Wheels

"Yes," she admitted. "I think Dad does."

"I know damn well he does. What's more, every time we meet, the old buzzard lets me know he doesn't like it. So I lose out two ways, coming and going."

"Darling," Barbara said, "I know, I know."

"Then why aren't we doing something - right now, tonight? Barb, hon, you're twenty-nine; you can't possibly be a virgin, so what's our hangup? Is it me? Do I smell of modeling clay, or offend you in some other way?"

She shook her head emphatically. "You attract me in every way, and I mean that just as much as all the other times I've said it."

"We've said everything so many times." He added morosely, "None of the other times made any more sense than this one."

"Please," Barbara said, "let's go home."

"My home?"

She laughed. "No, mine."

When the car was moving, she touched Brett's arm. "I'm not sure either; about making sense, I mean. I guess I'm just not thinking the way everyone else seems to do nowadays; at least, I haven't yet. Maybe it's old-fashioned . . ."

"You mean if I want to get to the honey pot, I have to marry you."

Barbara said sharply, "No, I don't. I'm not even sure I want to marry anybody; I'm a career gal, remember? And I know you're not marriage-minded."

Brett grinned. "You're right about that. So why don't we live together?"

She said thoughtfully, "We might."

"You're serious?"

"I'm not sure. I think I could be, but I need time." She hesitated.

"Brett, darling, if you'd like us not to see each other for a while, if you're going to be frustrated every time we meet . . ."

"We tried that, didn't we? It didn't work because I missed you." He said decisively, "No, we'll go on this way even if I make like a corralled stallion now and then. Besides," he added cheerfully, "you can't hold out forever."

There was a silence as they drove. Brett turned onto Woodward Avenue, heading south, then Barbara said, "Do something for me."

"What?"

"Finish the painting. The one we looked at tonight."

He seemed surprised. "You mean that might make a difference to us?"

"I'm not sure. I do know it's part of you, a specially important part; something inside that ought to come out."

"Like a tapeworm?"

She shook her head. "A great talent, just as Leonard said. One that the auto industry won't ever give its proper chance to, not if you stay with car designing, and grow old that way."

"Listen! I'll finish the painting. I intended to, anyway. But you're in the car racket, too. Where's your loyalty?"

"At the office," Barbara said. "I only wear it until five o'clock. Right now I'm me, which is why I want you to be you - the best, real Brett DeLosanto."

"How'd I know him if I met the guy?" Brett mused. "Okay, so painting sends me, sure. But d'you know what the odds are against an artist, any artist, becoming great, getting recognized and, incidentally, well paid?"

They swung into the driveway of the modest bungalow where Barbara and her father lived. A gray hardtop was in the garage ahead of them. "Your old man's home," Brett said. "It suddenly feels chilly."

Matt Zaleski was in his orchid atrium, which adjoined the kitchen, and looked up as Brett and Barbara came in through the bungalow's side door.

Matt had built the atrium soon after buying the house eighteen years ago, on migrating here from Wyandotte. At that time the move northward to Royal Oak had represented Matt's economic advancement from his boyhood milieu and that of his Polish parents. The orchid atrium had been intended to provide a soothing hobby, offsetting the mental stress of helping run an auto plant. It seldom had. Instead, while Matt still loved the exotic sight, texture, and sometimes scent of orchids, a growing weariness during his hours at home had changed the care of them from pleasure to a chore, though one which, mentally, he could never quite discard.

Tonight, he had come in an hour ago, having stayed late at the assembly plant because of some critical materials shortages, and after a sketchy supper, realized there was some potting and rearrangement which could be put off no longer. By the time he heard Brett's car arrive, Matt had relocated several plants, the latest a yellow-purple Masdevallia triangularis, now placed where air movement and humidity would be better. He was misting the flower tenderly when the two came in.

Brett appeared at the open atrium doorway. "Hi, Mr. Z."

Matt Zaleski, who disliked being called Mr. Z., though several others at the plant addressed him that way, grunted what could have been a greeting. Barbara joined them, kissed her father briefly, then returned to the kitchen and began making a hot malted drink for them all.

"Gee"' Brett said. Determined to be genial, he inspected the tiers and hanging baskets of orchids. "It's great to have lots of spare time you can spend on a setup like this." He failed to notice a tightening of Matt's mouth. Pointing to a Catasetum saccatum growing in fir bark on a ledge, Brett commented admiringly, "That's a beauty! It's like a bird in flight."

For a moment Matt relaxed, sharing the pleasure of the superb purple-brown bloom, its sepals and petals curving upward. He conceded, "I guess it is like a bird. I never noticed that."

Unwittingly, Brett broke the mood. "Was it a fun day in Assembly, Mr. Z.? Did that rolling erector set of yours hold together?"

"If it did," Matt Zaleski said, "it's no thanks to the crazy car designs we have to work with."

"Well, you know how it is. We like to throw you iron pants guys something that's a challenge; otherwise you'd doze off from the monotony."

Good-natured banter was a way of life with Brett, as natural as breathing.

Unfortunately, he had never realized that with Barbara's father it was not, and was the reason Matt considered his daughter's friend a smart aleck.

As Matt Zaleski scowled, Brett added, "You'll get the Orion soon. Now that's a playpen that'll build itself."

Matt exploded. He said, heavy-handedly, "Nothing builds itself! That's what you cocksure kids don't realize. Because you and your kind come here with college degrees, you think you know it all, believe everything you put on paper will work out. It doesn't! It's those like me - iron pants, you call us; working slobs - who have to fix it so it does . . ." The words roiled on.

Behind Matt's outburst was his tiredness of tonight; also the knowledge that, yes, the Orion would be coming his way soon; that the plant where he was second in command would have to build the new car, would be torn apart to do it, then put together so that nothing worked the way it had; that the ordinary problems of production, which were tough enough, would quickly become monumental and, for months, occur around the clock; that Matt himself would draw the toughest trouble-shooting during model changeover, would have little rest, and some nights would be lucky if he got to bed at all; furthermore, he would be blamed when things went wrong. He had been through it all before, more times than he remembered, and the next time - coming soon - seemed one too many.

Matt stopped, realizing that he had not really been talking to this brash kid DeLosanto - much as he disliked him - but that his own emotions, pent up inside, had suddenly burst through. He was about to say so, awkwardly, and add that he was sorry, when Barbara appeared at the atrium door. Her face was white.

"Dad, you'll apologize for everything you just said."

Obstinacy was his first reaction. "I'll do what?"

Brett interceded; nothing bothered him for long. He told Barbara, "It's okay; he doesn't have to. We had a mild misunderstanding. Right, Mr. Z.?"

"No!" Barbara, usually patient with her father, stood her ground. She insisted, "Apologize! If you don't, I'll leave here now. With Brett.

I mean it."

Matt realized she did.

Unhappily, not really understanding anything, including children who grew up and talked disrespectfully to parents, young people generally who behaved the way they did; missing his wife, Freda, now dead a year, who would have never let this happen to begin with, Matt mumbled an apology, then locked the atrium door and went to bed.

Soon after, Brett said goodnight to Barbara, and left.

Chapter 12

Now, winter gripped the Motor City. November had gone, then Christmas, and in early January the snow was deep, with skiing in northern Michigan, and ice heaped high and solidly along the shores of Lakes St. Clair and Erie.

As the new year came in, so preparations intensified for the Orion's debut, scheduled for mid-September. Manufacturing division, already huddled over plans for months, moved closer to plant conversions which would start in June, to produce the first production run Orion - job One, as it was called - in August. Then, six weeks of production - shrouded in secrecy - would be needed before the car's public unveiling. Meanwhile, Purchasing nervously co-ordinated an armada of materials, ordered, and due on vital days, while Sales and Marketing began hardening their endlessly debated, oft-changed plans for dealer introductions and promotion. Public Relations pressed forward with groundwork for its Lucullan freeload which would accompany the Orion's introduction to the press. Other divisions, in greater or less degree according to their functions, joined in the preparation.