Arthur Hailey - Wheels

A waiter bustled up. "Veal Parmigiana's good today." At Joe & Rose no one bothered with frills like menus.

Barbara and Nigel Knox nodded. "Okay, with noodles," Osch told the waiter. "And martinis all around."

Already, Barbara realized, the liquor had relaxed them. Now, the session was following a familiar pattern - at first gloomy, then self-consoling; soon, after one more martini probably, it would become philosophic. In her own few years at the OJL agency she had attended several postmortems of this kind, in New York at advertising "in" places like Joe & Rose, in Detroit at the Caucus Club or Jim's Garage, downtown. It was at the Caucus she had once seen an elderly advertising man break down and sob because months of his work had been brusquely thrown out an hour earlier.

"I worked at an agency once," Osch said, "where we lost a car account. It happened just before the weekend; nobody expected it, except the other agency which took the account away from us. We called it 'Black Friday."'

He fingered the stem of his glass, looking back across the years. "A hundred agency people were fired that Friday afternoon. Others didn't wait to be fired; they knew there was nothing left for them, so they scurried up and down Madison and Third, trying for jobs at other places before they closed. Guys were scared. A good many had fancy homes, big mortgages, kids in college. Trouble is, other agencies don't like the smell of losers; besides, some of the older guys were just plain burned out. I remember, two hit the bottle and stayed on it; one committed suicide."

"You survived," Barbara said.

"I was young. If it happened now, I'd go the way the others did." He raised his glass. "To Keith Yates-Brown."

Nigel Knox placed his partially drunk martini on the table. "Oh no, really. I couldn't possibly."

Barbara shook her head. "Sorry, Teddy."

"Then I'll drink the toast alone," Osch said. And did.

"The trouble with our kind of advertising," Barbara said, "is that we offer a nonexistent car to an unreal person." The three of them had almost finished their latest martinis; she was aware of her own speech slurring. "We all know you couldn't possibly buy the car that's in the ads, even if you wanted to, because the photographs are lies.

When we take pictures of the real cars we use a wide-angle lens to balloon the front, a stretch lens to make the side view longer. We even make the color look better than it is with spray and powder puffs and camera filters."

Osch waved a hand airily. "Tricks of the trade."

A waiter saw the hand wave. "Another round, Mr. Osch? Your food will be here soon."

The creative chief nodded.

Barbara insisted, "It's still a nonexistent car."

"That's jolly good!" Nigel Knox clapped vigorously, knocking over his empty glass and causing occupants of other tables to glance their way amusedly. "Now tell us who's the unreal person we advertise it to."

Barbara spoke slowly, her thoughts fitting together less readily than usual. "Detroit executives who have the final word on advertising don't understand people. They work too hard, there isn't time. Therefore most car advertising consists of a Detroit executive advertising to another Detroit executive."

"I have it!" Nigel Knox bobbed up and down exuberantly. "Everybody knows a Detroit panjandrum is an unreal person. Clever! Clever!"

"So are you," Barbara said. "I don't think, at this point, I could even think panjan . . . wotsit, let alone say it." She put a hand to her face, wishing she had drunk more slowly.

"Don't touch the plates," their waiter warned, "they're hot." The Veal Parmigiana, with savoury steaming noodles was put before them, plus another three martinis. "Compliments from the next table," the waiter said.

Osch acknowledged the drinks, then sprinkled red peppers liberally on his noodles.

"My goodness," Nigel Knox warned, "those are terribly hot."

The creative chief told him, "I need a new fire in me."

There was a silence while they began eating, then Teddy Osch looked across at Barbara. "Considering the way you feel, I guess it's all to the good you're coming off the Orion program."

"What?" Startled, she put down her knife and fork.

"I was supposed to tell you. I hadn't got around to it."

"You mean I'm fired?"

He shook his head. "New assignment. You'll hear tomorrow."

"Teddy," she pleaded, "you have to tell me now."

He said firmly, "No. You'll get it from Keith Yates-Brown. He's the one who recommended you. Remember? - the guy you wouldn't drink a toast to."

Barbara had an empty feeling.

"All I can tell you," Osch said, "is I wish it were me instead of you."

He sipped his fresh martini; of the three of them, he was the only one still drinking. "If I was younger I think it might have been me. But I guess I'll go on doing what I always have: advertising that nonexistent car to the unreal person."

"Teddy," Barbara said, "I'm sorry."

"No need to be. The sad thing is, I think you're right." The creative chief blinked. "Christ! Those peppers are hotter than I thought." He produced a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

Some thirty miles outside Detroit, occupying a half thousand acres of superb Michigan countryside, the auto company's proving ground lay like a Balkan state bristling with defended borders. Only one entrance to the proving ground existed - through a security-policed double barrier, remarkably similar to East-West Berlin's Checkpoint Charlie. Here, visitors were halted to have credentials examined; no one, without prearranged authority, got in.

Apart from this entry point, the entire area was enclosed by a high, chain-link fence, patrolled by guards. Inside the fence, trees and other protective planting formed a visual shield against watchers from outside.

What the company was guarding were some of its more critical secrets.

Among them: experiments with new cars, trucks, and their components, as well as drive-to-destruction performance tests on current models.

The testing was carried out on some hundred and fifty miles of roads-routes to nowhere ranging from specimens of the very best to the absolute worst or most precipitous in the world. Among the latter was a duplicate of San Francisco's horrendously steep Filbert Street, appropriately named (so San Franciscans say) since only nuts drive down it. A Belgian block road jolted every screw, weld, and rivet in a car, and set drivers' teeth chattering. Even rougher, and used for truck trials, was a replica of an African game trail, with tree roots, rocks, and mud holes.

One road section, built on level ground, was known as Serpentine Alley.

This was a series of sharp S-bends, closely spaced and absolutely flat, so that absence of any banking in the turns strained a car to its limits when cornering at high speed.

At the moment, Adam Trenton was hurling an Orion around Serpentine Alley at 60 mph.

Tires screamed savagely, and smoked, as the car flung hard left, then right, then left again. Each time, centrifugal force strained urgently, protestingly, against the direction of the turn. To the three occupants it seemed as if the car might roll over at any moment, even though knowledge told them that it shouldn't.

Adam glanced behind him. Brett DeLosanto, sitting centrally in the rear seat, was belted in, as well as bracing himself by his arms on either side.

The designer called over the seatback, "My liver and spleen just switched sides. I'm counting on the next bend to get them back."

Beside Adam, Ian Jameson, a slight, sandyhaired Scot from Engineering, sat imperturbably. Jameson was undoubtedly thinking what Adam realized - that there was no necessity for them to be going around the turns at all; professional drivers had already put the Orion through grueling tests there which it survived handily. The trio's real purpose at the proving ground today was to review an NVH problem (the initials were engineerese for Noise, Vibration, and Harshness) which prototype Orions had developed at very high speed. But on their way to the fast track they had passed the entry to Serpentine Alley, and Adam swung on to it first, hoping that throwing the car around would release some of his own tension, which he had continued to be aware of since his departure from the press session an hour or two earlier.