Slice of Life —
Pizza-maker Nick Blais ponders baking, biking and
romance
By Judah Pollack
Nate Blais, the 18-year-old in charge of making the
pizza pies at Sal's Pizza on South Willow Street, broke up with his
girlfriend a few months ago.
"We fought over stupid things," he says,
lazing in his chair as if his feet were slipping out from under him.
"She always wanted to go out to clubs, usually the Brass Monkey. I
didn't."
And she's an older woman. She's 19.
Blais is tall with the soft face of those life has
yet to mark. His top priority of the summer was avoiding
responsibility. He moves his limbs leisurely and speaks slow as syrup,
except when asked about his motorcycle.
"It's a Suzuki GSXR 750," he rattles off.
It's the bike he took a long ride on the night his girlfriend told him
they needed a break. They had been dating for two years.
But more often there's a slowness to Blais. Even
though he's currently working a 55-hour week, he appears always to be
lazing about. One wouldn't be surprised if he slept in a hammock.
"I lived off my graduation money till it ran
out," he says. He graduated from Pembroke Academy last year, and
was quite happy to. He's not really a "school-type guy."
"That lasted about three months. Then I bummed
off my parents until they told me I had to get a job. I had a friend
who worked here so I applied."
His friend was the pizza maker until one fateful
night when gross misfortune found him.
"He and another friend of mine were drunk and
had the beer muscles going on and wanted to wrestle. My friend broke
his leg. It was pretty gross. I was there. The bone wasn't poking out
of the skin, but it was out to here."
He holds his hand a good three inches from his
shin. "He didn't realize it was broken because he couldn't feel
it. He went to stand up but he fell right down."
And so Blais learned to make pies. He doesn't toss
the dough into the air but pounds it into submission, flattening it out
with large, flour-strewn hands. Cheese pies are the most popular and
pepperoni ranks as the favorite topping. The oven, which cooks a pizza
in 10 minutes at 550 degrees, has rotating panels allowing it to cook
24 pizzas at a clip.
"One day I want to come in in the morning when
the oven's cold, lie down on one of the panels and take a ride through.
Just to see what it's like." That's the end of his thought and he
leans even further back in his chair.
We sit in silence until the door to Sal's opens and
Blais' former roommate walks in. They were friends before they shared
an apartment, "but not good enough to live together." Blais
asks him how his classes are at Southern New Hampshire University.
"Not good," the friend says. "I've
got like no girls worth anything in my first three and only one in my
last class."
Blais nods at the unfortunate situation.
He lives at home for now while saving up money.
"My parents aren't charging me rent…
yet."
Blais is strolling into the future with few of the
worries of the goal-oriented.
He spends his weekends, "chillin' with
friends, doing stupid stuff on my bike. I crashed last week, nothing
serious, just a couple of scratches and a broken blinker."
He shrugs off the crash with the immortal sheen he
still possesses. A huge, purply gash in his shin attests to his
devotion to a slow-pitch softball league he plays in.
"It was the championship game. I had to
slide."
His leg doesn't seem to bother him.
All of this youthful ennui may in fact be Blais'
way of dealing with a broken heart.
"We had the same interests," he says,
still stuck on his girlfriend.
"She was a tomboy, liked playing sports,
riding motorcycles. We liked the same things."
He laces his big, floured hands on top of his head
and rubs
his baseball cap back and forth to scratch an itch.
"I liked the way she treated me. We're still
in touch," he sighs. "Trying to work things out. But she
doesn't care anymore, that's the thing."
