Atoning for the pizzas

Nick Fonda There’s someone I’d like to pay. I don’t have his name. I don’t have his contact information. I’m writing this on the off-chance that he, or more likely... L’article Atoning for the pizzas est apparu en premier sur Sherbrooke Record .

Nick Fonda There’s someone I’d like to pay. I don’t have his name. I don’t have his contact information.

I’m writing this on the off-chance that he, or more likely someone he knows, will read this and he’ll make a second try at contacting me so I can pay him and apologize. There was no malice. It was a comedy of errors that began innocently enough with a decision to order pizzas for supper, something we do only occasionally.

Our meals are generally in-house, and I’m normally the resident cook. Once it’s been decided what we’re having for supper—a decision generally made by the time lunch is finished—I make sure I have everything I need. Sometimes this means a quick dash to the store; usually I need go no further than the freezer and pantry downstairs.

On this particular Saturday, the menu had already been decided. I could relax until five o’clock or so when it would be time to don my toque and begin prepping our meal. At some point in the afternoon, our dinner party grew by 50 per cent to three people.

There were plenty of vegetables in the fridge and it would be easy to stretch our meal. Then, not long after 4:30 that afternoon, the plan changed again; there would be eight of us at the table. My menu for the evening certainly wouldn’t stretch to feed eight.

I did have other options in the freezer, but I didn’t have the time it would take to thaw something else. I could rush to the store to find something. Or, given the time, I could just order a couple of pizzas.

It took several minutes to sort out who wanted what topping and several more to decide if we’d order from the local pizza parlour or not. The place had been run by the same couple for half a century but, over the last five years, had changed hands a few times, including very recently. Did we know anyone who had ordered pizza there since the change?

Did we want to take a chance? The alternative was to order from more than a dozen kilometers away, but did we want lukewarm pizza? We agreed to order locally—three pizzas including one with a rather unusual topping.

The next two minutes is where it went inexplicably haywire. Was I distracted as I was looking up the phone number? Was I in too much of a rush?

Was I having a senior moment? However it was, I briskly tapped in the number I’d found online onto my keypad. Even as I did so, a couple of thoughts crossed my mind.

The number, in the 819-area code, was not a Richmond number beginning with the familiar 826. But this wasn’t necessarily a red flag. The place had recently changed administration.

It wouldn’t be the first restaurant to operate without a landline. The other thing about the number was that it was one of those numbers you end up remembering involuntarily, like 360-1818 or 770-4433, the kind of number businesses often request. What was definitely unusual was that I was asked to speak English.

After saying Bonjour , I launched into my order which I’d taken the time to scribble down on a piece of paper. I hardly started explaining that I wanted half plain and half vegetarian when the male voice stopped me. Could I speak English?

This was clearly someone quite newly arrived in Quebec. I could tell as well that it was someone who had learned English in some other part of the world. He took my order, including the pizza with the atypical topping.

I made a point of mentioning the special topping a second time. He assured me he understood. The pizzas would take 30 minutes. ...

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