Victor picked up his wineglass and raised it toward Elena. 'Tell me, how many languages do you speak?'
'Enough to understand a request for the bill,' she said.
A second ripple of laughter passed along the American side of the table. Victor's eyes narrowed. He looked from her to Masato and back again.
'I'm going to make you an offer,' he said. 'One million dollars if you can conduct the rest of this meeting in Japanese. Proper Japanese, mind you. Not a phrase you picked up from a television program.'
Elena did not move. Even the pianist in the adjoining lounge seemed suddenly distant.
Victor turned to his guests. 'A little entertainment to lighten the mood. She impresses us, and I write her a check. She doesn't, and we all enjoy the joke.'
'Victor,' said a woman beside him, 'that's quite enough.'
He waved her away. 'It's my money, Clara.'
Aiko's expression changed, and Elena saw something she had missed before. The Japanese delegation was not merely offended. They were frightened by the possibility that an unpredictable distraction would make the evening more dangerous.
Elena straightened a chair that did not need straightening. There were many reasons to refuse. She needed the job. Her younger brother's tuition payment was due Monday. And four years earlier she had promised herself never to become involved in another corporate translation dispute, no matter what she heard.
Then Victor said something to Masato in Japanese.
It was not a polite invitation. It was a casual insult, spoken at a volume carefully chosen to keep his American colleagues ignorant. Worse, it contained an unusual technical term: the kind of term no tourist would know and no businessman would use accidentally.
The young woman with the pen stared down at the table. Masato's hand clenched, then relaxed.
Elena felt the old, unwelcome certainty returning. She had heard the same technical term before, in a recording that had changed the course of her life.
'Sir,' she said quietly, 'are you certain you want an answer?'
Victor laughed. 'Now I'm absolutely certain.'
Elena turned to Masato, bowed with the degree of respect due his position, and addressed him in Japanese. She did not repeat Victor's insult. Instead she apologized for the discourtesy of the evening, stated that she was an employee of the restaurant rather than a representative of either company, and asked whether the delegation wished the conversation to continue in private.
Masato's gaze rose sharply. Aiko's pen slipped from her fingers and struck the rim of a plate.
A stranger near the bar began to move toward the exit.