i was having a pizza...

at around 8:45 p.m. at Amato's on Bathurst and Queen. As Britney Spears's coy, innocence-veneered voice played somewhere above my head, I saw a man walk in, gesturing and talking to himself. His beard was graying and rested over the neckline of his ski jacket. The Calabrese is one fine slice, let me tell you...cheese oil glistening, thin crust crumbling in salty, spiced bits over my tongue...Then I notice one of the guys emerge from behind the counter. A tense, whispered argument was continuing. In the time measured by my eyes in tiny increments of space, the "patron" grew more irate as the pizza man grew more defensive. The patron gave pizza man a bit of a push while the other Amato's employees urged them out the door. I saw the pizza guy throw a punch. As a response? Who knows? Somehow, they separated and the pizza guys came back in and locked the door behind them.

The older man's anger jabbed at us through the glass, as though the transparency allowed for it...

...silence...

CRASH!

He broke a window pane, his words now definite punches. Fear trickled upward from somewhere in my belly and up to my chest. My physical safety hasn't been threatened in a really long time. Sometimes I wonder whether I've just forgetten how to react through years of training that taught me to check instinctive reactions. I kept eating my pizza, though, as I thought gratefully that there aren't as many gun owners here as there are in the States. I think the dough made a nice dam, keeping the fear from going to my head; I wasn't scared for very long. The urge to make sure that proper steps were being taken kicked in and I and asked pizza man whether the cops were on their way. I kept thinking that the Dundas police station isn't very far away. I finished my pizza and walked out the door without hearing a single siren in the distance.