3. Chapter 3
3
Chapter 3
FINN
I t’s the first week of April and we’re back in Bahrain for the second race of the season. I’m staying at the Oasis Palace at the edge of the desert and the suite is exquisite. I love staying in Middle Eastern countries. Their luxury style always holds an air of mystique for me. A far shot from Dunboyne, where I grew up. Dunboyne is in County Meath, a stone’s throw from Dublin, a rural town filled with weekend homes for the wealthy Dublin folk who brought their money and turned it into a mix between the old and the new, the town growing each year.
My da used to take me to Dublin on weekends to race go-carts. He was an amateur rally driver, and he had big dreams for me from the start.
My ma had other dreams for me. That time my father had an accident, it was worse than the usual scrapes and bruises. We had visited him in hospital, and she sat me down in the corridor so she could see him first. To gauge how he looked, if it would scare me.
They had spoken in hushed voices. Angry.
“Are you done now, Owen? Can we be done with this?”
He had murmured something angrily. I heard only her voice, because it was higher pitched and raised in anger.
“Please don’t be an eejit,” she begged. “I can’t stand it anymore.”
Da’s voice was dangerously low when he answered her, but she interrupted him.
Fear had made her fearless. “Owen, please. I can’t live with this constant fear of losing you. This is no way to raise a family. You have to make a choice. It’s either having a family, or racing.”
Da was angry enough to raise his voice. He chose to race. It broke her.
She left shortly after. The only thing I have to remember her by is her claddach ring. The one Da gave her. Nothing but an empty promise now.
It’s either having a family, or racing.
I look out through the floor-to-ceiling windows over the cityscape of Sakhir with the desert glowing golden in the morning light. The suite, with its Arabian architecture and richly decorated walls and floors, has an intoxicating effect on me.
Bahrain is about as good as it gets.
I leave the hotel to head to qualifying and I can see the shimmer of the heat above the road as we make our way to the track.
I still haven’t spoken to Erik, and I haven’t gotten over the elation of the last drive, the placement and the point for Delta Victor.
The media speculated about it heavily .
When I get out at the lane to walk down to the paddock, I’m accosted by a journalist.
“Finn!” he shouts at me, hurrying over. “Finn, any idea why you placed so well in the last race?” He holds a recorder towards my face but snatches it back almost immediately to fire his second question. “Is it because now that your contract isn’t being renewed, the possible loss of income is driving you back to your roots, displaying the signature drives of calculated risk you were notorious for when you came on the scene?”
Journalists always fire questions like that, a long winded set up that writes its own headline with a simple nod or shake of your head. It’s suggestive, and you have to do your best to avoid it.
I know this journo. He writes fluff pieces, and he’s after gossip more than facts. I ignore him completely as I keep walking. He gives a frustrated sigh and sets his sights on Alejandro, who’s walking ten paces behind me.
Good riddance.
We are all earlier than usual today. We need to gather on the grid so that WebFlix Max can film us as a group for promo shots. We’re doing the thing where we line up and walk towards the camera. Something they can show in slow motion to make us look hardcore.
I get dressed and manage to avoid Erik. Jack, however, is a whole other beast.
“What the fuck are they wasting your time for on this?” He’s standing trackside with his arms crossed, a frown on his face. He’s taking in the film crew and the other drivers who are already standing around, waiting for the action.
I shake my head, striding out to join Reuben. His hair is freshly cut, and he has a small slit in his eyebrow.
We’re in full garb and I carry my helmet under my arm as we stand around making small talk.
Rheese is off to one side, and he narrows his eyes at me. I heard he contested the stewards when they made him give me his spot on the last race after his foul last week.
I know Rheese Knox very well. We came up together. He got a driver’s spot for Ainsworth-Sinclair while I was still holding out on accepting contracts.
Velocity gave me my first gig the following year, and we were head-to-head since then. He was angry because he missed out on Velocity. If he hadn’t signed with Ainsworth-Sinclair, he would have been their first choice. He resents me to this day, even though I’m now with Delta Victor.
It’s sweltering in our gear, and we wear our suits unzipped, the top half dangling from our hips, wearing the thin long sleeved fireproof shirts in the open.
The little makeup artist is running around trying to powder our sweaty faces.
“Casey, don’t bother.” It’s Curls. She’s standing with the filming crew quite a way off. “They’ll be wearing helmets for the shot.” She runs a tired hand over her face.
Casey gives her a radiant smile and with a toss of her red hair, she trots over to stand behind the filming crew. They have set up a small track, and the cameraman is seated on a small cart, which they will reverse as we walk up to them. Curls walks over to talk to Rheese and then she’s clapping her hands, and we need to zip up and don our helmets.
The crowd is loving this. We get tons of cheers and jeers as everyone waits for us to finish up so that we can get to the qualifying.
“Man, that is a great body,” Reuben observes as we are on take two and walking in a row, following the camera down the track.
I glance at Curls. She’s wearing jean shorts and a strappy blue top, the straps of her black bra showing underneath. The women I usually fuck won’t wear it like that. They wear bras discreetly, so you’re wondering if they’re wearing one at all.
“I’d love to take that sundress off her and see what’s going on underneath.”
“What?”
“The girl.” Reuben jerks his chin at Casey.
“You were talking about her ?” I grunt.
“Who else?”
“Curls.”
We eye up the blonde locks and I run my gaze up and down her body. Her thighs are touching when she walks, and it sends little tremors over her flesh with each step. She’s got the hint of a little stomach under her top and her upper arms are soft as she indicates something to Alejandro as we line up for the third and final attempt.
“Not my type.” Reuben dismisses her offhandedly. “I like them like that.”
We look at Casey. She’s waifish thin and all eyes and hair.
I’d walk past her on the street and not even notice her.
Curls, however. I’d sink my teeth into flesh like that any damn day.
Curls claps her hands at me and Reuben and we startle upright.
“She’s kind of bossy,” Reuben murmurs as we stand up straight, lining up neatly.
I grin inside the helmet .
After she dismisses us, I hang around. I want to explain about the girl. Or something like that.
Rheese beats me to it.
He steps up close, and she takes a step back, surprised. I come to a standstill.
Rheese is packing on the charm. He’s leaning in and giving her his full attention, all smiles.
She’s not his type.
Her grey eyes are all big and stormy as she laughs, and she just stands there as he tugs playfully at a blonde curl, wrapping it around a finger.
That’s infuriating.
She’s not his type.
I walk up to them, my helmet loose in my hand, the suit too hot in the sun. I feel sweat on my back.
“What’s the pool?” I cock my head.
They turn to me, surprised. Curls’ stormy eyes flash and I recall the girl.
“Finnegan.” Rheese nods at me.
“What’s the pool?” I ask again.
He hesitates.
I knew it.
Curls stands looking from him to me.
Rheese narrows his eyes at me. He’s looking, really looking at me, like he hasn’t in years.
And then he smiles.
He turns to Curls, holding up his hands in surrender. “It’s all in good fun, Camille.”
“What’s going on?” She has a small frown and looks from me to Rheese.
“You’re not his type,” I say, looking at him.
Rheese walks away laughing, not sparing us a backwards glance.
I turn back to her to explain, but she’s all fury.
She scoffs and walks away.
I know the guys. We race each other every year. Someone started a pool. A bet. On who fucks her first? It’s probably that cunt Lorenzo from Bianchi. And knowing Rheese, he’s betting on himself.
* * *
CAMILLE
We’re at the Jewel of the Desert circuit in Bahrain and I’m loving the weather. I may be a native Londoner, but the warmer climates suit me better. I’m following famous pop star Lucinda as she navigates the VIP experience. She’s a godsend. When I spot her arriving with her entourage, we scramble for permission to follow her for the day. She’s big in the Latin world and the potential exposure from WebFlix Max has her agent basically frothing at the mouth. Since we do fly-on-the-wall filming when we’re on location, we have to follow them from a couple of steps back. She doesn’t speak any English and her agent translates graciously as she makes her way to her private viewing area, a glass room with a small balcony offering the best views of the track. After she and her four or five friends devour gourmet hors d’oeuvres, guzzling it down with champagne that costs about as much as my month’s rent, we make our way down to the paddock where she and her team get a behind-the-scenes tour of the Velocity Racing garage. Their drivers are Ollie Blythe, another UK native, and Jasper de Vries, a Dutch veteran driver. They finish podium most races and it shows. They wear plain unbranded clothes with easy grace while shaking hands with Lucinda and her “ peque?o reba?o ”, as she refers to her entourage, or her “little flock”, as her agent translates for us.
I learned this last week. The rich wear branded clothes from fashion houses all around the world, something that distinguishes them, shows off their wealth. The mega rich buy from places you’ve never heard of. There isn’t a logo in sight.
Ollie is a black man from Milton Keynes, handsomely groomed, and perhaps just a smidge too tall for his sport. He does incredible lap times, but he’s constantly having to watch his weight, his lanky frame adding unnecessary kilos to a car that Velocity Racing insists must be as lightweight as possible. Every kilogram Ollie is overweight, translates to lost seconds on the track. His hair is also closely shaved on the sides with the top in two thick cornrows, ending in long braids that hang to his waist. They’re decorated with golden loops and charms, and though boyishly playful in nature, in reality, it gives him a sophisticated look. He never bothers to camouflage his accent, a lilting MLE with a hint of Senegalese. To know him is to love him. He is a man at total ease with who he is and his open face and wide smile reel me in like a charm. Me and Casey gave Lucinda envious looks as she lingers while hugging him.
“You’re not his type.” That’s what Irish said. I don’t look like the women hanging around the paddock. I don’t wear designer clothes casually. I don’t have thousands of dollars of hair extensions, every hair in its place. I don’t wear sunglasses worth as much as a car. I don’t walk like they do, talk like they do. I am nothing like them.
What? Like I don’t know that?
All our hearts break when Ollie’s wife, a blonde bombshell of a supermodel looking woman, steps up to him with a Velocity Energy Drink in one hand, the other hand protectively held over her heavily pregnant belly. She is surprisingly star struck to meet Lucinda, and her agent translates a casual yet kind conversation between the two women as they talk about Spanish food.
I can see why Ollie picked his wife. Her smiles come as easy as his do and her warmth reels you in like a spell.
When we break out of it, we head back up to the private viewing area and prepare to watch the qualifying race.
I make a mental note to ask for Ollie’s wife to be present when we film him at home. Apart from the group shots and the interview-style filming, we have to spend a day with each driver or team principal to give viewers a glimpse into their private life.
In Melbourne, already I was blown away at the speed of the race. I know, in theory, that the cars go more than two hundred and thirty miles an hour. In reality, it’s over in a blink.
A blink, and so much more.
You can hear the cars first, the roar overpowering, and as they tear down the track at impossible speeds, everything in their wake gets a second of fury, of being buffeted, overwhelming noise and the sheer power of the air moving around the car as it forces its way forward at impossible speed.
If you’re close, it snatches the very air out of your lungs.
And it’s relentless. It lasts for almost two hours.
For two hours, every driver has to physically battle the forces exerted on them by the impossible speeds, and every driver has only himself to rely on.
Standing next to the track, trying to capture the split second it takes for a race car to pass a spectator, me and Jay have removed our protective noise cancelling earphones and stand breathless and tense, fighting the air whipping us around, the noise deafening, the smell of fuel and burning tyres sharp, and when we replace our headphones and head back to the rest of the crew, I pull my phone from my pocket and send Dixon a message.
CAMILLE (16:45) I get it.
After the race, everything is a blur.
Casey booked us on a Sunday night red eye to Bahrain from Australia and we scurry to pack our gear and bags and hit the airport after the long day of filming.
The Annual Grande Prima issued us a ton of documentation that we use to secure our visas for the year ahead. I have a dedicated consultant who navigates the murky waters of passports and visas and I’m grateful not to have to do it myself. After spending countless hours in the past in interviews at foreign embassies, this is a service I didn’t even know existed. I have had many opportunities to travel in the past, none of them funded like this. I have ridden camels, spent hours on a longboat in flood season to get to a small town, flown in small aircraft in the cargo hold, slept in train stations and parking lots, camped in deserts and eaten just about every strange meal you can imagine. I have always been grateful for my career, no matter how small it is compared to others.
It has taken me all over the world.
This, however, is on another level.
When we check into the hotel in Bahrain, tired, sore, and hungry, we receive exemplary service, luxury rooms, and spectacular food.
I thank the WebFlix Max gods and try to wrap my head around the fact that I will be on the move like this for the next eleven months. Nothing but a suitcase.
Qualifying kicks off and startles me back to the present.
They are off. The usual bunch up at the start of the race, tyres bumping into each other, plumes of smoke and sparks flying through the air as the drivers push themselves, push their cars, jostling for a good position.
Ollie’s up ahead and pulls away easily, with Jasper right behind him. The Velocity Racing fans go wild.
Lucinda is on her feet and cheering along with her peque?o reba?o as the deafening sound of the cars and the crowd drown out the realities of everyday life.
I recall the reply that Dixon sent when he finally got my message.
DIXON (03:47) Now bring it to life.
* * *
CAMILLE
“He said what?”
It’s Amy. She’s on video call. I prop up my phone against the big, mirrored wall behind the sink in the bathroom.
“I’m not his type.”
“Fuck that guy.”
“Uh-huh.” I lean forward and add another layer of mascara, blinking it on.
“You good?” she asks casually. It makes me laugh.
“I’m fine. Stop worrying.”
“Okay, okay, just checking. How did today go?”
I stand back to admire my reflection. I’m in my underwear, fully shaved, with my hair still up in the towel. I untwist it and it falls wetly past my shoulders .
“It was great. I filmed Ollie afterwards in the media room. He’s all smiles, but you can tell he’s taking his time to think things through before he answers.”
“No, you can’t. But you can.”
“What?”
“Dixon always says you pay attention to people when they don’t talk. That’s your thing, why you get so much insight.”
I lean forward with my hair dangling down and rub the mass of curls between the folds of the towel.
“He’s never said that to me.”
She snorts.
“Anyway, it was great footage,” I continue.
“How’d the other guy do?”
“Rheese?”
“No, the rude one.”
“Oh. Irish placed like seventeenth, and two cars spun out, so he got two spots for free. Nothing like last week.”
“How’d he do last week?”
I stand upright, toss the curls over my shoulder, and take a moment to think it through.
“I don’t know, but we accessed Rheese’s in-car footage that day. The teams make it available to us and I was going over the footage of the foul.”
“What’d he say?”
“He said something like, ‘Fuck, he’s driving like he used to.’”
“What does that mean?”
I deposit a little mountain of mousse into my palm and smack my hands together. Little foam puffs splash on to the mirror. I come away with two hands coated in mousse and start scrunching it into the ends of my curls.
“I don’t know, but I’m gonna find out.”