Dutch Treatment
stories by
D. E. Fredd
Lorna: To, With and For.
Dutch Treatment
“Nothing against Gretchen, but what the hell do we need a translator for?”
“Because none of us speaks Dutch, French, Italian or German.”
“She can do that?”
“Her German’s a bit shaky, but she always understates her ability.”
I am the one pushing for Gretchen Batchelder to be part of our team. We are at the Sunset Grill on Brighton Ave. in Boston (one hundred beers on tap, over three hundred bottled brews). The discussion involves the expansion of our Megaprobe market to The Netherlands, Belgium and possibly Germany, the biggest move yet for DRG Associates. I am the “D.” Ron Suskind is the “R.” He and I are research and development, the think tank if you will, of circuitry analysis devices that have drawn raves from several quarters. It relates to TDR impedance testing for such things as IC packaging, backplanes and drive control development, not that you care. We’ve sold to Lucent and Cisco Systems in the states and now have a chance to go international. Greg Hansen handles the business end and sales, but we each do a bit of everything. We met way back at Cornell and get along well on both a company and personal level. Now that we are on the verge of going big time, there is a minor split in the group. Ron is the penny pincher. If he had his way we’d kayak to Amsterdam, subsist on Pringles and sleep in a park. I’m for acting as if we had been in the business world for decades. That doesn’t mean flying first class or staying at five star hotels, but it does mean buying decent clothes and adding Gretchen for a touch of global savoir faire to the presentation.
“You know, if you want a chick along to impress people, we could do better in the looks department.” Years back Greg dated one of Gretchen’s sorority sisters. The breakup went badly. He suspects that she harbors some negative opinions he’d rather the world not know about.
I can tell from Ron’s body language that he’s also against me. “It’s not her face, which I admit is attractive, but she has the strangest build. She’s very feminine and petite up top, nice breasts and narrow waist, but then all pelvic hell breaks loose from there on down. I’ve heard of childbearing hips, but she’s like a C-130 cargo plane; spread those legs and tanks roll out.”
Greg places another nail in my coffin. “She brilliant, has a great personality, but they used to call her the Eiffel Tower.” He looks at me. “You know, very narrow high up but a huge base, like the pyramids in Egypt.” He uses his fingers as a visual aid to help me comprehend what a pyramid looks like.
“I appreciate the architectural and military references, but this is not a Miss America contest. We’ve got to show Europe that we belong in their league. She speaks all the languages. She’s lived overseas, knows the culture and is smart enough to pick up Megaprobe’s functional and technical specifications. Do you think President Bush would rush into something this big without bringing language and cultural advisors on board?” They both stare at me. “Okay, forget the Bush analogy.”
Ron puts both elbows on the table, using his thumbnail to peel the label from his Magic Hat Pale Ale; next to can crushing it’s a barroom behavior I’ve always hated. “Tell us the truth; you have the ‘hots’ for her, right?”
I sit back. “She’s a friend.” I pause for emphasis. “We’ve never dated. There are a few phone calls each month just to see how she’s making out, and I relay news on how our business is going. I haven’t mentioned this job to her.” A lie on my part as Gretchen was financially stressed a few months ago, and I tried to cheer her up. “She just finished translating a Dutch mystery author into English and French so she’s got time. DRG comes first; you guys know that.”
“Okay, say we do bring her to the Netherlands; let’s see what the damage will be.” Ron turns over his place mat, makes three columns and labels them in his illegible scrawl. “First off, there’s the plane fare to and from. Then there are meals, and let’s not forget the room arrangements. As it now stands we only need one, but with her along, unless she agrees to share, which I doubt because it would be highly inconvenient for all concerned, we have to spring for a whole other room for just one person. Unless you want to bunk with her?”
He looks at me and cocks his head. I don’t react. He can see I’m getting pissed yet he forges on. “So the extra ticket is a thousand. Another room and meals for a day is a conservative four hundred times ten days — all told we are looking at five grand.”
Greg chimes in, carrying more coals to my already burning Newcastle, “We’d have to pay her also!”
Ron quickly adds Greg’s evidence to a column, draws a bottom line with emphasis and closes in for the kill. “Okay, two hundred a day would be another two thousand, so we’re talking seven thousand for a wide ass woman to make us look and sound like we’re not three beer-guzzling Brobdingnags from Cornell.”
“I resent the Cornell reference.” Seeing things are not going my way, I try a bit of humor before making one last pitch. “All I’m saying is that, if we get the Netherlands contracts and can make a decent impression on the Belgium steel company, which is in Flanders, a Dutch-speaking province, seven thousand will be a pittance. And what about tech support? How much good will can we engender by providing help in their native language?”
“Doesn’t that imply you want her with us full time?”
“We can make her a part-time consultant working from her apartment if she pans out.”
“Okay, suppose I agree the idea makes some sense. What about the guy thing?”
Ron gets puzzled look from Greg. “What ‘guy’ thing?”
Ron stretches back and signals our server to bring another round. “We work well together; we’ve always been like the Three Musketeers. If we think it, we say it. We yell and scream at each other during the day and then get drunk together at night. Remember when I was nuts about Allison from Bank of America; remember how it screwed up our beer Fridays when I brought her along? Bringing anybody into our tight little circle can destroy the chemistry.”
“Operation Gretchen” was debated for another two hours. Iraq was invaded with less discussion. Ron used up three placemats and two cardboard beer coasters for more numerical evidence. Finally Greg, ignoring the statistics and close to being totally wasted, came around to my way of thinking so the final vote was two to one. I thanked both of them, slapped Ron on the shoulder to show there were no hard feelings and picked up the tab, not that he gave a shit.
Gretchen graduated from Ithaca College. She was one of those “design-your-own-major” types, where she combined languages, art and music. Like the rest of us she was in her early thirties. She had done graduate work in Florence and at the Sorbonne. Beside Italy she’d lived for a short time in Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris. When I told her the good news she was reluctant, thinking she’d be a “fourth wheel,” and asked if I was certain Ron and Greg were really up for bringing her on board. I mentioned Ron’s financial concerns. She joked about having tap water with her meals and staying in her room if we went pub crawling. She also mentioned, rather wistfully, that, when she was a struggling grad student in Amsterdam, she had always wanted to see the Concertgebouw Orchestra and had never been able to afford it. That might be her one guilty pleasure the week we were there. But Ron needn’t worry; she’d pay for it herself.
A few days later we gathered at the Sunset to iron out the details. She blew Ron and Greg away by parroting some Megaprobe tech specs I had given her, almost sounding as if she knew what the hell she was talking about. Then she imparted some other info.