The Stallion (1996) (26 page)

Angelo had identified a vacant industrial plant in Danbury as a possible site for installing the machinery and personnel to manufacture the epoxy resin material that would become the bodies for the XB 2000. The manufacturing process was not heavy industry. The liquid material was rolled out into large, thin sheets, which could be stretched over fiberglass forms to shape it into fenders, doors, hoods, and so on. As many as twenty layers would be laid on, fastened together with epoxy cement, forming laminated body parts that would be extraordinarily strong and resilient, as well as light in weight.

Single sheets of the material could easily be trimmed with scissors, though they would in fact be trimmed with specialized
electric shears that cut by vibration rather than mechanical movement. The plant would use no dangerous machine tools, and there would be no heavy lifting. Care had to be taken with the chemicals, but workers could be trained to protect themselves. Once a sheet hardened, as someone put it, it could safely be used in place of a rubber sheet in a baby crib.

Manufacture of epoxy resin sheets would employ a hundred workers or so at first, and most of them could be women. The little city of Danbury enthusiastically welcomed Angelo Perino and Keijo Shigeto. They were invited to speak at a dinner held by the Chamber of Commerce and at luncheons of the local Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions clubs.

Angelo planned to make prototype bodies in Danbury. After the prototype XB 2000s were tested, he would ship epoxy resin sheets to Detroit to be formed into bodies in an XB Motors plant.

He formed a corporation to license the process and manufacture the material. He called it CINDY Corporation.

Toshiko made herself into an American woman as quickly and thoroughly as she could. For dinner at the Perinos’, she appeared wearing a pleated tartan skirt and a dark blue cardigan sweater over a white blouse.

“Greenwich Academy,” Cindy murmured to Angelo when they were in the kitchen pouring drinks.

Speaking English remained a challenge for her, but the little Japanese woman had plunged into it and somehow managed to make her wishes known in the local stores.

“Are gin,” she said, tasting her martini. “Rike this. Not so much rike Shots.”

“Scotch,”
Keijo corrected her curtly.

“Shotch…”

“Scotch.”

“Scotch. Yes. Is good. Gin more good.”

At midnight, Angelo and Cindy lay in bed together. They had been benignly amused with Toshiko’s attempts to speak English and at the same time sincerely respectful of the way she was facing the challenge of life in a country that was
vastly different from her homeland. They chuckled as they repeated some of the things she had said.

Times like this, nights together in bed, when they were not exhausted from the demands of the day, had become too infrequent for Cindy and Angelo; and they had learned to cherish them. They lay in each other’s arms, comfortable with flesh against flesh, since neither of them ever wore anything to bed.

“Darling…,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“Are you comfortable?”

Angelo nodded.

“So am I. And maybe we shouldn’t be. Maybe we’re too
damned
comfortable. Did you ever think of that? We’re not the kind to be comfortable. Still here we are, domesticated and cozy. I never thought we would get to be that way. In 1963 you were the second-ranked racing driver in the world—and would have been ranked first if that crash hadn’t sidelined you so long. When I met you, you were still great. I loved racing. They wouldn’t let a woman compete, but you let me be a test driver. We used to live on the edge, man!”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” he said.

“Maybe I’m not sure either, but I have a sense that we’ve lapsed into middle-age boredom—in our
personal
lives, I mean; your professional life is adventurous enough. We go sailing, but Bill doesn’t race the yawl. There’s no challenge in sailing with him. I’d like to take flying lessons, but I suppose as a mother of five—”

Angelo grinned. “If you flew, you’d want to go into aerobatics. And so would I—if I flew. Are you telling me you’re bored, Cindy?”

She shrugged. “It’s such a damned cliche,” she said.

“The gallery—”

“I ought to spend more time in there. I’ve let Dietz run things too much. And Marcus Lincicombe. Marcus is a fine dealer—too good to be a junior partner.”

“No reason why you shouldn’t spend more time in the gallery. You do trust the au pair, don’t you?”

“Yes. She’s all right.”

“Well, then…”

Cindy ran her hands down her cheeks, then down over
her breasts and lifted them. “Do you remember the line in
The Godfather
when Mike tells Kay he’ll let her ask him one question about his business but never another?”

Angelo nodded. “She asked him if he’d killed his brother-in-law, and he lied and said no.”

“Right. Will you let me ask you one question about your personal life?”

“Yes.”

“Are you the father of Betsy’s latest child?”

Angelo did not hesitate for more than a moment. He drew a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

“I thought so,” she said calmly. “I’m not going to forgive you, because I don’t think it’s something you need be forgiven for. I can understand. She’s drop-dead beautiful. She’s smart. She’s vital. She was
there
a lot of times when I couldn’t be. Besides, she’s a Hardeman. Fucking her, you fucked the whole clan.”

“I’m sorry, Cindy.”

“I’m going to show you how much I love you, Angelo. I could hold this over you, but instead I’m going to tell you that I’ve strayed on you a time or two. If you were a commuter who came home on the train every night, I don’t think either one of us would have found an occasion to do anything outside our marriage. But that’s not the way it is. Do you love her?”

“Well—”

“You damned well better. You’d better love the mother of your son. It’s okay, too—as long as you love me more.”

“I love you more, Cindy. A whole lot more.”

She smiled and reached out with both hands. “Show me,” she said.

Two prototypes of the XB 2000 were cobbled together—Angelo’s term—by the end of February 1984. He had leased the space in Danbury, had installed the necessary equipment to mix the epoxy resin material and roll it out into sheets, had ordered forms built according to the Varallo design, and had produced two bodies. They were flown to Detroit and installed on Stallion frames and chassis with modified engines. They carried Stallion gear boxes, instrument panels, and other interior components, and so were not really 2000s. Even so, they
looked
like the new car; and on the test track the modified engine drove the light vehicle with a performance that felt like the new car.

Betsy came to Detroit and demanded one of the prototypes. She drove it on a test track, then on the streets, then on the Michigan highways, picking up one speeding ticket and outdistancing the second police car that chased her.

Princess Anne was interested, and she and Igor came to Detroit and drove one of the prototypes. Pulled over by a Grosse Pointe patrol car, she indignantly showed the visa stamp in her passport that proved she had not been the woman driving the yellow sports car on the night when it had outraced the same police car.

It was not possible to have two XB 2000s available to every dealer by the time of the April dealers meeting. Two cars were ready for display in Cobol Hall—this pair complete with 2000 gear boxes, instrumentation, and all interior appointments.

Betsy was to unveil the car at the annual dinner for dealers. She was popular with the dealers, especially those who remembered her hospitality suite from the meeting two years before. When she was introduced by her father, the dealers rose and gave her a standing ovation—as they had done for Angelo Perino a few minutes before.

Loren and Roberta sat side by side at the head table, she all but obscured from the dealers by a large basket of white carnations.

“I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this,” muttered Loren as Betsy, looking splendid in a white silk dress, took the microphone and beamed at the clapping, shouting dealers.

“Keep cool, lover,” Roberta whispered to him. “The 2000 is gonna fail. And when it does, whose car was it? Let Betsy and Perino have their hour of glory. Their honey will turn to vinegar very shortly. And it damned well better, too. Perino knows too fuckin’ much.”

Betsy gave a short speech. She spread credit around. It was Angelo Perino’s project, she said. Applause. Based on something she had been urging him to do. Applause. Because her great-grandfather had promised her the company would do it. Applause. Possible because of the support of her father. Applause. Assisted by his vice president for engineering, Peter Beacon. Applause.

“XB Motors, formerly Bethlehem Motors, has maintained a secure niche in an industry increasingly dominated by the Big Three, because our company has always given the American consumer what he and she wanted. The Sundancer was a
great
car. The XB Stallion is a great car—as the sales figures you are returning every month clearly show. And now, for those Americans who want something different…

“I’ve driven it, ladies and gentleman—as a wonderful officer from the Grosse Pointe Police Department, who couldn’t catch up with me, can testify. I—”

Betsy laughed. She took a portable microphone from a technician who was ready with it. “Will Officer Bill McIntosh please come forward?” She walked down from the podium and waited for the policeman to wind his way down among the tables. He had been eating and drinking with a table of dealers and was not entirely steady on his feet.

“Bill has something for me,” said Betsy. The officer, in civilian clothes, stepped up to her, reached into his jacket pocket, and handed her a slip of paper. Betsy put her face up to his and kissed him. She waved the paper in the air. “This is my speeding ticket. Well deserved. Thank you, Bill, and … you wanta cuff me and take me in?”

The officer, blushing, shook his head.

“Well, stay here beside me and have a closer look at the car you were chasing that night.”

The lights went down. A 2000, in the light of a powerful spotlight, crossed the floor and stopped in front of Betsy.

The audience stood and cheered the car they saw. It was even lower and sleeker than the car they had seen in the drawing in her suite in 1982. It was yellow. It looked like a crouched cat ready to spring. Betsy and the policeman, standing behind it, towered above it and were clearly visible to all the dealers.

“Okay!” Betsy yelled. “The S Stallion—Super Stallion! You’ll have them in October. How many are you going to sell?”

“Six,” said Tom Mason, the dealer from Louisville. He spoke quietly to his wife and the other dealers at his table. “I can move BMWs faster than I can sell that.” He shook his head. “A two-seater. Radical technology in that epoxy resin body. It’s a racing car. Oh, we’ll sell it, but we won’t be able to move many.”

“You know what that car’s gonna do?” said one of the other dealers, a man named Greene, from Albany. “That’s
gonna bring guys in to look at it. They won’t buy it, but they’ll buy something else you got on the floor. We can afford to put one or two of them on the floor to attract trade. But XB’s not a big enough company to sustain a loss leader.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” said Mason. “I’m gonna drive my demonstrator. That’s gonna be
my
car.”

“No way, José,” said his wife.

“Why not?”

“In the first place, every time you get in it, you’ll have to twist and squeeze to get your fat butt through the door. In the second place, if you had
me
with you, you wouldn’t be able to get a bag of groceries in there with us. The car’s a
plaything,
Tom, and there aren’t many families in Louisville who can afford to have a plaything car.”

“Particularly when they realize that all that’s underneath that slick body is a bored-out Stallion engine and a Stallion platform.”

“With a racing transmission,” Mason pointed out.

“Priced,” said the other dealer, “like a … well, like a Porsche?”

“You can’t get a Porsche for the price,” said Mason.

“But when you have one, you have a
Porsche.”

“Hey!” said another agent across the table, a younger man. “Being a single, unmarried fellow, I’d
die
for a Super Stallion. Wherever I go, people are going to notice.”

“Girls,” said Mason’s wife, grinning.

“Speaking of which…,” said Mason, nodding at Betsy.

“There’s a story around,” said Greene. “The story is that Betsy Hardeman’s most recent baby was fathered by Angelo Perino.”

“Good for Angelo,” said Mason. “There’s the guy
I
trust. The Stallion was his idea, and it bailed the company out. It bailed out all the Bethlehem dealers. I’d have dropped the Sundancer line sooner or later. It was a great car in its day, but its day had passed.”

“He’s not a vice president anymore,” said Greene. “I don’t understand the whole deal.”

“No Perino, no company. That’s the deal,” said Mason. “You know why? He’s got fire in his guts about building
cars. Number One had that. I guess Betsy’s got it. Loren the Third does not. No Perino, no XB cars. If they really get rid of him, I’m out.”

Angelo and Cindy sat at a table below the dais. With them were Keijo and Toshiko, Alicia Hardeman and Bill Adams.

Cindy watched Betsy accept her speeding ticket from the Grosse Pointe officer. She nudged Angelo. “It’s easier to understand,” she whispered. “She’s something special.”

He squeezed her hand beneath the table. “Thank you for understanding,” he murmured. “Do you see what she’s doing?”

“She’s rubbing Loren’s face in shit,” Cindy whispered.

“You got it.”

Bill Adams leaned across the table toward Angelo. “The car is absolutely beautiful,” he said. “Can you really sell enough units to make it a viable product?”