Napulé Pizzeria on a Rainy Evening

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I’m sitting by the window, listening to the cars splash through the puddled street. The neon light from the diner across the street seem brighter through the wet glass.

The music is low and unrecognizable enough to ignore. The wine bottles have gathered a layer of dust that no one is in a hurry to shake off.

The lighting is dim. Perfect for writing. Perfect for peering out the window. Perfect for watching the slow traffic and the occasional pedestrian walking at a jog to escape the raindrops sooner. The lighting is the second sign (after the owner’s Italian accent) that the pizza baking in the blue-tiled stone oven will be worth more than it costs.

The pizzeria’s owner is throwing his hands up, half-amused, trying to figure out a spreadsheet on a thick and dated laptop. “I don’t know these things – this internet,” he tells his employee. “People tell me to google, but I don’t know google. But now, I have to understand these things.” He is old enough to have let the Dot Com era, the 2.0 era, and whatever era we’ve just been through pass him by without bothering to go online. I imagine he has no understanding of what ctrl+alt+del means (and what it used to mean). This is the third sign the pizza will be fantastic.

A quick glance through the menu reveals that there is olive oil on everything. That is, I suppose, the fourth sign.

The sound of the rain hitting every surface is accompanied by the subtle smell of dough rising, as if the air was populated by invisible specs of flour, inhaled with every breath.

There is nothing momentous in this moment, but it does bring a satisfying revelation: everything sounds better when it rains.

By Mathieu Roy

 

 
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Mathieu Roy is a writer and editor based in Sackville, New Brunswick (Canada). Nothing gets him going like leisure, old stuff, and spooky nonsense.  You can find more of Mathieu’s writing on Medium.


Photo by LuAnn Hunt on Unsplash