"Sure. He's still there - on salary. Same job. Retires soon. I buy him a meal sometimes."
Elsie asked, "What's a saga?"
Kreisel told her, "It's a guy who makes it to the end of the trail."
"A legend," Brett said.
Kreisel shook his head. "Not me. Not yet." He stopped, more thoughtful suddenly than Brett had seen him at any time before. When he spoke again his voice was slower, the words less clipped.
"There's a thing I'd like to do, and maybe it could add up to something like that if I could pull it off." Aware of Brett's curiosity, the ex-Marine shook his head again. "Not now. Maybe one day I'll tell you."
His mood switched back. "So I made parts and made mistakes. Learned a lot fast. One thing: search out weak spots in the market. Spots where competition's least. So I ignored new parts; too much infighting.
Started making for repair, replacement, the 'after market.' But only items no more than twenty inches from the ground. Mostly at front and rear. And costing less than ten dollars."
"Why the restrictions?"
Kreisel gave his usual knowing grin. "Most minor accidents happen to fronts and backs of cars. And down below twenty inches, all get damaged more. So more parts are needed, meaning bigger orders, That's where parts makers hit paydirt - on long runs."
"And the ten-dollar limit?"
"Say you're doing a repair job. Something's damaged. Costs more than ten dollars, you'll try to fix it. Costs less, you'll throw the old part out, use a replacement. There's where I come in. High volume again."
It was so ingeniously simple, Brett laughed aloud.
"I got into accessories later. And something else I learned. Take on some defense work."
"Why?"
"Most parts people don't want it. Can be difficult. Usually short runs, not much profit. But can lead to bigger things. And Internal Revenue are easier on you about tax deductions. They won't admit it." He surveyed his "Ford liaison office" amusedly. "But I know."
"Elsie's right. There's a whole lot you know."
Brett rose, glancing at his watch. Back to the chariot factory! Thanks for lunch, Elsie."
The girl got up too, moved beside him, and took his arm. He was aware of her closeness, a warmth transmitted through the thinness of her dress. Her slim, firm body eased away, then once more pressed against his. Accidentally? He doubted it. His nostrils detected the soft scent of her hair, and Brett envied Hank Kreisel what he suspected would happen as soon as he had gone.
Elsie said softly, "Come in any time."
"Hey, Hank!" Brett said. "You hear that invitation?"
Momentarily the older man looked away, then answered gruffly, "If you accept, make sure I don't know about it."
Kreisel joined him at the apartment doorway. Elsie had gone back inside.
"I'll fix that date with Adam," Brett affirmed. "Call you tomorrow."
"Okay." The two shook hands.
"About that other," Hank Kreisel said. "Meant exactly what I told you. Don't let me know. Understand?"
"I understand." Brett had already memorized the number on the apartment telephone, which was unlisted. He had every intention of calling Elsie tomorrow.
As an elevator carried Brett downward, Hank Kreisel closed and locked the apartment door from inside.
Elsie was waiting for him in the bedroom. She had undressed and put on a sheer minikimono, held around her by a silk ribbon. Her dark hair, released, tumbled about her shoulders; her wide mouth smiled, eyes showing pleasurable knowledge of what was to come. They kissed lightly.
He took his time about unfastening the ribbon, then, opening the kimono, held her.
After a while she began undressing him, slowly, carefully putting each garment aside and folding it. He had taught her, as he had taught other women in the past, that this was not a gesture of servility but a rite - practiced in the East, where he had learned it first - and a mutual whetting of anticipation.
When she had finished they lay down together. Elsie had passed Hank a happi coat which he slipped on; it was one of several he had brought home from Japan, was growing threadbare from long use, but still served to prove what Far Easterners knew best: that a garment worn during sexual mating, however light or loose, heightened a man's and woman's awareness of each other, and their pleasure.
He whispered, "Love me, baby!"
She moaned softly. "Love me, Hank!"
He did.
Chapter 14
"You know what this scumbag world is made of, baby?" Rollie Knight had demanded of May Lou yesterday. When she hadn't answered, he told her.
"Bullshit! There ain't nuthun' in this whole wide world but bullshit."
The remark was prompted by happenings at the car assembly plant where Rollie was now working. Though he hadn't kept score himself, today was the beginning of his seventh week of employment.
May Lou was new in his life, too. She was (as Rollie put it) a chick he had laid during a weekend, while blowing an early paycheck, and more recently they had shacked up in two rooms of an apartment house on Blaine near 12th. May Lou was currently spending her days there, messing with cook pots, furniture and bits of curtaining making - as a barfly acquaintance of Rollie's described it - like a bush tit in the nest.
Rollie hadn't taken seriously, and still didn't, what he called May Lou's crapping around at playing house. Just the same he'd given her bread, which she spent on the two of them, and to get more of the same, Rollie continued to report most days of the week to the assembly plant.
What started this second go around, after he had copped out of the first training course, was in Rollie's words - a big Tom nigger in a fancy Dan suit, who had turned up one day, saying his name was Leonard Wingate. That was at Rollie's room in the inner city, and they had a great big gabfest in which Rollie first told the guy to get lost, go screw himself, he'd had enough. But the Tom had been persuasive. He went on to explain, while Rollie listened, fascinated, about the fatso white bastard of an instructor who put one over with the checks, then got caught.
When Rollie inquired, though, Wingate admitted that the white fatso wasn't going to jail the way a black man would have done, which proved that all the bullshit about justice was exactly that - bullshit! Even the black Tom, Wingate, admitted it. And it was just after he had - a bleak, bitter admission which surprised Rollie - that Rollie had somehow, almost before he knew it, agreed to go to work.
It was Leonard Wingate who had told Rollie he could forget about completing the rest of the training course. Wingate, it seemed, had looked up the records which said Rollie was bright and quick - witted, and so (Wingate said) they would put him straight on the assembly line next week, starting Monday, doing a regular job.
That (again, as Rollie told it) turned out to be bullshit, too.
Instead of being given a job in one place, which he might have managed, he was informed he had to be relief man at various stations on the line, which meant moving back and forth like a blue-assed fly, so that as soon as he got used to doing one thing, he was hustled over to another, then to something else, and something else, until his head was spinning. The same thing went on for the first two weeks so that he hardly knew since the instructions he was given were minimal - what he was supposed to be doing from one minute to the next. Not that he'd have cared that much. Except for what the black guy, Wingate, had said, Rollie Knight - as usual - was not expecting anything. But it just showed that nothing they ever promised worked out the way they said it would. So ... Bullshit!
Of course, nobody, but nobody, had told him about the speed of the assembly line. He'd figured that one for himself - the hard way.