Arthur Hailey: Wheels

During her initiation to marriage, in Detroit, she had followed the same pattern, rising early with Adam and preparing breakfast which they ate together - he zestfully, and loudly appreciative of Erica's natural talent for cooking which she used with imagination, even for simplest meals.

By her own wish they had no live-in help, and Erica kept busy, especially since Adam's twin sons, Greg and Kirk, who were at prep school nearby, came home during most weekends and holidays.

That was the time when she had been worried about her acceptance by the boys - Adam had divorced their mother earlier the same year, only a few months before meeting Erica and the beginning of their brief, jet-speed courtship. But Erica had been accepted at once by Greg and Kirk -even gratefully, it seemed, since they had seen little of either of their parents over several preceding years, Adam being immersed in his work, and the boys' mother, Francine, traveling frequently abroad, as she still did. Besides, Erica was closer to the boys' own age. She had been barely twenty-one then, Adam eighteen years her senior, though the differences in ages hadn't seemed to matter. Of course, the gap of years between Adam and Erica was still the same, except that nowadays - five years later - it seemed wider.

A reason, obviously, was that at the beginning they had devoured each other sexually. They first made love - tempestuously - on a moonlit Bahamas beach. Erica remembered still: the warm, jasmine-scented night, white sand, softly lapping water, a breeze stirring palm trees, music drifting from a lighted cruise ship in Nassau harbor. They had known each other for a few days only. Adam had been holidaying - an aftermath to his divorce - with friends at Lyford Cay who introduced him to Erica at a Nassau night spot, Charley Charley's. They spent all next day together, and others afterward.

The night on the beach was not their first time there. But on the earlier occasions she had resisted Adam; now, she learned, she could resist no longer, and only whisper helplessly, "I can get pregnant."

He had whispered back, "You're going to marry me. So it doesn't matter."

She had not become pregnant, though many times since she wished she had.

From then on, and into marriage a month later, they made love frequently and passionately - almost unfailingly each night, then expending themselves further (but, oh, how gloriously) on awakening in the morning. Even back in Detroit the night and morning love-making persisted, despite Adam's early work start which, Erica quickly discovered, was part of an auto executive's life.

But as months went by and, after that, the first few years, Adam's passion lessened. For either of them it could never have sustained itself at the original fevered pace; Erica realized that. But what she had not expected was that the decline would come as early as it had, or be so near-complete. Undoubtedly she became more conscious of the change because other activities were less. Greg and Kirk now came home seldom, having left Michigan for college - Greg to Columbia, en route to medical school; Kirk to the University of Oklahoma to major in journalism.

She was still drifting . . . Still not quite asleep. The house, near Quarton Lake in the northern suburb of Birmingham, was quiet. Adam had gone. Like most in the auto industry's top echelon, he was at his desk by half-past seven, had done an hour's work before the secretaries came.

Also, as usual, Adam had risen in time to do exercises, take a ten-minute run outside, then, after showering, get his own breakfast, as he always did these days. Erica had slipped out of the habit of preparing it after Adam told her candidly that the meal was taking too long; unlike their early years together, he chafed impatiently, wanting to be on his way, no longer enjoying their relaxed quarter hour together at the table. One morning he had simply said, "Honey, you stay in bed. I'll get breakfast for myself." And he had, doing the same thing next day, and on other mornings after that, so they had drifted into the present pattern, though it depressed Erica to know she was no longer useful to Adam at the beginning of his day, that her imaginative breakfast menus, the cheerfully set table and her own presence there, were more irritating to him than pleasing.

Erica found Adam's diminishing concern about what went on at home, along with total dedication to his job, more and more an aggravating combination nowadays. He was also tediously considerate. When his alarm clock sounded, Adam snapped it off promptly before it could penetrate Erica's sleep too deeply, and got out of bed at once, though it seemed not long ago that they had reached for each other instinctively on waking, and sometimes coupled quickly, finding that each could bring the other, feverishly, to a swifter climax than at night. Then, while Erica still lay, lingering for a moment breathlessly, her heart beating hard, Adam would whisper as he slipped from her and from the bed, "What better way to start a day?"

But not any more. Never in the morning, and only rarely, now, at night.

And in the mornings, for all the contact they had, they might as well be strangers. Adam awakened quickly, performed his swift routines, and then was gone.

This morning, when Erica heard Adam moving around in the bathroom and downstairs, she considered changing the routine and joining him. Then she reminded herself that all he wanted was to move fast - like the go-go cars his Product Planning team conceived; the latest, the soon-to-be-unveiled Orion - and be on his way. Also, with his damned efficiency, Adam could make breakfast just as speedily as Erica - for a half-dozen people if necessary, as he sometimes had. Despite this, she debated getting up, and was still debating when she heard Adam's car start, and leave. Then it was too late.

Where have all the flowers gone? Where the love, the life, the vanished idyll of Adam and Erica Trenton, young lovers not so long ago? O where, O where!

Erica slept.

When she awakened it was midmorning, and a watery autumn sun was slanting in through slats of the venetian blinds.

Downstairs, a vacuum cleaner whined and thumped, and Erica was relieved that Mrs. Gooch, who cleaned twice a week, had let herself in and was already at work. It meant that today Erica need not bother with the house, though lately, in any case, she had paid much less attention to it than she used to do.

A morning paper was beside the bed. Adam must have left it there, as he sometimes did. Propping herself up with pillows, her long ashblond hair tumbling over them, Erica unfolded it.

A sizable portion of page one was given over to an attack on the auto industry by Emerson Vale. Erica skipped most of the news story, which didn't interest her, even though there were times when she felt like attacking the auto world herself. She had never cared for it, not since first coming to Detroit, though she had tried, for Adam's sake. But the all-consuming interest in their occupations which so many auto people had, leaving time for little else, repelled her. Erica's own father, an airline captain, had been good at his job, but always put it behind him mentally when he left an Island Airways cockpit to come home. His greater interests were being with his family, fishing, pottering at carpentry, reading, strumming a guitar, and sometimes just sitting in the sun. Erica knew that even now her own mother and father spent far more time together than she and Adam did.

It was her father who had said, when she announced her sudden plans to marry Adam: "You're your own girl and always have been. So I won't oppose this because, even if I did, it would make no difference and I'd sooner you go with my blessing than without. And maybe, in time, I'll get used to having a son-in-law almost my own age. He seems a decent man; I like him. But one thing I'll warn you of: He's ambitious, and you don't know yet what ambition means, especially up there in Detroit. If the two of you have trouble, that'll be the cause of it." She sometimes thought how observant - and how right - her father had been.