Free Edsel by Loren D. Estleman Page A

the record section looking for Bill Haley and the Comets, loudly. I swiveled my stool to keep them in the tail of my eye. Young people had become a threat in ways more direct than the traditional.
    “Movies are in trouble because for the price of ten Saturday nights anyone can put a box in his living room that spews out Clark Gable, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Gorgeous George all week long. That’s why the people who still go to them dress like bums and talk all the way through the feature. They think they’re still home.”
    She blinked and shook her head rapidly. “For just a second there you sounded like my father. The nurses in the home don’t even listen to him any more.”
    “I always wanted to be an old fart.” I took a bite out of my hamburger and put it down. Ground meat had changed commercially since the war. It no longer had texture. They had chopped and harrowed it so fine the raw patties must have looked like unbaked oatmeal cookies.
    “Well, congratulations.” Her forehead broke into a stack of creases that didn’t go away when it relaxed. That depressed me somehow. I was more sensitive to signs of decomposition in my contemporaries than I was in myself. “I am worried about you, you know. You treat change as some kind of contagious disease. If you thought you could avoid it by bundling up and breathing bottled oxygen, you would.”
    “I don’t mind change when there’s purpose in it. I’m not opposed to change. I just changed jobs.”
    “No, you changed employers. You’re still a flack. Or I think you are. You still haven’t said just what it is you’re doing for Sonny. And don’t tell me you’re the one who fixes the radios so they turn off when they go under a bridge.”
    I felt my face wince and poured coffee into it to cover up. That popular condescending nickname for the scion of the Ford family had never bothered me before I went to work for him. I’d used it myself once or twice. I belonged to that age group that didn’t run down the man who signed its paychecks, or at least I hoped I did. I wasn’t even sure I could spell sycophant, let alone be one. “I’m supposed to see to it that Ford doesn’t become a division of GM. Aside from that I’ve been told to avoid specifics.”
    “Ah. Another Cadillac.”
    This time I didn’t cover up worth a damn. She grinned beatifically. “Come on, Connie. They’ve been wanting to crack the luxury-car market ever since the old man died. The Lincoln didn’t do it; it’s what you drive until you can afford a Caddy. So Junior wants to put a car in every driveway in Grosse Pointe, and he’s hired you to do the grunt work. Impressive. Very impressive. So how come my delicate stomach juices are gnawing at a raw onion instead of caviar?”
    “If you can find it up on the menu I’ll get some to go.”
    Someone jostled me hard. I swiveled my stool to beg his pardon and bumped into a black-jacketed post-pubescent stinking of sweat and motor oil. I’d lost track of Young America during the conversation and now he and his companion, a hefty redhead in a two-tone Pershing High School jacket whose cream-colored leather sleeves covered all but the tips of her fingers, crowded onto the stools on either side of us. There was a vacant pair of stools at the end of the counter, but the pair had ignored them.
    The boy grinned past me at his date. Pink tongue showed where his front teeth were missing. “Pass the salt.”
    Red skidded the grenade-shaped shaker his way, bumping up Agnes’ elbow as she did so. Toothless poured salt into a tin ashtray in front of him and set down the shaker with a bang.
    “Pass the ketchup.”
    Bumping me with his shoulder, Toothless lunged for the red plastic squirter and rolled it down the counter. Red grabbed it and squeezed half a cup of the viscous contents onto the Formica top. A drop flew off the nozzle as she jerked the container upright and landed on Agnes’ sleeve. She jumped.
    “Pass the pepper.”
    I caught the