The Stallion (1996) (20 page)

For months the Perinos had been ignored by Greenwich,
but once they had been seen in the company of Alicia Hardeman and Bill Adams, they were welcome almost everywhere. They held an open house and invited all their neighbors. They received more invitations than they could honor.

Angelo settled into a routine. He flew out to Detroit on Monday morning, stayed in a furnished efficiency apartment near the plant through Thursday night, worked in his Detroit office through Friday morning, and flew back to New York on Friday afternoon.

He varied this routine with two more trips to Japan and with three long summer weekends when he and Cindy went sailing with Alicia and Bill.

In April Shizoka shipped two thousand Stallion power trains to Detroit. In May, XB Motors shipped one thousand bodies and chassis to Japan. It was settled that the XB Stallion would be introduced in the United States on Tuesday, October 7. By that date, every dealer would have a minimum of ten Stallions to show. That was an ambitious goal, and Angelo worked hard to meet it.

“We’ve never done it this way,” Peter Beacon objected.

“Pete, I don’t give a damn how you’ve done it or have never done it.”

Someday, Angelo swore, he would write an article listing the world’s weakest excuses.

Among those he had heard over the past few weeks, “We’ve never done it this way” was the most frequently used. Others were “Number One would never have approved,” “There is nothing in the plan for this,” “It can’t be done until the idea has been run past—,” “The committee hasn’t looked at it yet.”

He had come to the conclusion that Peter Beacon did not want to see the Stallion built. What he did want was a future without Angelo Perino. Beacon was vice president for engineering. Angelo was vice president for research and development. Hierarchically, Beacon was entitled to refuse
to initiate a manufacturing technique from research and development until it had been run past Loren and maybe even the board of directors. Politically, though, Angelo was riding high. What he wanted, he got.

For the moment, Loren was happy. He had been in a good mood since his second test-track drive in the Stallion prototype—with its suspension system restored and fender replaced. He had watched Angelo ram it through the gate at forty, then had brought it through himself at thirty. The Stallion was surefooted. And handsome. For the moment Loren was dedicated to manufacturing an automobile.

“It’s going to cost eighteen dollars a unit,” Beacon said, shaking his head.

“No, it’s not. If you can’t put it on the car for seven dollars and fifty cents, I’ll buy it and have it installed by Merckel.”

“Bethlehem Motors cars have never been bastardized with odds and ends of parts from other manufacturers.”

“That’s one of the reasons why the Sundancer costs too much and is on the verge of bankrupting the company,” said Angelo “If you can’t handle it, give me your resignation.”

“Give
you
my resignation?”

“I don’t give a damn who you give it to. Either perform or get your ass out. And don’t you ever tell me again what Number One would have done.
Number One is deadl”

Amanda’s reputation grew. Her paintings sold for higher prices. She experimented with a new style: still determinedly realistic, yet a little bolder, with broader strokes. Standing a few feet away from one of her paintings, the viewer saw an all-but-photographically realistic right index finger laid alongside a subject’s eye. Moving in closer, the viewer learned that the realistic finger was just four deft brushstrokes.

Angelo at last found time for her to paint his portrait. She complained that her paint dried between the sessions when he came to her studio to sit for her, but she completed the
painting and gave it to Cindy. The picture reproduced his appearance faithfully. Actually, it did more than that. As Angelo said of it, it did not stop at the surface but captured what was beneath his skin.

He was clothed. He had gently but firmly declined to pose nude.

Alicia Grinwold Hardeman did and paid Amanda $20,000 for the painting.

Since Alicia was a stockholder of XB and she and Angelo had developed a personal friendship, he had made a habit of keeping her informed about what was going on in Detroit.

On a Saturday afternoon in August, on his way home from a visit to a barber shop, Angelo stopped by the house on Round Hill Road to show her a set of the photographs that would be used in the print advertising campaign for the Stallion.

He was surprised that Bill Adams was not there. Usually he was, on Saturday afternoons. Alicia welcomed him into the house. She had been sitting beside her pool and was wearing a short white terry beach coat. He surmised there was a bikini under the coat.

“It seems to me,” she said to him as they walked through the house, “that you used to be an aficionado of dry martinis. When did you switch to Scotch?”

“I didn’t. Decent Scotch is easier to come by than well-mixed martinis.”

“Try me?” she asked as she turned into the kitchen.

“Sure.”

She had Beefeater gin. She cracked ice cubes in the palm of her hand, under the impact of an odd little hammer with a flat spring for a handle. Into a tall thin glass pitcher she put ice, gin, and a touch of vermouth. She stirred with a glass rod. Expertly, she cut a curl of lemon peel, then twisted it into a long-stemmed glass. She poured.

He sipped.

“A dry martini well mixed,” said Alicia.

“Well mixed,” he agreed, saluting her with the glass. She cut and twisted another bit of lemon peel and poured for herself. “When you can’t make automobiles or launch
great stock issues or run for Congress, you cultivate the small, civilized skills, like making a good martini.”

Once again, Angelo lifted his glass in salute. “The roads are crowded with cars,” he said. “Most of them junk. But good martinis are rare.”

“Altogether too many Americans,” she said, “content themselves with Bud Lite and think it’s beer, with instant decaf and think it’s coffee.”

“What can you expect of generations brought up on burgers and fries from McDonald’s or Burger King?”

“Angelo … Have you seen the painting Amanda Finch did of me?”

“No. I understand it’s—”

“Yes, of course. I’m starkers. And it’s
beautiful.
Someday, after I’m gone, it will hang in a gallery. I don’t mean a sales gallery; I mean a museum. Come. I’ll show you. I keep it upstairs. I don’t show it to everyone. But I swear to God, if the Bruce Museum wanted to hang it, I’d let them.”

He followed her up the stairs and along the hall to her bedroom, where the painting dominated one wall and in fact the whole room. He had guessed what Alicia Grinwold Hardeman looked like nude, but facing the painting he realized the naked woman looking lazily out of the painting was more realistically Alicia than Alicia was herself.

She was sitting on a graceful Victorian chair upholstered with black horsehair—a chair taken from her living room to Amanda’s studio. Like Manet’s
Olympia,
she wore a cameo on a black ribbon around her neck. Her dark brown hair was tied back. She wore a faint smile, perhaps defiant.

She sat with her legs crossed at the ankles and relaxed at an angle to the left. The pose did not display her crotch, only her belly down to the edge of her pubic hair, where Amanda had painted a few curly strands.

Alicia was forty-eight years old, and Amanda had made no attempt to portray her as younger than that. Her breasts were pendulous and soft. She was slender, but she had a full little belly. Amanda had not failed to depict the stretch marks from the birth of her one child, Betsy.

“Not bad for an old girl, huh?”

“You’re beautiful, Alicia,” said Angelo.

She sighed. “I wanted that picture done before I have to kid myself,” she said. “I’ve had Bill take Polaroids of me. When I’m a really old woman, I want to have evidence that I wasn’t always an old woman.
Capisce?

Angelo nodded.
“Capisco.”

She crossed the room to the window and parted the sheer curtains and looked out. “As the years go by, you know more and more vividly that you haven’t lived all you could have lived. You think about chances you didn’t take.”

“I know.”

“Not
you,”
she said. “Racing driver … all the rest of it. You’re still at it. You don’t miss anything, do you? Do you have any idea how many people envy you?”

“Alicia…”

“Bill, for example. Bill Adams. God, man! You
go after
what you want!”

“Alicia…”

“If only—Can you guess what
I
want right now?” “Alicia…”

“I want you to put me down on that bed and make love to me, Angelo. It may be the last chance I’ll ever have, to—”

“It could be a big mistake,” he said.

She smiled and shook her head. “Don’t spoil the romantic, dashing image of Angelo Perino. Don’t turn into Mr. Caution. Right now it’s perfect. No one can possibly know. Maybe another time will come. Maybe not. I’m not an hysterical woman, Angelo. I know there’s no future for us. But by God there’s
nowl
This one time, and maybe never again. Angelo…”

She
was
wearing a bikini under the beach coat. A skimpy yellow one. She jerked it off and stood for a moment with her hands on her hips, to let him look at her naked body. Then she offered herself in the missionary position and murmured and groaned the whole time he was inside her.

It was an odd experience for Angelo. Alicia was not a sexpot like her daughter, not a woman of uncommon appetites like Roberta; she was just a woman who enjoyed straightforward copulation, who was happy just feeling a big hard driving deep into her. Only when he came did she throw her legs around him to pin him inside her and prevent him from withdrawing.

She held him inside her for a long time as she came down slowly.

“Sometime again, Angelo,” she whispered. “When it’s absolutely safe. Don’t worry. I won’t embarrass you. No risks. Just … when we can.”

Driving home, he had an unworthy thought—unworthy, that is, of the fine woman he had just been with. He had now fucked all of Loren’s wives and his daughter.

On Monday evening, October 6, Cindy’s Porsche was put in the garage and the door was closed. Two XB Stallions, one white and one metallic blue, were brought to the house and parked in the driveway. The men who delivered them drove away with Angelo’s Sundancer.

The family went out to look at them. Of the children, only seven-year-old John understood what they were, and he gravely pronounced them beautiful. Shortly a third Stallion arrived, driven by Alicia, to whom a red one had been delivered a few minutes ago. Bill Adams was with her.

“Looks to me like you’ve got a winner here,” he said to Angelo.

“I’ve only got one question,” Cindy muttered under her breath to Angelo. “How long do I have to drive this goddamned thing before I can take out my Porsche again?”

“A week,” he said. “Me, I’m in heaven. Now I won’t have to drive that clunky Sundancer anymore.”

Two couples from the neighborhood arrived. They admired the Stallions and pronounced them handsome cars that would surely be a big success.

Shortly everyone went in the house, where a buffet and bar had been set up. The Stallion would be introduced to America on
Monday Night Football.

The telephone began to ring. Loren called to say the car looked good, and Roberta added a word of congratulations. Dr. John Perino called. Mr. Tadashi called from Japan to say he wished “excellence” to Angelo Perino and Loren Hardeman.

Dietz von Keyserling arrived, bringing Amanda Finch.

Alicia followed Angelo into the library, where he
switched on another television set and tuned it to WABC. They were alone for the moment.

“I’d like to talk with you for a moment,” she said.

“Sure.”

“I don’t know what to do about Betsy,” said Alicia somberly.

“What’s the problem?” Angelo asked.

“Oh God, she’s pregnant again!”

“Well, it can happen. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Her psychiatrist. Or so she says. She’s been seeing this shrink in London, and apparently he administered his favorite therapy.”

“He’s married, I suppose.”

“With three children. He wants her to come to the States and have an abortion. She wants to have the child. She says she can take care of another one. She has a home and a nanny. Little Loren is old enough to be placed in an English public school, so the nanny can give all her attention to the new one. The odd thing about her, Angelo, is that in spite of all her wildness and all her traveling around the world, she has been a good mother. She says mothering gives her a purpose.”

Angelo took Alicia’s hand between his. “You opened this conversation by saying you didn’t know what to do about Betsy. I think you’re going to have to let her do what she wants to do. Aside from giving her advice, I don’t see how you can influence her.”

“I suppose I can’t. It’s for damned sure her father can’t influence her. I think that shrink took advantage of her.”

“Oh, there you are,” said Bill Adams. “They’re about to kick off. When’s the commercial, Angelo?”

“It runs twice in the first half, twice in the second. Four different commercials, not a repeat.”

At halftime they walked out to the buffet and picked up some food, then went to the bar for drinks.

“The commercials are
greatl”
Amanda exclaimed.

Angelo thought so. He had hired a New York advertising agency to do them, taking the account away from the firm that had handled Sundancer advertising since 1966. The Stallion had to be introduced by a glamorous star, he said—
not only that, but by a glamorous star who had done few or no commercials before. The agency had managed to convince Natalie Wood to introduce the new automobile. Her fee was exorbitant, but half of it went to charities of her choosing—a fact that had been publicized by all three major network news broadcasts in the past two weeks.

At least
some
viewers would stay in front of their sets to see Natalie Wood.