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.
Now, in early evening, it was beginning to fill, the level of business and voices rising simultaneously.
"A whole lot riding on that Orion baby," Wingate said.
"Damn right."
"Especially jobs for my people."
"Your people?"
"Hourly paid ones, black and white. The way the Orion goes, so a lot of families in this city'll go: the hours they work, what their take-home is - and that means the way they live, eat, whether they can meet mortgage payments, have new clothes, a vacation, what happens to their kids."
Brett mused. "You never think of that when you're sketching a new car or throwing clay to shape a fender."
"Don't see how you could. None of us ever knows the half of what goes on with other people; all kinds of walls get built between us - brick, the other kind. Even when you do get through a wall once in a while, and find out what's behind it, then maybe try to help somebody, you find you haven't helped because of other stinking, rotten, conniving parasites ..."
Leonard Wingate clenched his fist and hammered it twice, silently but intensely, on the bar counter. He looked sideways at Brett, then grinned crookedly. "Sorry!"
"Here comes your other drink, friend. I think you need it." The designer sipped his own before asking, "Does this have something to do with those lousy aerobatics in the parking lot?"
Wingate nodded. "I'm sorry about that, too. I was blowing steam." He smiled, this time less tensely. "Now, I guess, I've let the rest of it out."
"Steam is only a white cloud," Brett said. "Is the source of it classified?"
"Not really. You've heard of hard core hiring?"
"I've heard. I don't know all the details." But he did know that Barbara Zaleski had become interested in the subject lately because of a new project she had been assigned by the OJL advertising agency.
The gray-haired Personnel man summarized the hard core hiring program: its objective in regard to the inner city and former unemployables; the Big Three hiring halls downtown; how, in relation to individuals, the program sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.
"It's been worth doing, though, despite some disappointments. Our retention rate - that is, people who've held on to jobs we've given them - has been better than fifty percent, which is more than we expected.
The unions have cooperated; news media give publicity which helps; there's been other aid in other ways. That's why it hurts to get knifed in the back by your own people, in your own company."
Brett asked, "Who knifed you? How?"
"Let me go back a bit." Wingate put the tip of a long, lean finger in his drink and stirred the ice. "A lot of people we've hired under the program have never in their lives before, kept regular hours. Mostly they've had no reason to. Working regularly, the way most of us do, breeds habits: like getting up in the morning, being on time to catch a bus, becoming used to working five days of the week. But if you've never done any of that, if you don't have the habits, it's like learning another language; what's more, it takes time. You could call it changing attitudes, or changing gears. Well, we've learned a lot about all that since we started hard core hiring. We also learned that some people - not all, but somewho don't acquire those habits on their own, can get them if they're given help."
"You'd better help me," Brett said. "I have trouble getting up."
His companion smiled. "If we did try to help, I'd send someone from employee relations staff to see you. If you'd dropped out, quit coming to work, he'd ask you why. There's another thing: some of these new people will miss one day, or even be an hour or two late, then simply give up. Maybe they didn't intend to miss; it just happened. But they have the notion we're so inflexible, it means automatically they've lost their jobs."
"And they haven't?"
"Christ, not! We give a guy every possible break because we want the thing to work. Something else we do is give people who have trouble getting to work a cheap alarm clock; you'd be surprised how many have never owned one. The company let me buy a gross. In my office I've got alarm clocks the way other men have paper clips."
Brett said, "I'll be damned!" It seemed incongruous to think of a gargantuan auto company, with annual wage bills running into billions, worrying about a few sleepyhead employees waking up.
"The point I'm getting at," Leonard Wingate said, "is that if a hard core worker doesn't show up, either to finish a training course or at the plant, whoever's in charge is supposed to notify one of my special people. Then, unless it's a hopeless case, they follow through."
"But that hasn't been happening? It's why you're frustrated?"
"That's part of it. There's a whole lot more." The Personnel man downed the last of his Scotch. "Those courses we have where the hard core people get oriented - they last eight weeks; there are maybe two hundred on a course."
Brett motioned for a refill to their drinks. When the bartender had gone, he prompted, "Okay, so a course with two hundred people."
"Right. An instructor and a woman secretary are in charge. Between them, those two keep all course records, including attendance. They pass out paychecks, which arrive weekly in a bunch from Headquarters Accounting.
Naturally, the checks are made out on the basis of the course records."
Wingate said bitterly, "It's the instructor and the secretary - one particular pair. They're the ones."
"The ones what?"
"Who've been lying, cheating, stealing from the people they're employed to help."
"I guess I can figure some of it," Brett said. "But tell me, anyway."
"Well, as the course goes along, there are dropouts - for the reasons I told you, and for others. It always happens, we expect it. As I said, if our department's told, we try to persuade some of the people to come back. But what this instructor and secretary have been doing is not reporting the dropouts, and recording them present. So that checks for the dropouts have kept coming in, and then that precious pair has kept those checks themselves."
"But the checks are made out by name. They can't cash them."
Wingate shook his head. "They can and they have. What happens is eventually this pair does report that certain people have stopped coming, so the company checks stop, too. Then the instructor goes around with the checks he's saved and finds the people they're made out to. It isn't difficult; all addresses are on file. The instructor tells a cock-and-bull story about the company wanting the money back, and gets the checks endorsed. After that, he can cash them anywhere. I know it happens that way. I followed the instructor for an afternoon."
"But how about later, when your employee relations people go visiting?
You say they hear about the dropouts eventually. Don't they find out about the checks?"
"Not necessarily. Remember, the people we're dealing with aren't communicative. They're dropouts in more ways than one, usually, and never volunteer information. It's hard enough getting answers to questions.
Besides that, I happen to think there've been some bribes passed around.
I can't prove it, but there's a certain smell."
"The whole thing stinks."
Brett thought: Compared with what Leonard Wingate had told him, his own irritations of today seemed minor. He asked, "Were you the one who uncovered all this?"
"Mostly, though one of my assistants got the idea first. He was suspicious of the course attendance figures; they looked too good. So the two of us started checking, comparing the new figures with our own previous ones, then we got comparable figures from other companies. They showed what was going on, all right. After that, it was a question of watching, catching the people. Well, we did."
"So what happens now?"
Wingate shrugged, his figure hunched over the bar counter. "Security's taken over; it's out of my hands. This afternoon they brought the instructor and the secretary downtown - separately. I was there. The two of them broke down, admitted everything. The guy cried, if you'll believe it."
"I believe it," Brett said. "I feel like crying in a different way. Will the company prosecute?"
"The guy and his girlfriend think so, but I know they won't." The tall Negro straightened up; he was almost a head higher than Brett DeLosanto.
He said mockingly, "Bad public relations, y'know. Wouldn't want it in the papers, with our company's name. Besides, the way my bosses see it, the main thing is to get the money back; seems there's quite a few thousand."
"What about the other people? The ones who dropped out, who might have come back, gone on working . . ."
"Oh come, my friend, you're being ridiculously sentimental."
Brett said sharply, "Knock it off! I didn't steal the goddamn checks."
"No, you didn't. Well, about those people, let me tell you. If I had a staff six times the size I have, and if we could go back through all the records and be sure which names to follow up on, and if we could locate them after all these weeks . . ."
The bartender appeared. Wingate's glass was empty, but he shook his head.
For Brett's benefit he added, "We'll do what we can. It may not be much."
"I'm sorry," Brett said. "Damn sorry." He paused, then asked, "You married?"
"Yes, but not working at it."
"Listen, my girlfriend's cooking dinner at my place. Why not join us?"
Wingate demurred politely. Brett insisted.
Five minutes later they left for Country Club Manor.
Barbara Zaleski had a key to Brett's apartment and was there when they arrived, already busy in the kitchen. An aroma of roasting lamb was drifting out.
"Hey, scullion!" Brett called from the hallway. "Come, meet a guest."
"If it's another woman," Barbara's voice sailed back, "you can cook your own dinner. Oh, it isn't. Hi!"
She appeared with a tiny apron over the smart, knit suit she had arrived in, having come directly from the OJL agency's Detroit office. The suit, Brett thought appreciatively, did justice to Barbara's figure; he sensed Leonard Wingate observing the same thing. As usual, Barbara had dark glasses pushed up into her thick, chestnut-brown hair, which she had undoubtedly forgotten. Brett reached out, removed the glasses and kissed her lightly.
He introduced them, informing Wingate, "This is my mistress."
"He'd like me to be," Barbara said, "but I'm not. Telling people I am is his way of getting even."
As Brett had expected, Barbara and Leonard Wingate achieved a rapport quickly. While they talked, Brett opened a bottle of Dom Perignon which the three of them shared. Occasionally Barbara excused herself to check on progress in the kitchen.
During one of her absences, Wingate looked around the spacious apartment living room. "Pretty nice pad."
"Thanks." When Brett leased the apartment a year and a half ago he had been his own interior decorator, and the furnishings reflected his personal taste for modern design and flamboyant coloring. Bright yellows, mauves, vermilions, cobalt greens predominated, yet were used imaginatively, so that they merged as an attractive whole. Lighting complemented the colors, highlighting some areas, diminishing others. The effect was to create - ingeniously - a series of moods within a single room.
At one end of the living room was an open door to another room.
Wingate asked, "Do you do much of your work here?"
"Some." Brett nodded toward the open door. "There's my Thinkolarium. For when I need to get creative and be uninterrupted away from that wired-for-sound Taj Mahal we work in." He motioned vaguely in the direction of the company's Design-Styling Center.
"He does other things there, too," Barbara said. She had returned as Brett spoke. "Come in, Leonard. I'll show you."
Wingate followed her, Brett trailing.
The other room, while colorful and pleasant also, was equipped as a studio, with the paraphernalia of an artist-designer. A pile of tissue flimsies on the floor beside a drafting table showed where Brett had raced through a series of sketches, tearing off each flimsy, using a new one from the pad beneath as the design took shape. The last sketch in the series - a rear fender style - was pinned to a cork board.
Wingate pointed to it. "Will that one be for real?"
Brett shook his head. "You play with ideas, get them out of your system, like belching. Sometimes, that way, you get a notion which will lead to something permanent in the end. This isn't one." He pulled the flimsy down and crumpled it. "If you took all the sketches which precede any new car, you could fill Cobo Hall with paper."
Barbara switched on a light. It was in a corner of the room where an easel stood, covered by a cloth. She removed the cloth carefully.
"And then there's this," Barbara said. "This isn't for discarding."
Beneath the cloth was a painting in oils, almost - but not quite - finished.
"Don't count on it," Brett said. He added, "Barbara's very loyal. At times it warps her judgment."
The tall, gray-haired Negro shook his head. "Not this time, it hasn't."
He studied the painting with admiration.
It was of a collection of automotive discards, heaped together. Brett had assembled the materials for his model - laid out on a board ahead of the easel, and lighted by a spotlight - from an auto wrecker's junk pile. There were several burned-brown spark plugs, a broken camshaft, a discarded oil can, the entrails of a carburetor, a battered headlight, a moldy twelve-volt battery, a window handle, a section of radiator, a broken wrench, some assorted rusty nuts and washers. A steering wheel, its horn ring missing, hung lopsidedly above.
No collection could have been more ordinary, less likely to inspire great art. Yet, remarkably, Brett had made the junk assortment come alive, had conveyed to his canvas both rugged beauty and a mood of sadness and nostalgia. These were broken relics, the painting seemed to say: burned-out, unwanted, all usefulness departed; nothing was ahead save total disintegration. Yet once, however briefly, they had had a life, had functioned, representing dreams, ambitions, achievements of mankind. One knew that all other achievements - past, present, future, no matter how acclaimed - were doomed to end similarly, would write their epilogues in garbage dumps. Yet was not the dream, the brief achievement - of itself - enough?
Leonard Wingate had remained, unmoving, before the canvas. He said slowly,
"I know a little about art. You're good. You could be great."
"That's what I tell him." After a moment, Barbara replaced the cloth on the easel and turned out the light. They went back into the living room.
"What Barbara means," Brett said, pouring more Dom Perignon, "is that I've sold my soul for a mess of pottage." He glanced around the apartment. "Or maybe a pot of messuage."
"Brett might have managed to do designing and fine art," Barbara told Wingate, "if he hadn't been so damned successful at designing. Now, all he has time to do where painting's concerned is to dabble occasionally.
With his talent, it's a tragedy."
Brett grinned. "Barbara has never seen the high beam - that designing a car is every bit as creative as painting. Or that cars are my thing," He remembered what he had told the two students only a few weeks ago: You breathe, eat, sleep cars . . . wake up in the night, it's cars you think about . . . like a religion. Well, he still felt that way himself, didn't he? Maybe not with the same intensity as when he first came to Detroit.
But did anyone really keep that up? There were days when he looked at others working with him, wondering. Also, if he were honest, there were other reasons why cars should stay his 'thing'. Like what you could do with fifty thousand dollars a year, to say nothing of the fact that he was only twenty-six and much bigger loot would come in a few years more. He asked Barbara lightly, "Would you still breeze in to cook dinner if I lived in a garret and smelled of turpentine?"
She looked at him directly. "You know I would."
While they talked of other things, Brett decided: He would finish the canvas, which he hadn't touched in weeks. The reason he had stayed away from it was simple. Once he started painting, it absorbed him totally and there was just so much total absorption which any life could stand.
Over dinner, which tasted as good as it had smelled, Brett steered the conversation to what Leonard Wingate had told him in the bar downtown.
Barbara, after hearing of the cheating and victimization of hard core workers, was shocked and even angrier than Brett.
She asked the question which Brett DeLosanto hadn't. "What color are they - the instructor and the secretary who took the checks?"
Wingate raised his eyebrows. "Does it make a difference?"
"Listen," Brett said. "You know damn well it does."
Wingate answered tersely, "They're white. What else?"
"They could have been black." It was Barbara, thoughtfully.
"Yes, but the odds are against it." Wingate hesitated. "Look, I'm a guest here . . ."
Brett waved a hand. "Forget it!"
There was a silence between them, then the gray-haired Negro said, "I like to make certain things clear, even among friends. So don't let this uniform fool you: the Oxford suit, a college diploma, the job I have. Oh, sure, I'm the real front office nigger, the one they point to when they say: You see, a black man can go high. Well, it's true for me, because I was one of the few with a daddy who could pay for a real education, which is the only way a black man climbs. So I've climbed, and maybe I'll make it to the top and be a company director yet. I'm still young enough, and I'll admit I'd like it; so would the company. I know one thing. If there's a choice between me and a white man, and providing I can cut the mustard, I'll get the job. That's the way the dice are rolling, baby; they're weighted my way because the p.r. department and some others would just love to shout: Look at us! We've got a board room black!"
Leonard Wingate sipped his coffee, which Barbara had served.
"Well, as I said, don't let the facade fool you. I'm still a member of my race." Abruptly he put the cup down. Across the dining table his eyes glared at Brett and Barbara. "When something happens like it did today, I don't just get angry. I burn and loathe and hate - everything that's white."
The glare faded. Wingate raised his coffee cup again, though his hand was shaking.
After a moment he said, "James Baldwin wrote this: "Negroes in this country are treated as none of you would dream of treating a dog or a cat." And it's true - in Detroit, just as other places. And for all that's happened in the past few years, nothing's really changed in most white people's attitudes, below the surface. Even the little that's being done to ease white consciences - like hard core hiring, which that white pair tried to screw, and did - is only surface scratching. Schools, housing, medicine, hospitals, are so bad here it's unbelievable - unless you're black; then you believe it because you know, the hard way. But one day, if the auto industry intends to survive in this town - because the auto industry is Detroit - it will have to come to grips with improving the black life of the community, because no one else is going to do it, or has the resources or the brains to." He added, "Just the same, I don't believe they will."
"Then there's nothing," Barbara said. "Nothing to hope for." There was emotion in her voice.
"No harm in hoping," Leonard Wingate answered. He added mockingly, "Hope don't cost none. But no good fooling yourself either."
Barbara said slowly, "Thank you for being honest, for telling it like it is. Not everyone does that, as I've reason to know."
"Tell him," Brett urged. "Tell him about your new assignment."
"I've been given a job to do," Barbara told Wingate. "By the advertising agency I work for, acting for the company. It's to make a film. An honest film about Detroit - the inner city."
She was aware of the other's instant interest.
"I first heard about it," Barbara explained, "six weeks ago."
She described her briefing in New York by Keith Yates-Brown.
It had been the day after the abortive "rustle pile" session at which the OJL agency's initial ideas for Orion advertising had been routinely presented and, just as routinely, brushed aside.
As the creative director, Teddy Osch, predicted during their martini-weighted luncheon, Keith Yates-Brown, the account supervisor, had sent for Barbara next day.
In his handsome office on the agency's top floor, Yates-Brown had seemed morose in contrast with his genial, showman's manner of the day before. He looked grayer and older, too, and several times in the later stages of their conversation turned toward his office window, looking across the Manhattan skyline toward Long Island Sound, as if a portion of his mind was far away. Perhaps, Barbara thought, the strain of permanent affability with clients required a surly counterbalance now and then.
There had certainly been nothing friendly about Yates-Brown's opening remark after they exchanged "good mornings."
"You were snooty with the client yesterday," he told Barbara. "I didn't like it, and you should know better."
She said nothing. She supposed Yates-Brown was referring to her pointed questioning of the company advertising manager: Was there nothing you liked? Absolutely nothing at all? Well, she still believed it justified and wasn't going to grovel now. But neither would she antagonize Yates-Brown needlessly until she heard about her new assignment.
"One of the early things you're supposed to learn here," the account supervisor persisted, "is to show restraint sometimes, and swallow hard."
"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 Wingate,
"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 we'll 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 middleclass 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 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.