by Dean Ing
* * * *
In April and May, Wes often fancied that he would welcome sudden death. He agonized over the daily progress of Delta One with its gossamer framework and its enormous expanses of aluminized plastic hide. He relaxed with two double scotches the day he found Rogan inspecting a rudder fin of the monster, a giddy ten stories above the hangar’s concrete floor. Wes found it hard to imagine that anybody but a cable rigger would actually like it up there. He said as much to Vangie Broussard over his second scotch, as they were ending a long workday.
“That’ s a new excuse: drinking over someone else’s foolishness,” Vangie replied, eyeing his glass as she filed computer disks, the fine nostrils pinched with disdain as though the disks were industrial waste. “I hope it’s not catchin’, Wes. You’ll have me drinking over yours.”
“I’ll bite: What’s my foolishness?”
“Liquor.” She saw the defensive set of his jaw and jabbed her flow pen in his direction like a schoolmarm. “And don’t twitch your face at me, Wesley Peel. This is after-hours, and on my own time I will say what I think. I’m not the only one who thinks so.”
“For example?”
“Never you mind. They just don’t worry about you enough to get in a flap with you about it.”
Wes, studying her with a faint smile: “You do, though.” When she blushed, Vangie looked every inch a full-blooded Caddo. “Hmph. With two brothers and two sisters, I’m flap-proof.”
“So I’ve noticed. Funny, in the three years*you’ve been here, I never knew you were firom a big family.”
“Cajun Catholics. What other kind is there in Crowley, Louisiana? And you’re trying to change the subject.”
“Part of my charm.” He grinned the killer smile.
“Or so you say. You’d charm me more without that glass in your hand, ’ ’ she retorted, and took her lower lip in her teeth as, with deliberate care, he set the glass down. “Oh my. That was not a come-on, Wes.”
“I know it. And that’s part of your charm; speaking your mind.” He sighed and stood up, reaching for a tubular roll of plastic sheeting that stood on end behind his desk. “Well, it’s time I went home where I can drink without kibitzers. Relax, Vangie; booze is only a hobby, like this sheeting. Wait ’til you see it tomorrow.”
“Is that what you do up there in that big old house, between parties? Just drink and play with plastic?”
“Don’t knock it. I’ve built life-sized manikins of all the female staff from this plastic.” Straight-faced, he stroked the milky sheeting with a fingertip. “So nobody complains when I squeeze the Charmin’.”
A three-beat pause before she shook her head with a knowing smile. “That is truly tacky, and I don’t believe it. My ex would do that, but not you.” She finished her filing and locked the storage drawer.
He lifted the roll of plastic. “Then what will I do with it, if you know so got-damn’ much?”
She pursed her lips in thought, elevated her brows, then said, “You build manikins of Kaplan and Schultheis and Al-lington.”
“Lady, have you ever got me wrong.”
“Hear me out. And then you sit them down and have executive meetings and press a button and they all nod their heads and applaud.”
Wes guffawed until the ceiling reverberated. “Great idea; maybe I will! It’s the only way I’ll ever enjoy that fantasy.” Sobering: “But this sheeting is already spoken for. If I can get it stretched and heated just right, it’ll be molded into a model of Delta One sometime tonight. I’ve spent two weeks building molds, and that’s the lion’s share of the job.”
The dark, tilted eyes regarded him curiously. “I guess we weren’t joking altogether, were we? What you do at home is put flesh on your fantasies - in miniature, as it were. No wonder you come in so often looking hung over. You stay up half the night working.”
“More like playing, and this time it’ll be all night, most likely.”
“You can’t afford that, Mister Peel, suh,” she said, using her best executive assistant drawl. “You have those nabobs from Santa Fe right here in this office at ten a.m. That’s,” she glanced at the clock, “fifteen hours from now. You don’t want to feel like somethin’ the cat dragged in, not to mention how you’ll look.”
“Hell, that’s right. But I need the model to make a point.
Well, if I had four hands or a slave girl I could be through by midnight. But I don’t. I guess the cat will just have to drag me -
“You are the most exasperatin’ man,” she fumed, pulling the flow pen from above one ear, tossing it down. “Any ol’ extra set of hands would do?” She saw him nod. “Then I’ll do it, but only because I do not want my boss to embarrass the firm in front of the rep-tied, Brooks-Brothered Santa Fe. I’ve been to your parties, so I know you don’t have a housekeeper; or if you do, she’s taking money under false pretenses. Do you cook up there?”
He had asked Vangie out to dinner once, and she’d turned him down. And an extra set of hands could cut hours off the job, and . . . and a lissome Creole was inviting herself up to his digs, even if she would disapprove of the stacks of magazines gathering dust in every room, and she had a dangerously vexed look that might mean withdrawal of the invitation. “Uh, well, I microwave like crazy. Got a freezer full of gourmet stuff.”
She nodded and got her light wrap, talking all the while as they walked toward the parking lot. She’d help until midnight, she said, but at her age beauty sleep was an absolute requirement. He must remember her Fiero was behind his souped-up Blazer, she said, and he must not drive like it was a race. And he could shelve the “slave girl” idea, she said; any executive assistant worth spit would have made the same offer, and for the same reason.
She said so much, in fact, that Wes smiled into the Blazer’s windshield, thinking about it as he led the way out of Hayward, beyond the boulevards, and up the switchbacks of Crow Canyon Road in the dusk. He had always wondered if anything could give Vangie Broussard a case of the fidgets, and now he had his answer. She might have top marks from Louisiana State; she might pop the eyes of visiting chiefs. But under that sophisticated charm fluttered the heart of a southern belle.
* * * *
Wes’s shop was separated from the main house, he said, to keep its stinks and noises isolated. Vangie knew how to stfetch a canvas, so she quickly mastered the art of locking a thin sheet of plastic into an oblong frame. She said nothing about the growl in her empty stomach - Wes had forgotten all about supper - and helped him arrange infrared lamps over the movable frame. Within an hour they swung the frame into position between the warm molds. Wes levered the molds together and raised a pair of crossed fingers.
He watched die sweep hand of a wall clock and a digital thermometer, then levered the male mold up and pried gently at the thin sheet which gleamed under the fluorescents, deeply contoured within the female mold. N
Vangie “oohed” as the sheet poppied free, then “awwed” as Wes pointed to a split. “Mold wasn’t hot enough,” he muttered. “Never mind. I seldom do anything right the first time.”
They repeated the routine, this time with success, and Wes trundled the second set of molds into place. Vangie turned the completed piece over in her hands, marveling at the painstaking work behind the models that emerged from this high tech hobby shop. It weighed only a few grams but spanned over three feet; the flat lower half of a lilliputian Delta One, complete with a faint bulge representing its control cabin.
By midnight, cementing minor bits in place after the upper and lower shapes were joined, the two of them sat back on high stools and slapped hands gently. Wes pronounced it a failure because it weighed a few grams too much to float when filled with helium from his welding tanks. Vangie pronounced it a success because, holding it in both hands, peering at the tiny shrouded propellers and indentations of control surfaces, she could imagine it as a four-hundred foot leviathan.
“I’ve got goose bumps,” she admitted, setting the model down carefully.
�
�I’ve got a thirst,” he rejoined, reaching for a bottle that stood on a nearby workbench. “Celebration time.”
He poured scotch into paper cups; touched his to hers; tossed it down. She sipped. “Congratulations,” she smiled. “You haven’t touched this all evening.”
He stoppered the bottle, put it away. “I’ve been on my best behavior,” he shrugged.
“I know.”
He shot her a quick glance. “I didn’t mean, uh - ”
“I know,” she repeated, more gently this time, and treated him to a winning smile. “Now, how about some supper before I run?”
A breeze from down the canyon whispered through open clerestory windows as they sat on stools at Wes’s kitchen passthrough and wolfed shrimp creole with a chilled Riesling. Wes spoke around his last mouthful: “Is this stuff as good as I think? I take it you must be an expert.”
“Actually it’s not bad,” she said, and “hmphed” to herself. “That’s one thing the Calcasieus did right,” she added, pointing her fork at an empty frozen food carton.
He read the label: Calcasieu Et Fils. “You know them?” “Lord, I guess,” she laughed. “Donny Calcasieu is one of those ‘fils.’ I left him six years ago and took my family name back.”
“Couldn’t get along with his plastic ladies?”
“If he’d been happy with plastic, we’d still be married.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. ‘ ‘Divorce between Catholics; my brother Tib, that’s Thibodeaux, drove a Calcasieu rig and had to quit to save his honor.” A long sigh as she looked out toward the twinkle of a distant light. “It’s a whole ’nother world back there, suh,” she said, exaggerating the accent to lighten her nostalgia.
“I’d like to hear about it,” said Wes, and looked at his watch. “But good Lord, it’s past one. Ah,” he hesitated, then rushed on, “you know you’re welcome to one of the guest rooms, and I know you won’t, and I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed playing in the shop so much, and, and, hell, it’s all your fault. Do you know what I’m trying to say?”
She took a last sip of Riesling, then slid from the stool. “You are trying,” she said softly, “to say ‘thanks.’ And you’re welcome, it was a real education. You’re a man of many trivial talents, Wesley Peel,” she said, smiling, taking her wrap, fishing for her car keys as she headed through his cavernous living room.
Wes sat, watching her go, thunderstruck. What the hell! He said as a complaint, “Trivial?”
She paused at the door and waved, still smiling. “My ballet instructor always said we mustn’t let men think too well of themselves. Don’t forget to bring Delta One,” she said with a bewildering change of pace, and closed the door behind her.
Wes poured himself another glass of Riesling and listened to her Fiero purr its way down the canyon. He was not thinking about the model. He was thinking, It might be a real education to see Vangie in a leotard.
SEVEN
Santa Fe’s men came expecting only to see the maglev maintenance unit, but left with a new concept in freight handling. Wes used models to illustrate the idea. If Peel Transit could develop hardware to snatch a flatcar’s load in motion, was Santa Fe interested?
First they were stunned; then they were interested. Railroad men were always interested in any new wrinkle that made them more competitive against highway rigs. But were they interested enough to share the development costs? They were indeed. Wes saw the Santa Fe delegation puff away, and then he shared a scotch with Vangie in his office. Wes had not even hinted to the rail magnates that Delta One was nearly ready for the tests, the money already spent.
And that’s good, he told himself, because her schedule has already slipped too much. And it’s damned bad too, because her test schedule will be crowding up against our maglev deadline. I could’ve finagled around that a year ago, but not now. If Delta One flops, I’m in hock. If the maglev flops, . . . But he could not allow himself to pursue that one. It could mean bankruptcy, or outside control.
Huddling with his technical staff over the upcoming tests, Wes grew short-tempered when other business demanded his attention. He fumed over the brief time it took to confer with a marketing consultant firm over a new, potentially serious, problem.
As far as Wes was concerned, the marketing firm consisted of Alma Schultheis. Slender, intense, carefully tailored with bronze hair like her brother’s and a weakness for bangle earrings, Alma had borrowed money from Wes to start her firm while still sleeping with him, years before. She might send hirelings to service other accounts now, but never to Wes. With her best curt nod, because she could get away with it, Alma sailed past Vangie Broussard into Wes’s office one morning in May, an hour after hearing his frustration on the phone. She sat down and balanced a memocomp becomingly over crossed knees. “One of these days,” she said, menacing him with a forefinger, “you’ll have a seizure. If I’d known you’d have a hissy over a few rumors, I’d ... I s’pose I’d do just what I’m doing, ’ ’ she finished with affection. Like her younger brother, Alma Schultheis would always cherish a few Tennessee phrases.
Nor could Wes voice a full, heartfelt blasphemy; an inhibition learned at his grandmother’s knee. “Got-damnit, Alma, my local rigs have less downtime than anybody’s! And Boff Allington keeps a running total of accident reports. You have to work at it to get hurt in a Peel rig,” he insisted.
“But not in front of one, with an electric runabout,” she replied.
“So you heard about that.”
“With my brother standing by, watching you risk your neck? Lordy, I guess,” she sighed. “Scared Tom half to death.”
“Had to be done,” he shrugged, and reached behind him toward the liquor cabinet.
“Ah-ah,” Alma said. “How many have you had this morning, Wes?”
“None of your got-damn business,” he muttered, bringing his hand back empty nonetheless.
Alma tried to stop the grin, then let it come, mirroring then-old conspiracy but unwilling to revive it. “That’s true. Well, I gave the rumor problem some thought on the way over. It’s clearly hurting business. There are three ways you could fight it.”
“One, find out where it started,” he said, lowering himself into his chair.
“Won’t help; free country,” she said. “These things usually start based on fact, which isn’t the case here; or with a campaign by the competition. Maybe some of those drag-knuckle NTC people. You want to hear my analysis, or don’t you?”
He didn’t, but said he did. What Wes really wanted was for Alma to magick a quick fix so that he could hotfoot it back to the hangar, to watch while Tom’s prototype crew installed multifuel engines for Delta One’s shrouded propellers.
Alma outlined his options: advertising, discounts on Peel rigs, or just ignoring the problem until it went away. She knew he did not ignore problems. She had left his bed in ’88, the year before introducing him to Tom, in part because Wes Peel could not let problems alone. When juggling several problems, she knew, he would pace the floors in his home for half the night while steadily emptying a bottle.
“So I suggest a carefully worded handout to sales staff with a small discount up front that makes lease-purchase options more attractive,” Alma finished, watching the glaze over Wes’s eyes. It suddenly occurred to her that Wes’s thoughts were elsewhere. “Unless my baby done left me East of the Sun and West of the Moon, for two chickens in every pot in the James G. Blaine Society. And you would, too.” She raised her voice a decibel. “Don’t you think I’m right, Wes?”
Fingers interlaced behind his head, nodding judiciously. “I guess so.”
“Gotcha!” She leaned forward, one elbow propped on his desk, chin in hand, and waited for his chagrin to wash away. “Shall I just handle this, so you can get on with whatever it is?”
He sighed. “It’s my Big Lifter, Alma,” he admitted.
“Oh, my very, very dear,” she said, averting her gaze and touching her cheek with the mock embarrassment of a Tennessee girl meeting a sexual innuen
do. An old game between them, which Alma always won.
Now he was chuckling helplessly. “I meant Delta One. Why the hell do I let you in here?”
“Because I’m more help than hindrance,” she said, all business. “You’ve got Tom to worry over Delta One for you. Or is it something I should know about?”
“No, it just takes forever. We’re scheduled for hover tests next week. Barring problems, our new test pilot will be matching up with a flatcar in early June.” Wes gazed heavenward. “I don’t have to tell you what that means.”
“I’m afraid you do,” she replied.
“If it works, we can unload a rail carload cheaper and faster than anybody ever dreamed. Another bullet for the freeway elephants,” he added.
“Will it be fun to watch? Any marketing pizzazz in it?” Eyes gleaming, he began to explain how it could gush barrels of pizzazz, or become a four-hundred-foot albatross around his neck. And three weeks later, thirty miles away in Sacramento River delta country, Alma saw it for herself, and met Glenn Rogan: two thrills for the price of one.
* * * *
On that morning Wes drove to die test site, an isolated river delta region near San Francisco Bay, in a company van with Alma beside him. He refused to tell Alma why he kept smiling to himself on the way: because, when he’d told Vangie Broussard that Alma would tag along, Vangie - whose proper place was at the factory - had bristled without a word. And every time Wes smiled, he thought, All that and a leotard, too . . . maybe.
The van was packed with video recorders, telemeter equipment for the tests, and the man who knew how to talk to all of that equipment: slim, bespectacled Brian “Boff” Allington, his hairpiece slightly askew under his earphone clamp. So long as his bow tie was straight and his shirtsleeves neatly rolled on his forearms, Boff worried little about hairpieces. He had been known to doff it like a hat to a woman he disliked. Tom’s wife Ellie, for example; though Alma, an old friend, was safe from Boffs darker humors.