Our sales model started to be analyzed across “the sector.”
We were asked questions, and some salesmen even tried to convince their children to accompany them—with no success, thanks to insecure and overprotective mothers.
That was when S, that Moses of sales, had the idea to hire me. And it didn’t seem such a bad idea.
He explained it like this: He and D sold different products: perfumery and hardware, respectively. I could accompany them on the same trip, changing my appearance ever so slightly. Nothing sophisticated, a simple hat would do it. He himself would buy it. Nobody would notice that in the morning I was daughter to one of them and, in the afternoon, daughter or niece to the other.
All that was needed was good timing and a little flexibility, this last requisite on my part.
Whatever S earned from the sales he closed in my company, he would give us a commission.
I listened to the plan with great interest, imagining the new hat and the commission. D paid me five pesos for every 100 earned in his quid pro quo system, but, taking into account the additional effort, as well as my growing clout before the store counters, I was sure that this time I could get ten out of every 100 in real money.
“Of course not,” said D. And he thought of the samurai.
The logical thing would have been to call to mind feudal patriarchs, but maybe because he was still obsessed with fixing the film projector—brand-name Fuji Photo Film—he thought of the samurai, and added:
“Under no circumstances.”
In all ideals-based communities there is a code of honor, operating norms, “prin-ci-ples.” And D always emphasized that last word, gave it a special cadence.
Then he launched into a speech about how violating a code of honor, so long as the code was effective, and independent of whether it was honorable, could cost the offender not only admonition from fellow community members but also, even worse, expulsion.
S and I looked at him in silence, not understanding where he was going with this.
“She can accompany you, but there’ll be no money changing hands,” D concluded.
I could have protested, but I knew that, in the sales society, I was not yet considered a true samurai, despite my strong performance. I was a tiny samurai, defending a tiny castle, capable of committing a tiny hara-kiri. Nothing more, but nothing less, either. The three of us were clear on that point and, for the moment, that should have been enough for my diminutive honor.
I maintained a stoic silence (with nothing but a light kick that I landed on an empty chair to give me away), but I couldn’t help it when my angry gaze met S’s happy one. It was at that point exactly that our gazes cancelled each other’s out.
The thing is, deep down I felt something like affection toward S.
“When do we start?” I asked, forgetting the commission and remembering professionalism.
“Tomorrow,” said S.
“I have a birthday party at school,” I said.
“The day after tomorrow, then,” said D.
“Okay,” said S and I at the same time.
And we took that synchronicity as a sign that the deal was done.