The Driver (40 page)

The richest man in the world is one who stops counting.

Thirty-two hours. A mere day-and-a-third. Six years I spent trying to defeat it.

I never knew greater joy than when, six months after the final run, the first draft of this book was completed. I could stop counting. I yearned to give those I loved the hoard I'd so far spent only on myself.

Time.

But I had miscalculated.

Virtually everyone warned me. The 2007 Gumball was meant to be my last. I didn't need to go. I wanted to. So did Nine, who so regretted giving up his seat in October, but even he feared the worst. A questionable route through the Balkans. New and old competitors, eyes fixed on the myth that was Team Polizei.

I saw Maggie. She had waited. She said she understood.
When I get back,
I said, because I
was
scared, and I didn't want her to see that, or worry, or suffer through it yet again. I left for London a few days later.

On the afternoon of May 2, on a small, tree-lined road southwest of Struga, Macedonia, just a few kilometers from the Albanian border where UN escorts were waiting to accompany us to Tirana for dinner with the prime minister, a red VW Golf emerged from a side road—just as the lead Gumballers approached. And then it finally happened. The accident of my worst nightmares.

The Golf 's passengers, Vladimir and Martina Cepuljoski, died of their injuries.

Nick Morley—Oliver's younger, level-headed brother—was the other driver.

He survived unscathed, was arrested, charged in their deaths, convicted, and later released on a suspended sentence.

Ross and I were on a parallel route hundreds of miles away, but I knew the truth. I'd seen my early videos. I knew how often I'd tempted fate. However much I sought to mitigate the risks, I could easily have been the one to strike that red Golf.

I was shattered, but not surprised. Ross and I withdrew and returned to London. The rest of Gumball '07 was cancelled.

Due to the extraordinary events surrounding the cancellation of Gumball, I'd been away one week longer than expected, breaking an earlier promise I'd made to myself. One day, I had gone to see my dad after visiting hours at the hospital had ended. He died the next morning. I vowed I'd never be late again.

On Friday, May 11, Nine called, and said something so shocking, so inconceivable, that I—uncertain I'd grasped the irrevocable truth—served him platitudes borne of our twenty-year friendship. Maggie hadn't waited. Not only had Gumball—the cauldron into which I'd once leapt—evaporated, so had the world I'd left behind. I went home. And stayed there. In silence.

On Monday, May 14, I received a text message from Dennis Collins. He and Rawlings had just arrived in L.A. From New York. In 31 hours and 59 minutes.
A New World Record!
he wrote. Strangely, I was happy for them, even proud. I knew what it took. I said nothing of my run. They deserved their summer of glory.

I began to understand why—against all wisdom—I'd ventured out one last time. Why Rawlings and Collins went without alone. Why conversation with old friends now seemed so stilted. Why Nine and Maggie were now together.

They, I, all of us—had changed, however unwittingly. We dream of stopping time, relish in its rare capture, lie to ourselves about its inexorable advance, but time has no mercy. Nor, in committing utterly to that for which our hearts yearn, should we. The costs of my journey were far higher and carried by many more than I could have known. But I would do it again, if I didn't now know better.

 

Someone, perhaps Rawlings, will inevitably make another run. Safely, I hope. And the Roy/Maher time will be broken. Someday. But if anyone suggests
I
venture back out in response, they have much to learn about the underrated pleasure of a full night's sleep, or a good book on a rainy Sunday, or ice cream on the beach.

If you see an old Targa by the dunes, you'll know where to find me.