“I, perhaps more than anyone here, enjoy a hot car. But that’s not the business we’re in. We’re about to build a car for the masses, not for the speed afficionados. I think at the present time, seeking a hot-car image is wrong. That is something that should have been done seven years ago. Today it is out of date.”
The banker spoke up again. He looked over at Number One. “Could you give us your opinion on the matter, Mr. Hardeman?”
Number One’s face was unreadable. He had been doodling on a pad while Loren and Angelo were speaking. Now he looked up. “I think we should build the car,” he said quietly.
The vote of the board of directors was sixteen for the proposal, one against. The meeting was concluded several minutes after that, and they began to leave the room in groups.
Angelo had just finished returning his papers to the file when Number One called him. He looked up. “Yes, sir?”
“Wait a moment,” the old man said.
Angelo nodded silently.
At last they were alone in the room. Number One pushed his chair toward Angelo. “You know that I agreed with you, didn’t you?”
“That’s what I thought,” Angelo said.
“I owe you an explanation why I voted against you,” the old man said.
“You don’t owe me anything. You’re the boss.”
“There was a time,” the old man’s voice was almost reflective, “that people used to say I had destroyed Loren’s father by countermanding every decision he made. That eventually I was the cause of his death.”
Angelo was silent. He had heard the stories.
The old man looked up into Angelo’s face. “I couldn’t let that story begin all over again, could I?”
Angelo let out a deep breath. “I guess you couldn’t.”
But later, when he got back to his office, he wondered whether Number One had been telling him the truth.
Chapter Three
He woke with a start. The faint sounds of the orchestra playing in the grand ballroom downstairs floated in through the open windows on the warm June night wind. He sat up in bed, grunting involuntarily as a sudden sharp pain stabbed through his temples. “Jesus!” he exclaimed, almost aloud to himself. “It can’t be the booze, I didn’t drink that much. Besides Perino told me it was the real stuff.”
He got off the bed and padded in his bare feet into the bathroom. The marble of the floor was cold and he went back for his slippers. He turned on the water and splashed it on his face. The headache began to ease and he stared at himself in the mirror. Bit by bit the day came back to him.
It had begun with the wedding at St. Stephen’s at noon and then moved to the lawn reception at Hardeman Manor from two o’clock until five. Then everyone began to leave. But it wasn’t over yet. They were merely going home to rest and change their clothes. The grand wedding ball was to begin at eight o’clock that evening.
He remembered going upstairs and taking off his jacket. But that was all. He did not remember undressing, but apparently he had, for he was in his pajamas and an entirely new wardrobe was laid out for him. He rubbed his chin reflectively. Another shave couldn’t hurt.
He took the shaving mug with the engraved golden picture of the first Sundancer automobile he had built back in 1911 and began to stir the shaving brush in the cup, bringing up a full white lather. Slowly he applied the lather to his face and then massaged it into his skin with strong, firm fingers. Afterwards another layer of hot lather over the first and then he took the ivory-handled straight razor from its case and began to strop it gently against the leather strap hanging from the wall beside the mirror. A few moments later he was ready for his shave.
He began under his chin. Short, gentle strokes up from the neck. He smiled to himself. The razor was perfect. Carefully then he came down from his sideburns toward the chin, then sideways across his upper lip toward his cheek. He ran his fingers over his face. Smooth.
As carefully as he had stropped the razor, he rinsed it and dried it and placed it back in its case. Then he stepped into the shower and turned the water on full force. First hot, then cold, until he was completely awake and tingling. He stepped out of the shower and pulled a rough towel around him and began to rub vigorously. The tingling of his flesh warmed him.
He began to think of Loren Junior and his new bride. Now he remembered that they, too, had gone upstairs to change and he began to wonder if they had waited. Then he thought of his son, the studious, quiet, gentle boy so unlike himself that at times he wondered how he could have a son like that. Of course Junior would wait. But his bride. That was another matter.
She was a Mormon. And he knew about the Mormons. They thought nothing of sharing a husband with several other women and the only times they quarreled was when one of them missed their turn in bed. They didn’t like to be done out of their share.
Not that he blamed them. He didn’t like being done out of his either. Especially since Elizabeth had always been such a delicate woman, and even more so after Loren’s birth. He knew he was a big man and he tried to be gentle with her, but she was so small that he knew he hurt her, even if she bit her lips to keep from crying out when he entered her. He could see the pain in her eyes.
Good thing in a way that Junior wasn’t as large as he was, though he didn’t think it would matter with Junior’s wife, Sally. She was a solidly built girl even if she was skinny in the modern flapper sense. She still had a big bust and wide hips no matter how much she dieted to get into size. She probably could take all Junior had to give her and then some. He hoped that Junior would be enough of a man for her. Then he felt the heat swelling into his loins and he laughed aloud. He had to be a dirty old man thinking thoughts like that about his son’s wife. But then, he wasn’t that old. He was forty-seven this twentieth day of June, 1925.
He threw the towel carelessly on the floor and walked into the bedroom. He pulled a union suit from a drawer and stepped into it, his fingers buttoning up the front as soon as his arms went through the sleeves. A pair of black silk sox were folded neatly over the tops of his black patent-leather shoes. He slipped into them and locked the garters tight and reached for the freshly starched dress shirt resting across one of the two wooden valets next to his closet.
The linen rustled sharply as he put on the shirt. He walked over to the dresser and picked up the diamond studs and began to fasten them into the shirt front. He slipped the matching cufflinks into the sleeves and picked up the gold collar stud. This was not easy. In less than a moment, he was red in the face and the collar was crushed. Angrily he threw it away and took another from the drawer. Holding it in his hand, he walked into Elizabeth’s room.
He stopped in the doorway. His wife was not there. Only the young dressmaker who had come from Paris to make the gowns for this occasion.
She was kneeling, her back to him, on the floor in front of the dressmaker’s form and placing some pins in the fold of a skirt. She had been humming quietly to herself as she worked. Suddenly she became aware of him and the humming stopped. She looked back without getting to her feet, then rose swiftly, raising her eyes to his face.
Her eyes were dark blue, almost purple in tone against her white skin surrounded by heavy black hair drawn tightly in a chignon behind her head. He stared at her as if it were the first time he saw her. They were deep limpid eyes and a hidden light seemed to be lurking in their depths.
After a moment, he found his voice. It sounded harsh and strange to his own ears. “Where’s Mrs. Hardeman?”
Her eyes dropped. “Downstairs, Monsieur.” Her voice was low and with the faintest hint of accent. “She is greeting the guests.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine o’clock, Monsieur.”
“Damn!” he swore. “Why didn’t someone wake me?”
“I think Madame tried,” she said, raising her eyes again. “But you would not, how you say it, awaken up?”
He started back to his room, his fingers fumbling with the collar stud
. Suddenly he turned back to her. “I can’t fasten this damn thing.”
“Perhaps I can be of help, Monsieur,” she said, coming toward him.
He placed the studs in her outstretched palm. She reached up toward his collar. “You are tall, Monsieur. You will have to bend a little.”
He leaned toward her. For a moment her eyes looked into his, then turned away. Her fingers were light and sure as she pressed the stud into the back of the collar. She then tried to match the front of the collar to the shirt. It didn’t work.
She looked closely at the collar and then laughed. “No wonder you could not place the stud,” she said. “You have made the buttons in the wrong buttonhole.”
He felt the shirt. She was right. He had matched the buttons and the studs one buttonhole short. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, his fingers clumsily trying to unfasten them.
“Let me, Monsieur,” she said. The faint scent of her perfume came to him as her fingers flew down his shirt front rearranging the buttons.
He felt the sudden strong surge of heat in his loins as her fingers came down to the bottom buttons. He felt his face begin to redden. He could tell that she was aware of what was happening to him, though she gave no sign. He felt he had to say something. “What’s your name?” he asked awkwardly.
“Roxanne, Monsieur,” she answered, not looking up. She was at the third button from the bottom of the shirt and moving down to the second.
He felt the pressure growing stronger against his union suit. A quick downward glance revealed his deepest fears. The swelling against his underwear was unmistakable. He bent his hips back away from her hand, trying to keep himself away from her. The position was awkward and also hopeless. By the time her fingers reached the last button, his phallus was swollen and beating against his shirt.
She stopped suddenly and looked up into his face. She did not raise her hands, her eyes were very wide. Her mouth opened slightly as if she caught her breath, but she did not speak.
He stared down into her eyes. After a moment, he spoke. “How much?”
Her eyes did not waver. “I would like to stay here and open a small shop, Monsieur. There is nothing for me in Paris.”
“You’ve got it,” he said in a harsh voice.
She seemed to nod slightly and slowly sank to her knees before him. Gently her fingers opened his union suit and he sprang out at her like an angry lion from its cage. Carefully she peeled back his foreskin, exposing his red and angry glans, and took him in both hands, one behind the other as if she were grasping a baseball bat. She stared at it in wonder. “C’est formidable. Un vrai canon.”
He laughed deep in his chest. He did not know the meaning of her words, but he did recognize the tone. It was not the only time he had heard it in a woman’s voice when she first saw him. “You’re French, aren’t you?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Well, then, French it.”
She opened her mouth wide and placed it on him. He felt the tiny sharpness of her teeth on his raw glans and in his excitement dug his hands deep into the chignon in her hair and jammed himself into her mouth.
She began to choke and cough. He held her for a moment and then let her pull away. She looked at him, no longer quite sure of herself, her breath rasping in her throat.
“Take off your dress,” he said.
Her eyes fell from his face and fixed on his thrusting phallus. She did not move.
“Take off your dress!” he said harshly. “Or I’ll tear it off!”
She moved slowly, almost as if hypnotized, without taking her eyes from his phallus. The dress fell from her shoulders revealing round, heavy breasts with bursting plum-colored nipples. Almost sluggishly she began to rise from it.
He tugged angrily at his shirt. The studs and buttons tore, flying wildly around the room. He threw the shirt away and pulled off his union suit. Naked, he looked even more an animal than before. Shoulders, chest and belly covered with hair out of which sprang the massive erection.
She felt a weakness in her knees as she poised to take off her stockings, and she would have fallen if he suddenly had not put out a hand to steady her. His touch was hot against her arm and she felt the fire running into her and the wetness begin to pour from her.
He placed his hands under her armpits and raised her naked out of her shoes and held her high in the air over him. He laughed, the exultation deep inside him.
She almost fainted looking down at him. Slowly he began to lower her on him. Her legs came up, circling his waist, as he began to enter her. Her breath caught in her throat. It was as if a giant of white-hot steel were penetrating her vitals. She began to moan as it opened her and climbed higher into her body, past her womb, past her stomach, under her heart, up into her throat. She was panting now, like a bitch in heat. But there was no other way she could breathe. She clung to him in sudden weakness.
As if she were weightless, he crossed the room with her wrapped around him. He stopped at the side of his wife’s bed and with one hand flung the satin covers to the floor. He stood there for a moment, then suddenly threw her from him onto the bed.
She stared up at him in shock, her legs still open and drawn back, her knees almost at her belly. She felt empty, almost hollow, as if he had withdrawn all her insides with himself.
Then he was poised over her, like a giant animal blocking out the light until all she could see was him. His hands reached and grasped each of her heavy breasts as if he wanted to tear them from her body. She moaned in pain and writhed, her pelvis suddenly arching and thrusting toward him. Then he entered her again.
“Mon Dieu!” she cried, the tears springing into her eyes. “Mon Dieu!” She began to climax almost before he was fully inside her. Then she couldn’t stop them, one coming rapidly after the other as he slammed into her with the force of the giant body press she had seen working in his factory on a tour just the day before. Somehow she became confused, the man and the machine they were one and the same and the strength was something else she had never known before. And finally, when orgasm after orgasm had racked her body into a searing sheet of flame and she could bear no more, she cried out to him in French.
“Take your pleasure with me! Take your pleasure with me! Quick, before I die!”
A roar came from deep inside his throat and his hands tightened on her breasts. She half screamed and her hands grabbed into the hair of his chest. Then all his weight seemed to fall in on her, crushing the breath from her body, and she felt the hot onrushing gusher of his semen turning her insides into viscous, flowing lava. She discovered herself climaxing again.
“C’est pas possible!” she murmured against his ear as he lay quietly now across her. She closed her eyes as she felt him growing soft and smaller. She began to smile inside herself. The woman always was the victor. The man was only the stronger for the moment.
He got to his feet. “I’ve got to dress,” he said. “Before someone downstairs comes looking for me.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will help you.”
But what neither of them knew was that they had been seen. By the newly wedded bride who had thought it would be great fun if she were to be the one who could awaken her father-in-law and get him to come downstairs to his own party.
Chapter Four
Sally Hardeman shut the door quietly behind her and stepped out into the hallway. Suddenly her legs were too weak to support her and she leaned back against the door, trying to control their trembling. She took a deep breath, fumbling in her tiny evening purse for a cigarette. She lit it and sucked the smoke deeply into her lungs. It didn’t matter now whether anyone saw her smoking. Somehow that wasn’t very important any more. Not after what she had seen.
It was true. The stories she had heard. They were all true. Now she believed them all. Even the one her closest girl friend had told her about how at a very formal dinner in Hardeman Manor one night, she had felt a hand sliding up her back beneath her loose evening blouse. Almost before she had become aware of
the touch, her brassiere had been unfastened and the hand came around, fondling and cupping her naked breast.
She almost shrieked aloud and turned angrily toward the man sitting next to her before she remembered who he was. Loren Hardeman. He wasn’t even looking at her, his face turned away, talking to the woman on his left.
Only his right arm was there, behind her chair and under her blouse. She looked around the table. Everyone seemed engrossed in his own conversation. Even Mrs. Hardeman almost diagonally across the table from her was talking to her neighbor. It was with a feeling of shock that she realized no one seemed to notice the slightly billowing movement of her blouse as his hand circled and fondled the breast beneath.
“What did you do?” Sally had asked.
Her girl friend had looked at her with a curiously wise expression. “Nothing,” she had answered flatly. “If no one saw what was happening or, at least, pretended not to, who was I to make a fuss? After all, it was Loren Hardeman.” And then she giggled. “Then when I looked around the table and thought how stupid they all were not to see what was happening, I began to enjoy it.”
“You didn’t!” Sally breathed.
“Yes,” the girl had answered. “There was something about his touch that was very exciting.”
“Then what did you do?” Sally had asked.
Her girl friend had smiled. “After dinner was over I went to the bathroom and hooked up my brassiere.”
That was all there was to that story, but there were others. Now Sally could believe them all. She dragged again on the cigarette but her legs still refused to stop trembling. She hoped no one would come into the hallway and see her like this.
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