Stephanie Doyle - One Final Step

“Thanks, Pop.” It was a lecture she had received before, mainly from herself. She bristled a little to hear it from Ben.

She understood she’d purposefully cut herself off from the life she once had. But it wasn’t as if anyone had come knocking on her door to pull her back into the political arena. She could be as ready to reenter the political world as can be. It didn’t mean she was going to get any job offers.

“I’m not your father, I’m your employer. More importantly, I know you. Go research electric cars and Michael because you know you are itching to do it. Then call him in the morning and take the job. Consider my health-care costs. I need the money.”

Madeleine snorted. Ben Tyler did not need the money. He did, however, need to think he was contributing to the group, helping its members. Especially at a time when he felt so physically useless.

“I’m seriously considering it,” she told him.

“I’ll take it.”

“Yo, cancer boy. Dinner is on the way and you are going to eat some of it even if I have to sit on your pathetically weak chest and force the food down.”

Ben leaned into the camera and lowered his voice. “Do you see what I have to put up with?” To Anna he shouted, “You’re fired.”

“Nice try, Donald Trump. Start making your way into the kitchen. By the time you shuffle here the food will have arrived.”

Madeleine laughed and she could see a hint of a smile on Ben’s face before she disconnected the call. That was what made Anna completely indispensable. She still made Ben smile. And a man, no matter how sick, still wanted to smile once in a while.

Left on her own, Madeleine thought about Michael. Michael, who needed a kingmaker.

This was probably not going to end well, but the urge to reach for it was impossible to ignore. For seven years she’d felt like she was living someone else’s life. Happily, because her own life had imploded into a disaster. Lately, though, she’d begun to feel a sense of urgency. Like if she didn’t try to overcome her fears she would waste away and forever become the quiet hermit she’d made herself into.

She was going to take the job.

God help her.

CHAPTER TWO

“THISISIT.”

Madeleine turned her attention to the flat-screen monitor on the wall and watched a series of images appear. At Michael’s urging, she’d agreed to come back to his office for an in-depth look at the project. Despite having made up her mind to take the job, she still found herself hesitating to tell him.

Sitting with him now, the presentation was less important than observing the man. She watched as he animatedly went through each screen, detailing design changes, enhancements and improvements for the standard Detroit-made car, while at the same time utilizing the factory machinery already in place. He talked about making more space in the passenger seating area and trunk without the need for driveshafts and chassis.

None of it made any sense to her. She was the stereotypical woman when it came to automobiles. She knew they needed a key and gas to work and every three thousand miles the oil needed to be changed. That was about all.

“Okay, let’s talk about money. Are you still with me?”

Madeleine nodded, then listened to him expand on costs. He discussed how many to build against projections of what would sell. And the price of the car and the impact it would have on the average American. Not to mention the nation’s dependence on foreign oil.

Madeleine had to smother a smile. The average American. It had been a long time since she’d heard anyone use that phrase so effectually. Because it targeted not a specific group, but everyone in the country. It was something politicians learned long ago, all American people, rich, poor and those in the middle, still liked to identify themselves as average.

This man wasn’t average. He was extraordinary.

Again she considered the bio on him she had read before agreeing to fly to Detroit. Raised by a single mother in the poor section of Detroit, he found he had a knack for both fixing up cars as well as racing them. It eventually led him into crime when he began to steal them. Incarcerated at the age of nineteen, he’d served all three years of his sentence.

His time served was actually an anomaly. As a first-time offender for grand theft auto, the sentence made perfect sense. But with parole and relatively good behavior he should have been out in half the time. Instead he’d spent the full three years behind bars.

After being released he went to work at an auto body shop. Archie Beeker still owned and operated it, not too far from where Michael grew up. In countless interviews, Michael always credited Archie with giving him his start, with saving his life. While working for Archie he began to rebuild cars from the scrap heap and was racing them in what was called “Formula X” races all around the country.

Not the sleek, sophisticated machines of Formula One and not the stock racing cars of NASCAR, the Formula X cars represented the best designs built with the least amount of money. Eventually through his wins and his designs, Michael attracted the attention of a Formula One team who took him to Europe and the rest was history. After years of successfully racing cars in Europe he eventually retired and came back to his hometown of Detroit to start up his specialty car design company. A company that would eventually spawn the idea for the vehicle he was currently showing her.

Madeleine tried to reconcile the images of the spiky-white-haired racer with the wraparound shades and the sedate businessman standing in front of her in his expensive suit and tie.

But there were still edges to the businessman. His sleeves were rolled up. She could see his forearms were sprinkled with light brown hair. For a moment she was captivated by those naked arms.

“So what do you think?”

She thought his arms appeared very strong. Probably not the answer he was looking for and definitely not something she should be thinking about at all. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had such thoughts about a man. Probably not in seven years.

Another kind of counting she didn’t like to think about. She didn’t know what the fact that it had been so long said about her, a woman who hadn’t admired a man’s forearms in more than seven years.

Cold? Most likely. Overly cautious? Definitely.

“Have I finally convinced you?” he asked.

“I think you believe in what you’re doing.”

“Understatement. Did I sell you?”

“I don’t know much about auto mechanics.”

“Forget that, did I sell you as an average citizen? Would you buy this car? Would you believe you can save money by buying it?”

Madeleine considered that. She drove a BMW. A nine-year-old gift from her father, which was beginning to show its age. He’d given it to her after she’d been hired by the Marlin presidential campaign. Tangible evidence of her success at such a young age. Her older brother, Robert, who hadn’t yet made junior partner at his law firm, had been seething with jealousy when her father handed her the keys.

She should have done away with it years ago, if only because it brought back memories of a time when her father was proud of her. Not that she was hanging on to it for sentimental reasons, trying to hold on to a piece of him now that he was gone.

Her father would disdain such impracticality.

The future was where her head should be. Eco-friendly instead of maudlin and sappy. What Michael was describing would be better than all hybrids on the road today. Definitely a practical choice for her.

“I don’t know,” she said, trying to regain her focus on the present instead of the past. “It almost seems improbable.”