FaceMate

by Steven M. Greenberg

  OK, them miser’ble feet was gettin’ pretty well recovered by now, so up and back on with the shoes and down the hall towards…. Yep, Rachel was in her room, alright. You could see the light comin’ through the open doorway, and with no TV goin’ and none of that screwball music that kids was listenin’ to nowadays, that meant Rachel’s homework was likely gettin’ done. And when Dottie reached the open doorway, well, what do you know? There was her perky little daughter flat on her tummy with a book spread out on the floor, down below the foot of the bed, studyin’ hard.

  “Hi there, sweetie-pie. You must have a test to be doin’ all ‘at studyin’ this late.”

  “Oh, Mom! Hi!” Up she got, and off the bed, and over to the doorway where she gave her mommy a humongous hug. Rachel was as wonderful a daughter as any mom could want. Maybe not as smart as Tommy, maybe not as good a looker—but then who was? But Rachel worked hard at school, not like Tommy who used to thumb through his lessons and know every word. Yessir, Connor would have been proud of his kids if he’d lived to see ‘em all growed up. That’s where they got their brains from, ‘cause Connor was really the smart one, not her. Connor wasn’t educated like Tommy was gonna be, but he was smart in practical things, in fixin’ things. Even now, people always said how great a mechanic her darlin’ husband used to be.

  “You hungry at all, sweetie? You kids get to eat?”

  “Yeah, I had, like, a sandwich and stuff. Tommy picked up from Arby’s on his way home from the garage.”

  “For the both of you then?”

  “No, Mom, you know Tommy. He brought me a roast beef and just ate a couple of fries.”

  “Oh that boy! What’s he tryin’ to do to himself? He’s tryin’ to kill himself like your dad did. Alright, anyways, how ‘bout some of the tasty stuff I brought home from Cosmo’s? Let’s see: What didn’t sell so good today was…. There’s a couple of stuffed pork chops in the bag and some shrimps—they’re really good fried shrimps. One of the last of my reg’lars before I left changed his mind on the shrimps after they got cooked, so Cosmo said for me to take ‘em along for you kids. Oh, and I got some pie like I always bring. Caramel apple—it’s really terrific, if I do say so myself.”

  “OK, I might try a piece of the pie later on. That sounds pretty good. I bet Tommie’ll eat the some of the other stuff, though.”

  “OK, sweetheart, I’ll run on out and check. He out back again?”

  “Where else? I mean—Duh!—where else would Tommie be but in his precious garage?”

  So back up the hallway and over towards the kitchen, then out the kitchen door into the yard, and across the sand and river rock, past the big saguaros Tommy had planted to either side of the flagstone walkway, and past them smelly oleanders which was kinda gettin’ overgrowed, to the big man-door in the metal building that Connor and Tommy had put up eight years ago, and, pushing it inward, Dotty passed through the door and stepped inside.

  Tommy was grindin’. He didn’t hear her for the racket that he made. And so she waited, watchin’, just as she’d waited watchin’ Connor in the old days a million times and more before he up and died on her, still too young to leave his Dorothy a widow of only thirty-five years. Things was tough back then; he hadn’t left them much—how could he have known about that funny, long-named heart disease if he’d never ever seen a doctor before? But there they were anyways, all of ‘em. How can anybody plan? So they’d sold the main garage and a lot of the equipment, although Tommy had kept the tools that didn’t bring enough to make it worth their while to auction off.

  And so it turned out better in the end that Tommy still had all this stuff, enough to do the work he lived for, just like his dad: The big old air compressor that chugged away powerin’ his dad’s old ratchets and sanders and grinders. And the hoist—Old John MacReedy had hauled it over to the metal building in his truck and helped Tommy to pour the concrete that would anchor it to the floor. Oh and Connor’s beat-up hand tools too—Tommy had those—the ones he hadn’t needed to replace; and the big old chest to keep ‘em in that he’d had to put new wheels on so’s the darn thing could move across the bumpy floor.

  There—the grinding stopped all sudden like and Tommy turned around:

  “Mom! I didn’t hear you come in. When did you get home?”

  “Just a bit ago, sweetheart. Rachel told me I’d find you out here. She said you didn’t eat but a couple French fries is all. That’s not good for you, you know.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t all that hungry after lunch, and besides, I’ve got to get this Toronado done for Mr. Crane. You see so far? I’ve got the frame and body nearly ready for primer and paint—all since yesterday—all in five hours or less. And honestly, Mom, I didn’t even want the fries. I just ate a couple to keep Rachel company. So—How’s she doing on her studying for the test tomorrow? Did she say?”

  “No, honey, she tells you a whole lot more than she tells me. But listen: That’s enough for today, you hear? It’s after ten, you know? I’ve brung you lots of tasty stuff to eat. I brung home shrimps and stuffed pork chops and some really good caramel apple pie the way I bake it—you know. How ‘bout I warm somethin’ up?”

  “OK, Mom, in a bit. Just let me just finish looking things over—fifteen minutes maximum—and I’ll be in.”

  He pulled off the latex gloves and wiped his brow: Three weeks of nights and weekends, no more, and the old Toronado was nearly good to go mechanically and all stripped down for paint—a full week ahead of what he’d planned. He’d finish up the engine and tranny in another week—Not too much to do on those, either; the tranny was OK, bands good, valves working smoothly. And the motor—just a set of rings and a rebuild of the carb was all the old gal needed, and she’d fire up and purr just fine. That Toronado parts car out at Coleman’s yard on Route 42—now there was a lucky find if there’d ever been one: chrome, stainless—just needed a bit of buffing and that was it; well worth the couple hundred bucks that Mr. Crane had paid for with a check.

  Tommy pulled the air hose off the grinder and stepped back a couple of feet to take a careful look. The Olds was pretty doggone clean now, the undercarriage all degreased and rust-proofed and ready for paint, the sheet metal straight enough for sanding and final prep, then a couple of spots to fill before the base and clear coat got applied. He’d finish up with the engine and have the whole kit and caboodle bolted in by the following weekend. Good—Great! He wasn’t the least bit tired, not even the least bit hungry; he could have gone a couple of hours more, but he’d promised his mom, so….

  Off went the compressor, back into the chest went the tools. Fifteen minutes, he’d told his mom; she’d have the oven heating up by now, and it would take a while for the food to be prepared, leaving a little time for him to close up shop. He stepped over to the car, three feet up on the hoist, and ran his fingers across the fenders and doors—Smooth, clean, perfect. A little more rust than Mr. Dworkin had thought: A couple of patch panels here and there he’d welded in—you could barely make out the seams, even before the filler got applied for a final cover up. A magnificent thing, this classic Olds, a piece of sculpture really. What must it have been like for the drafters and design team to create so wonderful a medley of leather, chrome, and steel? One more year of grad school—that was all—and maybe he’d be one of the lucky ones who helped produce such splendid products of the automotive art.

  How he loved this work! Every part of it, every aspect, every routine, simple task: Metal fabrication, mechanics, brakes, trannies, the diagnostic challenge of an electrical system gone awry; and then the final finished product—a beauty to behold once it was done: flawless paint, correct upholstery, body panels perfectly aligned—just like the factory turned out—or better: Yes, if you did it well, it turned out better in the end. When you were done, and did your duties carefully, you had a wonder of aesthetic and mechanical creation there before you, a precisely moving sculpture gradually fashioned through the decades by a thousand brilliantly inventive minds. Think
of them: The Fords, Lelands, Ketterings, each one incrementally adding to the cumulative beauty, safety, and reliability of this amazing object that moved the world from place to place. Had the fellows working on the line when this magnificent car was built exulted in the product of their labor as much as he did bringing that belabored product back to life? Ah, how could they have!—No way!

  The fascination he had always felt for vehicles—How he loved this kind of work!— But why? What was it that drew him so irresistibly to such mindless tasks as brake jobs, engine overhauls, shaping metal and spraying paint? These were things he’d done since childhood, as familiar and routine as combing his hair or brushing his teeth. He did them without having to think, without expending too much energy, since he knew all the shortcuts of saving time and work. So why the fascination? Why so much pleasure in doing things you’d done a thousand times before? Was it those childhood memories that pleased him so? Those early years shadowing his dad, watching, learning, helping out? Or maybe the dozens of vehicles they’d worked on together, father and son, adolescent years when he’d gradually grown up. No way of forgetting those prideful words bestowed on him by an honored parent—“Good job, Tommy. I couldn’t have done it any better myself.” Dad could have done it better, though. Connor Mulroy could do anything with a car; he was a legend, everyone agreed; the kind of automotive wizard his son had always longed to be.

  OK, but thanks to the scholarships, the straight-A grades, the sheaf of recommendations from his profs: now there was a terrific chance that he was getting there at last. A PhD in automotive engineering, and right at the top of his class from first grade up. Dad had had the skill but not the formal education, not the big-name contacts a fellow gathers going to a top-notch school. Why, even the legendary Professor Kendrick was in his camp now. “Tommy,” he’d said last year before the spring semester’s end, “I’m going to get you in with the big boys when you’re done.” And Allan Kendrick knew the big boys in Detroit as well as anybody did. He’d been a mover and shaker there for over twenty years before he’d tossed it all aside to teach, with all those managerial millions in the bank.

  Yeah, but it wasn’t the millions that attracted Tommy Mulroy, no sirree. He wouldn’t turn them down, of course, if they happened to come his way—Gosh! look what he could do for Mom and Rachel if he had some decent money coming in—But the gratification of this passion of his for cars: that came not from the potential earnings, but from the process itself. The hands-on: Oh, sure, that was something he’d never totally give up. But there was more for him out there in the automotive world to work on if everything went just right.

  Like his project now at school—the modular car. That was something that would revolutionize the industry if he could manage to get it built. And some ideas he had for efficiency too. Not many people realized it, but nearly eighty percent of the energy of fuel is lost in wasted heat. What if you could capture most or all of that and have it help to move the car? Thirty-five miles a gallon would become nearly two hundred. He’d thought about this long and hard and had some fascinating ideas toward that end. And if he got in with the big boys in Detroit one day, he’d love to try those new ideas out.

  Someday. Someday in the not too distant future, Tommy thought, he might get to realize his dream.

  16

  Those promo pictures had gone out with the finance team, but second-hand delivery simply wouldn’t do for this.

  No, this one was extra special; this one had an aura of sanctity about it that wouldn’t merit the treatment of any ordinary piece of mail. The Magna Carta, the Mona Lisa, the deed to your family’s home—you don’t just stuff them in a wrapper and drop them in some mailbox for the postman to collect. What you do is coddle them in transport, convey them by the securest means available, and deliver them with a respectful pair of hands.

  And so when Eddie retrieved the original and the digitally enhanced copies of that old, decaying photo of Bennie and Liz from Art Lupone in Graphics, he had a choice to make, and second-hand delivery wasn’t the kind of choice he chose.

  Brandon was. Brandon was the guy who got the corporate team through every obstacle imaginable: Through turbulence and thunderstorms, past quarantined borders, around restrictive customs agencies. Brandon was reliable, Brandon was dependable. If it positively, absolutely had to get there safe and undamaged and on time, Brandon was the man to do the job. So it was Master Pilot Brandon Dumbrowski who got the padded envelope and the Lear Jet full of fuel to fly it to Columbus and put it into Rajiv’s awaiting hands all by himself.

  Eddie could send it with an unencumbered spirit and a guiltless mind this morning, for he had thought things through and decided that: Nope, there was no real alternate option, other than to toss the dice, and risk the odds, and run the whole proposition by Ben. Last night, in fact, twenty-four hours after he and Charlotte had dug that precious relic from the closet of Linda’s old room, he had sat with Ben and explained things as tactfully as he could. Ben was in the City for some TV spots—two or three of them in fact—the poor guy had taken the copter in at nine and had been running back and forth from studio to studio all day. But he was available by dinnertime; so Ed and Charlotte had commandeered a limo, picked up Carole at the Atherton estate, and driven the hour’s drive to meet Ben at their go-to New York restaurant—a place called Frisco’s on the Park, finest steaks and seafood in town (or so the critics said).

  Ben was seated at the bar when they ambled in. So they collected him, got ushered to their waiting table; the wines were brought—Frisco’s knew their preferences well enough by now to pop the proper corks and put the standard orders on the grill—Everybody kissed everybody else on the cheek, the girls avoiding smearing any makeup, and they chatted, guy to guy and girl to girl, with preliminary banter, while the steaks and lobster tails and fish filets were being impeccably seared and baked and broiled.

  “So? How did the appearances go today, Bennie?” Eddie asked. For Ben looked tired, but no less high in spirits for his visible fatigue.

  “Great, Ed, great. Getting the message out—not that I’ll need to do my messaging much longer though: Everybody everywhere is buzzing about the FaceMate website. You know?—Half the people at the stations—techs, cameramen, whatever—are checking out the site or else they’ve already signed up. Matter of fact, a couple of the panelists on Stuart’s show had gotten matches back within a week or so—And believe-you-me, they were impressed.”

  “Yeah, I figured so—You know we’re up over two-hundred-million as of this morning. Rajiv emails me every day to brag about the latest numbers coming in.”

  “Yeah, sure. He’s a dynamo, that kid. Alex is the genius, I realize, but old Rajiv is the heart and soul of the operation. Gujaratis—man, those guys have business instincts in their veins. I could sense it when I talked to him that first night on the phone.”

  “And you were right about that, Ben…. So—I was thinking, Bennie: Look … you remember what Alex said that day they flew out to sign the papers?”

  “Said? Alex? I don’t think he said all that much. I kind of got the impression he never says too much about anything.” Ben smiled and shook his head in a whimsical sort of way, but Eddie stayed deadpan as he got to the specifics.

  “About the picture, I mean.”

  “The picture? What picture?—Oh yeah, right—something about putting my picture in his program for a match. Does he still want to do it?”

  “Does he want to do it, you’re asking? You’re serious? Hey, Rajiv has been driving me nuts trying to get a goddam decent picture of you. He’s been emailing me about it two or three times a day for the past four weeks.”

  “About a picture? So? Send him one. Or tell him to tear one out of Forbes this month. There’s a pretty decent close-up in there where I look a little less weather-beaten than I probably do right now.”

  “Listen, Ben,” Ed put his hand on Bennie’s sleeve. “That’s what I really wanted to talk to you about tonight. That’s the reason the three
of us decided to drive in. So—the story is … I actually gave the kid a picture—a bunch of pictures, to be accurate—Publicity shots, you know? He got them a nearly two weeks ago.”

  “Yeah? And?—What? They can’t find anybody who looks that fat and out of shape?”

  “Right!—Hey, I’m the one who’s fat and out of shape, not you, pal. But seriously—They sent me some of the matches—sort of to preview and all. I guess Alex has this fixation in his mind that he wants to impress you, and he figured he’d let me see if the matches his program came up with were close. But, bottom line, truthfully, they weren’t all that close. The problem is….”

  “Hey, I don’t give a good goddamn about finding my double, Eddie—You know that. Tell the kid his matches are great, tell him I’m blown away by the accuracy, make him feel fantastic about it, and let him off the hook.”

  “Yeah, but—I don’t think he’ll go for that though, Ben. That Alex kid is persistent—obsessive-compulsive, I maybe ought to say. He’ll hold onto this like a pit bull whatever I tell him—I mean, the kid’s not blind; he sees the pictures too. No, I’ll keep getting matches emailed to me until he finds something he really thinks is good.”