Wheels

Even since then, they had had to delay their arrangement because Ollie had not come back from Cleveland as expected, and instead went on to two other cities - Erica had forgotten where. But they were here now, and Ollie was becoming impatient.

He asked, "How about it, baby?"

Suddenly she remembered, with a mixture of wryness and sadness, a maxim on Adam's office wall: Do it TODAY!

"All right," Erica said. She pushed back her chair and stood up.

Walking beside Ollie, down the inn's attractive, picture-hung corridors - where many others had walked before her on the same kind of assignation - she felt her heart beat faster, and tried not to hurry.

***

Several hours later, thinking about it calmly, Erica decided the experience was neither as good as she had hoped for, nor as bad as she had feared. In a basic, here-and-now way, she had found sensual satisfaction; in another way, which was harder to define, she hadn't.

She was sure, though, of two things. First, such satisfaction as she had known was not lasting, as it had been in the old days when Adam was an aggressive lover and the effect of their love-making stayed with her, sometimes for days. Second, she would not repeat the experience - at least, with Ollie.

In such a mood, from the Queensway Inn in late afternoon, Erica went shopping in Birmingham. She bought a few things she needed, and some others she didn't, but most of her pleasure came from what proved to be an exciting, challenging game - removing items from stores without payment. She did so three times, with increasing confidence, acquiring an ornamental clothes hanger, a tube of shampoo, and - especial triumph! - an expensive fountain pen.

Erica's earlier experience, when she had purloined the ounce of Norell, had showed that successful shoplifting was not difficult. The requirements, she decided now, were intelligence, quickness, and cool nerve. She felt proud of herself for demonstrating that she possessed all three.

Chapter 11

On a dismal, grimy, wet November day, six weeks after the meeting with Adam Trenton at the proving ground, Brett DeLosanto was in downtown Detroit - in a gray, bleak mood which matched the weather.

His mood was uncharacteristic. Normally, whatever pressures, worries and - more recently - doubts assailed the young car designer, he remained cheerful and good-natured. But on a day like today, he thought, to a native Californian like himself, Detroit in winter was just too much, too awful.

He had reached his car, moments earlier, on a parking lot near Congress and Shelby, having battled his way to it on foot, through wind and rain and traffic, the last seeming to flow interminably the instant he sought to cross any intersection, so that he was left standing impatiently on curbs, already miserably sodden, and getting wetter still.

As for the inner city around him . . . ugh! Always dirty, preponderantly ugly and depressing at any time, today's leaden skies and rain - as Brett's imagination saw it - were like spreading soot on a charnel house.

Only one worse time of year existed: in March and April, when winter's heavy snows, frozen and turned black, began to melt. Even then, he supposed, there were people who became used to the city's hideousness eventually. So far, he hadn't.

Inside his car, Brett started the motor and got the heater and windshield wipers going. He was glad to be sheltered at last; outside, the rain was still beating down heavily. The parking lot was crowded, and he was boxed in, and would have to wait while two cars ahead of him were moved to let him out. But he had signaled an attendant as he came into the lot, and could see the man now, several rows of cars away.

Waiting, Brett remembered it was on such a day as this that he had first come to Detroit himself, to live and work.

The ranks of auto company designers were heavy with expatriate Californians whose route to Detroit, like his own, had been through the Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles, which operated on a trimester system. For those who graduated in winter and came to Detroit to work, the shock of seeing the city at its seasonal worst was so depressing that a few promptly returned West and sought some other design field as a livelihood. But most, though jolted badly, stayed on as Brett had done, and later the city revealed compensations. Detroit was an outstanding cultural center, notably in art, music, and drama, while beyond the city, the State of Michigan was a superb sports-vacation arena, winter and summer, boasting some of the lovelier unspoiled lakes and country in the world.

Where in hell, Brett wondered, was the parking-lot guy to move those other cars?

It was this kind of frustration - nothing major - which had induced his present bad temper. He had had a luncheon date at the Pontchartrain Hotel with a man named Hank Kreisel, an auto parts manufacturer and friend, and Brett had driven to the hotel, only to find the parking garage full. As a result he had to park blocks away, and got wet walking back. At the Pontchartrain there had been a message from Kreisel, apologizing, but to say he couldn't make it, so Brett lunched alone, having driven fifteen miles to do so. He had several other errands downtown, and these occupied the rest of the afternoon; but in walking from one place to the next, a series of rude, born-happy drivers refused to give him the slightest break on pedestrian crossings, despite the heavy rain.

The near-savage drivers distressed him most. In no other city that he knew - including New York, which was bad enough - were motorists as boorish, inconsiderate, and unyielding as on Detroit streets and freeways.

Perhaps it was because the city lived by automobiles, which became symbols of power, but for whatever reason a Detroiter behind the wheel seemed changed into a Frankenstein. Most newcomers, at first shaken by the "no quarter asked or given" driving, soon learned to behave similarly, in self-defense. Brett never had. Used to inherent courtesy in California, Detroit driving remained a nightmare to him, and a source of anger.

The parking-lot attendant had obviously forgotten about moving the cars ahead. Brett knew he would have to get out and locate the man, rain or not. Seething, he did. When he saw the attendant, however, he made no complaint. The man looked bedraggled, weary, and was soaked. Brett tipped him instead and pointed to the blocking cars.

At least, Brett thought, returning to his car, he had a warm and comfortable apartment to go home to, which probably the attendant hadn't. Brett's apartment was in Birmingham, a part of swanky Country Club Manor, and he remembered that Barbara was coming in tonight to cook dinner for the two of them. The style of Brett's living, plus an absence of money worries which his fifty thousand dollars a year salary and bonus made possible, were compensations which Detroit had given him, and he made no secret of enjoying them.

At last the cars obstructing him were being moved. As the one immediately ahead swung clear, Brett eased his own car forward.

The exit from the parking lot was fifty yards ahead. One other car was in front, also on the way out. Brett DeLosanto accelerated slightly to close the gap and reached for money to pay the exit cashier.

Suddenly, appearing as if from nowhere, a third car - a dark green sedan - shot directly across the front of Brett's, swung sharply right and slammed into second place in the exit line. Brett trod on his brakes hard, skidded, regained control, stopped and swore. "You goddamn maniac!"

All the frustrations of the day, added to his fixation about Detroit drivers, were synthesized in Brett's actions through the next five seconds. He leaped from his car, stormed to the dark green sedan and wrathfully wrenched open the driver's door.

"You son-of-a ..." It was as far as he got before he stopped.

"Yes?" the other driver said. He was a tall, graying, well-dressed black man in his fifties. "You were saying something?"

"Never mind," Brett growled. He moved to close the door.

"Please wait! I do mind! I may even complain to the Human Rights Commission. I shall tell them: A young white man opened my car door with every intention of punching me in the nose. When he discovered I was of a different race, he stopped. That's discrimination, you know. The human rights people won't like it."

"It sure would be a new angle." Brett laughed. "Would you prefer me to finish?"

"I suppose, if you must," the graying Negro said. "But I'd much rather buy you a drink, then I can apologize for cutting in front like that, and explain it was a foolish, irrational impulse at the end of a frustrating day."

"You had one of those days, too?"

"Obviously we both did."

Brett nodded. "Okay, I'll take the drink."

"Shall we say Jim's Garage, right now? It's three blocks from here and the doorman will park your car. By the way, my name is Leonard Wingate."

The green sedan led the way.

The first thing they discovered, after ordering Scotches on the rocks, was that they worked for the same company. Leonard Wingate was an executive in Personnel and, Brett gathered from their conversation, about two rungs down from vice-president level. Later, he would learn that his drinking companion was the highest-ranking Negro in the company.

"I've heard your name," Wingate told Brett. "You've been Michelangelo-ing the Orion, haven't you?"

"Well, we hope it turns out that way. Have you seen the prototype?"

The other shook his head.

"I could arrange it, if you'd like to."

"I would like. Another drink?"

"My turn." Brett beckoned a bartender.

The bar of Jim's Garage, colorfully festooned with historic artifacts of the auto industry, was currently an 'in' place in downtown Detroit.