The Stallion

It was difficult for the Hardeman family to decide whether or not to mark the 100th birthday of Loren Hardeman I, Number One, founder of Bethlehem Motors, the nation's number four automobile manufacturer. He was weak and obviously sinking slowly into his long sleep. On the other hand, he was still capable of anger and might direct it at anyone he could identify as insufficiently deferential to him and insufficiently interested in his centenary.

Roberta, wife to Loren Number Three, Number One's grandson, made the decision. They would celebrate with a dinner, to which only the immediate family would be invited. The group that assembled around a table in the late afternoon consisted of Number One, Number Three, Roberta and Betsy, Number One's great-granddaughter, for whom he had named his famous sports car.

The old man sat at the table in a stiff gray suit, white shirt, red-and-blue-striped tie and Panama hat. Betsy had played tennis a little earlier and had not changed out of her tennis whites. Roberta wore her favored stretch stirrup pants—this pair cream white—and a long-sleeved silver lamé top. Loren looked uncomfortable in a blue blazer and white duck pants.

Two bushel baskets filled with congratulatory wires and letters sat on a side table. Number One shrugged at them and declined to read any of them.

Loren read one to him. It was from the White House, from Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. Number One listened, his head bobbing, and when Loren tried to hand him the engraved and embossed card, he waved it aside and said, "Peanuts."

He wouldn't allow Loren to read the wires from executives of the automobile industry. "Boring bullshit," he muttered. "Pro forma. I've outlived their grandfathers."

He drank Canadian whiskey as he had done in the old days. "What's the difference now?" he asked.

The birthday dinner was catered. So many foods were off-limits to Number One that he had not employed a cook for years and just ate the bland meals his nurse set before him. Tonight, however, he was treated to a hearts of palm salad and pompano, with a chilled Rhine wine.

When they had finished and the dishes were cleared away, brandy was served, and only then did Number One wave the bottle away.

"I have something I want to say," he announced. He pushed his wheelchair back and glanced around the table, letting his eyes settle for a moment on each member of his family. "I guess it was Maurice Chevalier who said the only thing worse than living to a ripe old age is the alternative. If you have ambitions to live to my age, curb them. It's not worth it.

"Loren, that car Angelo Perino is developing for you is a piece of shit. It's gonna look like a fuckin' strawberry box. It's gonna look like a Model A. Maybe it'll run OK; I keep reading about how good the Jap engines are. But it won't sell because it won't have a modern look. Remember this—you can't buy a Studebaker or a Packard or a Hudson anymore, but you can buy a Sundancer.

"Roberta, you make sure Loren keeps his backbone stiff. I know you keep his other bone stiff, but I'm talking about his backbone.

"Betsy, I have something to say to you, but I want to say it in private. You give the nurse 15 minutes to get me into bed, then come up. I want to talk to you."

Loren watched the nurse wheel Number One out of the room, then turned and spoke to Betsy: "He's gonna give you shit."

Betsy reached for the brandy bottle. "Maybe not."

•

Number One sat propped up against four big pillows. He wore blue-and-white-striped flannel pajamas. Betsy could see now why he wore the Panama hat. Only a sparse fringe of white hair circled his liver-spotted pate, which made him look even older and frailer than his hundred years.

Her short white tennis dress and her tennis shoes were entirely out of place in what was conspicuously the old man's deathbed room. But she squared her shoulders, drew a deep breath and planted her hands on her hips.

Number One pointed at a machine that sat on a table beside his television. "You think you can make that thing run?" he asked.

Betsy looked at the machine. She had seen two or three of them before. It was a machine that could tape television shows and play them back. She studied the controls for a moment, then said she thought she could run it.

"Good. Pull that big dictionary out of the shelf over there."

She did. Behind the dictionary was a tape cartridge.

"Play it," he said.

She mounted the cartridge on the spindles on top of the big, heavy machine and hit the switch marked Play.

A picture appeared on the television screen. It was of an empty bed. Voices began to sound....

"Goddamn it, you shouldn't have come here! You know you shouldn't have come here." Angelo's voice.

"Why not? The old fart's asleep. My father is sleeping one off. So is Roberta. Anyway, I want you. You can't believe how much I want you." Her own voice.

They came into the view of the camera; she was busily pulling off her clothes. The light was dim and the focus was not precise, but no one could have doubted who they were and what they were doing. She threw herself on the bed and spread her legs. Angelo pulled off his slingshot underpants, but not his white T-shirt, and mounted her.

"Four years ago, that was. I've watched the tape a good many times," muttered Number One. "You are a true slut, Betsy! I wish I'd known you 50 years ago."

"Was Sally any better?" she asked.

"Sally—your grandmother—she was a lady."

"And you were a gentleman...."

The old man shook his head and grimaced. "Angelo Perino," he grumbled.

"You and I are perfect together," whispered Betsy's image on the screen—whispered hoarsely enough for a hidden microphone to capture. She drank brandy and handed the snifter to Angelo. "There's got to be more to it than this—more, I mean, than sneaking a night in the house. Oh, God! Leave her, Angelo! Give her a nice settlement and come to me."

"The best is yet to come," Number One interjected.

It was. After another minute or so of urgent, whispered conversation, Angelo rose on his hands and knees and presented his backside. Betsy buried her face in it, and though the camera saw only the back of her head, it was obvious that her tongue was as deep in his ass as she could push it. Their grunts were further evidence of what she was doing.

"You can turn it off. That was the most interesting part. I do wish I'd known a woman of your ilk even 40 years ago. No woman ever did that for me."

"I can't believe——"

"Would you like to see your father with Roberta?" asked Number One. "Would you like to see her tan his backside with his belt? She puts welts on his ass. Would you like to hear him tell her how great it is and beg for more? Surely you don't believe, child, that I would allow people to plot and scheme and fuck and lick ass in my house and not make a record of it. Is that like me? How do you think I managed to live a hundred fucking years and fuck every son of a bitch who——"

"I was going to call you an evil old man," said Betsy. "You were evil before you became an old man. When did you become evil, great-grandfather? Was it when you fucked my grandfather's wife? Or earlier?"

Number One smiled and shook his head. "I've fathered a brood, haven't I? My son was a fairy and killed himself. My grandson—well, there's hope for him. At least he's devious and has the capacity to hate."

"So why did you show me this?" she asked, nodding toward the tape machine.

"It will be handy as evidence against you if you try to break the new will that my lawyers are drafting—which I'll sign before the week is over. You've been calling your son Number Four. Dream on, you little slut. Your son will never so much as share in the control of Bethlehem Motors. I'm leaving everything I own to a trust. You will be a trustee, but you'll be outvoted by Loren and my other trustees."

"You'll have to fight Roberta."

"I've made a deal with Roberta. I've already put a big chunk of cash in trust for her, and I'm getting rid of her. She manipulates Loren like a puppet master, and she's gonna tell him he needs an heir and she can't give him one. As soon as she can find the right girl for the purpose, she will divorce Loren and let him marry the girl. He will get her pregnant and produce the real Number Four, who will be a Hardeman. When that happens, the trust pays out the money to Roberta."

"You have it all figured out, don't you, you old piece of shit?"

Number One grinned. "I take note that you begged Angelo four years ago to leave his wife and come to you. Since then he has fathered two more children by her."

"Got it all figured out...."

"I think so. The lawyers will be here with the new documents before the week is over."

"You overlooked something, great-grandfather," said Betsy.

"Did I? What?"

"Me," she said.

She jerked one of the pillows from under his head and jammed it down over his face. He struggled, but he was a weak, 100-year-old man, and she was 26 and strong enough to have played three sets of tennis that afternoon without getting winded.

Something good happened—good for her. She felt him stiffen and guessed he was having a coronary. Maybe he wouldn't die of suffocation. Maybe....

She held the pillow in place, just the same, for five minutes. When she removed it, he was turning blue and his eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. To be certain he was gone, she sat beside him for another ten minutes, holding the pillow gently over his face so as not to bruise him.

•

She removed the cartridge from the VCR and wiped her fingerprints from the controls.

He had not made this tape himself. Someone in the house, or someone elsewhere, had done it for him. It would not do for investigators to find missing only the tape showing her with Angelo. She began to move books. Sure enough, she found half a dozen more tape cartridges. She would have liked to see if one really showed Roberta beating her father's naked ass, but she could not stay here and play tapes, and she could not risk keeping them.

She stepped onto the balcony outside Number One's bedroom. The house was silent and mostly dark. She stood for a while, watching to see if anyone was outside. Detecting no one, she tossed the tapes onto the lawn.

Outside a few minutes later, she gathered them up. She walked toward the beach. Then, inspired, she took off her tennis dress and panties and walked onto the sand stark naked, clutching the cartridges. If anyone saw her and wondered why she was moving so furtively, the explanation would be that she had decided to take a walk, nude, on the beach.

(continued on page 82)The Stallion(continued from page 64)

If she couldn't find the remains of a fire, she would sit down and pull all the tape out of the cartridges. Then she would tear it to bits and scatter the bits in the surf.

But a hundred yards south she found what she hoped she might find: the final glowing coals of someone's fire. At the edge of the tide were bits of driftwood and palm frond. She gathered a little fuel. Keeping the fire low, she pulled the tape out of the cartridges—her own first—and laid it on the flames. The tape burned quickly, with a little more flare than she would have liked. When she had burned all the tapes, she let the heat melt the cartridges. She covered the melted mess with sand to cool it, and after a few minutes carried it out into the surf. She cast it out as far as she could, walked out of the water and started back toward the house.

•

No one screamed. When she came downstairs in the morning, Roberta intercepted her before she reached the lanai and told her Number One had died in the night of a massive coronary.

"Well, he made his hundred years," Betsy commented. She had nothing more to say.

It was noon before the formalities were concluded. Even so, word had gone out over the wires: Loren Hardeman I was dead.

A telegram arrived from New York:

Shocked and distressed to learn of death of Loren Hardeman I. My personal sympathy to all members of his family and all his many friends, among whom I include myself. He was a giant of the automobile industry, which will never be the same without him.

Angelo Perino

•

Angelo had heard talk that the old man had changed his will to disinherit Betsy and her son, Loren IV, and to settle control firmly in Loren III's hands. But the will that came to probate contained nothing surprising. Betsy inherited. Control rested, even so, in Loren, who would vote his own stock, and in the Hardeman Foundation, which would vote its stock. A majority of the trustees of the foundation would vote along with Loren.

Angelo was aware that the death of Number One left him with no appeal if Number Three decided to bail out of his new car project. He was staying at Dukes Hotel on St. James' Place in London, a small, very old and very traditional hotel. He had arrived on Monday—a week before Christmas—to meet with the bankers who would finance production of the car. He would fly home on Thursday. Roberta had been there since Friday and would fly home the following Friday. They had three nights.

As far as Loren was concerned, Roberta was in London for Christmas shopping and the theater. Maybe he knew and maybe he didn't know that Angelo was in London, too.

"I bought you a present," Roberta told Angelo as they walked out of the hotel arcade.

She handed Angelo a box. They stopped in the entrance to the arcade while he opened it. Inside was a Burberrys raincoat. He didn't know its exact price, but he knew a Burberrys coat cost more than $500. Quite a present, indeed.

He didn't like this relationship with Roberta. What he had going with Betsy was altogether different. Roberta was a vigorous, noisy piece of ass. How noisy she would get if he turned her out was a question. He didn't trust her.

•

At a Lebanese restaurant on Shepherd Market, Angelo requested one order of lambs' testicles as an appetizer for the two of them. Westerners who ate them did it more for the adventure than because they tasted good. They were in no sense nauseating, but they were definitely an acquired taste. Other parts of the lamb would be served as the entrée.

Otherwise, they ate hummus on crisp Lebanese bread, lots of wrinkly black and green Greek olives, tomatoes, radishes and carrots—all with two bottles of excellent Lebanese red wine.

"Business," Roberta said when she had eaten two lambs' testicles and was cleansing her palate with olives and wine. "Loren would like to kick your ass."

Angelo glanced at the two Middle Eastern men at the next table, which was so close that they could no doubt hear everything he and Roberta were saying. The two men had been talking in Arabic, and if they understood what "kick your ass" meant, they showed no sign of it.

"Be specific, Roberta."

"All right. He has it in mind to oppose the new car—more to screw you than for any other reason. The key is to make him think he's important. What's the name of the new car? Perhaps if Loren named it, he'd—"

Angelo grinned. "I know what I want to call it," he said. "I'd like to call it the 1800. The engine displacement is 1800 cubic centimeters."

Roberta ran her tongue over her lips. "No way. The American public isn't ready for a car called just '1800.' It has to have a name."

"Like what?"

She smiled, at first amused. Then the smile spread into something wicked. "Hey! 'Stallion.' For my Italian stallion. I'll get Loren to suggest that name. Naming the car makes him look big in his own eyes. That may gratify his ego enough to keep him from trying to kill the project. He'll never guess what it means. It'll be our secret, and every time we hear it we can laugh."

"If he guesses, if he even gets the least suspicion in his mind, he'll scuttle the project."

"Believe me, he won't. Leave that to me."

•

The elegant little room in Dukes Hotel had a fireplace, in which some logs had already been placed. All Angelo had to do was touch a match to the kindling underneath the logs, and the fire would catch and burn.

While he did this, Roberta threw aside her black dress, her bra and her panties and waited for him in a black garter belt that held up dark stockings.

"I want to do something we've never done before," she said. "I want to give you something you've never had. What would that be, Angelo? Is there something you've dreamed of doing but have never done?"

"I'd rather just fuck you, Roberta."

"And you better! But I was thinking for starters, to get you up good and stiff."

"I'm good and stiff now."

"And all covered up. Let's see." She reached for him and began to undo his clothes. "Oh my God, you are, aren't you?"

She helped him undress until he was naked, with his engorged phallus standing almost horizontal.

Roberta laughed. "You lie down on your back, lover," she said. "I'm gonna (continued on page 190)The Stallion(continued from page 82) climb on top. That way I can take you in deepest, and I'm gonna have you up to my belly button. After that, I'm gonna suck you dry, until you can't come again, and you beg for mercy—even if you come 14 times. You're gonna remember Roberta as the best piece of ass you ever had. And I've got a notion I'm not the only woman named Hardeman you've ever had."

•

"I'm going to take the fuckin' company away from him, Betsy," Angelo said simply when he returned to the States.

"I'll help you," she said. "But you must never trust my father. More important, you must not trust Roberta. My father would rather destroy the company than let you take it from him. What he really wants is to destroy you."

They had just ordered dinner from room service. Betsy was as she liked to be when she was with him: naked except for a pair of sheer white crotchless panties. He wore blue slingshots, nothing more.

"Will you give me an honest answer to an honest question?" Betsy asked.

"Sure."

"Have you ever fucked Roberta?"

He frowned and shook his head. "Are you kidding?" he asked.

She reached for his hand. "Number One kept concealed video cameras in some of the bedrooms in his house in Palm Beach. He had tapes made of the shenanigans that took place in those rooms. The night he died I gathered up the tapes, took them out to the beach and put the cartridges on a picnic fire. After that I threw the melted remains in the ocean. One of those tapes was of you and me."

"How do you know?"

"How do you think? Didn't you ever get it through your head how evil that old man was? He showed me the tape of you and me."

"And?"

"Maybe looking at it again, with the live me sitting there, is what caused his coronary—that is, if God didn't cause it, to do justice at long last."

"Are you sure you got all the tapes?"

"All that were in his room. I doubt there were any others."

"What's all this got to do with Roberta? That's the subject you——"

"Angelo, I didn't have time to look at his collection, but if there was a tape of you and Roberta, it's very likely he showed it to my father. That would have been like him, to sow a deeper hatred. Angelo, the old man was wicked."

"There was no tape of me and Roberta," said Angelo.

"All right. She's got the same mentality my great-grandfather had. If you ever did it anywhere, you better wonder if she taped you. The woman is capable of——"

"I don't know much about Roberta," said Angelo. "I don't want to know anything more than I know already."

"Another question," said Betsy. "Number One couldn't have made those tapes. So who did? And when will we hear from them? We've got blackmail in our future, my love."

"There are only two ways to deal with blackmailers. One, you pay them. Two, you kill them."

"I like that. Which is why I count on you to make sure my son inherits what he is entitled to."

"I'm not sure I have any influence over that," said Angelo.

"You will," said Betsy. "Soon."

•

"I bought you something while you were away on business," Betsy said after they finished their meal.

He had noticed a small wrapped package on the coffee table and expected that sooner or later she would open it. She handed it to him. He took off the paper and found a small wooden box with a lid that slid back. Inside the box, on a pink silk lining, lay three leather straps with buckles and a dozen rubber rings, plus instructions in Japanese, German, French and English:

The world-famous "Arabian Strap" For the more handsome manly parts For the more pleasing fuck

Betsy helped him follow the instructions. The straps were made of soft black leather about half an inch wide and were fitted with steel buckles. Betsy read the instructions and laughed, but she watched intently as he did what the instructions said. He slipped out of his slingshots. First he passed the longest strap through the loops on the ends of the two shorter ones. Then he looped the long strap under his scrotum and over the root of his hard-on, pulled it tight and buckled it.

"I like the way it squeezes up your balls," said Betsy. "This is good already."

The rubber rings came in three sizes. Angelo rolled one of the middle-sized ones down his shaft. He stretched the ring to roll it over the two short straps, one on each side. Finally, as the instructions said, he tightened and buckled the two straps. His cock, already erect, stiffened even more and grew slightly larger. It stood high and turned a little red.

"Does it hurt?" asked Betsy.

Angelo laughed. "Hell, no."

"The instructions say that if you don't pull it too tight, you can walk around all day with it on, giving you a very showy bulge."

"Like a woman in a pointy bra," he said.

"Put on your underpants. I want to see what you'll look like."

"I'm not sure I can get them on."

He tried and succeeded, stretching the slingshots out in a great pointed bulge. He walked to a mirror and looked at himself. He pulled the underpants off and stared at the mirror.

Betsy pointed at his freakish engorgement. "I want that," she said, pulling off her panties.

She shrieked as he entered her. For two minutes she moaned and grimaced. The strap caused premature ejaculation. But it kept him hugely erect, and he did not pull out. He continued until he had come three times and she had come two or three times.

Betsy hurried to the bathroom to wash herself. When she came back out, she poured two scotches. "You like your present?" she purred.

Angelo grinned. "That was the best I ever had."

"Let me help you take it off. I don't want it to damage you."

She worked the buckles and loosened the straps. "It's your present," she said, "but it stays with me. I don't want you using it with other women."

He kissed her. "I don't want you letting any other man put it on."

"I don't know another man who would be willing to try it," she said. "Maybe you don't know another woman who would be willing to have you with it on. We're a pair, Angelo, like I've always told you."

•

Alicia Grinwold Hardeman was Loren's first wife and Betsy's mother. As part of her divorce settlement, she had received half his stock in Bethlehem Motors. This left her a minority stockholder, but a stockholder nonetheless.

Since Alicia was a stockholder and she and Angelo had developed a personal friendship, it was to his benefit to keep her informed of what was going on in Detroit.

On a Saturday afternoon in August, on his way home from a visit to a barbershop, Angelo stopped by the house on Round Hill Road to show her a set of photographs of the Stallion prototype.

Alicia welcomed him into the house. She had been sitting beside her pool and was wearing a short white terrycloth beach coat. He surmised there was a bikini under the coat. She offered him a drink. He asked for a scotch.

"It seems to me," she said as they walked through the house, "that you used to be an aficionado of dry martinis. When did you switch to scotch?"

"I didn't. Decent scotch is easier to come by than well-mixed martinis."

"Try me?" she asked as she walked into the kitchen.

"Sure."

She had Beefeater gin. She cracked ice cubes in the palm of her hand, under the impact of an odd little hammer with a flat spring for a handle. Into a tall, thin glass pitcher she put ice, gin and a touch of vermouth. She stirred with a glass rod. Expertly, she cut a curl of lemon peel, then twisted it into a long-stemmed glass. She poured.

He sipped.

"A dry martini with a twist, well mixed," said Alicia.

"Well mixed," he agreed, saluting her with his glass.

She cut and twisted another bit of lemon peel and poured one for herself. "When you can't make automobiles or launch great stock issues or run for Congress, you cultivate the small, civilized skills, like making a good martini."

Once again Angelo lifted his glass in salute. "The roads are crowded with cars," he said, "most of them junk. But good martinis are rare."

"Angelo, have you seen the painting of me?"

"No. I understand it's——"

"Yes, of course. I'm stark naked. And it's beautiful. Someday, after I'm gone, it will hang in a museum. Come. I'll show you. I keep it upstairs. I don't show it to everyone."

He followed her up the stairs and along the hall to her bedroom, where the painting dominated one wall and, in fact, the whole room. He had guessed what Alicia Grinwold Hardeman looked like nude, but the naked woman looking lazily out of the painting was more realistically Alicia than Alicia herself.

She was sitting on a graceful Victorian chair upholstered with black horsehair. Like Manet's Olympia, she wore a cameo on a black ribbon around her neck. Her dark-brown hair was tied back. She wore a faint smile, perhaps defiant.

She sat with her legs crossed at the ankles and relaxed at an angle to the left. The pose did not display her crotch, only her belly down to the edge of her pubic hair.

Alicia was 48 years old, and the artist had made no attempt to portray her as younger. Her breasts were pendulous and soft. She was slender, but she had a full little belly. The artist had not failed to depict her stretch marks.

"Not bad for an old girl, huh?"

"You're beautiful, Alicia," said Angelo.

She sighed. "I wanted that picture done before I have to kid myself," she said. "I've had Bill take Polaroids of me. When I'm a really old woman, I want to have evidence that I wasn't always an old woman. Capisce?"

Angelo nodded. "Capisce."

She crossed the room to the window, parted the sheer curtains and looked out. "As the years go by you know that you haven't lived all you could have lived. You think about chances you didn't take."

"I know."

"Not you," she said. "Race-car driver, all the rest of it. You're still at it. You don't miss anything, do you? Do you have any idea how many people envy you?"

"Alicia——"

"If only—can you guess what I want right now?"

"Alicia——"

"I want you to put me down on that bed and make love to me, Angelo. It may be the last chance I'll ever have, to——"

"It could be a big mistake," he said.

She smiled and shook her head. "Don't spoil the romantic, dashing image of Angelo Perino. Don't turn into Mr. Caution. Right now it's perfect. No one can possibly know. Maybe another time will come. Maybe not. I'm not a hysterical woman, Angelo. I know there's no future for us. But by God there's now! This one time, and maybe never again. Angelo...."

She was wearing a bikini under the beach coat. A skimpy yellow one. She jerked it off and stood for a moment with her hands on her hips, to let him look at her naked body. Then she offered herself in the missionary position and murmured and groaned the whole time he was inside her.

It was an odd experience for Angelo. Alicia was not a sexpot like her daughter, not a woman of uncommon appetites like Roberta; she was just a woman who enjoyed straightforward copulation, who was happy just feeling a big hard cock driving deep into her. Only when he came did she throw her legs around him to prevent him from withdrawing.

She held him inside her for a long time, as she slowly came down.

"Sometime again, Angelo," she whispered. "When it's absolutely safe. Don't worry. I won't embarrass you. No risks. Just ... when we can."

Driving home he had an unworthy thought, unworthy, that is, of the fine woman he had just been with. He had now fucked both of Loren's wives and his daughter.

•

"This meeting of the board of directors of Bethlehem Motors, Inc. will come to order," Loren said sonorously.

He had obviously given some thought to the arrangement of the room. The directors sat around a table. Angelo sat in a chair behind them, against the wall, where the corporate counsel also sat. The stenographer who would transcribe the meeting sat beside Angelo.

"You have been given copies of the minutes of the last meeting of the board," said Loren. "Without objection, they will be received as written. You have copies of the treasurer's report. Without objection, it will be received as submitted. This is the first meeting of the directors since the death of my grandfather, and we have major decisions to make. Unless someone wishes to bring up something else, I would first like to take up the report of our consultant and vice president, Mr. Angelo Perino, who proposes that this company build a new automobile. No objection? Mr. Perino."

Angelo stood. He spoke without notes. "Along with the minutes and treasurer's report, you have copies of my report and recommendations. Before his death, Mr. Hardeman the First somewhat reluctantly concluded that this company could not survive in the automobile business if it continued to build what we may call the traditional American car. Indeed, I will go so far as to say that the American automobile industry as we have known it cannot survive if it continues to build what has come to be regarded as the traditional American car."

Myron Goldman, the banker, raised his hand. "Can the company afford this thing, Mr. Perino?"

"The financing is in place, sir," said Angelo. "Some money from New York, some from London."

The directors smiled and nodded. There were no more questions.

"Do we have, then, a unanimous vote?" asked Loren.

He had it.

Loren nodded dramatically. It was almost a bow. "So," he said. "Our company is off on a new venture."

He went on. "I have hired consultants who specialize in product and corporate names. They've been damned successful, also in creating logos. They've got an idea that X is an intriguing letter. Exxon. Xerox. And so on. So, ladies and gentlemen, here is what they've come up with——"

The corporate lawyer pulled the cover off a sheet standing on an easel.

XB Stallion

Loren shone with pleasure. "The new corporate name, ladies and gentlemen: XB Corporation, and the new name for our new car."

The board drank champagne before it disbanded. "Well," Loren said to Angelo, "we bet the store. All I can say to you is don't plan on my going down and your surviving. If I go down, you come with me."

"And vice versa," said Angelo. "Loren, I wouldn't have it any other way."

Roberta threw aside her black dress. "I want to do something we've never done before," she said.