Amazonian goddess was “certainly not healthy,” but it was the only way I could cope. I chose to view the woman as an otherworldly, goddess-type creature who’d floated into Nick’s path one day, led him astray for five nights, and then left our world, hopefully for the very hot hallways of hell.
Nick and I were officially back together, but I still had a hard time.
“One minute it’s like we’re back to normal,” I told Kit, “then the next he’ll say something or I’ll say something and we’ll remember.”
“And then?”
I took a bite of croissant. It was flaky and buttery but suddenly hard to swallow. “And then it’s awful.”
Sometimes I was in love with Nick, proud of how we’d weathered the storm that had swept through our lives. Sometimes—when I picked up a wine from Napa Valley or saw a TV show about infidelity—my insecurity raged. Sometimes I hated him.
“God, now I’m sorry,” Kit said. “What a sad pair we are.” She put her cup down and threw an arm around my shoulders, hugging me across the table.
I hugged her back. Throughout high school, college and my early years in Chicago, my life had been refracted through the lens of my girlfriends’ eyes, particularly Kit’s. When I got married and she’d moved, I thought I didn’t need the insights or affirmations as often. But now, to be in the company of a friend gave me an optimistic charge. A good bout of girlfriend bonding was exactly what I needed.
Over Kit’s shoulder, I saw the sun moving across the piazza and beginning to warm the gray stone man in the center of the sculpture. Water splashed from the fountain, cleansing him.
Sitting back, I raised my cup. “Let’s have a toast. To Italy, and to a wonderful few days of escape.”
“To fabulous fucking friends!” Kit said. She let out a little holler, which drew looks from the people in the bar, and we touched our cups together.
Kit and I spent a languid first day, moving from one overpriced store on the Corso to the next, laughingly enduring the saleswomen who glanced pityingly at our American fashions and wondered out loud (they didn’t know I understood) whether we could afford the skirts we were looking at.
We were giddy and goofy from lack of sleep, and this was Italy. Nothing bad could touch us. We had dinner on the Via Veneto, doted on by the rotund proprietress who was different in every way from the saleswomen we’d encountered.
“Eat! Eat!” she kept saying. “You are nothing but bones.”
Food kept appearing at our table like wrapped presents 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
