“Okay, Keith,” Barbara said, “I’m swallowing now.”
He had had the grace to smile, then returned to coolness.
“What you’re being given to do requires restraint; also sound judgment and, naturally, imagination. I suggested you for the assignment, believing you to possess those qualities. I still do, despite yesterday, which I prefer to think of as a momentary lapse.”
Oh, God!, Barbara wanted to exclaim. Stop making like you’re in a pulpit, and get on! But she had the sense not to say it.
“The project is one which has the personal interest of the client’s chairman of the board.” Keith Yates-Brown mouthed “chairman of the board” with awe and reverence. Barbara was surprised he hadn’t stood, saluting, while he said it.
“As a result,” the account chief continued, “you will have the responsibility—a large responsibility affecting all of us at OJL—of reporting, on occasions, to the chairman personally.”
Well, Barbara could appreciate his feelings there. Reporting directly to the chairman about anything was a large responsibility, though it didn’t frighten her. But since the chairman—if he chose to exercise it-had a life and death power over which advertising agency the company used, Barbara could picture Keith Yates-Brown and others hovering nervously in the wings.
“The project,” Yates-Brown added, “is to make a film.”
He had gone on, filling in details as far as they were known. The film would be about Detroit: the inner city and its people, their problems—racial and otherwise—their way of life, points of view, their needs. It was to be a factual, honest documentary. In no way would it be company or industry propaganda; the company’s name would appear only once—on the credits as sponsor. Objective would be to point up urban problems, the need to reactivate the city’s role in national life, with Detroit the prime example. The film’s first use would be for educational and civic groups and schools across the nation. It would probably be shown on television. If good enough, it might go into movie houses.
The budget would be generous. It would allow a regular film-making organization to be used, but the OJL agency would select the film maker and retain control. A top-flight director could be hired, and a script writer, if needed, though Barbara—in view of her copywriter’s experience—might choose to write the script herself.
Barbara would represent the agency and be in over-all charge.
With a sense of rising excitement as Yates-Brown spoke, Barbara remembered Teddy Osch’s words of yesterday at lunch. The creative director had said: All I can tell you is, I wish it were me instead of you. Now she knew why. Not only was the assignment a substantial compliment to her professionally, it also represented a strong creative challenge which she welcomed. Barbara found herself looking appreciatively—and certainly more tolerantly—on Keith Yates-Brown.
Even the account supervisor’s next words diminished her appreciation only slightly.
“You’ll work out of the Detroit office as usual,” he had said, “but we shall want to be informed here of everything that’s going on, and I mean everything. Another thing to bear in mind is what we spoke of earlier—restraint. It’s to be an honest film, but don’t get carried away. I do not believe we want, or the chairman of the board will want, too much of—shall we say?—a Socialist point of view.”
Well, she had let that one go, realizing there would be plenty of ideas, as well as points of view, she would have to fight for eventually, without wasting time on abstract arguments now.
A week later, after other activities she was involved in had been reassigned, Barbara began work on the project, tentatively titled: Auto City.
Across Brett DeLosanto’s dining table, Barbara told Leonard Win-gate, “Some of the early things have been done, including choosing a production company and a director. Of course, there’ll be more planning before filming can begin, but we hope to start in February or March.”
The tall, graying Negro considered before answering. At length he said, “I could be cynical and smart, and say that making a film about problems, instead of solving them or trying to, is like Nero fiddling. But being an executive has taught me life isn’t always that simple; also, communication is important.” He paused, then added, “What you intend might do a lot of good. If there’s a way I can help, I will.”
“Perhaps there is,” Barbara acknowledged. “I’ve already talked with the director, Wes Gropetti, and something we’re agreed on is that whatever is said about the inner city must be through people who live there—individuals. One of them, we believe, should be someone coming through the ‘hard core’ hiring program.”
Wingate cautioned, “Hard core hiring doesn’t always work. You might shoot a lot of film about a person who ends up a failure.”
“If that’s the way it happens,” Barbara insisted, “that’s the way well tell it. We’re not doing a remake of Pollyanna.”
“Then there might be someone,” Wingate said thoughtfully. “You remember I told you—one afternoon I trailed the instructor who stole the checks, then lied to get them endorsed.”
She nodded. “I remember.”
“Next day I went back to see some of the people he’d visited. I’d noted the addresses; my office matched them up with names.” Leonard Wingate produced a notebook and turned pages. “One of them was a man I had a feeling about. I’m not sure what kind of feeling, except I’ve persuaded him to come back to work. Here it is.” He stopped at a page. “His name is Rollie Knight.”
Earlier, when Barbara arrived at Brett’s apartment, she had come by taxi. Late that evening, when Leonard Wingate had gone—after promising that the three of them would meet again soon—Brett drove Barbara home.
The Zaleskis lived in Royal Oak, a middle-class residential suburb southeast of Birmingham. Driving crosstown on Maple, with Barbara on the front seat close beside him, Brett said, “Nuts to this!” He braked, stopped the car, and put his arms around her. Their kiss was passionate and long.
“Listen!” Brett said; he buried his face in the soft silkiness of her hair, and held her tightly. “What the hell are we doing headed this way? Come back and stay with me tonight. We both want it, and there’s not a reason in the world why you shouldn’t.”
He had made the same suggestion earlier, immediately after Wingate left. Also, they had covered this ground many times before.
Barbara sighed. She said softly, “I’m a great disappointment to you, aren’t I?”
“How do I know if you’re a disappointment, when you’ve never let me find out?”
She laughed lightly. He had the capacity to make her do that, even at unexpected moments. Barbara reached up, tracing her fingers across Brett’s forehead, erasing the frown she sensed was there.
He protested, “It isn’t fair! Everybody who knows us just assumes we’re sleeping together, and you and I are the only ones who know we’re not. Even your old man thinks we are. Well, doesn’t he?”
“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 e
lse 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 Masdevattia 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.
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.
And while the Orion program progressed, many in the company gave thought to Farstar, which would follow Orion, though its timing, shape, and substance were not yet known. Among these were Adam Trenton and Brett DeLosanto.
Something else which Adam was concerned with in January was the review of his sister Teresa’s investment, bequeathed by her dead husband, in the auto dealership of Smokey Stephensen.
Approval from the company for Adam to involve himself with one of its dealers, however tenuously, had taken longer than expected, and had been given grudgingly after discussion by the Conflict of Interest committee. In the end, Hub Hewitson, executive vice-president, made a favorable ruling after Adam approached him personally. However, now that the time had come to fulfill his promise to Teresa, Adam realized how little he really needed, or wanted, an extra responsibility. His work load had grown, and an awareness of physical tension still bothered him. At home, relations with Erica seemed neither better nor worse, though he accepted the justice of his wife’s complaint—repeated recently—that nowadays they had scarcely any time together. Soon, he resolved, he would find a way to put that right, but first, having accepted this new commitment, he would see it through.
Thus, on a Saturday morning, after arrangements made by telephone, Adam paid his first call on Smokey Stephensen.
The Stephensen dealership was in the northern suburbs, close to the boundary lines of Troy and Birmingham. Its location was good—on an important crosstown route, with Woodward Avenue, a main northwest artery, only a few blocks away.
Smokey, who had clearly been watching the street outside, strode through the showroom doorway onto the sidewalk as Adam stepped from his car.