Alexis Rotella

I Should Have Been an Image Consultant

A few young country men try to become persons of the world when offered an opportunity to spend a few years in Italy. The first move, of course, is to gin up their duds.

A guy from New York commissions his first tailored suit – a loud black-and-white plaid. He insists my Italo-American husband, who has been speaking the language since toddlerhood, doesn’t pronounce “trattoria” correctly–accent, he says is on the “tor,” not the “i.”

A Cleveland native decides on an exact replica of the one he wears back home including the pegged trousers. He asks what I think. I blurt out the jacket is shaped like a refrigerator. He’s the same person who accompanies me to Paris on a business trip. He chooses the $100 wine, then orders with a flair “the bouillon base.”

Rabbits on marble slabs
their skins left on –
butcher shop window