The Stallion (1996) (18 page)

“Throw away everything the family ever stood for,” said Angelo.

“Throw away something else. You. This time you’ll lose, Angelo. The new guys will liquidate the company’s assets—loot it is a better word—and they won’t build the Stallion.”

“I’ve heard of these guys,” said Angelo. “They may have a hard time coming up with the money.”

“Loren won’t sell if he thinks he’s about to be the new Hank Ford. Lee Iacocca built a car for him and saved his ass. Hank never forgave him for it. Loren will forgive you if we can make it look like he contributed important things to the Stallion. And make the world believe it.”

“I said I’d go along with the charade.” Angelo opened his briefcase and handed her drawings of the dashboard of the Stallion. “Notice that the top of the dash is flat and has ridges on the sides and at the rear. You see, it forms a little tray where you can put maps or pencils or tollbooth change—or a cup of coffee. Keijo is tearing that out of the prototype right now and installing a sloped-back dash. Anything you put on that is going to roll off on the floor. What’s more, this is dark gray. The sloping dash will be beige. It will reflect sunlight up on the windshield and reduce visibility.”

Roberta nodded. “Okay, but that’s basically cosmetic. Isn’t there anything more fundamental?”

“If you want it. We can build a serious oversteer into the suspension. Suppose Loren drives the test car into a shrieking skid. It might even roll over.”

“And kill him,” she said dully.

“He’s going to be in test-driver harness and helmet. Besides, the test car is equipped with roll bars. We can give him a chance to do something dramatic and get madder’n hell about it.”

Roberta smiled and shook her head. “Angelo, you’re a prince,” she purred. “Roberta’s gonna show you she can be very grateful.”

She undressed quickly. “Enough talking business,” she said. “Now let’s
do
business. I’ve been thinking about something for two weeks.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Something you’re going to like. But first I want to take one of those showers together, like we did in London. God! You know that’s been more than a year ago? Only four times since then. You don’t take good care of me, Angelo.”

“I’m trying to save a company.”

“I’d say a man that doesn’t get it regularly couldn’t save anything, but I’m sure you get it more than regularly.”

“So do you,” he said.

“But it’s very different,” she said. “You’re very different, Angelo. You’re … you’re
competent.”

“Italians know how to make great art and great love,” he said.

“Tell me how great it was after we do it,” she said.

When they came out of the shower, she led him by the hand to the bed. “Now, lover,” she said, “Roberta is going to bring you with her lips and tongue
exclusivement.
No touch with hands. In fact … you can tie my hands behind my back with your belt if you want to.”

Angelo shook his head.

“It’ll take a while,” she said, “but when you come, you’ll know you’ve come.” She grinned. “Then there’ll be no premature ejaculation when you give it to me.”

She was right when she said it would take time. Usually a woman used her hands toward the end, to add more friction and vigor and bring him to a climax faster. Roberta kept her hands away, as she said she would. She licked him. She sucked him between her lips. She held his cock between her lips and massaged its head with her tongue. She licked his length. She licked his scrotum. She dipped her tongue in her glass, held it against the ice for a moment, then licked him
with a cold tongue. His sensations were at first shallow but slowly his arousal became more complete and more profound, until he felt that something inside him was going to wrench loose. He began to gasp.

From time to time Roberta looked up, raised an eyebrow, and smiled. Her face was flushed and perspiration gleamed on her forehead, on her cheeks, and on her breasts. Doing what she was doing this way was hard work: bobbing her head up and down, burying her face in his crotch to reach his scrotum with her tongue without lifting it in her hands, then coming up again and sucking him as deep into her mouth as she could.

“Coming, no?” she gasped.

He moaned and nodded. His body stiffened, and his legs extended tautly, as his violent spasms began. She closed her lips around him and sucked as he throbbed and squirted. She swallowed. Only after his last spasm, when he began to soften, did she lift her head. Even then she came down again and licked him a little more, to gather the last drops.

She grabbed for her glass and gulped the last of her Scotch.

Angelo bent forward. He felt incipient cramps in his legs. He was still hard and big, though he couldn’t believe he could be.

“Tell me you’ve had it better,” said Roberta.

He could honestly say, and did, that he’d never had it better.

“It’s an acquired taste and a learned skill,” she said.

“I thought I sensed that you liked it, too, that you were having a good time.”

“Sure,” she said. “Some.”

“‘Acquired taste and learned skill,’” he repeated. “How’d you come to acquire the taste and learn the skill?”

“You know something? Girls do it today when they’re twelve or thirteen. They know they can’t get pregnant that way. But when I was a teenager…” She shook her head.

“Me, too. We’re the same age, about. When we were kids, nice girls didn’t takes boys’ dicks in their mouths. If they did, they weren’t nice girls anymore, acquired nasty reputations, and were called nasty names.”

“There’s an old cliche,” said Roberta, “to the effect that it was a brave man who first ate an oyster. Well, it was a brave Roberta who first took a cock in her mouth.”

“It was a brave Angelo who first put his tongue in a girl’s cunt.”

“Why did you do it?” she asked.

“To seduce her. I wasn’t getting anywhere with her, so—”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty-six or -seven.”

“Do you like to do it?”

“I can handle it,” he said. “I’m not wildly enthusiastic about it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to do it. I’ve got something else in mind. I was thirty-four the first time I gave head. My husband wanted me to do it. He’d begged me to do it. I was sure I’d gag, maybe vomit. But I didn’t, and gradually I got used to it and even got to like it. He got so he liked it too much. We’d leave the office winter evenings when it was dark, and he’d ask me to go down on him while he drove. Can you imagine? I bet I sucked Harold off a hundred and fifty times on Jefferson Avenue. If we got stuck in traffic, I’d have to sit up, then get down and start all over when we were moving again. Sometimes he drove past our turnoff because he wanted me to finish before we got home. That’s when I learned to swallow it. It made too much of a mess if you lost any trying to spit it in a Kleenex.”

Angelo kissed her. Her lips were a little swollen and a little tender. “You’re one hell of a woman, Roberta. I hope Loren appreciates you.”

“You wouldn’t
believe
how much he appreciates me,” she said. She sighed loudly. “Let’s have another drink. Then I want you to give it to me doggy style. Twice. Then I gotta go home. And I’ll see you in Tokyo.”

When Angelo arrived at the Shizoka R&D lab, he found a bemused Keijo Shigeto, who had already installed the deficient dashboard top in the prototype Stallion. Angelo had explained to him on the telephone why they
were modifying the car to introduce defects. It was almost impossible to make him understand the vagaries of American corporate politics.

Or maybe not. It occurred to Angelo that maybe Keijo understood entirely but was inhibited by Japanese standards of courtesy from acknowledging that he did.

On the flight from Detroit to Tokyo, Angelo had reviewed the best means of introducing a profound oversteer. Keijo reviewed his proposed modifications and agreed they could easily do it—and easily return the car to its stable configuration.

On this occasion and on this occasion only, Angelo heard a sharp exchange between two Japanese. He could not understand what they said, but it was obvious that one of Keijo’s assistants did not want to make the change. His voice rose as he protested. Suddenly Keijo spoke brusquely. Obviously he gave a blunt order. He bowed shallowly and curtly and strode off.

Two days later Angelo tested the modified Stallion, which had been transported by train to the test track.

The oversteer was subtle. It didn’t show up in the gentle curves of the test track, even at high speeds. In a quick ninety-degree turn, as at an intersection, the car forcefully tightened its turn and resisted straightening out. A driver who didn’t anticipate it, or who lacked experience with oversteer, could find himself ramming the curb.

Angelo assured himself the car would not endanger Loren. He’d make no tight turns until he pulled off the track. When he did that, he’d have to turn sharply to come through a gate. If he wasn’t a damned good driver, the car would get away from him. But he would have slowed down by then, and he couldn’t hurt himself.

Then he could raise all kinds of hell, and Angelo would promise to fix the problem.

What a way to run a business!

Loren needed to be briefed on how to deal with the Japanese. But he wasn’t to have that luxury. His flight from
Detroit would arrive in midmorning, he would have some time to sleep, and that same evening he was to be honored at a dinner given by Mr. Tadashi Komatsu, chief executive officer of Shizoka Motors.

Angelo’s invitation, brushed in Japanese characters but accompanied by a typewritten English translation, arrived at his room with his breakfast tray. He telephoned Keijo a little later and learned that Mr. Tadashi was pleased to invite his American guests to a Western-style dinner. A limousine would call for Angelo and the Hardemans and take them to a country club a short distance out of town. The dinner would not be black tie.

Loren called Angelo as soon as he arrived. Angelo told him to get as much sleep as he could; he might be facing a demanding evening.

Roberta came to Angelo’s suite at about two o’clock. She wanted assurance that Loren would not be killed if he crashed the XB Stallion. She also wanted a quickie. She got both.

Membership in a country club was a conspicuous luxury in Japan. Devoting valuable land to playing games was widely considered an arrogant waste of a natural resource. Nonetheless, a few wealthy businessmen had bought land, laid out golf courses, and built luxurious accommodations. The initiation fee for membership in the club Angelo and the Hardemans visited that night was exactly $1,000,000.

Golfers did not change from street clothes to golf clothes in a locker room. Each member had a ground-level suite for that purpose. Members played tennis on indoor and outdoor courts, handball on indoor courts. There were game rooms, exercise rooms with trainers, steam baths, and massage rooms.

Many members had additional suites on upper levels, arranged so they could move in and out discreetly, accompanied by whomever they wished. A dozen or so young prostitutes lived in cottages in a grove separated from the
clubhouse. They could reach the clubhouse through a tunnel and then ascend to the upper floors in a private elevator.

The club was self-consciously Western. It made only two concessions to its few traditional members: a communal bath in which members and their friends could soak in scalding water, and one small restaurant that served Japanese food.

Guest suites had been prepared for Angelo and the Hardemans, where they could—as their driver-escort told them—refresh themselves until it was time for the reception and dinner. A petite maid in a short skirt, little white apron, and white cap attended them there, to serve them drinks and offer tiny hors d’oeuvres.

Keijo Shigeto came to Angelo’s suite, accompanied by his wife, the exquisite little Toshiko. The last time Angelo had seen her she’d been in traditional Japanese dress, and now he sensed she felt uncomfortable in a short black tight cocktail dress and high-heel shoes.

“Mr. Tadashi suggested that because Mrs. Hardeman will be present for dinner, my wife should be present too. She will sit beside her, with an interpreter at the next place, so they can converse together.”

“That’s very thoughtful,” said Angelo.

It was also going to be an ordeal for the petite Japanese woman—maybe also for Roberta, who would be obliged to keep up some kind of conversation, while really wanting to take part in the men’s business talk.

At seven they left the suite and went to Mr. Tadashi’s suite, where he was waiting with an array of his executives.

Tadashi Komatsu bowed deeply to Loren, a little less deeply to Roberta and Angelo, less deeply still to Keijo, who had already bowed very deeply to him. The strict Japanese sense of hierarchy governed their courtesies. It also governed their speech. Though Angelo could not hear the distinctions, he knew that Tadashi would express a thought to Keijo in slightly different terms than Keijo would use to express the same thought to Tadashi, his superior.

Angelo had warned Loren and Roberta not to try to understand and certainly not to try to mimic their hosts.
The best they could do was be courteous in the American way. The Japanese preferred that to flawed attempts to be like them.

Tadashi was the archetypal Japanese CEO: perhaps sixty years old, turning gray, his eyes behind thick-lensed glasses, his clothes flawlessly tailored. He was about five feet seven. Behind his ready smile he did not conceal an intensity that clearly implied that he was very, very serious about who he was and where he was and what he was doing.

Angelo had met Tadashi several times before and knew his English was idiosyncratic. “Encountering you is the fun I have hoped to have,” he said gravely to Loren and Roberta.

Most of the evening he spoke through an interpreter, either Keijo or a young man who hovered at his side and sat behind him at dinner. Another young man interpreted for Roberta and Toshiko.

Over dinner Tadashi conversed mostly with Loren, through his interpreter. Angelo tried to listen to what they were saying, hoping Loren would commit no faux pas, but Keijo kept him in conversation most of the time. Tadashi asked Loren many questions—each preceded by the ritual “Mr. Tadashi would like to know…” He asked nothing about XB Motors, nothing about the Stallion. He wanted to know who Loren thought would be elected president of the United States in 1980. He asked who would win the National and American League pennants, the World Series, and the Super Bowl. He wanted to know what had been Loren’s favorite American film of the past year and which American authors he would recommend.