Once Around the Track (27 page)

He accepted it with a feeble smile and took a few fortifying sips. “I’m meeting Melodie here,” he told the secretary.

Deanna’s sympathetic expression hardened into the one she usually reserved for cockroach sightings. “I know,” she said, biting off every word. “She called and said she was on her way. She asked me to have coffee ready for her.”

Badger nodded. He never interfered in interoffice dynamics. Opinion varied on whether or not he even noticed them.

Deanna said, “There’s something else I need to tell you before she gets here. I guess you can’t do it, but…Well, the Roush people called and asked if you could possibly do them a favor. One of their drivers was supposed to make a visit to the children’s ward of a local hospital today, but their guy is not feeling well himself, and obviously nobody wants a driver who might be contagious going to visit sick children. I’m rambling, aren’t I?”

Badger, who had closed his eyes, nodded.

Deanna took a deep breath. Sitting two feet from Badger always made her nervous. She’d tell her envious friends,
He’s so macho I’m afraid he’ll short out my birth control patch.
But she knew that such feelings were all in her head. Badger treated everybody just the same. “Well, anyhow, Badger, all the other Roush drivers are otherwise committed today, and so they phoned here asking for you. They wondered if you would go to the children’s ward. The children are really looking forward to a visit from a NASCAR driver, as you can imagine.”

Badger opened his eyes and sighed. “The
Roush
people called us?” he asked.

The secretary nodded. She thought she knew why he’d asked which team had called. If the team had been Hendrick or DEI, then the driver the children were expecting to meet might have been Jeff Gordon or Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Nobody would want to be the substitute who walked into a room full of kids expecting either of them. The howls of disappointment would be deafening. But Badger probably figured that he was as kind and personable and famous as the Roush guys—well, anyhow, he wouldn’t be too much of a disappointment as a substitute.

“When do they need me?” he asked.

“Well, this afternoon,” said Deanna. “At one o’clock. But I checked on the whereabouts of that textile mill you’re visiting, and they are too far apart. You’d never be able to get to the hospital in time.”

Badger nodded. He looked up at the black-rimmed clock on the wall behind the desk. Five minutes until ten. “Which Roush driver is sick?” he asked.

Deanna told him.

“He’s a good guy,” said Badger. “He’s doing this for nothing, of course.”

“Yes, I’m sure he is—or was. Before he got the stomach flu.”

He ran his hand through the bristles of his newly cropped hair. “Yeah, he would. He’s not rolling in money, either. Not yet, anyhow.” He sighed. “Did you tell them I had another commitment?”

Deanna shook her head. “I told them I’d ask you and let them know.”

“So you think I should do it?”

She gasped. “Oh, I would never tell you what to do, Badger. I just didn’t want to make a decision without consulting you first.”

“I appreciate that, Deanna.” He sighed again. “I think I ought to go. Look, is there anybody around today who could go with me? Is Sark here?”

“No. She e-mailed her press release about the race and said she wouldn’t be in. Almost everybody is off today. Well, Rosalind Manning is here. The engine specialist. She stopped in for coffee on her way to the shop, but she’s not a publicist. She doesn’t seem at ease with people somehow. I mean, she’s polite and all, but…”

“She’s smart, though,” said Badger. “Went to MTA, didn’t she?”

Deanna fought to keep a straight face. “MIT,” she said. “But they’re both found in Cambridge.”

“Whatever. I just need somebody to carry the autograph cards and help me field questions in case any reporters show up. And, you know, keep me on schedule. I have a real hard time saying no to people, even when I know I have to.”

“I’m sure she’d be glad to go with you,” said Deanna, who wasn’t sure at all, but she could not imagine anyone turning down a chance to spend the day with Badger. “If you were going, that is.”

“Call them back. Tell them I’ll do it.”

“Do what?” said Melodie Albigre from the doorway. There was a dangerous lilt in her voice, and she was jingling her keys as if she might throw them at his head.

Deanna, who had picked up the phone and was in the process of punching in the number of the Roush office, gasped at the sound of the Restrictor Plate’s voice. She started to replace the receiver, but Badger touched her wrist, and said, “No. Keep dialing, Deanna,” he said. “It’s all right.”

Melodie made a show of consulting her watch. “We need to get going, Badger,” she said. “You know what traffic is like on I-85 on weekday mornings.”

Badger nodded. “I can’t go,” he said.

“What do you mean you can’t go?” She swept into the room, her voice rising with every step she took.

Thank God for cordless phones,
thought Deanna, scurrying toward the back room just as someone on the other end of the line picked up. She figured that as long as she was out of earshot she’d call Rosalind’s cell phone, too, and tell her to get to the office as fast as she could. Badger needed rescuing.

“I can’t go to the textile mill,” said Badger, who was using his slowest drawl and wearing his most mournful retriever expression in hopes of averting the coming storm. “Something important just came up.”

His manager’s scowl suggested that she ate retrievers for breakfast. “Something came up, did it? Where is Tuggle? She can’t schedule practices on my day.”

Badger hesitated. Tuggle would back him up. She said she would. Any time he needed an excuse, she said, he could claim he had a team meeting, and she’d swear it was true. He sighed. The hospital appearance would probably make the local papers, anyhow, which meant that Melodie would find out sooner or later. Why postpone her tantrum? Besides, Badger generally told people the truth, anyhow. He was handsome enough to get away with it. In his experience, people usually forgave him for whatever it was he had done to piss them off. And if they didn’t, well, there were always more people to replace them in his constellation.

“I’m filling in for a Roush driver at a visit to a children’s hospital,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed until they looked like knife slits in her doughy face. “Why should you?”

“It’s an emergency. They asked me.”

“I see. And how much are they paying?”

“It’s sick children, Melodie. I don’t want any money for doing it. It’s the right thing to do.”

She rolled her eyes. “You are so hopeless! When NASCAR finally dumps you, you’ll be living in a packing crate and sharing your last can of Alpo with one of the other has-been field fillers.”

Badger’s eyes glistened and he took a couple of deep breaths. Finally, he said, “Maybe so.”

For form’s sake, Rosalind knocked on the already open door. “I heard you were looking for me,” she told Badger. “Deanna told me about your appearance today. I’m ready if you are.”

Deanna, who felt it was safe to return to the room now that reinforcements had arrived, rushed to her desk and began rummaging in one of the lower drawers. “Don’t forget your autograph cards, Badger! And I have a new box of Sharpies that you can take.”

“I’ll take them,” said Rosalind, eying Badger’s Restrictor Plate with a look that bordered on civility. She had overheard that last exchange, and her expression suggested that she had not liked it. “We should get going, though. That signing is at twelve, isn’t it?”

Badger and Deanna looked at each other, both remembering that he was scheduled to appear at one. “Yes!” they said in unison.

They turned to leave, but then another thought occurred to Badger. “Do you reckon they want me to wear m’ firesuit?”

“Do it,” said Rosalind. “Little kids love purple.”

Melodie’s cell phone began to chime. “I see I’m wanted elsewhere,” she said, glancing at the caller ID. “Hopefully with someone who is cooperative, and therefore capable of being helped. I’ll talk to you later.” She swept out without waiting for a reply.

Rosalind picked up the stack of autograph cards and stuck out her tongue at the retreating figure of Badger’s manager. She murmured to Badger, “Well, now that we’ve got the restrictor plate off your carburetor, go change into a firesuit, and let’s go see some kids.”

Rosalind drove her BMW, because oddly enough Badger didn’t mind being chauffeured around by other people. She put him in charge of the directions, which had been faxed over from Roush headquarters.

“Do you want to talk shop?” asked Rosalind, when they were safely onto I-85 heading south. “I don’t have much in the way of chit-chat. I’m an engineer. With all the social deficiencies that implies.”

“Fine with me,” said Badger. “I’m still tired from yesterday.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question first?”

Badger had leaned back and closed his eyes. “Shoot.”

“Why do you put up with that fourteen-carat bitch who runs your life?”

He opened one eye. “Melodie? Oh, she’s an expert. Got a college degree and awards and everything.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh, she did. She’s not a bit shy about telling folks her qualifications. She’s going to help me hook up some business deals.”

“But surely there are lots of management people who could do that. Why do you put up with someone who treats you like a stray dog with mange?”

“I guess I’m used to it,” said Badger. “Women always end up treating me like that sooner or later. They say it’s the only way they can get my attention.”

“But doesn’t it bother you? Tuggle would like to beat her with the jack handle, just from having to watch her hassling you.”

Badger sighed. “Tuggle hassles me, too.”

“Not like that, though. Tuggle is tough, but I think she likes you. She respects you, anyhow. But that woman acts like you’re something she stepped in.”

“Well, if she makes me rich, I guess it’s worth it.”

“Fine. Whatever,” said Rosalind, who wouldn’t have put up with such treatment for any amount of money.

“Well, like I said, I’m used to it. Can I smoke?”

Rosalind resisted the urge to brake or to take her eyes off the road to gape at her passenger. “You
smoke
?”

Badger shrugged. “Trying to quit. It’s hard, though. Got started when I was twelve or so. I get real edgy when I try to stop. It keeps my weight down. So—can I?”

“Sure,” said Rosalind, pulling out the ashtray for him. “I don’t treat my car like a temple.” She thought of a couple of smart remarks she might have made about the fact that he didn’t treat his body like one either, but she decided not to say them. He had been harassed enough for one day. Instead, she said, “I’m sorry about the car.”

“What?” said Badger. “It’s nice. I like BMWs.”

“No, I mean the race. I think the engine was okay, but that doesn’t help if they can’t get the rest of the package right.”

Badger was holding his Bic to a Marlboro Light. He smoked for a while without speaking, and Rosalind thought that smoking might be Badger’s way of tempering his speech, to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings with a hasty remark. She waited, concentrating on the traffic funneled into one lane by construction work on that section of road.

Finally, he said, “Almost everybody on the team is new at this. It takes time to get it right. Besides, NASCAR isn’t like it was in the old days. Now a driver can’t make all that much of a difference. Now it’s all about multicar teams pooling their research and about testing time in the wind tunnel. Engineering tricks.”

“Well, we could use some engineering tricks,” said Rosalind. “I wish I had some.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about it,” said Badger. “Even if you get a great car, and the pit crew performs perfectly, we’ll never be able to compete with the big dogs. Not to the championship. They have five hundred employees. What do we have? Thirty, maybe? And they have money to burn.”

“Yeah,” said Rosalind. “But if we could come up with some kind of an edge, we might be able to win one race, at least. Maybe on a track where driver experience still does count for something. What track would that be?”

Badger answered in a plume of smoke. “Darlington.”

They didn’t talk much for the rest of the ride. Badger asked where she was from and where she’d studied engineering, but when she told him MIT, he didn’t even know where it was. Rosalind’s shyness made her answers short and not very informative, and he didn’t seem overly interested in her personal information, anyhow. She wasn’t pretty enough to matter, and she had never been any good at keeping a conversation going, because she couldn’t think of much to ask him in return. The biographical facts of Badger’s life were posted on half a dozen Web sites, in varying degrees of adulation, and his life in 200 words was featured in slick racing magazines, accompanied by glamorous pictures of him in the firesuit and shades. If you wanted to know how the real person differed from the media image, asking questions wouldn’t do much good. By now all his answers were well-rehearsed sound bites. It had probably been years since he’d heard an original question.

The only way to get to know Badger was by observation. Rosalind wasn’t all that interested in him personally, anyhow. She thought motors were much more fascinating than drivers. As long as he handled her creation with reasonable skill and brought it back in one piece, he could be a werewolf for all she cared. And yet, because he wore a glamorous firesuit and looked like a catalogue model, people wanted him to sign pieces of paper, which they would treasure forever—or until they moved on to another obsession and unloaded their autograph collection on eBay. She thought it was a curious phenomenon, but since the fans’ obsession with the sport and its stars had created a job for her, she wasn’t complaining.

She took the highway exit for the hospital. “Last cigarette,” she said to Badger, tapping the ashtray. “Want a breath mint?”

“Got some,” said Badger, rummaging in the duffel bag he’d brought with him.

“I hope you’ve got a change of clothes in there, too, because you’ll probably expect me to take you to lunch after this, and I’m not walking into a restaurant with Spiderman.”