January 18 2005, 06:12 PM Hey, Rob!

In Naples, there is a thin street that is paved with timbers on end. The buildings are close and tall, and the sky is a bright stripe of blue ribbon to those looking up past the large open windows and the lashes of the tiled roofs. The walls are simple, cleaned by sun and rain, and are rough with time. On the street there is a simple doorway, framed in oak. The door is painted with a black paint, slick and looking freshly wet.

Behind the door lives an elderly woman. Her hair is grey and flecked with white. She smiles for you. She holds a cat, a gentle cat, and spends fingernails behind its ears. She sits near the top of the stairs, which is somewhat unfortunate, for sometimes she manages to fall down them.

The basement she lets to the Parson. It is unclear what the Parson is up to down there. His stated purpose is that he makes wine, and needs the dim coolness to store his tries. He is shifty, and has dark eyes which seem to float on his face above his collar, and his fingers are very long and thin. They have soft skin, those fingers, and glow unnatural. Sometimes, when the elderly woman tumbles down the stairs, she knocks him clear over to the other stairs, and into the next basement, below.

The basement below. It is colder, and dimmer, and the walls are in rough stone and timber blacked with time. One thin bulb hangs down there, and swings sometimes. There is an oil lamp, too, and matches, for when the lightbulb becomes depressed. In the corner of this place is an ancient altar, to a god forgotten, a god for simple food of flat bread and thin sauce, and a scatter of cheese. It is the dusty altar of the pizza god, and to one side there is a stack of stained and aged boxes, thin and bent, chalices of past sacrifice.

The pizza god hates you.