A Banzai for Her

Rosa was a Neapolitan colleague, a Manager like me. She walked with the kind of confidence that didn’t need translation — her whole program was written on her face, and anyone who knew how to read, read it.

It was almost inevitable that Vincenzo — one meter and fifty-eight of ambition and fragility — left his wife and kids for her. Some men don’t choose. They surrender.

Every time I met her in the corridors, it felt like stepping into those Japanese clubs where everything is ritual, everything is coded, everything is distance. The first gesture is a smile. Then a sentence in a language you don’t understand, but you know the real message is somewhere underneath.

In her broken English, Rosa always asked me the same thing: why don’t you have friends? Why can’t you keep relationships alive? What stops you? What holds you back?

I never answered. Not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t have the right answer yet — or maybe I didn’t want to give her the exam she was expecting. One evening I found her at the hotel entrance, waiting for someone to give her a ride. She asked me where I was going. The answer came easy:

“Anywhere in the world, as long as I’m in your arms.”

She burst out laughing. We ended up talking about clients, numbers, strategies. That’s when she confessed that the Area Manager spent the entire monthly budget on her, and that our results were only the product of our own ability.

What a son of a bitch, I thought. Then I smiled.

Because that night I had already understood one thing: I had taken the Area Manager’s budget — and he didn’t know it yet.

Banzai.