What Are We Doing in Latin America

by Robert Riche

  “How the hell doya do that?” I ask her, dropping the British accent.

  “Aldo shoots craps. I play poker. We alwuz win.”

  “Geez, no kiddin’.”

  And now, pals until at least when the plane gets up and then down, we talk. Or rather, she does. I am fascinated. Aldo was in the wholesale fruit and vegetable business in Hunt’s Point market for fifteen years until he hurt his back. Now he gets workman’s compensation, and plays the horses, and makes a wonderful living.

  Aldo takes an interest in the conversation, leaning across his wife’s lap to tell me in a hoarse whisper about a “nag” that is running in the seventh at Belmont this afternoon, and he has $15,000 on him. If I want to do myself a favor, he tells me, when we get to Vegas I should put a bundle on the nose of this horse, Raggedy Ann, because I’ll be able to retire when he comes in first. Aldo was not gassed, I don’t think. He simply talks like a godfather. I could tell him, I suppose, that whatever extra funds I have are tied up right now in my son’s education, but even if I had the money, I wouldn’t bet it, because I’d lose. He’s lucky I’m not betting on his horse.

  Aldo’s wife is Loretta—last name, Bellagamba. They live in Co-op City and have a terrace with a wonderful view of the South Bronx, which from a distance, they tell me, looks like Venice, figure that, and they raised three sons in their apartment, which has four rooms, including kitchen and living room. One son is a cameraman with NBC News. “Every Friday, they run the names of the crew at the end of the show,” Loretta tells me. And, you know, I’ll probably look for the name Bellagamba the next time I am in my country kitchen at home and watching the six o’clock news while my wife walks around my feet setting the kitchen dining table.

  Another son, Loretta tells me, is an accountant, with DeLoitte, Haskins & Sells (my company’s accounting firm), and the youngest son, Tommy, now twenty, Aldo doesn’t want her to talk about (“Nevva minedat,” he whispers). But obviously Tommy is Loretta’s favorite, and she has to tell all. He’s been convicted of car theft, and he takes drugs, and Aldo threw him out of the house. (“Wha wudjew do?” he asks me), and he’s the “smottest one a duh treeya dem.” And they don’t even know where he is right now. Having divested herself of this enormous grievous burden, Tommy’s mother can’t talk about it anymore now, as she is about to cry, and she looks over my head for Aggie or Augie, or somebody to hurl an insult at that will get the laughter rolling again, and I don’t know—welcome to the club, folks. She bears this enormous burden that is eating her heart out with such great good cheerfulness, who the hell would dare argue that with all of her brassiness she isn’t the most dignified person aboard the plane?

  The thirty-six minutes stretches out to 50, with Chet Dowd coming on every five minutes or so, and the stewardesses cheerfully doing their part to reassure us of how safe it is to fly by reminding us to buckle up our seat belts, and read the emergency procedure card in the pocket of the seat in front of us, and note the location of the emergency exits, as well as the instructions on how to inflate our life preservers, and how to put on our oxygen masks “in the unlikely event” that we should need to. Loretta’s stories make the time pass quickly, and suddenly we are “next in line and cleared for departure, folks.”

  Up, up, and away. Chet noses us up beautifully over La Guardia, with the familiar thrill in the pit of the stomach as the rear of the plane humps up off the ground, and the clinger sounds and the “Fasten Seat Belt” sign goes off, and the cabin fills with the smell of hot coffee, and while Loretta and Aldo practice blackjack on the service table in front of them, I feel myself psyching up for the three days ahead.

  This is an important trip for me. My company is a major manufacturer and supplier of prosthetic devices, and with the recent proliferation of internal plastic parts, such as artificial hearts, kidneys, breasts, sexual transplant organs, etc., business is thrumming. No part of the human body is off limits to us, and we have a whole division devoted just to Research and Development located in Cologne, Germany. The company actually is German, and our U.S. group, as they call us, is primarily a sales and marketing organization that the Krauts, as we call them, hope someday will become the largest group company in the world, and that means the largest of thirty-three, including Zambia.

  The company is called Pro-Tec, which can sound a little bit like a prophylactic to some Americans, but the Germans don’t realize that, and none of the Americans, including Frank, has ever had the temerity to point it out to them. Tec, for technology, is a sound that sends our parent company directors into paroxyms of delight. Anyway, it would be too late to change the name now, as we are well known in medical circles, and have spent a lot of time and money building up our name. We do get phone inquiries from porno suppliers and distributors wanting to handle our line, but we have a pretty divorcee at the switchboard who has gotten over her initial embarrassment and is quite hard-nosed now about heading these calls off and setting the callers straight.

  As director of advertising and public relations, I am responsible for expending a little more than $1 million annually in advertising to a variety of trade publications such as Precision Prosthetics, Prosthetic Technology, and The American Review of Prosthetic Devices. Talk about wild reading. Because it’s my job to know what’s happening in the world of prosthetic devices, I feel obligated to at least thumb through these magazines every month when they appear. When I am particularly keyed up at night and feel that I will not be able to get to sleep easily, I settle down with the American Review into my Air-Flow recliner in my den/office off the living room, and I can expect to be asleep within ten minutes.

  In addition to working with an advertising agency in the preparation of and placement of ads, my responsibilities include setting up publicity arrangements for a variety of trade show events that take place every year, the largest one of them all occurring every two years, and that being the International Prosthetics & Surgical Equipment Exposition at Las Vegas, which is what I am heading toward now.

  Pro-Tec is introducing a new product at the Vegas Show this year that the Krauts believe is ten years ahead of anybody else and that they hope will capture the major share of market in prosthetic devices world-wide. It is a plastic hand that works chemically, instead of mechanically. Basically, the way I describe it to the editors whom I take to lunch is that it is a plasticized molded hand constructed on the inside with pockets of absorbent chemical materials (the composition of which is unimportant) that contract and expand instantaneously in various desirable ways when subjected to electrical charges triggered by nerve impulses. It is, indeed, an incredible breakthrough in prosthetic devices.

  The Krauts, again with unusual sensitivity to the nuances of the English language, have named their new artificial appendage the “Hand-Arbiter,” from the German arbeiter for work, or job, which translates loosely into English, if you want to think about it, as hand-job. This is what everybody calls it at Pro-Tec U.S.A. Everybody except Frank.

  Chet sets the Boeing 747 down nicely on the ground at McCarran International, and while we wait for our luggage at one of the carousels, Loretta hits the silver dollar jackpot at one of the nearby slot machines, and Aldo returns grinning from one of the pay phones where he has just placed a credit card long distance call.

  We share a cab together to Caesar’s Palace, Aldo insisting on paying the fare, and giving the driver a $10 tip. When we arrive at the entrance, the doorman greets the Bellagambas by name and with effusive respect, snapping his fingers for not one, but two bellhops to carry their bags, one of whom I am able finally to browbeat into carrying my bags too, by screaming at him that I am a member of the Bellagamba party.

  Inside the lobby the Bellagambas and I part company with a mutual promise to get together for drinks before the next three days are out.

  I have never been here before. After I am registered, another bellhop guides me through a seemingly endless maze of brightly illuminated slot machines to what I take to be the opposite far side of the hot
el, at which point we go back out into the bright sun again and down some steps and then up to another level overlooking a vast open area with pool and poolside bar, continuing our journey back inside another wing of the building, then down a hall to an elevator and up finally to my room. I have the feeling I may never be able to find my way back to the lobby without help.

  The room itself is about three times the size of the bedroom in our home, with a king-size bed on a raised platform, and mirrors on the ceiling overhead. The mirrors are intended to enhance Bacchanalian nights, but are largely wasted on me, since I tend to prefer the lights off, or at least dimmed when I go for it, which I do not expect to do, anyway, during the term of my visit here.

  Anyway, it’s good to be safely in Las Vegas at twelve noon local time. I am due to attend shortly a meeting at Pro-Tec’s Convention Center exhibit area to go over last-minute plans prior to tomorrow’s convention opening. This is the biggest show of its kind for the prosthetics industry, and everybody who is anybody is here. Which explains why the Krauts have spent $1 million on the Pro-Tec exhibit, a display area so large they are not able to fit it inside the Convention Center. Instead, we are to be located outside, directly in front of the entrance to the hall. According to the detailed plans that I have seen, our display is laid out in the form of a carpeted mall bordered by individual stalls to be manned by experts (our sales force) hawking mechanical legs, hands, glass eyes, a working plastic heart (connected to a model of a human circulatory system), and an area devoted to sex change devices, including things I don’t even want to think about made of goat chamois. At the end of the mall, rising up above it and looming over it somewhat like the Taj Mahal, or at least like a sultan’s summer palace, there is to be an air-conditioned red-and-white striped circus tent, pennants flying, the interior of which will include an open bar, free snack and sandwich service, plus a complex of private administration offices, rest rooms, telephones, a closed circuit TV room, an executive conference room, and a large center tiled piazza area with tables and chairs for enjoying the refreshments in air-conditioned splendor while our sales force pitches prospective customers on our lines of products.

  It is in this center hall area where tomorrow we will hold a press conference at noon at which time it will be my responsibility to introduce the Hand-Arbiter to eighteen editors from the various trade publications that are most important to us. I know all of the editors on a first-name basis, and have invited them to drop by for a beer and a sandwich at noon and to get a first-hand look-see at what we think is the single most significant breakthrough in the prosthetics industry in the past forty years. Inventor of the Hand-Arbiter, Dr. Wolfgang Feigenweiser, who got his early on-the-job training in prosthetics during and immediately after World War II, will be present to answer any questions. I can count on these editors showing up, because they know from past years’ experience that our air-conditioned tent is the most comfortable place at the convention where they can sit down and get a free lunch, and I like to think they trust me enough so that when I tell them I have an important story for them, they will take note. Just in case, I told them that if they didn’t show I’d be goddamned if they’d ever again get an advertisement placed in their magazine from Pro-Tec.

  So I’m feeling fairly relaxed in my seraglio here at Caesar’s Palace, freshening up with that endocrine soap they supply, when suddenly I am surprised by the ringing of my telephone. And I’m even more surprised after I pick up to hear the raspy Jersey intonations of Aldo Bellagamba, whom I left no more than twenty minutes ago (about the length of time it took the bellhop and me to move our caravan cross-country to the room). Is it possible he has another tip on a horse?

  “Where are yuh?” he demands, right off the bat.

  “What do you mean, where am I? I’m right here.”

  “Well, we been waitin’ an hour.”

  “What are you, drunk?”

  “Hey, hey. Dere yuh go again. Ya don’t loin, doya?”

  “Is this Al?”

  “Dis is Frank.”

  “Frank?! Oh, Frank! Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Yuh alwuz gotta come up wi’ duh smot remok, doncha?”

  “Frank, I didn’t know it was you. I thought it was one of those smooth insurance fellows I met on the plane.”

  “We’re waitin ta go ovuh you pot a duh show.”

  “My what?” He’s hard to understand sometimes.

  “Hey, lissen, willya, I don’ ha’ time ta say evrytin’ twice.”

  “Yes, Frank. Sorry. I’ll be right over. Don’t worry about the press conference, though. Everything’s all set.”

  “Dat’s wutchew tink. Dey gotta few idees dey wantcha t’add.”

  “Who’s got a few ideas? Everything’s all set, Frank.”

  “Seeya in a coupla minutes.” And he hangs up, which I take to mean that the conversation is over.

  I make it down to the outdoor pool area, and then by asking here and there am able to find my way back to the lobby. At the front door they still think I am a member of the Bellagamba party, so I have no trouble getting a cab, and in ten minutes I am at the front of our Pro-Tec exhibit area at the Convention Center, which I find easily, because the Krauts have rigged up a barrage balloon directly overhead that looks like a giant sausage and says PRO-TEC on both sides.

  Not quite sprinting, but moving briskly down the center mall through the bazaar of exhibits on either side, I catch glimpses out of the corner of my eyes of various of my colleagues from our corporate offices already acclimatizing themselves to their respective stalls where they will be hawking their wares tomorrow. What is most incredible is that together they look like an assemblage of prep school freshmen, having been fitted out to a man in identical uniforms of gray flannel trousers, navy blazers with brass buttons, Oxford button-down shirts and regimental ties striped with Pro-Tec’s official colors, red black and gold, the same colors, coincidentally, of the Third Reich. Once upon a time, and not so terribly long ago either, you had to be recommended by three generations of yachting club members before you would dare presume to wear an outfit like the one these salesmen, and I, are all wearing now.

  Frank, also in flannels and blazer, is seated on a couch in the executive administration office, his feet up and resting proprietarily on a coffee table. In his gold-chained loafers, he looks like a manager of a cut-rate shoe store.

  “’Sabout time,” he says.

  He is faced by others seated in easy chairs, my colleagues and peers from head office whom I know and, in fact, work with on a daily basis, and a couple of Germans whom I don’t know.

  Nobody introduces anybody, but I recognize from photos that I have seen of him that the old German, the only one not in gray flannels and blazer, is Dr. Wolfgang Feigenweiser himself, and he, indeed, rises to introduce himself. We shake hands, and immediately I am aware that I am gripping my first fully connected and functioning Hand-Arbiter. Although it is the closest thing to a real hand that man has yet to devise, it feels like a palmful of knockwurst, and it responds to my clasp about a second and a half late, and when I unclasp, I am not immediately reassured that it is going to let go. But it does. Grasping a Hand-Arbiter in the flesh, so to speak, is different from seeing one in a box, which has been my only contact with one up to now. Dr. Feigenweiser grins, presenting a hideous leer in which one side of his mouth turns up while the other side implodes downward. He fastens one steady eye on me through amber-tinted glass. The other eye I cannot see because the lens, though not amber, is frosted over. I notice that he limps slightly when he steps toward me, and before sitting down, gives the thigh of his left leg a thump with his good hand, that is, the one that is not rubber. At least, I assume it’s not rubber.

  “Ach, so,” Feigenweiser says. “You vill ingwoduce Hand-Arbeiter (He uses the German pronunciation) to ze pwess, no?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Gut. Ve haf al-zo zum ideas.”

  Seated next to Dr. Feigenweiser is a muscular looking lady of about
forty in a black pants suit and regimental necktie, who introduces herself as Dr. Feigenweiser’s assistant, Fraulein Shatsie, Shatsie being either her first or her last name, but in any case, not connected to any other. She does not smile. Except for a heavy eyeliner, she wears no make-up. There is a cigar next to a fountain pen sticking out of her jacket hanky pocket.

  The others in the room are all well-known to me, my colleagues and peers, first, Morrie Glick, Director of Marketing, whom I work with closest back at Head Office; Morrie’s secretary/assistant Diana Payne-Pignatelli; and Tony Passanante, National Sales Manager. I like these people. Correction: I like both of the men, each of whom loathes the other; I think they both like me, or at least, do not have an outright aversion to me. The woman, Diana Payne-Pignatelli, I cannot stand even to be in the same room with for more than a few minutes at a time, but this is right in the mainstream of thinking at Pro-Tec Head office, where she is the one person most despised by every level of employee from mailroom clerk to field district managers, except by Morrie who sleeps with her as often as he can, that is, whenever he can get her out of town and away from her husband, whom Morrie assures me also likes her. She is shapely, and not bad looking, if the expresson of self-importance on her face that contracts her forehead into a perpetual knotted frown and squeezes her lips up into something like a Hershey’s kiss doesn’t turn your stomach. She is here because she is in charge of hotel room arrangements for Pro-Tec personnel attending the show, plus ticket reservations for any Vegas shows that Pro-Tec sales people will be inviting prospective customers to all week. Anyone who wants a bed to sleep in, or tickets to any show worth going to must report to Miss Piggy, as the salesmen refer to her. She can put you either in a laundry closet or in the Augustan suite, depending on her perception of your importance in the company. She has Frank in a penthouse up on the top floor of Caesar’s, and Morrie has a suite on the floor below, adjoining her own room.