by Anna Premoli
“Okay then - we’ll need a few days to speak to the other candidates too, but we’ll let you know as soon as we can,” she says coldly as she rises from her chair. I stand up too and take hold of the hand that she is holding out to me. Her grip is very firm.
The impression that I’ve developed so far of the world of business is one of great formality. They don’t mess around here. They don’t mess around at all. And they are keen to get that message over to you loud and clear.
“We’ll be in touch soon,” says Iris as she accompanies me to the exit. “Ah, Giada, one thing - our office is quite straight-laced, so, if I were you, I would get rid of the piercings and the other stuff.”
I blink in surprise, because I’m pretty sure I hadn’t told her that I had any. This woman must be more perceptive than I had realised.
“Of course, no problem,” I reassure her quickly. I’m so used to taking them out for Sunday lunches with my family... If they care so much about appearances, they won’t be disappointed. At least this is a game where I know the rules.
“Keep an eye on your emails,” she tells me, and then she walks away.
If they hire me, which it is beginning to look like they conceivably might, the first thing I’m doing is going out and buying at least five really hardcore business suits like hers.
If you’re going to get down, you might as well dress up for it, right?
*
Exactly five days later my cell phone rings inside the Bocconi study room. I grab it and quickly run out to avoid disturbing the others.
“Giada Borghi?” asks a deep male voice.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I’m calling from M&K consulting. I’m happy to be able to confirm that you have been selected for the six-month internship, if you are still interested in the position.”
A feeling of immense satisfaction appears in my stomach and rapidly spreads throughout the rest of my body.
“Of course I am!” I cry cheerfully before I can help myself.
Excessive displays of emotion are frowned upon around those parts, but just this once, who cares?
“Great,” he says. “In that case, you’ll be starting on Monday. At eight. Sharp.”
“Eight sharp,” I repeat with a smile. I’ve never been happier about having to set the alarm at the crack of dawn in my entire life.
Having a goal suddenly makes me feel incredibly alive. Are things starting to happen for me too?
It would be about time.
*
For my first day of work at this consulting company with the fearsome reputation, I opt for a classic look: black trousers and jacket. The only bit of colour that I allow myself is a light blue blouse. But apart from that, I’m the perfect anonymous employee: flat black shoes and a bag that looks like my grandmother’s. In fact, now that I think about it, it actually is my grandmother’s. When she passed away last year, my mother gave away almost all her stuff because she would never dream of using second-hand clothes and bags. No, only the best of the best for mother, who is still obsessed with leaving her rather humble origins behind her. Many years ago she married the son of a big-shot Venetian industrialist – my dad – and jumped a few rungs up the social ladder, so now she thinks she’s part of the high society by divine right and she’s ridiculously severe with anyone who doesn’t respect the rules and who fails to play the game, as though she’s completely forgotten the difficulties that she herself must have faced at first. Not only that but she also insists on refusing to understand in any way why I, who was born into this world of stuck-up provincial rich people, do everything I can to stay away from it. Ending up accepting an empty life like that has always been one of my biggest nightmares. When I left to study in Milan, that nightmare got a little smaller, because one of the undeniable advantages of a big city is that people almost never have time to criticize you. And as well as that, there’s something vaguely eccentric about Milanese high society that we provincials often lack. You have to really go all out to scandalize the Milanese, which is why I’m planning to stay here even after I graduate.
So, while my mother’s friends at the bridge club would get a case of the vapours if they found out about my tongue piercing, here in Milan it’s just a quirk like any other. That’s why I can’t help loving the way the city treats its inhabitants: in spite of everything, it accepts you so much so that you end up inevitably falling for its charms, even on cold and foggy days like today.
“Giada, it’s a pleasure to meet you again,” says Iris, the woman who interviewed me a week ago and who now appears seemingly from nowhere. They’d had me in the lobby waiting for one of the managers to come and retrieve me and I guess she must have been given the job.
She gives me a quick glance and nods approvingly. “Perfect clothing, by the way.”
“Thank you, Ms. Lombardi, I did my best,”.
“Now that we’re colleagues, I don’t see any need for formalities. Call me Iris. I insist.” She beckons me to follow her and accompanies me into a large open-plan office which is gradually filling up with people. She stops by a desk and points to a computer. “This will be your desk. We are just waiting for our office’s other new intern to arrive and then I will send someone from IT over to you to get your profiles, email and all the rest sorted out.”
She opens the top drawer of my desk and pulls out what I assume must be my badge and phone.
“Company phone. The number is written on that form there. And remember, it is for company business only! If you need to call your boyfriend or girlfriend, please do so during breaks and on your own phone, okay? I hate having to work as a nursemaid to the new interns and the clearer things are at the beginning, the better we will all be able work.”
She certainly is direct. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Girlfriend?” I can’t help asking her with a laugh.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she says solemnly. “Employees’ private lives are their own business.”
Ok, message received loud and clear. You’re here to work, and that’s all you’re here to do. There’s no time for nonsense.
Iris walks away as I sit down happily in my new swivel chair and, not worrying at all about whether I look stupid, push off with my feet and do a couple of spins. I still have a smile on my face when I see Iris coming back. Wow, that was fast.
Behind her is a very tall young man clad in an immaculate grey suit and a dark blue tie. The problem is that the closer the two of them get, the more I have this weird feeling that I know him. And before long, my smile vanishes, making way for an expression of pure horror. The kind of thing that would have Hitchcock putting me under contract on the spot, if only he were still with us.
Shit! The guy who looks like a walking autumn-winter men’s fashion show is Ariberto-Tight-Shirt. Aribert-kiss-the-girls-when-they-aren’t-expecting-it. Aribert-I-never-want-to-see-you-again-in-my-life.
Shit, shit, shit...
Without thinking twice - because if I did, I would obviously not do it - I throw myself down and try to hide under the desk. My brilliant plan is to prevent him from seeing me for the minute or two that it’ll take for him to piss off. Maybe he’s here because he has to do an interview or something. Hah, as if the fearsome M&K would ever take on someone like him... I doubt he’d even be able to pass the first part of the written test.
I have somehow convinced myself of this true when the legs of Iris and Mister-Shirt stop right next to my desk. Or, more exactly, at the desk exactly in front of mine.
I roll my eyes and groan with anguish. This can’t be happening... And if it is, I demand that some inexplicable cosmic phenomenon causes a hole to open in the floor of this office and suck one of the two of us into a wormhole in space. Preferably him, but I’ll settle for me if that’s not possible. Anything as long as I don’t have to talk to him.
“That’s odd, where has she gone?” says an astonished Iris, “I left the other intern right here...”
“Maybe she�
�s already run away?” Ariberto jokes idiotically.
“She certainly didn’t seem the type to be easily intimidated,” Irene says. Thanks for sticking up for me!
I would quite happily remain hidden under the table except that by now I have realised that the fool is not just passing through, nor is he likely to disappear by magic, despite me having read all that Harry Potter stuff, and so the longer I take to reveal my presence, the more bizarre – not to say disturbing - all of this is going to look. All that remains for me is to hope that Iris is one of those eccentric Milanese I was talking about. The ones who never get freaked out by anything.
“Ahem,” I say, clearing my throat as I appear from under the desk. Iris makes a frightened squeak and jumps with surprise as I climb back to my feet while trying to preserve a minimum of dignity. It requires superhuman effort, but I don’t want anyone to say that I gave in without fighting my hardest.
“I’d dropped my pen.”
It’s the first thing that comes to mind. Absolutely pathetic, of course, but my imagination has never been my strongest point.
Ariberto squints in disbelief, an expression of terror and incredulity appearing on his face.
Yeah, welcome to the club, buddy...
“Where’s your pen?” he asks me, after scrutinising me at length to ensure that it’s not just his imagination playing tricks on him.
“My what?” I ask, perhaps less than gracefully.
“Your pen,” he repeats, pointing to my empty hands. “Weren’t you looking for a pen?” Damn him and damn the fact that right now he’s obviously the more focused of us.
“Ah yes, my pen... it must have rolled away somewhere,” I reply with a poker face.
A long moment of silence follows, because it is obvious that too much has already been said. You can only discuss imaginary pens for so long before things start to get pretty weird.
“Well, now that you’re both here, I’d like to introduce you officially: Giada Borghi, this is Ariberto Castelli di Fievolo.”
As if by magic, my expression changes and becomes one of pure pleasure. So much so that I almost forget how stupid I must have looked a moment before. Yessss! I just knew he would have a stupid pompous surname! Hah!
“Castelli is fine,” Ariberto specifies uneasily. He must have noticed my pleased expression and realised the reason for it. Wow! The boy’s making progress: neuron one, let me introduce you to neuron two. “In fact, Ari is fine,” he concludes.
What with that dazzling bloody smile of his, I’ll bet he’s always been pretty successful at convincing people to do as he wants. At least, he was until he met me. What do you want to bet that I can lower his average - a lot?
“But Castelli di Fievolo sounds so nice...” I say. ‘Ari’ sounds annoyingly hipsterish, so he can forget about persuading me to call him that.
At that precise moment Iris’s mobile starts ringing. She looks at the screen. “They’re calling me for a meeting. Okay guys, since you know each other now and you know where your desks are, I can get back to work. And maybe once you have settled in properly, you can take part in the next meeting yourselves, okay?” And so saying, she scurries off as fast as lightning. Wow the people round here are in a hurry! I mean, even for Milan, where everyone is always in a hurry even when they’re not actually going anywhere...
“Castelli di Fievolo...” I repeat, much more sarcastically this time.
Iris’s being there meant I couldn’t go all out, but now there are no limits.
“Taking the mickey out of me is a bit rich when it’s coming from someone who was hiding under a table...” Ariberto reminds me promptly.
He’s right, unfortunately - that definitely wasn’t my finest moment.
“Ok, true, I saw you and I threw myself under the desk because I was hoping to avoid a scene,” I say belligerently. “What about it?”
“Nothing, it’s that I didn’t imagine you being such a... such a chicken,” he says eventually.
A chicken? Me??
“Yeah, well, I didn’t imagine you being the type to jump on unsuspecting girls, Castelli...”
A slight blush appears on his perfect face. For his first day of work he has scrubbed his skin and even given a bit of shape to his curly mop of hair. And I have to admit that, seen in the daylight, his hair really is beautiful: brown, but with lovely reddish tones where it catches the light, and with a ridiculous amount of volume. Some shampoo company ought to get him to do an advert for them. Come to think of it, his eyes look pretty good too: also brown, but full of shades ranging from gold to greenish. Okay, he’s hot. But I already knew that. The problem is that in a grey suit, he looks even hotter. I don’t know how much his tailor charged him, but he deserves every last penny.
Planet Earth calling Giada, Planet Earth calling Giada, come in Giada...
I try to force myself to recover from the state of mental prostration into which I accidentally seem to have fallen and stop staring at him. Him and that flipping sexy mouth of his.
“Yes, talking of that,” he says, looking sheepish, “I would like to apologize about the... incident.”
“Ahh, so pawing girls you don’t know is called an ‘incident’ now, is it?”
A contrite expression on his face, he runs his hand through his hair. “Honestly, I don’t know what came over me. You probably won’t believe me but I don’t usually behave like that. It was the first time. The first and the last, to be clear. And I apologize profoundly. I’m not trying to justify my actions, but at some point I felt like there was this current between us, do you know what I mean? And I thought that you were looking at me in a certain way, so I said to myself, who dares wins, and...” He goes quiet and blushes even harder, unsure of how to proceed. My face is a mask of careful neutrality; I’m terrified of revealing anything. “Well, it’s pretty obvious that the attraction was one-way, isn’t it?” he concludes with a nervous laugh, trying to defuse the tension.
Surprisingly, there are limits to my ability to lie to myself, so I’m forced to admit that I did actually feel the current he’s talking about. I felt it loud and clear. And that final kiss caused a spark that I would never have expected to be kindled by someone like him. Ariberto Castelli types are high up on my list of things not to do even by mistake.
Okay, there was an ‘incident’, but I think I can say that we can put it behind us now and move on. For the sake of all of us. Not to mention that it’s been months since that night.
“Listen, let’s forget all about it...” I suggest magnanimously. “As far as I’m concerned it never happened.” More or less. More more than less, but what the heck.
With a sigh, Ariberto visibly relaxes. “Thanks, I appreciate it,” he says eventually in a sincere-sounding voice. “Can we start over?” And he holds out big hand.
At this point, refusing it would be rude, so I reach over and squeeze his hand tightly. And... wow. Electricity flows between us again as if it had never stopped. I hope with all my heart that this ridiculous thing doesn’t end up being a problem. My life is already enough a Greek tragedy, I certainly don’t need any more drama.
I don’t like the fact that an insignificant gesture is enough for things between us to get weird and suspiciously complicit again. I really don’t like it. We need to restore a bit of distance, which is why I decide to opt for my usual sarcasm. That never fails.
“I’ve decided what I’m going to call you,” I announce after having extracted my hand, not without some difficulty. “Yes, I think that from here on out, you’ll be Bertha.”
“Bertha?” he says with a smile. “Seriously?”
“What, hasn’t anyone called you Bertha before?” Honestly, people have no imagination...
“No, you’re the first.”
“Great. I always like being original. It doesn’t happen often, but it looks like the wind is starting to blow in my direction.”
“Not that I mind, but don’t you think it sounds a bit... I don’t know... grannyish?” he asks
eventually.
I scrutinize him carefully from head to toe and then return to his eyes, which, to tell the truth, seem rather amused.
“Bertha, Bertha, Bertha... you and manliness come from two different worlds,” I tease him.
He is still looking at me benevolently, which I presume means that his self-love is so strong that it can’t be affected by a bit of mockery. Or that he is awfully sure of himself and of his qualities. To tell the truth, though, when - by pure chance - I came into contact with certain parts of him at the nightclub, Ariberto Castelli’s manliness appeared to me the least of his worries, but there’s no need for me to tell him that, is there?
“You reckon?” he asks doubtfully.
“I do reckon, Bertha,” I say, smiling at him with conviction. And then I sit down at my desk and watch him do the same. Our computers are perfectly aligned, one in front of the other. In other words, there is no way for me to escape.
I pretend to be unflustered but damn it all, how am I supposed to relax knowing that I’ll be spending the next six months forced to see myself in those eyes every time I look up from my monitor? Something tells me these six months are going to feel pretty long.
Perhaps, after all, the wind isn’t actually blowing in my direction yet.
*
“Out of all, and I mean literally all, the human beings on the planet – and there are seven billion of them – why did destiny have to play a mean trick like this on me?” I complain as I finish telling my friends about what happened at work. We are sitting in a bar near Via Marghera with dishes stacked with snacks in front of us. We really don’t know how to resist an aperitif. After starting off cold and foggy, the weather has turned glacial and rainy. A worthy conclusion to an awful day.
“Where has your usual philosophical outlook on life gone?” asks Lavinia.
“It jumped out of the window and committed suicide as soon as it saw Ariberto Castelli appear.”