luncheon date at the Pontchartrain Hotel with a man named Hank Kreisel, an auto parts manufacturer and friend, and Brett had driven to the hotel, only to find the parking garage full. As a result he had to park blocks away, and got wet walking back. At the Pontchartrain there had been a message from Kreisel, apologizing, but to say he couldn't make it, so Brett lunched alone, having driven fifteen miles to do so. He had several other errands downtown, and these occupied the rest of the afternoon; but in walking from one place to the next, a series of rude, born-happy drivers refused to give him the slightest break on pedestrian crossings, despite the heavy rain.
The near-savage drivers distressed him most. In no other city that he knew - including New York, which was bad enough - were motorists as boorish, inconsiderate, and unyielding as on Detroit streets and freeways.
Perhaps it was because the city lived by automobiles, which became symbols of power, but for whatever reason a Detroiter behind the wheel seemed changed into a Frankenstein. Most newcomers, at first shaken by the 'no quarter asked or given' driving, soon learned to behave similarly, in self-defense. Brett never had. Used to inherent courtesy in California, Detroit driving remained a nightmare to him, and a source of anger.
The parking-lot attendant had obviously forgotten about moving the cars ahead. Brett knew he would have to get out and locate the man, rain or not. Seething, he did. When he saw the attendant, however, he made no complaint. The man looked bedraggled, weary, and was soaked. Brett tipped him instead and pointed to the blocking cars.
At least, Brett thought, returning to his car, he had a warm and comfortable apartment to go home to, which probably the attendant hadn't. Brett's apartment was in Birmingham, a part of swanky Country Club Manor, and he remembered that Barbara was coming in tonight to cook dinner for the two of them. The style of Brett's living, plus an absence of money worries which his fifty thousand dollars a year salary and bonus made possible, were compensations which Detroit had given him, and he made no secret of enjoying them.
At last the cars obstructing him were being moved. As the one immediately ahead swung clear, Brett eased his own car forward.
The exit from the parking lot was fifty yards ahead. One other car was in front, also on the way out. Brett DeLosanto accelerated slightly to close the gap and reached for money to pay the exit cashier.
Suddenly, appearing as if from nowhere, a third car - a dark green sedan - shot directly across the front of Brett's, swung sharply right and slammed into second place in the exit line. Brett trod on his brakes hard, skidded, regained control, stopped and swore. 'You goddamn maniac!'
All the frustrations of the day, added to his fixation about Detroit drivers, were synthesized in Brett's actions through the next five seconds. He leaped from his car, stormed to the dark green sedan and wrathfully wrenched open the driver's door.
'You son-of-a ...' It was as far as he got before he stopped.
'Yes?' the other driver said. He was a tall, graying, well-dressed black man in his fifties. 'You were saying something?'
'Never mind,' Brett growled. He moved to close the door.
'Please wait! I do mind! I may even complain to the Human Rights Commission. I shall tell them: A young white man opened my car door with every intention of punching me in the nose. When he discovered I was of a different race, he stopped. That's discrimination, you know. The human rights people won't like it.'
'It sure would be a new angle.' Brett laughed. 'Would you prefer me to finish?'
'I suppose, if you must,' the graying Negro said. 'But I'd much rather buy you a drink, then I can apologize for cutting in front like that, and explain it was a foolish, irrational impulse at the end of a frustrating day.'
'You had one of those days, too?'
'Obviously we both did.'
Brett nodded. 'Okay, I'll take the drink.'
'Shall we say Jim's Garage, right now? It's three blocks from here and the doorman will park your car. By the way, my name is Leonard Wingate.'
The green sedan led the way.
The first thing they discovered, after ordering Scotches on the rocks, was that they worked for the same company. Leonard Wingate was an executive in Personnel and, Brett gathered from their conversation, about two rungs down from vice-president level. Later, he would learn that his drinking companion was the highest-ranking Negro in the company.
'I've heard your name,' Wingate told Brett. 'You've been Michelangelo-ing the Orion, haven't you?'
'Well, we hope it turns out that way. Have you seen the prototype?'
The other shook his head.
'I could arrange it, if you'd like to.'
'I would like. Another drink?'
'My turn.' Brett beckoned a bartender.
The bar of Jim's Garage, colorfully festooned with historic artifacts of the auto industry, was currently an 'in' place in downtown Detroit.
Now, in early evening, it was beginning to fill, the level of business and voices rising simultaneously.
'A whole lot riding on that Orion baby,' Wingate said.
'Damn right.'
'Especially jobs for my people.'
'Your people?'
'Hourly paid ones, black and white. The way the Orion goes, so a lot of families in this city'll go: the hours they work, what their take-home is - and that means the way they live, eat, whether they can meet mortgage payments, have new clothes, a vacation, what happens to their kids.'
Brett mused. 'You never think of that when you're sketching a new car or throwing clay to shape a fender.'
'Don't see how you could. None of us ever knows the half of what goes on with other people; all kinds of walls get built between us - brick, the other kind. Even when you do get through a wall once in a while, and find out what's behind it, then maybe try to help somebody, you find you haven't helped because of other stinking, rotten, conniving parasites ...'
Leonard Wingate clenched his fist and hammered it twice, silently but intensely, on the bar counter. He looked sideways at Brett, then grinned crookedly. 'Sorry!'
'Here comes your other drink, friend. I think you need it.' The designer sipped his own before asking, 'Does this have something to do with those lousy aerobatics in the parking lot?'
Wingate nodded. 'I'm sorry about that, too. I was blowing steam.' He smiled, this time less tensely. 'Now, I guess, I've let the rest of it out.'
'Steam is only a white cloud,' Brett said. 'Is the source of it classified?'
'Not really. You've heard of hard core hiring?'
'I've heard. I don't know all the details.' But he did know that Barbara Zaleski had become interested in the subject lately because of a new project she had been assigned by the OJL advertising agency.
The gray-haired Personnel man summarized the hard core hiring program: its objective in regard to the inner city and former unemployables; the Big Three hiring halls downtown; how, in relation to individuals, the program sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.
'It's been worth doing, though, despite some disappointments. Our retention rate - that is, people who've held on to jobs we've given them - has been better than fifty percent, which is more than we expected.
The unions have cooperated; news media give publicity which helps; there's been other aid in other ways. That's why it hurts to get knifed in the back by your own people, in your own company.'
Brett asked, 'Who knifed you? How?'
'Let me go back a bit.' Wingate put the tip of a long, lean finger in his drink and stirred the ice. 'A lot of people we've hired under the program have never in their lives before, kept regular hours. Mostly they've had no reason to. Working regularly, the way most of us do, breeds habits: like getting up in the morning, being on time to catch a bus, becoming used to working five days of the week. But if you've never done any of that, if you don't have the habits, it's like learning another language; what's more, it takes time. You could call it changing attitudes,
