Sharyn McCrumb - Once Around the Track

Well, it hadn’t worked like that.

Despite all the sacrifices, Big Brother the Car had never lived up to its promise, and Daddy had died too young to make it work or to wise up and try to do something else with his life. Julie decided that it was up to her to even the score between humans and machines, and she figured that cars owed her something to make up for the lousy childhood she’d had. Early on she had worked out a strategy to succeed. She treated herself like a car. She stayed as pretty as she could, because paint schemes matter, and she made excellent grades in high school to streamline her path to greater things. She stayed away from roughneck boys who would have constituted a detour in her life plan, and finally, she won a scholarship to Virginia Tech, where she’d studied automotive engineering with a fierce determination that allowed her no time for socializing or extracurricular activities. She graduated from Tech with highest honors, because she had pursued car knowledge like a bounty hunter going after a fugitive, which in a way she was. After graduation she had her pick of job offers, but instead of heading for a research and development job with one of the big car manufacturers, she had chosen to devote her talents to NASCAR.

Her advisor’s jaw had dropped when she told him. “NASCAR, Julie?” he’d said. “How could you possibly choose that over an industry job?”

She’d smiled and said that she thought it might be an adventure, which was true. Industry jobs would always be there, but she thought she’d like to try stock car racing first. “Daddy would have been proud,” she’d said primly, speaking of her family’s racing tradition with a nostalgic pride she did not feel.

She still had nightmares about standing on the roof of an old sedan with a stopwatch in her hand, ready to time a car that hurtled past her at breakneck speed. She could still feel the dust in her throat and the chill of the night air on her bare legs. Carmichael.

Her father’s folks had been of Irish descent. Maybe in an earlier time they would have been horse crazy, instead of obsessed with cars. Maybe this obsession with speed was bred in the bone. Sometimes she could feel it, too, but mostly she felt the rage of the slighted child toward the hated favorite. Now, though, she would be in charge.

We got him.

Christine Berenson held up the photo in front of her as if it were a mirror.

So this is Badger Jenkins.

As always with Christine Berenson, the professional reaction came before the personal one. She acknowledged that whatever his shortcomings educationally and socially, the camera obviously loved Badger Jenkins, definitely an asset in a world where money buys speed, because sponsors provide the money. Win or lose, a pretty boy in the driver’s seat could bring in corporate sponsors, not to mention selling a million tee shirts, coffee mugs, and other assorted ritual items to his besotted admirers. Her advisors said that Badger Jenkins was a good driver-a seat-of-the-pants driver, all nerves and instinct-but she was more pleased that the other end of him was marketable. For business reasons.

Well, mostly for business reasons.

The face that looked back at her from the photo looked nothing like hers. It was a strong, masculine face that seemed composed of sharp edges-prominent cheekbones, a blade of a nose, a jutting jaw-even the brown eyes were piercing. It wasn’t an angry face, though. Focused, perhaps. Determined.

Struggling to have a thought, Christine told herself with a wry smile, fighting the attraction of that face. He was, after all, just a race car driver. Imagine trying to make him sit through an opera.

She sighed. If their genders were reversed, she could keep him as a pet and no one would think twice about it, but women were denied that luxury. They were expected to marry someone even more powerful than themselves, and that usually meant someone older and more sharklike. This little one-trick pony would probably end his career in half a dozen years with two million dollars in the bank and four concussions, and think himself both rich and lucky. No, you couldn’t ally yourself with him on any formal basis. Idly, she ran her forefinger along the perfect jawline in the photo.

But he was undeniably handsome, in the same way that a thoroughbred or a Harrier jet is beautiful: perfection of design with no conscious desire to please. The man was looking away from the camera, absorbed in some private reverie of his own, indifferent to the effect those perfect features might have on the observer. He was too busy being himself to care what anybody thought about him-exactly like a stallion.

That’s what he reminded her of: her first horse. That little bundle of nerves that was so beautiful and so much stronger than she was. She had to learn, by sheer force of will, to get the better of him by out-thinking him. It was a lesson that had served her well, and one worth remembering now.

This man looked as if he didn’t care what anyone thought about him as long as he could do whatever it was he was determined to do. Win races, she supposed.

She wondered what it would feel like to be so unencumbered of the feelings of others. Certainly she had never known such self-possession. As far back as she could remember, the pressure had been there to be pretty, to be smart, to be pleasing to others. First Mummy had instilled in her the message that people only liked pretty girls, slender girls, smiling girls. And if she had doubted the truth of those early lessons, then half a dozen years of adolescence would have shown her the light, because to be an ugly duckling in the world of private schools and debutante parties was to experience hell on earth. The poor, chubby, frizzy-haired beast on her hall had swallowed a bottle of aspirin, had her stomach pumped, and then went away forever, giggling with relief and joy.

What would it feel like to exercise just because you enjoyed it, rather than in social self-defense? To befriend people because they were interesting, and not because they were useful? To live without second-guessing yourself every waking moment?

One might as well ask a thoroughbred. Certainly this pretty boy was not up to philosophical discussions. But that was all right. She would do the thinking for the team, and she would see that he was treated well and kept happy. Just as she would have looked after a thoroughbred had the other form of racing appealed to her instead.

“But why would you want to invest in a stock car?” Tate had asked her, in mild bewilderment, as if she’d ordered oysters in May.

She had given him a vague smile and a little shrug, trying to formulate a polite response. It wasn’t as if he actually cared. It was, after all, her money. “I don’t know,” she said. “Horses are so passé, I suppose.”

He nodded, not really interested in anything she did, but as unfailingly polite as six generations of inbreeding could possibly make him. “Yes, one does feel that the sport is somewhat quaint in this age of lasers and space shuttles.”

She nodded. They vaguely knew of people in northern Virginia who kept polo teams, and certainly Indy racing was fashionably daring in their social circle, but she rather fancied the idea of cars that looked like actual street vehicles and the reverse snob appeal of stock car racing. NASCAR was indeed a millionaire’s sport, even if few people realized that fact. It was different. Christine liked being different, as long as she did not incur any social punishment for it. Stock car racing promised not to be boring. The other women with whom she had formed this venture all sounded so idealistic, talking about opportunities for women and automotive safety research, and she had murmured agreement with all these lofty goals, but really her motives were much more basic than that.