Part II of a trilogy. Part III will be posted tomorrow.

The diesel thing took the wind out of Chaz’ sails.  Luckily there was a guy over in the Oldsmobile Division that went for it hook, line, and stinker and ended up being the one GM Brass could pin the blame on.  Chaz dodged the bullet and kept his nose clean in his glass office in the bowels of the Cadillac Division.  Well, he kept it fairly clean.  Sometimes there seemed to be a white powder residue of some sort around it when he came back from the Executive Men’s Room.  “All that white still doesn’t cover up all that brown some of the designers would say when he walked by the studio.

His lifestyle irked them.  A new company Cadillac every six months.  An expense account that seemed bigger than the salary of a lot of the boys drawing and modeling the cars he was supposed to be coming up with.  Occasionally they‘d read articles in The Detroit Free Press that featured Chaz Chambers, always with some buxom blond on his arm, wearing something that could barely pass for a dress, with boobs spilling out that she probably still had 48 payments left on.

Chaz was spending less and less time at the office.  There was a lot of time with “clients”.  Entertaining dealers.  Working product placement deals.  Golf tournaments.  Those under him knew how little he was actually working.  Those above him had a lot bigger issues to be worried about.  Toyota, Nissan, and Honda were stealing market share from The Big Three.  Margins were getting thinner than the plots on the John Hughes movies that seemed to be coming out every six months.

One morning his secretary, Marge, came into his office and shut the door.  Chaz quickly tossed the mirror and razor blade into his desk drawer and pulled out the Quarterly Report, though he was holding it upside down while he acted like he’d been reading it.  “Mr. Chambers,” she began.

“How many times have I told you to call me Chaz?” he stopped her.

“Never with your clothes on,” she answered.  “Mr. Chambers, I feel like I need to make you aware of what the scuttlebutt is in the break room.”  She looked serious.  He poured himself a stiff drink off the cart in the corner, despite it being 9:30 AM.

“Go on,” he said. “Bonnie from the Top Floor said they’re looking at you.  She heard her boss say it’s been a long time since the Seville trick, you know, making it the most expensive.  She said they said your performance isn’t matching the hit on payroll,” Marge said, wringing her hand in her lap as she shared the intel from upstairs.

“That’s BS!” Chaz shouted.  “Putting that bustle back ass-end on the back of the ’80 model was genius!  Hell, Lincoln and Chrysler copied it within a year.  What are they talking about?”

“I mentioned that.  She said they need something more than a forty year old British trunk that the competition can copy in a year.  They need something that’ll remake Cadillac.  She said they said you might have been a one-trick-pony.”  Marge stared at her lap.  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this.  I thought you should know.”  Marge was smart enough to know that her career was as dependent on him as the new MTV was on teenagers.  That’s why she’d come in and shut the door.  Again.  At least the last time it got her a raise.

“Thanks Marge,” Chaz told her.  “I appreciate the heads up.  And everything else you’ve done for me.”  The wink at the end of the sentence was creepier than the new big-haired heavy metal bands playing on the radio.

“One more thing,” she said as she got up to leave.  “This came in yesterday’s mail.  The return address says Fort Stockton, Texas, so I figured it must be personal.”  And with that, she got up and walked towards the door, a view he always took time to admire, regardless of the dire circumstances.

“Hold on!” he said as he opened the envelope.  He called her back to his desk and handed her the invitation.  “My cousin is getting married next month.  Make me some reservations on TWA to get to Texas and get me a rental car.  Dates are on the invitation.  And get me someone at the top over at Chevrolet on the phone as soon as you can.”

The wedding was hot and awkward, much like the bride.  Chaz made sure he didn’t let on to his cousin that he’d slept with her the last time he was in Fort Stockton for his aunt’s funeral.  Fort Stockton was a small town, his cousin may have already known.  But Chaz preferred keeping to himself that the family tree was starting to look more like a Saguaro cactus.  It didn’t help that the bride kept winking at him during the reception.  It was particularly uncomfortable when she pulled Chaz on to the dance floor when the DJ started playing Do That to Me One More Time by Captain & Tennille, though he had always been a fan of The Captain.

Thankfully, the bride and groom left for the honeymoon suite over at the Cattle Baron Hotel before the DJ played Guilty by Barbara Streisand & Barry Gibb, or Chaz might have had to pull his cousin off to the side for a little true confession.  Chaz had considered telling him before, but after the accident at the bull semen company he owned, his cousin had never been quite the same.  Besides losing an eye, he seemed to have a temper control issue that made even the bulls tense up before each procedure, an unusual development.

Chaz decided to stop in for a nightcap at the Lucky Lady before heading back to the hotel, himself.

“Charlie!” Jigger yelled across the bar when he saw Chaz walk in.  “It’s been a month of Sundays since you been in.  Park it on that stool and fill me in.  First one’s on the house.”

“Nobody calls me Charlie anymore.  It’s good to be home,” Chaz said.  “Surprised you weren’t at the wedding.”

Jigger leaned in, spoke in a low voice to be sure only Chaz could hear him.  “Didn’t feel right.  I’ve slept with the bride.”  

Chaz nearly spit out his drink.  “Does my cousin know?”

“Doubt it,” Jigger said.  “He’d a never seen it comin’!”

They both laughed, despite the fact they knew they shouldn’t.

“Don’t know if I ever thanked you properly for your advice on the Cadillac I was working on last time I was here,” Chaz said.  “Made my career.  Was damed genius, pricing that dressed up Nova at the top of the whole lineup.  Don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself.”

Jigger just sat back and grinned.  Whatcha workin’ on now?”

“I just pulled a rabbit out of a hat,” Chaz told him.  “Needed to.  It’d been too long since I hit a home run.  They were about to reassign me to Arm Rests and Ash Trays.  Had to go back to the Chevrolet well, but this will put me back on top again.  Turing another Chevy into a Cadillac.  This time even smaller.”

Jigger rubbed the whiskers on his chin and gave Chaz a squint.  He looked skeptical.  “Got any details?”

Chaz reached into the inside breast pocket of his plaid blazer and pulled out a couple pictures.  He laid the first one on the bar.  “This is the Chevy.  They’re going to call it ‘Cavalier’”  Jigger looked at it.  He was relatively unimpressed.  Chaz laid down the second picture.  “This one is the Cadillac.  Going to call it ‘Cimarron’.  I tried ‘Chivas’ again, but they still didn’t go for it.  Might be a copyright thing.”

Jigger looked at the pictures on the bar.  His expression seemed to turn dour.  “You sure these aren’t BOTH the Chevy?”

“No.  No.  The second one’s the Cadillac.  A little BMW fighter.  Yuppies will eat ‘em up like Rubic’s Cubes.  It’ll put me back on top.  They’ll call me ‘The Boy Wonder’ again.  And it’s not going to cost nearly as much to turn this Chevy into a Cadillac.  A lot less than turning the Nova into a Seville.  Barely changing anything.  Each one’ll be a cash machine.”

“But . . . they look exactly the same,” Jigger said.  “People aren’t stupid.”

“Now Jigger,” Chaz said, “I know a little something about marketing and the American buying public.  I mean the dumb bastards are buying Cabbage Patch Kids faster than the factory in China can make the damn things.  I’m telling you this subcompact Cadillac will fight off all the expensive German cars those Preppies are overpaying for.”

About then Rusty and Rex came in and sat down at the bar.  Chaz greeted each with a tight hug and a “How the Hell are ya?” then commented that he was surprised he hadn’t seen them at the wedding.  They both shuffled their feet and looked down, then at each other and grinned.  “Not you guys, too?”  They both tried to hide their embarrassment, but not too hard.

Chaz scooped up the pictures and stuffed them back into his jacket pocket while Jigger popped open a couple Lone Star Long Necks.  “I got a long drive to Lubbock tomorrow morning to catch a flight back to Detroit.  It was good to see you all.”

Jigger came around to the other side of the bar and put his arm around Chaz.  Gave him a bear hug.  Then whispered in his ear, “Don’t do it, Charlie.  Trust me on this one.  Pull the plug while you can.  That ain’t no BMW.  It ain’t no Cadillac.  It’s barely a Chevy in a world that’s buying Toyotas and Nissans.  Save yourself before it’s too late.”

Chaz laughed it off and headed out to the parking lot and his rented Impala.  For all the world it looked like Chad from the Piggly Wiggly in the back seat of the Ford LTD parked next to him.  And a girl with him that looked just like his cousin’s bride.