I look like an American

Four guys in a car pulled to the side of the road and started yelling in Spanish, “Amigo, amigo, wait, wait.”

So I did. It was mid-afternoon, and I had time to wait.

The front passenger asked, “Do you know Italian?” And he was, certainly, speaking Spanish with an Italian accent, with the wave-like, up-and-down, pronunciation of the words. ArRIVeDERci.

“No.”

“Do you speak Spanish?”

“A little.”

“Me too. We need help. Wait, please. We’ll pull over.”

I waited and they pulled over and only the spokesmen of the car got out to talk with me.

He started, “We’re looking for the airport. We’re businessmen, and we’re looking for the airport. Are you a tourist?” He said all this very slowly and repeated the words that he thought were important like “aERoPUERto” and “tuRISto.”

I said I was a student from the United States. Obviously. I wore my backpack and a Hope sweatshirt. About no Europeans wear clothes with words on them unless it’s “Springfield” or “Gucci” or something like that. But I told him anyway.

He continued in English and spoke quickly, “Very good. We were here for a computer conference. You know conference? We were here for a computer conference, and now it’s over, and we’re looking for the airport. We work for Apple. You know Apple? It’s from California.”

I nodded. All of these things could have been true. There was a conference center right up the road.

“Good.” And he shook my hand. “We need to find the airport because we have computers with us and we don’t want to take the bus. We have four computers. This is too many. We would like to give you one. For free. You like the Apple computers? We have too many computers. We can’t bring them all to Italy. They are in the car. Come, I’ll show you.”

HA. “That’s alright.”

“You don’t like the Apple computers?”

“No. They aren’t for me.”

“We have iPhones. You like iPhones? We have five iPhones. Too many. We give you two for free. You want to see? Come to the car. Let me show you.”

I did want to see, dammit. Maybe, just to see if they existed. But a walk to the car didn’t seem like it was worth my curiosity. It was a good fifteen feet away.

“You don’t like iPhone?”

I did not. And he shook my hand and walked away.