The Rome Affair. Laura Caldwell
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under the tree—saffron risotto with gold leaves, pink salmon drizzled green with dill sauce. So, too, the men appeared. “Married,” I kept murmuring, holding aloft my left hand, reveling in the attention but somehow proud again of my marital status, while Kit grinned and flirted and sent them away, even as they sent us sparkling decanters of chianti. We tripped home arm in arm, laughing with memories already made.
But the next morning I was walloped by a bout of jet lag that made the previous day’s tiredness seem like child’s play. I couldn’t believe I had to attend a meeting, much less make a lengthy pitch on complicated architectural software.
I showered, but it failed to wake me up. I left Kit in her sumptuous bed, with plans to see her after my meeting. I headed for a neighborhood bar, where I downed two espressos, neither of which had any effect other than to make me blink more often and feel more dazed.
A twenty-minute cab ride took me over the muddy Tiber River and through Trastevere, onto a tiny, winding, cobblestone street with stone palazzi on either side. The driver stopped and pointed at an iron gate with the number thirteen etched in the stucco. When I got out of the car, I saw a small brass plaque announcing Rolan & Cavalli, the largest architectural firm in Italy. A twinge of anticipation fluttered in my belly.
I had fallen into a sales career five years out of college, after I decided I had to get the hell out of advertising, an industry I’d misguidedly battled my way into. I thought I’d use sales as a sort of break, that I’d probably return to advertising (for no one truly left, one of my bosses had once said) and find a job at a better agency, or at least one that didn’t want me to specialize in the tedium that was account management. But I loved sales—the rush, the wondering, the cliff-like highs and even the lows.
The lows had been few until recently, when the economy slowed and construction slowed along with it, leaving many architects wondering if they really needed our pricey new software to help them design buildings. The U.S. offices of Rolan & Cavalli had finally come around and begun using the software after almost a year of my working on them. Now, I was here to convince the Roman architects that their Italian office needed the software as much as their American counterparts. Laurence Connelly, my boss in Chicago, was counting on me to land this account. “You’ll bowl over those Italians, Blakely,” he’d said in a rare attempt at encouragement. “Go get ’em.”
The gate buzzed, and I walked into a large courtyard with a white cherub fountain in the middle, a few cars and scooters parked to one side. On the opposite side of the courtyard, double doors made from heavy pine swung open and a portly man in his early fifties stepped outside, extending his hand.
“You are Rachel Blakely?” he said in formal, heavily accented English.
“Yes, hello.” I quickly crossed the courtyard and shook his hand.
“I am Bruno Cavalli. Benvenuto. Welcome to Roma.”
“Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure.” I pumped his hand once more, surprised that the owner himself had greeted me.
I felt the exhilaration of an impending pitch, a potential sale. Sometimes being in sales was painful—particularly when you were faking your way through a cold call or getting shot down from a company you’d been working with for five years—but the anticipation and bursts of elation from my job had gotten me through Nick’s revelation about his affair. It had given me back some of the confidence he’d stolen. And here in Rome was potential. Here, I might close again.
Bruno showed me through the front doors and through a sitting room decorated in shades of sienna and white. We made small talk as we walked, passing offices and drawing tables. By the time we reached the conference room, a round space with a large, mahogany table in the center, I was feeling charged up and ready to sell Bruno and his team—four men and two women—on the excellence of our software.
Bruno introduced me to the team, and I thanked him in Italian, then switched to English. “Thank you all for having me and for your time today.”
One of the team members, a paunchy man in an olive green suit, turned his head and leaned an ear toward me. A few others nodded, but as I moved from a few introductory remarks into my pitch, I saw perplexed glances. I slowed my words, but I quickly realized that although Bruno had near-perfect English, his staff did not. Some knew a few words, but when it came to talking architecture, they were only used to Italian. As the confused looks around the table increased, my adrenaline faded.
Finally I halted my words. “Capite?” I said. Do you understand?
The man in the olive suit shook his head. A woman held up her hand and rocked it from side to side. “Cosi, cosi.”
I glanced at Bruno, who shrugged. “Italiano?” he said.
I struggled not to rub a distressed hand over my tired face. While it was true that I’d lived here for six months as a kid and studied Italian in college, and while it was also true that I could order wine with the best of them and eavesdrop on snotty saleswomen, I didn’t think I could give an entire pitch in Italian, certainly not to describe complex architectural concepts. My company, Randall Design, had sent me, knowing I was the only one in our sales team with any Italian skills, but I’d been given the impression that I would mostly rely on English, stepping in here and there with a few Italian phrases.
Still, I would give it my best shot. I launched into my pitch in my schoolgirl Italian. The first few sentences came out okay. Then I started to stumble. I had to halt frequently to think of the proper words, the proper tenses, how to form a sentence. Pitying glances came from around the table.
I shuffled along until I heard “Scusi!” in a high, cultured voice.
The speaker was a woman with white hair pulled back in a low knot. She had raised a delicate hand. A braided gold bracelet adorned her slender wrist.
“Si?” I said eagerly. Questions during a pitch gave me motivation; they revealed that the client might be interested.
But the white-haired woman rattled off a lengthy question at such a rapid speed I only picked up every fifth word or so.
I took a breath and tried to respond to what I thought she might be asking—a question about our 3D capability. I mangled a few words; I forgot others. A man to my right wore a look of complete confusion and leaned closer, as if I onlyneeded to talk more loudly. The woman with the white hair shook her head dismissively.
Bruno offered to translate, and the question-and-answer session, which should have taken ten minutes, took about forty. My pitch limped.
After two hours, Bruno stood from his chair. “Grazie, Rachel,” he said, looking at his watch. “If we might take a break.”
I nearly kissed him with gratitude.
But then he continued, “Two of our members will take you for a meal. We will finish this afternoon.” He spoke in Italian to the team members, all of whom nodded.
“Oh…” I said. I thought of Kit at the hotel, waiting for me. I’d promised we’d have the afternoon together, that I’d show her some of my favorite Rome sites, aside from the Gucci store. I thought of how badly I wanted a shower and a glass of wine and a nice long chat with my girlfriend.
But Bruno was giving me another chance, one I needed and appreciated.
“Thank you so much. That would be lovely,” I said. “Could I please use your phone?”
I called Kit from Bruno’s office and apologized. She was silent for a moment. “It’s okay, Rachel,” she said then. “I’ll just go wander. Good luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll need it.”
My hatchet job of the language continued its shamble at the ristorante, where they took me to lunch. There was no reprieve, only more questions about the software—questions that took me decades to decipher and centuries to answer. This sorry situation continued during my afternoon presentation of the product itself. I noticed every sigh from the team members who couldn’t understand me. I saw them glancing at their watches.
When