Super Bowl Piranha

 

 The six-inch-long piranha circled its new home with all its sharp teeth showing.

            "You're sure having one is legal?" Dean asked.  He owned La Dolce Vita restaurant, the site of the new Piranha aquarium.

            "Don't worry about it.  I've had piranha-like this for years," Bumper Poole replied.  He owned Fins and Things, located next door.

            "How much bigger is it going to get?"

            "That's the adult size.  Now, you can't act freaked out.  You're supposed to have owned it for a long time."

            As Bumper finished speaking, the glass door to La Dolce Vita's lobby swung open.  A man wearing a sports jacket and cloth facemask walked in, followed by someone carrying a news camera.

            "I'm Chad from Channel 5.  I'm looking for Dean," the man in the jacket announced.

           Dean and Bumper looked at each other and hurried to put on their face masks.  They were an unusual pairing.  Dean wore a long-sleeved silky shirt.  His salt and pepper hair made him look distinguished and severe.  Bumper was tall and greyhound skinny.  Despite the winter weather, he wore a tank top and constantly looked like he was nervously robbing a convenience store.

            "I'm the guy you're looking for," Dean said.  "You’re here about the fish, right?”

            “I’m a sports guy, so I’m not usually interested in fish stories.  But if he can pick the Super Bowl, then I’m interested.”

            “He’s picked the winner for the last seven years,” Bumper interjected.

            “You work here too?” Chad asked Bumper.

            “No, I own the shop next door.  That’s where the fish came from.  Me and Dean are friends.  We discovered the whole Super Bowl thing together.”

            “So how does he do it?  Swim through a hoop or tap on the glass or something?”

            “Nah, we have these little shrimp pellets, and we dye them the team colors,” Bumper answered.  “The number of pellets he eats equals the team score.  He doesn’t get the score exactly right, but he always picks the winner.”

            Chad walked closer to the tank and stared at the piranha.  He turned to his camera guy and asked, “You think you can get a good shot of him swimming around?”

            “Yeah, sure.”

            “And you’re ready for him to make the picks for this year?” Chad asked Dean and Bumper.

            Bumper held up two plastic containers holding shrimp pellets.  “Ready.”

            “I hope he has a name.  I don’t want to keep calling him “the fish” when I’m talking about this.”

            Bumper’s face froze like he was caught with his hand up a vending machine. Dean stayed cool and almost immediately replied, “We call him Moses.  You know, like the prophet in the Bible because he’s predicting things.”

            “Alright, let’s do this with Moses, the piranha,” Chad declared.

            Bumper and Dean sprinkled the colorful pellets on the water with the camera positioned in front of the aquarium.  Chad dictated the action as Moses swam around and chomped.  Ultimately, he ate thirty-one gray pellets and nine red ones before growing disinterested.

            “You heard it here first, folks,” Chad said into the camera.  “Moses picked your Super Bowl LV score: Tampa Bay 31, Kansas City 9.”

            As Chad walked out the door, he turned to say how he could probably get the story on air that night because people loved Super Bowl prediction stuff.  Dean and Bumper shared a glance as if they had gotten away with something.

            Fins and Things and La Dolce Vita had moved into the same strip mall twelve years earlier.  For most of those years, their owners were cordial but nothing like friends.  Bumper built his business selling interesting fish and reptiles.  He advised his customers to keep healthy aquariums and terrariums; people returned for more.  Eventually, Bumper had three full-time employees, and his business was like his child.  He saw himself reflected in the signs on the door and the aisles of animals for sale.

            Dean’s feelings about his restaurant ran even more profound.  He had worked in a kitchen before venturing out on his own.  He knew most new restaurants fail, but he took the risk anyway and borrowed money from relatives and a bank.  During the first few years, he went to bed every night worrying about bankruptcy.  But he was in a good location and making good food.

            More and more people returned for lunch and dinner.  Bankruptcy fell off Dean’s list of worries as he grew to a staff of twenty people working the kitchen and the dining room.  One of the unique features of La Dolce Vita was a large window overlooking the local high school’s stadium.  The restaurant would be packed with customers who treated it like a luxury viewing suite during football games.

            La Dolce Vita made good money, and Dean saved a healthy chunk of it.  Then, in early 2020, everything changed overnight.  Covid restrictions closed Dean’s dining room. What began as a two-week vacation for his staff led to most of them being laid off.  Dean kept a skeleton crew and tried to switch to a takeout menu, but a good part of La Dolce Vita’s appeal was its atmosphere.  It was hard to duplicate that in paper bags in the lobby.

            Next door, at Fins and Things, Bumper let go of his staff, too.  He tried to sell fish and snakes on a website, but few people were interested in picking up animals outside Bumper’s door without first seeing them in person.

            Dean and Bumper continued driving to the strip mall to watch their life’s work get erased.  Often, the only cars in the parking lot belonged to them.  One day, as they were both outside squinting angrily at the sun, Dean invited Bumper for a drink.

            Next to the window overlooking the high school, the two businessmen sipped from bottles and complained about the government and the world's unfairness.  The experience was so therapeutic their meetings became a routine.  They complained a lot about how the world owed them something, but they also shared ideas on starting over.  Their favorite conversation starter was asking, “What would you do with $10,000?”

            During one of their regular sessions, they came up with the idea of a Super Bowl predicting fish.  It was supposed to bring free publicity to the restaurant and Fish and Things.  Their old customers would be reminded to come back as soon as possible.  Bumper already had a family of piranhas.  Setting up an aquarium in La Dolce Vita’s lobby was easy.  It was also easy to convince a sports reporter their fish had a winning streak going.

            When Dean and Bumper had imagined things playing out, they hoped they would get lucky enough for the fish to pick the winner.  In the closing seconds of Super Bowl LV, they realized they had unleashed a phenomenon.  Moses picked the exact final score – Tampa Bay 31 and Kansas City 9.

            Chad, the sports reporter, called as soon as the game ended.  He did a follow-up story, passed on to the national network.  Moses made news across the country as Chad reported that the fish had now correctly picked eight Super Bowls in a row and nailed the score from the last one.

            If Dean and Bumper had not been solid friends and conspirators, they may have fought for custody of Moses.  But they agreed he should remain in La Dolce Vita’s lobby surrounded by signs explaining why he was famous.  One of the signs encouraged restaurant customers to visit Fins and Things next door.  Bumper was content with advertising that his store was the birthplace of the world’s most famous predictive piranha.

            The signs and Moses’ YouTube channel were significant parts of the plan to bring customers back.  As Covid restrictions eased up during 2021, more and more people could sit in Dean’s restaurant.  Before eating, they all stopped to admire Moses.

            “If you like him, don’t forget to visit his friends next door,” Dean told his diners.

            Business increased.  Growth was frustrating and unpredictable.  Dean struggled to find new cooks and waitpersons.  He did much of the work, including cleaning tables and scrubbing the kitchen after everyone else had gone home.

            Bumper spent equally long days cleaning out fish tanks and trying to find new employees to help.  He and Dean still lost money every month, but they got closer and closer to breaking even.  They were frantically busy, yet they always found time to have lunch together.  Bumper brought food for Moses and then ate free spaghetti as he and Dean sat near the window overlooking the high school stadium.

            It was during these lunches that a mythology about Moses emerged.  They forgot about inventing his seven-game prediction streak and randomly selecting him from the fish in Bumper’s shop.  It was easy to accept that Moses had true prophetic powers.  He had come to them as a gift – some small measure of payback after all they had lost and suffered.

            Throughout the 2021 NFL season, Dean and Bumper posted the weekly scores next to Moses’ tank to keep him updated on the teams.  As the 2022 Super Bowl approached, they planned a prediction party big enough to push their businesses past the break-even point.

            Bumper’s girlfriend handled the advertising.  Her campaign combined social media posts with paper flyers left on windshields around the city.  The flyers urged everyone to enjoy a weekend-long celebration at La Dolce Vita and a special Super Bowl sale at Fins and Things.  Moses would make his prediction on Saturday night surrounded by a crowd of fans.

            Dean and Bumper did not have to prompt Chad.  He called them to reserve a spot in front of Moses’ aquarium.  So did reporters from New York and Philadelphia.  The La Dolce Vita lobby was set to be filled with so many cameras there was little room for Moses’ devoted fans from Toms River.

            On Thursday afternoon, before the festivities kicked into high gear, two young men wearing suits and sporting scruffy beards walked into La Dolce Vita.  They admired Moses’ aquarium before asking to speak with the owner.

            “What can I do for you?” Dean asked after strolling into the lobby.

            “We’re with BFH.  Stands for Bet From Home.  We’re interested in your fish,” one of the guys announced.

            “So are a lot of people,” Dean replied.

            “We’d like to buy it.”

            “He’s not for sale,” Dean replied coolly.

            “We’re ready to pay a lot of money.”

            Dean looked anxiously at Moses’ aquarium and all the surrounding signs.  “I better get my partner.”

            Bumper came right over.  He and Dean listened quietly as the BFH guys explained they were starting a national campaign for their online gambling company.  They wanted Moses as their mascot, and they wanted him to make his prediction at their company headquarters in New Brunswick.

            “He’s a special fish.  A magical fish,” Bumper said.

            “We realize that,” a BFH guy said in return.  “That’s why we’ll give you $10,000 for him.”

            Dean and Bumper shared the glance they used whenever someone asked probing questions about Moses’ history.  “We’ll have to think about it,” Dean answered.

            “You don’t have very long to think,” the BFH guy said.

            “We’ll sleep on it and tell you tomorrow,” Dean said.

            After the guys in suits left, Dean and Bumper whispered back and forth in front of Moses.  “If he can predict the future, he’s worth more than $10,000,” Bumper insisted.

            “He’s already been worth at least that to us,” Dean said.  “But what if he gets the next score wrong?”

            “I’m more worried about them taking good care of him.  Those guys don’t know anything about piranhas.”

            By the time the whispering was done, they decided to give it more thought, but they were leaning toward keeping Moses where he was.

            It was another late night for Dean.  He was alone when he walked through his restaurant, turning off the lights.  He made a final check of the lobby and aquarium.  Moses was not moving.  Dean dialed Bumper’s phone in panic.

            “Sorry, but you better get over here.”

            Bumper walked in with messy hair and wearing sweatpants.  He took one look at the aquarium and made the dreaded pronouncement.  “He’s dead.”

            Dean and Bumper mourned Moses for fifteen minutes in the dark restaurant.  Bumper repeated that Moses was too young to die and was too special for this earth.  Dean said he felt the same way when his grandmother passed away.

            The pain and emptiness came and went.  A clock on the wall pushed past midnight, and the two struggling business owners realized they were facing a new day alone.  They both had the same thought, but Bumper first verbalized it.

            “Those BFH guys don’t know one fish from another.  All they want is the publicity.  We switch Moses for one of his healthy brothers, and they’ll never notice.”

            Dean quickly agreed, and Moses was reverently placed in Bumper’s fish disposal unit under cover of night.  A sibling took the place of honor in La Dolce Vita’s lobby.

            The following day, Dean called BFH and consented to the deal.  His one condition was that they promised to take good care of the fish no matter what happened in the future.  BFH readily agreed and sent a team down to take possession of their prize.

            Bumper repeated instructions about what to feed Moses’ brother and how to clean the tank.  Then he handed over the dyed shrimp pellets the fish would need for predicting the Super Bowl score – blue for the Rams and orange for the Bengals.  The BFH people nodded impatiently as they understood and then handed $5000 checks to both Dean and Bumper.

            “That’s gotta be the most expensive piranha ever,” Bumper said after the BFH guys disappeared.

            “Should we feel guilty?” Dean asked.

            “What if Moses’ brother is even better with predictions?  Then they got a bargain.  And if anybody should understand gambling, it’s those guys.  Besides, the world owes us a little something.”

            The prediction party no longer featured Moses in La Dolce Vita’s lobby.  Dean and Bumper announced that Moses had gone on to a better place.  Then, they shared the link for watching a live stream at BFH headquarters.

            Moses’ replacement did not like the blue pellets at all.  He gulped down 49 orange ones in a row, predicting a Super Bowl blowout in favor of the Bengals.  When the Rams won the game the next day, Dean and Bumper made excuses like, “It was too much pressure for Moses after changing homes.”  When they whispered to each other, they were convinced the real Moses would have predicted the correct score.

            As for the fake Moses, he was never allowed to make picks again.  He lived out his days in the BFH lobby, an expensive symbol of risk and reward.