The Stallion (1996) (42 page)

“These are robotic spot welders,” said Loren. “Computer controlled. Craftsmen though they were, human welders sometimes made mistakes, which cost us in terms of quality control. I studied this new technique and ordered it for this new plant. A weld never breaks in a Stallion.”

Van was impressed. The factory was huge. It was brightly lighted, clean, and free of fumes. It was not noisy, as he had thought it would be. The men and women who worked on
the floor were mostly inspectors, checking the work done by the machines that moved parts and fastened them into place. They wore white shirts with thin blue-and-red stripes, dark blue slacks, hard hats with the company logo, and clear plastic shields over their faces—which seemed unnecessary to Van, in this environment that seemed without hazards.

Subassemblies moved along the ceiling on chains and were lowered to the line at the appropriate places. Smaller parts moved over the floor in electric trucks, following marked lanes and flashing and beeping warnings. The whole operation was far more orderly than Van had imagined.

“You see, uh … if I’ve sometimes seemed remote and distant, which your mother sometimes has thought I am, this kind of thing is why. XB Motors didn’t just
happen,
Loren. It takes a lot of hours, every day. It takes a
commitment.’?

Van nodded.

They walked off the factory floor, and a chauffeur drove them to Loren’s office. A buffet and bar was already set up and waiting.

“Keep the hard hat as a souvenir,” said Loren. “It may not fit in your airline luggage, so I’ll have it shipped to you. What will you have to drink?”

Van accepted a Scotch in the English way, with a splash of water, no ice.

“I’m sorry we’ve been so remote from each other, Loren,” said Loren the Third. “I accept my share of responsibility for that … press of business and so on, the universal excuse. Try the mushrooms. They are done that way especially for me. Roberta’s idea. She’s one hell of a woman—not that your grandmother Alicia wasn’t.”

Van tried the mushrooms, even though he remembered that Claudius had died from eating poisoned mushrooms.

“You’re an heir to what you saw,” said Loren. “Maybe not the heir—though why not?—but certainly
an
heir.”

Van had never supposed otherwise. He sipped his drink and nodded.

“There’s a tradition,” Loren the Third went on. “A family tradition. Your mother is a viscountess. Anne is a princess. I am chairman of the board of a major corporation. This family has a record of distinction and success.”

Van nodded.

“Loren, you are the fourth of our name. I would be honored if you would call yourself Loren.”

“I am enrolled at Harvard as Loren. I sign my checks Loren. I seem to have picked up a nickname.”

Loren the Third grinned. “Nothing wrong with that. I wouldn’t want to tell you what some of my school friends called me.”

Van picked up a bite of cheese. “I’m sorry I never met my great-great-grandfather,” he said. “I was only six when he died.”

“He was not universally admired,” said Loren the Third. “Men who achieve great success often are not.”

“Rockefeller … Carnegie,” said Van.

“Ford,” said Loren the Third. “Number One, as we called him, could be a tyrant. But he was a great man. We should be honored to be descended from him.”

Van raised his glass. “To him,” he said.

Loren the Third stuffed another big mushroom in his mouth. “I am told … that you have formed a close relationship with the eldest daughter of Angelo Perino.”

Van nodded. “Anna and I are very close.”

“I am pleased to hear it. I’ve never met her but will accept your judgment that she is a fine girl. Angelo Perino is a brilliant man. He and I don’t always agree, but I think there is a mutual respect between us that overcomes disagreements.”

Van said nothing. He nodded and swallowed Scotch.

“I do ask you to remember something, though, Loren. Your great-great-grandfather Loren Hardeman the First was an industrialist who built a corporation respected around the world. Anna’s great-grandfather was a criminal, deported to Sicily—and he might have been sent to a penitentiary. The Perino family is, as the term goes, connected, meaning associated with organized crime. Not very long ago I employed a private investigator to discover if Angelo Perino was taking improper advantage of your mother. That man and his female associate were beaten half to death, here in Detroit. I don’t know, of course, if Angelo asked for that to be done. But it was done.”

“The Mafia?” Van asked.

“I would not suggest Angelo Perino is a mafioso. Far be it from me. But I think you should be aware of the
possibility.
Putting that aside, I hope you will make a judgment as to whether or not the son of Max van Ludwige and the Viscountess Neville, heir to the Hardeman name and reputation, should be intimately associated with the name Perino. I leave it to you. I am sure she is a fine girl. Italian families produce angels for daughters.”

Robert Carpenter shoved down his underpants and stepped up on Amanda’s model platform. Posing nude was the only way he’d been able to think of to become quickly more intimate with Cindy Perino, and he had agreed to pay $18,000 for the painting. Loren Hardeman had specifically authorized it. The painting would be his fee for two more months of routine work and for this above-and-beyond-the-call-of-duty sacrifice.

He was hugely embarrassed, so much so that he was not sure he could cope with it. His breath was short as he watched the two women, Amanda and Cindy, staring at him and appraising him as if he were a bronze casting: with the same critical eye, examining, judging. In his career as a would-be artist, then teacher of art history, he had seen many studio models and had always empathized with them. He knew what
he
ogled when he first saw a male model, and he knew where Amanda and Cindy were staring. He thanked God he was not deficient and that, at thirty-six, he had not developed a belly or any sagging flesh under his chin or at his armpits.

“Bob,” said Amanda, “would you feel more comfortable with a seated pose?”

“Whatever you think,” he said.

“Do you want to be staring out of the painting, or have your eyes looking some other way?”

“Well, I…”

“You are either saying to the viewer, ‘Here I am, untroubled about being naked, and happily letting you see me,’ or you are saying, ‘Dear viewer, you have surprised me. I would never let you see me naked otherwise.’”

“No one stands and poses hour after hour when accidentally discovered,” he said. “Anyone who sees the painting knows that. The last thing I want to be is coy.”

“Well, try clasping your hands behind your back. No. Put them on your hips. Tip your hips a little. That’s it. Now tip your shoulders as much the other way.”

Carpenter followed her directions. His acute embarrassment was tempered by his certain knowledge that Amanda Finch would create a distinguished work of art he could not have afforded to own otherwise. With the two he had bought before and accepted for his fees, he would have one of the best collections of Finches on the West Coast—maybe
the
best. He began to wonder how he was going to acquire more. He could always sell them, of course—though he doubted he would ever sell this one. Strictly speaking it would not be part of his collection, since he could not imagine hanging it where people could see it.

“Are you comfortable?” Amanda asked. “Can you hold that pose for fifteen minutes?”

“I’m comfortable enough,” he said. “But isn’t it a little contrived?”

“Maybe it is. Pose the way you feel natural.”

He put his weight on his left foot and extended his right a little forward, enough to balance him. He closed his left thumb and first two fingers on his chin whiskers and let his right hand rest easily on his right thigh.

“Perfect,” said Amanda. She began to sketch.

“I like your esthetic sense, Bob,” said Cindy. “You appreciate the right art; and posing just now, you bring a sure grace to it that not many men could achieve.”

They lay together in his room at the Hyatt Regency, satiated, sweaty, and breathless. Bob’s face was in Cindy’s lap. Though they were exhausted, he held her nether lips apart with his fingers, lazily studying the configuration of her parts, moistening a finger now and then and exploring further.

“I have a confession to make,” he said.

“Make it.”

“I’ve never done anything more difficult in my life than take off my clothes and stand naked in front of you and Amanda. You want to know why I did it?”

“You thought I wouldn’t be able to resist you, once I’d seen you.”

He shook his head. “I thought it created an intimacy between us that I couldn’t create any other way. Once you had seen me like that, I could talk to you and you’d listen.”

“I seem to have listened,” said Cindy.

“I love you,” he said. “You have to understand that. It’s not just fooling around.”

Cindy propped herself up on her elbow and frowned at his sober face. “Who are you, Bob?” she asked. “Don’t lie to me. I can find out in an hour. You’re no yacht broker.”

“My father was—and a damned successful one, too,” he said. “I’m a professor of art history because I’m a failed artist. I buy art because I inherited enough money to indulge myself. I really do appreciate Amanda’s stuff. I’m a little afraid of what her painting of me will say. She’ll see through me and portray me as a fraud. Cindy … where’s your husband?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I can pose for Amanda every day for a week, and you and I can be together every night for a week.”

“Angelo is in Germany. He’ll be home Friday night.”

“Germany? He gets around the world, doesn’t he?”

“Battery technology,” she said.

Efficiency tests of electric motors coupled to batteries through the McCullough computer system began in March 1992. The first 000s were just Stallion chassis without bodies and without engines, powered by four heavy-duty electric motors on the four wheels. The batteries were arrays of twenty ordinary automobile batteries, purchased in quantity from Sears Roebuck. The vehicles circled the test track at thirty miles per hour, discharging their batteries while instruments closely monitored the amount of energy that moved from the batteries to the wheels.

On its first test, the computer system managed to transfer 78 percent of battery energy to the wheels: an immense improvement over the most efficient utilization of the energy produced by internal-combustion engines.

Then S Stallion bodies were installed on the Stallion chassis: light epoxy resin bodies. The rear-seat area was filled with batteries. The sleek bodies, cutting wind resistance, improved efficiency so much that the energy transferred through the computer system ran the cars twenty-five miles on a charge, rather than the nineteen or twenty miles achieved with the bare chassis.

Acceleration was sluggish. The battery arrays surrendered
their power at a measured rate and could not deliver surges of power.

Batteries were the key. They had to deliver power fast when it was required. They had to hold more energy. And they could not fill the entire rear-seat area of the car and weigh a ton.

In spite of the tight security maintained around the test track, paparazzi managed to get photos of the bare chassis running with stacks of batteries on plywood platforms behind the driver, also of the Super Stallion-bodied cars with batteries piled inside. It was then that the 000 acquired the nickname Oh! Oh! Oh!

In May, Betsy flew from London to Detroit for a board meeting. Her father invited all the members of the board to his house for a cocktail party. All of them came: Angelo, Betsy, Tom Mason, Loren, and Roberta. Cindy had been invited but had declined to attend. Van had also been invited but had sent his excuses, saying his upcoming exams required him to stay at Harvard. Peter Beacon, who was still vice president for engineering for XB Motors, attended with his wife, as did James Randolph, director of the Hardeman Foundation.

The gathering was cordial, but each guest seemed determined to remain a polite distance from the others. Even Betsy seemed aloof to Angelo.

Loren had taken Roberta’s advice to try to diminish the distance between himself and his daughter. He talked quietly with Betsy, mentioning nothing but her husband and children.

“How serious,” he asked her, “is the infatuation between Loren and Anna Perino?”

“I suppose as serious as an infatuation can be between kids that age. He’s just twenty. She’s only seventeen. They haven’t had sex, I’m certain.”

“Her father would kill him.”

“I doubt that. I haven’t talked to Angelo about it.”

“I have no influence on the matter, of course. My
judgment doesn’t count. But do you think an alliance between our family and the Perinos would be wise?”

“They’re very young,” said Betsy. “Many things can happen between now and the time when they’re old enough to form an alliance, to use your word.”

“Well … how are your other children? Little Sally?”

“She wants to be a ballerina. She’s devoted to the idea. Her teacher says she’s good enough—provided she doesn’t grow too tall.”

“Don’t let her starve herself in an effort to prevent it.”

“I have that problem already. I’ll be lucky if she doesn’t turn anorexic.”

“I’d like to come to London and see the children. All of them.”

“Please do,” Betsy said, smiling despite herself.

In June, Anna graduated from Greenwich Academy. Angelo flew in from Berlin to be there. Van had gone home to London at the end of May, but he flew back. Nineteen-year-old John Perino flew to Florida to help his eighty-two-year-old grandmother, Jenny, fly to New York. Anna’s uncle Henry Morris came, with his wife and their eldest son.

Among the gifts sent to Anna were a heavy gold bracelet from Betsy, who signed her card “Aunt Betsy,” and a strand of pearls from Loren, who signed his “Loren Hardeman III.” Amanda’s gift was a portrait of Anna, for which the girl had posed five hours. Dietz von Keyserling sent an ivory netsuke: a tiny Japanese girl smelling a flower. Marcus Lincicombe came to the house to deliver his gift: two Hermès silk scarfs.