no cash prize for the qualifier, but the winners will be entered in the Super Pigorino Bowl at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.

That’s where the money is. But only the victor wins the five thousand dollars. Second prize is free pizza for a year. Third prize is a Papa Pigorino Signature Pizza Cutter. All participants will receive a Papa Pigorino T-shirt.

The entry fee for the qualifier is fifty dollars. I figure I can eat more than fifty dollars’ worth of pizza, so that’s a no-brainer. And I’m pretty sure I can eat faster than anybody else in Vacaville, so qualifying is a gimme.

I do the math: no-brainer plus gimme equals the greatest opportunity of a lifetime.

I’m rereading the poster for the tenth time when my pizza arrives. I take it to a booth and wait an eternity for it to cool. When I judge it to be a reasonable number of degrees below the temperature of hot lava, I set the timer on my phone and dive in.

Four minutes later, I call HeyMan.

“Three minutes forty seconds,” I say when he answers.

“Is that some sort of code?” HeyMan asks.

“It’s the David Miller World Record for scarfing an entire Pigorino’s combo with extra sausage and cheese.”

“No way,” HeyMan says.

I tell him about the contest.

“Dude! You can’t lose!”

“I’m not so sure about that,” I say. “Last year, Jooky ate forty-two slices in ten minutes. That’s, like, fifteen seconds a slice. My time is double that.”

“Yeah, but you had extra sausage and cheese.”

“True. But the really good news is that the Pigorino contest is on the Fourth of July. That’s the day of the big Nathan’s contest in New York. All the pros will be at Coney Island eating hot dogs. I need fifty bucks to enter, though. Can I borrow it?”

“Huh.”

“What does that mean?”

I hear him say, not into the phone, “He wants me to give him fifty bucks for some pizza contest.”

“Not give! Lend!” I shout. “Who are you talking to?”

“Cyn.”

“Where are you?”

“At her house. I’m helping her put together a bookshelf — ouch!”

“What happened?”

“She threw a book at me. Um, I guess I should have said I’m watching her put up a bookshelf.”

I hear Cyn’s voice in the background. “Much better,” she says.

I grab a Super Pigorino Bowl entry form on my way out of the pizzeria. The Fourth is only ten days away, and I have to pay my entry fee by Friday. I keep thinking about HeyMan and Cyn. It bugs me that they would be hanging out together without calling me, even if it’s just to watch Cyn put up a bookshelf. Also, it bugs me that HeyMan is being weird about lending me the fifty bucks. I know he has it.

I’m thinking so hard I forget to do Mom’s shopping until I’m almost home. I have to turn around and walk all the way back to Four Seasons. I get everything on the list — just barely, since the pizza took a big chunk out of the money Mom gave me.

She’s in the kitchen when I get home.

“Did you get Cheerios?” she asks.

“I got everything.” I plunk the bag on the counter.

She holds out a hand. “Change?”

I give the one dollar and seventeen cents I have left.

“That’s all?” she says.

“I took my allowance a day early.” Before she can respond to that, I say, “By the way, I decided I don’t need a job.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Pigorino’s is having a pizza-eating contest. I’m going to win it.”

“Absolutely not,” she says.

My grin goes away. “Why?”

“People all over the world are going hungry. Those contests are a disgusting display of excess and gluttony.”

“It’s a sport,” I say. “Dad always says I should do more sports.”

“Eating is not a sport.”

“It is if you can eat seventy hot dogs in ten minutes like Joey Chestnut.”

She makes a tsk sound with her tongue, rolls her eyes, and slumps her shoulders — the whole I-can’t-deal-with-this-right-now package.

“Go check on Mal,” she says without looking at me.