Wheels

Chapter 31

"It's your life, not mine," Adam told Brett DeLosanto. "But I wouldn't be a friend if I didn't say that I think you're being hasty, and making an enormous mistake."

It was close to midnight, and the five of them - Adam and Erica, Barbara and Brett, and Leonard Wingate - were in the Country Club Manor apartment.

Brett and Wingate had joined the others half an hour ago, having driven from the inner city. The conversation had been gloomy. When they had exhausted all that could be said about Rollie Knight, Brett announced his intention to leave the automobile industry and to submit a letter of resignation tomorrow.

Adam persisted, "In another five years you could be heading up Design-Styling."

"There was a time," Brett said, "when that was the only dream I had - to be a Harley Earl, or a Bill Mitchell, or Gene Bordinat, or an Elwood Engel.

Don't misunderstand me - I think they've all been great; some are still. But it isn't for me, that's all."

Leonard Wingate said, "There are other reasons, though, aren't there?"

"Yes, there are. I don't think car manufacturers, who do so much long-range planning for themselves, have done more than a thimbleful of planning and service for the community they live in."

Adam objected, "That may have been true once; it isn't any more.

Everything's changed or changing fast. We see it every day - in management attitudes, community responsibility, the kind of cars we're building, relations with government, acknowledgment of consumers. This isn't the same business it was even two or three years ago."

"I'd like to believe it," Brett said, "if only because obviously you do.

But I can't, and I'm not alone. Anyway, from now on I'll be working on the outside."

Erica asked, "What will you do?"

"If you want the truth," Brett told her, "I'll be damned if I know."

"It wouldn't surprise me," Adam said, "if you got into politics. I'd like you to know that if you do, I'll not only vote for you, I'll contribute to your campaign."

Wingate said, "Me, too." It was strange, he thought, that only this evening he had sensed Brett's leadership and wondered how long he would stay in design.

Brett grinned. "One of these days that may cost you both. I'll remember."

"One thing he's going to do," Barbara told the others, "is paint. If I have to chain him to an easel and bring his meals. If I have to support the two of us."

"Speaking of support," Brett said, "I've thought of starting a small design business of my own."

"If you do," Adam predicted, "it won't stay small because you can't help being a success. Also, you'll work harder than you ever did."

Brett sighed. 'That's what I'm afraid of."

But even if it happened, he thought, he would be his own man, would speak with an independent voice. That was what he wanted most, and so did Barbara. Brett glanced at her with a love which seemed to increase day by day. Whatever unknown quantities were coming, he knew that they would share them.

"There were rumors," Barbara said to Adam, "that you might leave the company too."

"Where did you hear that?"

"Oh, around."

Adam thought: It was hard to keep any secret in Detroit. He supposed Perce Stuyvesant, or someone close to him, had talked.

Barbara pressed him. "Well, are you leaving?"

"An offer was made to me," Adam said. "I thought about it seriously for a while. I decided against it."

He had telephoned Perce Stuyvesant a day or two ago and explained: There would be no point in going to San Francisco to speak of terms and details; Adam was an automobile man and would remain one.

As Adam saw it, a good deal was wrong with the auto industry, but there was a great deal more that, overwhelmingly, was right. The miracle of the modern automobile was not that it sometimes failed, but that it mostly didn't; not that it was costly, but that - for the marvels of design and engineering it embodied - it cost so little; not that it cluttered highways and polluted air, but that it gave free men and women what, through history, they had mostly craved - a personal mobility.

Nor, for an executive to spend his working life, was there any more exciting milieu.

"All of us see things in different ways," Adam told Barbara. "I guess you could say I voted for Detroit."

Soon afterward they said goodnight.

On the short drive from Maple and Telegraph to Quarton Lake, Adam said,

"You didn't say much tonight."

"I was listening," Erica answered. "And thinking. Besides, I wanted you to myself, to tell you something."

"Tell me now."

"Well, it rather looks as if I'm pregnant. Look out! Don't swerve like that!"

"Just be glad," he said, as he pulled into a driveway, "you didn't tell me on the Lodge at rush hour."

"Whose driveway is this?"

"Who the hell cares?" He put out his arms, held her, and kissed her tenderly.

Erica was half laughing, half crying. "You were such a tiger in Nassau.

It must have happened there."

He whispered, "I'm glad I was," then thought: It could be the very best thing for them both.

Later, when they were driving again, Erica said, "I've been wondering how Greg and Kirk will feel. You've two grown sons, then suddenly a baby in the family."

"They'll love it. Because they love you. Just as I do." He reached for her hand. "I'll phone and tell them tomorrow."

"Well," she said, "between us we seem to be creating things."

It was true, he thought happily. And his life was full.

Tonight he had Erica, and this.

Tomorrow, and in days beyond, there would be Farstar.