“I don’t know, Audrey. He’s got a good set of pipes, though.”
“Okay. What was the first movie you ever took me to, John Naile?”
“We saw Elvis in King Creole five years ago, one of the theaters in the Loop, and afterward we went to that deli next to the Chicago Theater and we both had hot pastrami. How’s that for being romantic and remembering stuff? Huh?”
“And you ate most of my pickle.” Audrey laughed softly, sliding over a little closer to him, resting her head against his shoulder. John Naile still had the “lover’s knob” mounted on the wheel of the Thunderbird, but didn’t need one to drive the Cadillac one-handed. Maybe cars like this did have their merits. He folded his right arm around his wife. Despite her Jackie Kennedy-esque pillbox hat, he could still kiss his wife’s hair. He touched his lips to her forehead. The scent of her hair, her perfume and the new-car smell of the Cadillac’s leather seats all mingled very pleasantly. He’d forgotten to light his cigarette and didn’t want to at the moment; the smoke would dispel the ambience.
“Glad you married me?” Naile asked.
“Well, I’ve had to put up with a lot, John, you being rich and all, with Horizon Industries being one of the leading defense contractors and everything, and that White House dinner when we met President Eisenhower and Dick Nixon. Stuff like that. And then there’s your mom and dad—they’re so nice to me it’s almost spooky! The first time I met them, it was as if they expected you to bring me home and they knew we were going to get married.”
“Get Mom to show you her crystal ball sometime,” Naile laughed. “I never told you about her Gypsy blood, did I? And was that a yes? About being happy you married me?”
Audrey turned her face up toward him and kissed his cheek. She whispered, “Yes, silly.” Her right hand drifted under his jacket, one smooth finger finding an opening between two shirt buttons.
“Quit that!” He wedged his knee against the steering wheel for a split second and feigned a slap at her hand.
“Why’d they make such a big deal about us coming up on a weekday?” Audrey did that sort of thing, picking up a conversation almost randomly. This one dated from when they’d first gotten into the car almost two hours earlier. “I mean, it’s always good to see them; I really love your folks. But you said you had a lot of stuff to do at the office with that new rocket-shooter thing and—”
“Beats me, babe,” he told Audrey honestly. “All Dad said was that nothing could interfere with us being here this afternoon—not even prototyping the launcher.”
Although John Naile handled the day-to-day running of Horizon Industries with a relatively free hand, his father was still president, chairman of the board and chief executive officer. Why Horizon was developing an inexpensively produced, disposable rocket launcher without any indication that the Pentagon was looking for one was something John Naile had never fully understood. With the apparent rush on the research and development so they could move into prototyping, wiping out a full day to come up to the estate was even more enigmatic. “I really don’t know,” he added lamely, “but Dad’ll tell us.”
The weather WLS was reporting for Chicago didn’t match at all what John Naile saw through the Cadillac’s windshield. Usually, central Wisconsin would have worse weather this time of year, but on this day at this moment, it was a classically beautiful November landscape through which they drove. They’d been on the grounds of the estate since twenty feet or so after leaving the county highway. And suddenly, he was reminded of the musical “Camelot,” the song that Richard Burton sang about the sheer perfection of that mythical kingdom’s climate. This was such a place this day, and John Naile wouldn’t have been too much surprised to learn that James Naile had decreed it thus.
John Naile glanced at his watch and compared the Rolex to the dashboard clock; surprisingly, they were in perfect agreement that the time was a few minutes after noon. “You know, how Dad’s pushing how great Cadlillacs are and everything? I’ll say one thing—the clock keeps time.”
“I still like the seats, John.”Audrey Naile pulled her legs up under her and nuzzled her nose against his neck.
“Is that okay for you to sit like that? All scrunched up and everything?”
“I’m not that pregnant, John. It’s still okay for me