“Hmm, indeed. Maybe after we leave your parents’ place, we can—”
“Why don’t we spend the night at Lake Lawn Lodge?” John Naile suggested.
“I don’t have any clothes with me, John.”
“You won’t need any for what I’ve got in mind. Besides, we can buy what we need, or you can borrow something from Mom.”
“‘Gee, Mary Ann? Could I borrow some stockings and underwear? Your son and I are going to go misbehave and—’”
“Hush,” he scolded his wife good-naturedly. The road was just about to split at the driveway leading to the main house, the fork to the left leading deeper into the property. The turn was a little sharp, and John Naile slowed the Cadillac before making the right. Audrey sat up and smoothed her dress. She slid over fully into the passenger side, turned down the visor and began adjusting her hat and her hair in the vanity mirror. As always, she wore very little makeup; when she woke up beside him each morning, she looked as perfect as if she’d spent hours in front of a mirror.
All of this—the very comfortable living he made, the estate which someday he would inherit, and all the other family investments—was thanks to David Naile, who founded Horizon Industries in 1914 and never made a bad investment in his life. Phenomenal business judgment seemed to be a family trait. James Naile, David’s son and John’s father, bought large blocks of stock in obscure companies that always grew into dependable profitability. Who would have figured IBM would have gotten so hot? And why would anyone invest in Japanese electronics? John Naile shook his head just thinking about it.
“What’s on your mind, besides your fedora, John?”
“I always think about how things got started, every time I drive up here. My grandfather must have been a genius, you know? He piloted Horizon through the Depression as if there wasn’t any stock-market crash in ‘29 at all. Horizon’s steel foundries refused to sell scrap metal to Imperial Japan, and our aircraft and munitions plants were already working double shifts before Hitler invaded Poland in ‘39. And Dad seems to have his father’s magic touch. You’d better hope I’m just a late bloomer, babe.”
“It’s experience, John, and you’re getting that.”
“Maybe.” He nodded soberly. Every once in a while, he’d pick a winner in the stock market, but not that often and never anything that weird. His father and late grandfather possessed skill; with him, it was educated dumb luck.
After his stint in the army at the end of the Korean War, he’d picked up his sidetracked life and gone to college. Because he “knew” his destiny—Horizon Industries— he’d studied business administration, but carried a second major in music. A certain natural proclivity for the piano and the Naile family jawline seemed to be his principal genetic inheritances from his grandfather, the natural business acumen noticeably lacking. He’d begun growing into that, yes, he supposed, since finishing college in ‘58 and marrying Audrey that same year. But he had a long way to go.
“Haya Goldsmith was raving about your parents’ place.” Another resurrected conversation appeared magically out of the blue. “Remember when you and your dad had that big dinner for everybody in the international divisions last year? She talked my ear off! Haya loves Tudor; there isn’t a Tudor anywhere in Israel as far as she knows! Did you ever date Haya?”
“No, she was only thirteen or so when Dad got her dad to start up the Israeli division for him, and their whole family packed up and left the country.” Then John Naile remembered something. “I take that back about dating her, though. The summer before my senior year in high school? Dad took me over to Israel with him on business,
and I took Haya to a movie once.”
“What movie did you see with Haya?”
John Naile thought about it, but couldn’t remember. It was probably just as well that he couldn’t, all things considered. Haya was a genuine knockout, the prettiest comptroller anybody could hope for. Finally he said, “Can’t remember what movie it was.”
“Right. You’ve got a memory like a steel trap, John.”
“No kidding, Audrey. Something old with Humphrey Bogart, I think.” Horizon was one of the first companies to pump money into Israel after independence, and—John Naile had learned only in 1960—had secretly smuggled arms to Israel while the fledgling Jewish state fought for its very existence after the British withdrew from Palestine. The man who’d run