The Oath

The Oath Parte 7

"Okay!", I replied, interrupting him.

"Wait up...! What I want to know from you is whether you know a good teacher; male or female, it makes no difference, because the boss has to enroll his child in school!"

"Which class should the kid go to?", I asked him, having understood that it was elementary school.

"The third grade...!", he answered me.

"It is the same grade that my son Jim will have to attend; I know the teacher very well, and my wife better than me: the director can enroll him in the same school!", I replied, thinking I had finished the conversation.

"Good! Then give me your wife's phone number, so when the lady comes, she will get in touch with her!", he answered me, taking pen and paper at the same time.

Giving him the number, I greeted him, ready to go out.

"Wait up...! Come..., that I introduce you: he's in the office with the old director!", he replied, taking me by the arm, and accompanied me to the direction.

The door was open, and the two were sitting at the desk: facing each other.

"Hey... Frank!" Very cordially, the old director greeted me, getting up and coming towards me.

It was he who introduced me to the new colleague: a thin type, and much taller than me. The man was elegant, and dressed in a suit of dark gray, white shirt, blue tie, burgundy shoes, English model, white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his jacket, light brown hair, and mustache; a typical bank manager: you recognize them immediately. »

— Don Nicò: a person who immediately seemed nice and jovial to me.

« He also got up and came to meet me, clenching my hand with a certain vigor, which I appreciated; a sign of a straightforward personality, but that in any case he would have to do the interests of the bank he worked for.

"I've already told my colleague about you, and your brother and your company!", the outgoing manager told me, sitting back down.

At first, I felt embarrassed: two managers, for what they represented, who gave me importance...! I understood, however, which the apparent pantomime was not directly addressed to my person but to the financial transactions that he had proposed to me, and that with the new manager they could see me as the protagonist again.

The clerk pulled up a chair for me too, and pointed out to his new director that he had already told me about the school, and left. All three of us talked about this and that, each adding some brief personal, life, and work experiences; The new director immediately seemed to me a bright man.

After a while, I looked at my watch: I had been absent from the company for more than three quarters of an hour; too much, for simple banking operations; I got up and said goodbye to the manager who was going away, and to the new one I advised him to have his wife put in contact with mine in due time, as far as the school was concerned.

The kids started going to school together, and the mothers, that for that reason they met every day, became friends.

The wife of the new manager, unlike the brunette, was a girl with a sincere and frank character, cheerful and smiling: and that suited Olympia well.

Thus began the invitations to lunch or dinner: once at my house, and once again at their house.

Seeing us surrounded by happy people and mentally different from us, taken only by work, and, they in particular, without any friendship, for Pasquale and his wife it was undoubtedly the spring that further increased that horrible feeling that is called jealousy.