Double Fake by Rich Wallace

1
    The Pizza Division
    C alvin Tait stepped outside, walked across the short front lawn, and immediately started sweating. Another brutal day, he thought. Must be ninety already.
    Gazing down the hill and way across the Hudson River, he could see the New York City skyline, shining in the sun but dimmed by the early summer haze. He made his way up the walk of the neighboring house and rapped on the door.
    Zero answered within seconds, yanking the door open. “Yo,” he said.
    Calvin pushed past Zero into the house. “You got the air on?”
    “Nah. My dad said not to.”
    “Not until it breaks a hundred, huh?”
    “Something like that,” Zero said. “Anyway, we’re going out, right?”
    “Yeah. We need to get downtown and check out the rosters. Practice starts tonight, man. I can’t wait.”
    “I just gotta get some socks. Come on.”
    Calvin followed Zero up the stairs, winding past an overflowing laundry basket, a stack of news magazines, Zero’s black leather sneakers, and a fat orange cat that lifted its tail and mewed.
    Zero yanked open a drawer in his small wooden dresser and grabbed an armload of socks. “Need to find a matching pair,” he said, dumping the socks onto the bed.
    “They’re all white,” Calvin said. “They’re bleached whiter than you are.”
    “Yeah, but they’re different.” Zero picked up three of the socks. “This one’s got a yellow stripe along the top edge. This other one’s got thin little ribs. This one has thicker ribs and a gray heel.”
    “You gotta be kidding me.”
    “Just give me a second.” Zero kept pawing through the pile of socks until he found a pair.
    Calvin rolled his eyes. “You could try sorting them out before you dump ’em in the drawer.”
    Zero frowned but gave it some thought. “That sounds a little compulsive, don’t you think?”
    They went downstairs and Calvin took a seat at the dining-room table. Zero put on his socks, then went back up the stairs to get his sneakers. Calvin reached across and examined the large plastic chicken that sat in the place of honor at the center of the table.
    “Don’t mess with that,” Zero said, running down the stairs.
    “Just looking.”
    “That thing’s fifty years old, at least. My great-grandmother brought it over when she immigrated from Brooklyn.”
    “It’s an imitation chicken,” Calvin said.
    “It’s an heirloom, dude.”
    “It’s plastic.”
    “Yeah. It’ll last forever.”
    Calvin stared at the chicken. Parts of the brown plastic were painted, so the head was red, the tail feathers were black, and the feet were yellow. Some of the paint was peeling away.
    “It’s old. I don’t doubt that,” Calvin said.
    “It’s valuable,” Zero said. “Believe me.”
    Zero finished tying his shoes. “So what are we doing again?” he asked.
    “We need to get to the Y and check out the teams.”
    They had signed up for the YMCA’s summer soccer league for eleven- and twelve-year-olds. Both of them had a lot of sports experience—football, basketball, baseball, track. Neither had played much soccer before, but the summer league was a big deal in this town. Coaches from the Hudson City Soccer Club and the St. Joseph’s parish squad watched the league closely to recruit new talent for their fall squads.
    “Hope we get on the same team,” Calvin said.
    “We should. My mom told them we had to be together for carpooling to practices and games.”
    Calvin laughed. “Right. The next time we get a ride anywhere will be the first.”
    They walked downtown past blocks of tightly packed houses. At the corner of Fifth Street they turned onto the Boulevard and stopped to look in Amazing Ray’s 99-Cent Store, the windows stacked with rolls of paper towels and laundry detergent and cases of Goya pineapple drink.
    The YMCA was an old brick building on the Boulevard near St. Joseph’s Church. It had no pool, but the small gymnasium got plenty of use—basketball, floor hockey, gymnastics.
    “Hello,