9. Cass
CASS
PLAYLIST: RENEGADES – X AMBASSADORS
Idon’t know why I do it, but I ride all the way from Red Hook through the city with her to the spot on Columbus Avenue I used to race Elise.
Maybe it's the Eleanor, maybe the daring to know who Addy really is. Because Addy is, while looking like an older copy of Elise, the opposite of her. She cares. She cares so annoyingly fucking much that it destroys her.
Elise didn’t care about anything, and it made her reckless.
Addy cares, but can’t handle it, and it makes her a whole other level of reckless.
Like me.
It is like she is holding up a mirror for me. Because I tell myself I don’t care, while I do care. I care so much I couldn’t let the woman I despise for her mere existence kill herself. Which is why I sat with her, why I reminded her of who we are.
She is, and I hate to say it, one of us. She was born to ride; I knew it the moment she pulled the stunt around the corner, and I need to see what she can do on a quarter mile. It’s where the soul of a person shows.
I have raced the Eleanor before. But Elise was young and inexperienced. Addy isn’t, so I’ll give it my best this time.
I come to a halt at the red light.
Columbs Avenue is almost empty, as if the angels in the sky were watching, knowing Addy needs this.
I let down the window and point with my hand to come to a halt next to me. She does, with her window let down, too.
It’s like I am having a deja-vu, seeing the Eleanor next to me.
“Quarter mile is till the third,” I say. “Where it splits. If we get busted, we meet at Red Hook.”
She nods.
The red light counts down.
“Cass,” she says, a weak smile on her face. “You really have to get used to seeing backlights.”
I grin.
“Nah,” I say and slap my girl. “No one beats her on a quarter.”
“She’s too heavy,” she says, the counter reaches five seconds.
The Eleanor roars.
Three.
I let my girl roar.
Two.
One.
We shoot off, and damn, she is very, very good. Her reaction is like one of a trained driver, and she actually leads. Not much, but just enough.
But 1001hp against the Eleanor’s 726hp—she won’t win this one, and I catch up with her.
The following traffic light is red.
We glance at each other.
I don’t even wonder if she’ll do it.
We shoot through three crossing cars.
Honking.
One almost gets me.
She leads, because I had to evade that car.
I catch up.
The next red light.
A truck directly turning onto Columbus in front of us. There is no way—
My mouth drops open as she maneuvers the Eleanor through the tight spot and squeezes herself through the smallest possible window between the sidewalk and the crossing truck without a single fucking scratch and drives off.
It takes me too long to get past a truck, and she reaches the third traffic light long before me.
She beat me again, by doing the impossible.
She waits for me at the red light.
“You’re fucking insane,” I say and laugh.
She grins.
“Comes as a default setting,” she says cheerfully.
“Apparently,” I say. Somewhere in the distance, sirens draw closer. “Let’s get lost,” I say as the light turns green and we launch off. I use my NOS on purpose, so I get in front of her.
The entire way back to Red Hook, we play a game of overturning each other. We race across the Brooklyn Bridge, and when we’re back in Red Hook, we both drift around several corners. I try to copy what she does, but even though I try, her move is so exceptional that I can’t get my girl to do it.
She comes to a halt at the empty lot at Ferris Street.
I stop next to her, get out, and open the gate. We drive inside and park the cars close to the water.
“You gotta tell me how you do it,” I say when I get out. “That corner thing.”
She laughs.
“Prepare to crash fifty cars into house walls before you will be able to make that heavy girl do it.”
“She is not that heavy,” I say definitely.
“Oh, she is,” she says and slaps my girl’s quarter panel. “But we love a heavy girl here.”
I can’t stop the grin cracking onto my face.
“So since when do you drive?” I ask.
“Since forever,” she says. “When I got to L.A., it kind of saved me from myself. Luke and Tommy, who you kindly called,” she adds with a strange emphasis while she sits down on the Eleanor’s hood. “They took me under their wings.”
“You worked for them?”
“Worked,” she says with a light scoff. “I made them the most money. The green snake Tommy still drives? That was me.”
“Why even bother becoming famous then?”
She scoffs even heavier and looks away, staring into the illuminated night above the water.
“You must know who he was,” she says. “His way and nothing else. The famous actress was just about okay to him; otherwise, he would have never allowed me to leave.”
My stomach turns slightly as she mentions the man who abused the love of my life in ways I can’t even think about without getting sick.
I don’t know what to say. I am not someone of big words. I act and think later. I don’t talk feelings. Or things. And I don’t know how to talk to someone who just tried to end her life.
“She never said much,” I say. “I only knew when she—“ I break off. Talking about a dead sister with someone who is already emotionally imploding is fucking stupid.
“Me too,” she says silently. “If I knew—“ she stops herself, twitches slightly with her head. “She was always his princess, I never thought he’d—he hated me. I was never good enough—“
I swallow so hard it hurts in my throat.
“Did he ever—?” I begin to ask but let it trail off. Who am I to ask her anything like this?
She doesn’t answer. Instead, she wipes over her face, apparently crying again.
“What is it with you and all the crying?” I ask her in annoyance, because it makes me uncomfortable beyond.
“Just because you are on the emotional level of a rock doesn’t mean everyone else needs to be a cold-hearted bitch,” she says and I have to laugh.
“Fair point,” I say and sit onto my girl’s hood.
For a long time, we just sit there and stare into the night.
At some point, she leans back and lies down.
“I hate this city so much,” she says, staring into the sky.
“It’s nice when you keep away from the epicenter of suit shit show.”
She laughs. Her laugh is so…different. While Elise had this rich laughter, Addy’s is more subtle. It’s wild that I am here comparing them both, and I don’t even know why my mind does it.
“So that’s what you do?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “My dad had this garage just around the corner. He owned this lot here. It’s our space, for the community.”
“What are you working on?” she asks and props herself up on her elbows to look at me.
“Everything,” I say.
She is slightly taken aback.
“What are you hiding?” she asks.
“Nothing, it’s just…hard to explain.”
“You have a garage; what’s hard to explain? You work on cars, don’t you? Those cars have model names, yes?”
I snigger. She is so grounded…so normal…so pragmatic.
“They do,” I say. “But one of them has a particular attitude.”
“Which one?”
“A 1972 Porsche,” I say hesitantly. Because that Porsche isn’t just any Porsche.
“What’s the matter with it? The overheating or the oil?”
I laugh, because she knows her craft.
“Everything. She has a bit of a temperament, just like the owner.”
Addy sits up and jumps off the hood, aiming to get in the car.
“Where are you going?” I ask.
“Back to my life of shit,” she says. “Now that I am still alive, I have suit asses to crawl into.”
“I’m not letting you go anywhere alone tonight,” I say and push myself off my girl’s hood. “Follow me.”
I get into the car, and we drive the six blocks to the garage and house. I turn into the driveway with her following me, and a mixed feeling of what the fuck am I doing here, and knowing it’s the right thing to do.
The entire yard is packed with cars; they’re all inside. The place where we all meet.
She gets out of the car and leans against the door.
“You sure?” she asks.
“No,” I say, because there will be many questions following. First and foremost, the one I have myself, and that’s the one about my own sanity. “But let’s do it anyway.”
Though everyone in the house has seen me in all episodes of Elise, I can already hear the talking that’s happening about bringing her here. Not to forget the small disaster from two nights ago.
I walk her past the garage to the house.
She stops.
“That’s her?” she asks at the open gate with the Porsche in it. But before I can say anything, she slips into it.
Her hand caresses the freshly done bodywork in the half-dark.
I walk past her and turn on the light on the workbench in the back. I don’t know what I feel right now, her being in here. It feels strange to the point of repulsion, and I dislike all the feelings she is causing in me.
“You’ve done her well,” she says, a faint smile on her face. And I know that she knows.
“She was a mess,” I say. “I’ve been working on her for years now.”
“Of course she was,” Addy says. “Elise never did things half.”
I have to laugh, because doing things fully, like crashing this car, was her thing.
“So what’s the matter with her?” Addy asks, glancing at the motor in the back of the Porsche.
“Everything,” I say and lean into her to turn the key. “Listen.”
The motor coughs like a dying smoker with lung cancer.
“Give her a little slap with the throttle,” Addy says, “Like a heartbeat.”
I do as told.
Addy chuckles, rolls up her sleeves, and walks over to the tool cart. She opens several drawers, pulls out torque wrenches, metric sockets, feeler gauges, and Allen keys.
She removes the valve cover bolts, which sit close to the wall and are a pain in the ass to get off while the motor is in the car. But she does it like someone who has done this a million times.
After it comes off, she just watches it for a while.
“Three is your culprit,” she says. “Turn her off.”
She takes the feeler gauge and gets to work on the third valve.
“Don’t get too excited with that one,” I say.
“I’m not,” she says, sliding her hand into the small space and down. “The thing with a German girl is, she is over-engineered and yet simple in her needs.”
I snigger a bit. It’s been a while since I met someone who sees cars in the way I do.
“You need a new cover for the bottom,” she says when she comes back up. “The magnesium ones suck. Get the 930 valve cover. Make sure everything is clean and stone cold when you take them out, and she should purr like a kitten.”
“You mean this one?” I say, holding up the cover I already got.
“Yes,” she says as she sees it with lit-up eyes.
“Wanna help?” I ask, pointing to the motor lift. We definitely need to get the motor out for that.
Without another word, she grabs it and attaches it. I turn on the full light in the meantime, and then we screw everything off in silence.
Here and there, we ask for a tool, risk a look, or ask if everything is set. We have the motor hanging in under an hour. She dives under the car.
“The oil is definitely leaking,” she says, coming up with rubbing oil grease between her fingers.
“What?” she asks me, and it’s only then that I realize I was staring at her with a half-open mouth. I close it.
“Nothing,” I say and get back to work.
“Not the Hollywood princess you thought I was?”
I say nothing, but grin to myself.
We work on the motor the entire night. I grab a beer from the stack in the other part of the garage and hand it to her.
We talk.
We laugh.
We don’t talk.
We work, lost in thought.
It nice, more than nice, says a voice in me.