Wheels

ends up a failure.'

'If that's the way it happens,' Barbara insisted, 'that's the way we'll tell it. We're not doing a remake of Pollyanna.'

'Then there might be someone,' Wingate said thoughtfully. 'You remember I told you - one afternoon I trailed the instructor who stole the checks, then lied to get them endorsed.'

She nodded. 'I remember.'

'Next day I went back to see some of the people he'd visited, I'd noted the addresses; my office matched them up with names.' Leonard Wingate produced a notebook and turned pages. 'One of them was a man I had a feeling about. I'm not sure what kind of feeling, except I've persuaded him to come back to work. Here it is.' He stopped at a page. 'His name is Rollie Knight.'

***

Earlier, when Barbara arrived at Brett's apartment, she had come by taxi. Late that evening, when Leonard Wingate had gone - after promising that the three of them would meet again soon - Brett drove Barbara home.

The Zaleskis lived in Royal Oak, a middleclass residential suburb southeast of Birmingham. Driving crosstown on Maple, with Barbara on the front seat close beside him, Brett said, 'Nuts to this!' He braked, stopped the car, and put his arms around her. Their kiss was passionate and long.

'Listen!' Brett said; he buried his face in the soft silkiness of her hair, and held her tightly. 'What the hell are we doing headed this way? Come back and stay with me tonight. We both want it, and there's not a reason in the world why you shouldn't.'

He had made the same suggestion earlier, immediately after Wingate left. Also, they had covered this ground many times before.

Barbara sighed. She said softly, 'I'm a great disappointment to you, aren't I?'

'How do I know if you're a disappointment, when you've never let me find out?'

She laughed lightly. He had the capacity to make her do that, even at unexpected moments. Barbara reached up, tracing her fingers across Brett's forehead, erasing the frown she sensed was there.

He protested, 'It isn't fair! Everybody who knows us just assumes we're sleeping together, and you and I are the only ones who know we're not.

Even your old man thinks we are. Well, doesn't he?'

'Yes,' she admitted. 'I think Dad does.'

'I know damn well he does. What's more, every time we meet, the old buzzard lets me know he doesn't like it. So I lose out two ways, coming and going.'

'Darling,' Barbara said, 'I know, I know.'

'Then why aren't we doing something - right now, tonight? Barb, hon, you're twenty-nine; you can't possibly be a virgin, so what's our hangup? Is it me? Do I smell of modeling clay, or offend you in some other way?'

She shook her head emphatically. 'You attract me in every way, and I mean that just as much as all the other times I've said it.'

'We've said everything so many times.' He added morosely, 'None of the other times made any more sense than this one.'

'Please,' Barbara said, 'let's go home.'

'My home?'

She laughed. 'No, mine.'

When the car was moving, she touched Brett's arm. 'I'm not sure either; about making sense, I mean. I guess I'm just not thinking the way everyone else seems to do nowadays; at least, I haven't yet. Maybe it's old- fashioned . . .'

'You mean if I want to get to the honey pot, I have to marry you.'

Barbara said sharply, 'No, I don't. I'm not even sure I want to marry anybody; I'm a career gal, remember? And I know you're not marriage-minded.'

Brett grinned. 'You're right about that. So why don't we live together?'

She said thoughtfully, 'We might.'

'You're serious?'

'I'm not sure. I think I could be, but I need time.' She hesitated.

'Brett, darling, if you'd like us not to see each other for a while, if you're going to be frustrated every time we meet . . .'

'We tried that, didn't we? It didn't work because I missed you.' He said decisively, 'No, we'll go on this way even if I make like a corralled stallion now and then. Besides,' he added cheerfully, 'you can't hold out forever.'

There was a silence as they drove. Brett turned onto Woodward Avenue, heading south, then Barbara said, 'Do something for me.'

'What?'

'Finish the painting. The one we looked at tonight.'

He seemed surprised. 'You mean that might make a difference to us?'

'I'm not sure. I do know it's part of you, a specially important part; something inside that ought to come out.'

'Like a tapeworm?'

She shook her head. 'A great talent, just as Leonard said. One that the auto industry won't ever give its proper chance to, not if you stay with car designing, and grow old that way.'

'Listen! I'll finish the painting. I intended to, anyway. But you're in the car racket, too. Where's your loyalty?'

'At the office,' Barbara said. 'I only wear it until five o'clock. Right now I'm me, which is why I want you to be you - the best, real Brett DeLosanto.'

'How'd I know him if I met the guy?' Brett mused. 'Okay, so painting sends me, sure. But d'you know what the odds are against an artist, any artist, becoming great, getting recognized and, incidentally, well paid?'

They swung into the driveway of the modest bungalow where Barbara and her father lived. A gray hardtop was in the garage ahead of them. 'Your old man's home,' Brett said. 'It suddenly feels chilly.'

Matt Zaleski was in his orchid atrium, which adjoined the kitchen, and looked up as Brett and Barbara came in through the bungalow's side door.

Matt had built the atrium soon after buying the house eighteen years ago, on migrating here from Wyandotte. At that time the move northward to Royal Oak had represented Matt's economic advancement from his boyhood milieu and that of his Polish parents. The orchid atrium had been intended to provide a soothing hobby, offsetting the mental stress of helping run an auto plant. It seldom had. Instead, while Matt still loved the exotic sight, texture, and sometimes scent of orchids, a growing weariness during his hours at home had changed the care of them from pleasure to a chore, though one which, mentally, he could never quite discard.

Tonight, he had come in an hour ago, having stayed late at the assembly plant because of some critical materials shortages, and after a sketchy supper, realized there was some potting and rearrangement which could be put off no longer. By the time he heard Brett's car arrive, Matt had relocated several plants, the latest a yellow-purple Masdevallia triangularis, now placed where air movement and humidity would be better. He was misting the flower tenderly when the two came in.

Brett appeared at the open atrium doorway. 'Hi, Mr. Z.'

Matt Zaleski, who disliked being called Mr. Z., though several others at the plant addressed him that way, grunted what could have been a greeting. Barbara joined them, kissed her father briefly, then returned to the kitchen and began making a hot malted drink for them all.

'Gee'' Brett said. Determined to be genial, he inspected the tiers and hanging baskets of orchids. 'It's great to have lots of spare time you can spend on a setup like this.' He failed to notice a tightening of Matt's mouth.