Chapter 7: Cent’anni!

Twenty-four years of experience as a human being had prepared Eliza for a great many interactions with people. She had shaken hands. She had given noncommittal seatbelt hugs. Once or twice she had done a sort of weird bow because it felt right. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for meeting Alessandro Neroni. This was a man who had made millions upon millions of dollars on the backs of those with less. He was an exploiter, a rank capitalist who used people as means to various ends. She’d said as much in her radical e-mails. Obviously, he knew that.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I didn’t fly you all the way out here to fire you, face to face.”

As if firing her was the worst thing that he could do. Well, is it rational to think that he might try to kill her? That would be stupid. For all of Monte Salute’s shady business practices, they worked within the confines of the law. It was law that they heavily influenced with corporate lobbying, but, to the best of Eliza’s knowledge, they were perpetual plaintiffs and rarely defendants.

“You have…” Mr. Neroni started, “I believe the word is, ‘spunk.’ You’ll have to forgive my slang. It’s always a bit behind. Do they call it ‘balls,’ or is that specific only to men?”

Eliza contemplated a response to this. It was a question he clearly intended her to answer. Nothing came out of her mouth.

“Ms. Veselsky,” said Mr. Neroni. “Did you forget to let our guest speak?”

The assistant chuckled to herself and then turned to Eliza.

“Feel free to answer Mr. Neroni. After all, he is our boss,” she said.

Again, Ms. Veselsky’s words oozed through her brain, sweet and warm like melted ice cream. Eliza felt compelled, but gently.

“I mean, a lot of things are considered gender neutral,” blurted Eliza. “I’ve heard other women say, ‘grow a pair,’ when they clearly just mean that someone should show some backbone.”

“Ah, backbone! That’s one I know,” said Mr. Neroni, finally standing. “That’s an old one!” He was talking as if she were digital help. Siri or Google or Alexa. “Let’s stay with that one. You have a lot of backbone. Why don’t you give that backbone a rest and have a seat with me at this table? We can have a glass of this fantastic…” Mr. Neroni lifted the wine bottle from his side to read its label. “Ah! Masseto Toscana? Perfetto!”

Eliza sat down. Was she going to have a glass of wine with this man? She was there. It wasn’t going to hurt anything. There was a glug-glug of his generous pours of the dark red liquid. He looked at Ms. Veselsky. She shook her head. He shrugged.

“You know it doesn’t… agree with me,” she said.

“Nor me, but you don’t have to agree with everything to make them wonderful,” said Mr. Neroni, smiling at Eliza. He hadn’t removed his shades and that bothered her for some reason. She couldn’t understand why, but it did. The comment was clearly aimed at her, and she wondered where this was going. He clearly had every intention of talking to her about her e-mails. Ms. Veselsky remained frozen. She did not sit down.

“More for us, yes?” he said to Eliza, who did not know how to respond. Was he suggesting that they were going to drink the whole bottle?

“Cent’anni!” he said, clinking Eliza’s glass. She was following his lead now but waited for him to drink the wine before she put the glass to her lips. Stupid, Eliza thought. Stupid, stupid, stupid… The owner of a multinational corporation is going to poison you for writing nasty e-mails to his officers. Right.

She sipped. Eliza had never been able to understand why expensive wine was expensive. She’d have been able to tell that this was a red wine and that someone who knew what they were talking about would have said that it was good. Mr. Neroni grinned widely, almost… aggressively. Redness glazed his teeth as he laughed. He was laughing with her, but she wasn’t laughing.

“It’s good!” he proclaimed. “Of course, it’s good. And you, you are good! So good! Thank you for coming!”

He sounded like he was being played by a somewhat sinister Roberto Benigni. We she projecting ill intent on him? No, this was a man who owned more than, if you asked Eliza, anyone should be allowed to own, and here he was, acting silly. Unpretentious. Joyful. This was not the serious, suit-wearing kleptocrat that she’d been prepared to deal with. But, his actions made direct profit on the misery of others. He was not a good person.

“Mr. Neroni-” started Eliza.

He waved his hand at her, and she prepared for him to say something like, “Please, Alessandro,” or, “Please, it’s Sandro,” or something. Instead, his comment was, “Please, no business till we finish our glass. You have to really enjoy it, and you’re not going to do that if you’re talking about me poisoning the third world.”

“Develop-” started Eliza. He raised an eyebrow and then his glass. He was telling her to enjoy herself. She felt a fire in her stomach. He was *telling* her to enjoy herself. It wasn’t Greg. But, it wasn’t far off. “Developing world,” she finished correcting him.

Mr. Neroni sighed and nodded his head from side to side, dismissively.

“Mr. Neroni, I think I have a right-” began Eliza again.

He looked at her with clear annoyance. As if the only reason that she could possibly not be enjoying the wine was simply that she hadn’t heard him.

“Please,” he said, “just finish one glass. Then, we talk all the business you want. Just one glass.”

At this point, it wasn’t going to mean anything, but it was the principle of the thing. Still, he wasn’t going to listen to her until they finished a glass of wine. It was good, but Eliza couldn’t focus on that. She glared at him for a moment, and this elicited a smirk. He sipped his wine. Ms. Veselsky stood mutely by. What was happening?

Eliza drank another sip or two of her wine. She didn’t know how much something like this would cost but decided that it was right out of her price range.

“What can we discuss, then?” said Eliza.

“Tell me something that you think I don’t know about you,” he replied. It took Eliza back for a moment. Had he actually looked up anything about her? Why? It didn’t make any sense. She was no one.

She sipped her wine and contemplated this. What might he not know about her? With access to the HR department’s information, the internet, and vast reserves of money, there probably was little in the way of information that someone like Alessandro Neroni couldn’t buy. There were certainly things that he couldn’t know about her. But, she wasn’t about to just volunteer any of that.

“You don’t know what I am thinking about right now,” she replied, taking another sip of wine.

“Ah!” he laughed. It was a full laugh. He appreciated her wit. Then, he looked at her from behind his sunglasses and said, “I bet I do! I bet I do!”

His enthusiasm bordered on absurd, and Eliza caught herself smiling. The wine was very good.

“Okay?”

“You’re thinking about what you want to tell this disgusting capitalist sitting in front of you,” he said.

“But,” she started and was going to point at her wine glass but realized it was empty.

“But what?” said Mr. Neroni. “Now, you can talk to me all you want about whatever you want. I know we’re bad.” He punctuated this by sticking a finger in her face. The seriousness of the gesture was out of place, and it was passing. His mouth flattened into a grim line for seconds and then collapsed into laughter. “But, hey, we’re not as bad as a lot of the other ones out there! Look at KunstKorp! Germans, yes, they claim that they have less industrial waste, but if you look at the amount of energy their factories consume, it’s outrageous. Outrageous! I admit, we could be better. Could be better. But, I think you’re being very unfair in your ‘Bad Patch’ e-mails.”

Mr. Neroni’s speech leapt from word to word like a fugue. He refilled her wine glass. The whole miniature tirade felt rehearsed. Maybe, it had been. English wasn’t his first language, right? Had he rehearsed a little speech to throw at her? Why? She was… to him, she was no one. But, it sounded like a corporate disclaimer. It was so… weak. Even the reasoning.

“We’re not the worst? *I’m* being unfair?” Eliza said, shocked that this was his response. It was nothing. It felt like the sort of response a child would give to having been caught in some minor misbehavior. It was insulting.

“Yes!” said Mr. Neroni. “Yes! You understand. Was there more?”

“I’m not being unfair – your corporation uses overseas factories to skirt environmental regulation. That means that you’re exploiting laborers who can’t get better jobs and exposing them to toxic chemicals in your factories. That is all true, right?”

“We uphold the highest environmental standards enforced in international treaties and in the countries where our factories produce things,” said Mr. Neroni, smirking into his wine glass.

“You’re not even taking *this* seriously,” she said. “Why did you bring me here?”

“Speak your mind, Ms. Latimer,” he said. “I want to hear everything that you have to say. When you are finished, I will tell you what I have to say. Just give me everything. Then, I’ll tell you why you’re here.”

It was about then that Eliza Latimer felt a bit of a chill in the air. The sun was going down.