Edsel by Loren D. Estleman Read Free Book Online

two-line filler about her double mastectomy in a back section of the Detroit News a couple of years ago the last I’d heard of her was she’d married a trumpet player with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra and settled down in Tarzana. Meanwhile that shot of her with spatula in hand and reactor at her back shows up in every 1950s collage, sandwiched between Elvis and the hula hoop. And nuke plants are as common as instant rice.
    The first fever was still on when I cleaned out my desk, shook Fleenor’s carplike hand, and poked my head into the Snake Pit to wave at the beatnik whose name I never caught, lying unraveled on the swaybacked sofa sighting down his body at a half-finished painting on his easel of a ballpoint pen orbiting the earth. He lifted an index finger from his chest without looking at me and I went on to Research.
    “So you’re really pulling out.” Agnes, seated at her desk with a platoon of potted plants lined up along the edge and a sheet of peel-and-stick file labels in front of her, glared at me over the tops of her rhinestone reading glasses.
    “If you only knew how long I’ve waited to hear you say something like that.”
    She stuck out her tongue. “You ought to hang around. I understand the A. Hitler Gas Oven Company is looking for a spokesmodel.”
    “I thought all the ban-the-bomb nuts were out of work.”
    “Hope Crane’s tits look a little like nuclear warheads, don’t you think?”
    “So does Adlai Stevenson’s head. Are we going to argue politics or are you going to wish me well on my new job?”
    “What is it, anyway? You never said.”
    “I polish the dust out of the hole in the O in the Ford insignia on every car that comes off the line.”
    “Go to hell, Connie.”
    I twisted the doorknob. “Are we still on for a movie Saturday night?”
    “Not if it’s another cowboy picture. I’m still scraping cowpie off my heels from the last one.”
    “ The Robe is playing at the Fox, if your bladder’s up to it.”
    “Worry about yours. I don’t have a prostate. Enjoy the job.”
    The new Skyliner and my old Studebaker had to have been made on different planets by cultures that never communicated. The big Ford held the curves like a cast-iron bathtub and the overhead V-8 thrummed like a bass fiddle whether idling or accelerating. The interior was more comfortable than my apartment. I liked the big green steering wheel, as wide as a manhole cover, with finger contours like bicycle grips and a chromium horn ring that when depressed cut loose a stereo blast that swept pedestrians and lesser machines out of its path like dead leaves. The seat, upholstered in ivory-and celery-colored vinyl, molded itself to my lower half like naked feminine thighs. When I turned on the radio, Teresa Brewer sang at me from all sides. Even the clock worked.
    Its only drawback was its main selling point. That clear Plexiglas insert in the front half of the roof, while affording a spectacular view of sky and cityscape normally obscured by steel and headliner, also exposed the car’s interior and occupants to the sun, in fact magnifying its rays at certain angles the way a convex lens in the hands of a cruel little boy focuses daylight into a lethal pinpoint that fries ants in their tracks. To avoid sunburn I had taken to wearing a hat for the first time in fifteen years, and the problem of finding parking in congested areas was complicated further by the need to locate a spot in the shade to keep the upholstery from fading; or worse, fusing itself to some of my favorite parts when I sat down on it without thinking. I wanted to speak to Israel Zed about it but thought I’d wait until the job was more secure.
    For the first couple of weeks it felt anything but. The Ford Administration Center wouldn’t be finished for two more years, and pending the availability of my plush office just down the hall from Henry’s I was holding down a desk behind a flimsy partition in the Accounting Department at the aging