Somebody said, "Here's where I came in,"
Chairs were eased back. Most of the others began drifting out to their separate studios. The Color and Interiors chief stopped beside the chairs of the two students. "If you filter Junior's output the way he advised to begin with - you might just find a pearl or two."
"By the time I'm through" - Brett checked a spray of egg and coffee with a napkin - "they'll have enough to make pearl jam."
"Too bad I can't stay!" Heberstein nodded amiably from the doorway.
"Drop in later, Brett, will you? We've a fabric report I think you'll want to know about."
"Is it always like that?" The youth, who had resumed drawing finger parabolas on the tablecloth, looked curiously at Brett.
"In here it is, usually. But don't let the kidding fool you. Under it, a lot of good ideas get going."
It was true. Auto company managements encouraged designers, as well as others in creative jobs, to take meals together in private dining rooms; the higher an individual's rank, the more pleasant and exclusive such privileges are. But, at whatever level, the talk at table inevitably turned to work. Then, keen minds sparked one another and brilliant ideas occasionally had genesis over entree or dessert. Senior staff dining rooms operated at a loss, but managements made up deficits cheerfully, regarding them as investments with a good yield.
"Why did you say car owners deceive themselves?" the girl asked.
"We know they do. It's a slice of human nature you learn to live with."
Brett eased from the table and tilted back his chair. "Most Joe Citizens out there in community land love snappy looking cars. But they also like to think of themselves as rational, so what happens? They kid themselves. A lot of those same Joe C.'s won't admit, even in their minds, their real motivations when they buy their next torpedo."
"How can you be sure?"
"Simple. If Joe wants just reliable transportation - as a good many of his kind say they do - all he needs is the cheapest, simplest, stripped economy job in the Chev, Ford, or Plymouth line. Most, though, want more than that - a better car because, like a sexy-looking babe on the arm, or a fancy home, it gives a good warm feeling in the gut. Nothing wrong with that! But Joe and his friends seem to think there is, which is why they fool themselves."
"So consumer research"
"Is for the birds! Okay, we send out some dame with a clipboard who asks a guy coming down the street what he wants in his next car. Right away he thinks he'll impress her, so he lists all the square stuff like reliability, gas mileage, safety, trade-in value. If it's a written quiz, unsigned, he does it so he impresses himself. Down at the bottom, both times, he may put appearance, if he mentions it at all. Yet, when it comes to buy-time and the same guy's in a showroom, whether he admits it or not, appearance will be right there on top."
Brett stood, and stretched. "You'll find some who'll tell you that the public's love affair with cars is over. Nuts! We'll all be around for a while, kids, because old Joe C., with his hangups, is still a designer's friend."
He glanced at his watch; there was another half hour until he would meet Adam Trenton en route to the proving ground, which left time to stop at Color and Interiors.
On their way out of the dining room, Brett asked the students, "What do you make of it all?"
The curiosity was genuine. What the two students were doing now, Brett had done himself not many years ago. Auto companies regularly invited design school students in, treating them like VIPs, while the students saw for themselves the kind of aura they might work in later. The auto makers, too, courted students at their schools. Teams from the Big Three visited design colleges several times a year, openly competing for the most promising soon-to-be graduates, and the same was true of other industry areas - engineering, science, finance, merchandising, law - so that auto companies with their lavish pay scales and benefits, including planned promotion, skimmed off a high proportion of the finer talents.
Some including thoughtful people in the industry itself - argued that the process was unjust, that auto makers corralled too much of the world's best brainpower, to the detriment of civilization generally, which needed more thinkers to solve urgent, complex human problems. Just the same, no other agency or industry succeeded in recruiting a comparable, constant flow of top-flight achievers. Brett DeLosanto had been one.
"It's exciting," the bright-eyed girl said, answering Brett's question.
"Like being in on creation, the real thing. A bit scary, of course. All those other people to compete with, and you know how good they must be. But if you make it here, you've really made it big."
She had the attitude it took, Brett thought. All she needed was the talent, plus some extra push to overcome the industry's prejudice against women who wanted to be more than secretaries.
He asked the youth, "How about you?"
The pensive young man shook his head uncertainly. He was frowning. "I'm not sure. Okay, everything's big time, there's plenty of bread thrown around, a lot of effort, and I guess it's exciting all right"- he nodded toward the girl - "just the way she said. I keep wondering, though: Is it all worth it? Maybe I'm crazy, and I know it's late; I mean, having done the design course and all, or most of it. But you can't help asking: For an artist, does it matter? Is it what you want to give blood to, a lifetime?"
"You have to love cars to work here," Brett said. "You have to care about them so much that they're the most important thing there is. You breathe, eat, sleep cars, sometimes remember them when you're making love. You wake up in the night, it's cars you think about - those you're designing, others you'd like to. It's like a religion." He added curtly, "If you don't feel that way, you don't belong here."
"I do love cars," the youth said. "I always have, as long as I remember, in just the way you said. It's only lately . . ." He left the sentence hanging, as if unwilling to voice heresy a second time.
Brett made no other comment. Opinions, appraisals of that kind were individual, and decisions because of them, personal. No one else could help because in the end it all depended on your own ideas, values, and sometimes conscience. Besides, there was another factor which Brett had no intention of discussing with these two: Lately he had experienced some of the same questioning and doubts himself.
The chief of Color and Interiors had a skeleton immediately inside his office, used for anatomy studies in relation to auto seating. The skeleton hung slightly off the ground, suspended by a chain attached to a plate in the skull. Brett DeLosanto shook hands with it as he came in. "Good morning, Ralph."
Dave Heberstein came from behind his desk and nodded toward the main studio. "Let's go through." He patted the skeleton affectionately in passing. "A loyal and useful staff member who never criticizes, never asks for a raise."
The Color Center, which they entered, was a vast, domed chamber, circular and constructed principally of glass, allowing daylight to flood in. The overhead dome gave a cathedral effect, so that several enclosed booths for light-controlled viewing of color samples and fabrics - appeared like chapels. Deep carpeting underfoot deadened sound. Throughout the room were display boards, soft and hard trim samples, and a color library comprising every color in the spectrum as well as thousands of subcolors.
Heberstein stopped at a display table. He told Brett DeLosanto, "Here's what I wanted you to see."