Playing with Fire

An adult stories – Playing with Fire by pink_silk_glove,pink_silk_glove a special shout out to my beta readers – you know who you are

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄ 1976 ▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

he sees you as a race car
a finely tuned machine
a temperamental instrument
sleek with a glossy sheenhe runs his hands along your curves
he starts and warms your core
then he gets inside you
and pins you to the floor

he steers you, he shifts you
he drives you ’round the bend
up and down and ’round and through
no relent he intends

he takes you to the very edge
teetering on a knife
and if you should fall off
you just might lose your life

▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄ MONACO

The people leaned over the rails of their terra-cotta apartment balconies against the clear bright blue sky. She aimed her lens and framed them up, some with necks craning this way and that, some with sunglasses, some with mouths chattering or sipping from drinks. She zoomed in and clicked, then zoomed back out to add some sky, stopped down and clicked again. A handsome young man with thick dark hair and sideburns, his powder blue shirt half open, leaned his elbow on the rail taking in the scene with a casual intensity. The woman next to him was in a yellow spaghetti strap summer dress with blonde hair pulled back to show dark roots. Her eyes followed a mechanic hurriedly rolling a tyre down the street to his pit box. The couple were totally unaware that their picture was being taken. None of them were, at least not at that moment, although everyone knew that the cameras were about.

The smells of gasoline, oil and rubber dominated the air. An engine roared to life behind her, deafening despite her plug-stuffed ears. The white car with the red stripe up the front had started up like a phantom, it’s cockpit devoid of a driver. The mechanics were hunched over its uncovered motor, tinkering and analyzing as it revved.

She moved down to the next block. The block of flats next to the Credit Foncier was more modern, a four-storey rectangular block of balconies jutting out over the street above the store fronts. She got below it at the near corner and aligned the flush front of the balconies with the heads and arms of the spectators protruding against the starkly vivid blue and snapped.

WHOOSH!

Spinning herself around with a gasp, she saw the intense orange flames balling upwards into a thick black cloud. The white car with the red stripe had suddenly burst into flames. A man ran past her, checking over his shoulder, and another was running toward her, fleeing the fireball. Instinctively she raised her camera to her eye, snapped and snapped again.

“Feu!”

“Au feu! Au feu!”

“Spara!”

“Fire!”

She moved closer, within twenty yards, and the heat of it hit her in the face. Voices were shouted from the pit boxes and clamored in alarm from the balconies above. A mad dash of legs ran both from and to the scene. She clicked away, shutter capturing the chaos and bright flames in the darkening light as the black could cast shade, the gentle Mediterranean breeze coaxing it across the street, causing the onlookers above to head inside and shut doors and windows. She turned her camera on it’s side for a portrait of the ascending smoke and clicked away. At ground level, hand held fire extinguishers shot expanding plumes of white cloud upon the base of the blaze. Bracing herself down on one knee she kept snapping until she ran out of film. With no time to change, she just switched over to her second camera hanging from her neck. Loaded with the faster film, these shots would be less defined but would contain no less drama.

A bleating siren grew louder behind her and she turned to see the fire truck coming up the street. Scurrying to the barrier at the side, she made way for it as it screamed by and stopped.

“Allez! Allez!” A policeman was waving away onlookers. She stepped forward to see around the fire truck as they laid out two hoses and shouted. The race car had already reduced to a black smoldering. She got in one more shot before a hand grabbed her shoulder. “Allez!” the policeman ordered.

“I’m with the press,” she argued, holding up her lanyard.

“Mademoiselle, allez! Go! Out!” he commanded as he took her by the elbow and directed her away.

“But… but…”

“Out!” he pointed adamantly and handed her over to another officer who took her other elbow and marched her away down the street.

Anyone who wasn’t essential to the race teams were penned down at the end of the pits for the next half hour while crews cleaned up the mess. Several of the media and an assortment of fans headed for the cantina. The race itself was delayed a half-hour as well. Once they re-opened things, she headed back in. The pre-race was a great opportunity to get closeups of drivers and mechanics and the like.

The scarlet red cars drew lots of attention. Their glossy lines gleaming in the sunshine certainly looked fast with big white numbers one and two on their noses. Next was the black and gold cars with the gold spoke wheels. One was up on jacks as its black and gold clad mechanics hovered around it, and one of the drivers in a black and gold race suit pointed and chatted. Like all of the cars, its tyres were fat and smooth with no treads. One of the blue cars was being rolled out next to its mate for its position at the start, one of its white shirted mechanics leaning in to steer while several others pushed behind. White was the most popular color of cars, some with stripes of blue and red, or with large patches of green. Sponsor names and logos were everywhere – gas and oil companies, tyre companies, a German bank, a Japanese electronics manufacturer, lots and lots of cigarette brands. The number twenty-six car was yellow and black with its driver in a white suit. He was donning a silver and blue helmet over his balaclava, his green eyes flashing as he chatted in French with someone who looked to be a manager of some sort. After a quick exchange of words, the manager patted him on the shoulder, the driver climbed into the car and a mechanic leaned in to help tighten his belts. She collected pictures of them all.

She passed the space where the white car with the red stripe had caught fire. The tarmac was covered in an ashy stain, both blackened by the blaze and lightened by the powder that had been spread upon it to soak up the chemicals and swept up. It smelled black like charcoal left in a barbecue grill far too long.

Up ahead were two baby blue cars, striking as the Mediterranean sun fell across their right sides, the shadows of the flats across the street creeping across their lefts. A driver sat in one, his helmet white with two thin red stripes wrapped around it, as his mechanics rolled him out to the start. The other car sat empty. She got up close, adjusted her f-stop and snapped. Then she knelt down for a low angle. As she focused, the car’s driver approached blurry in the background. She paused and looked up from the viewfinder.

“Snap away, gorgeous,” he smiled. His accent was American. His hair was blonde and feathered trailing down the back of his neck and his smile was calm and assured, flippant even. He walked up to the car in his white coveralls with baby blue stripes along the sleeves and legs and unzipped halfway down, and placed his helmet on the side radiator. It was blue with a bold white five-point star on the side and the bottom edge was red with white block lettering. Under the chin read ‘U S A’.

“Lucky,” she read aloud the stencilled font beneath the white star.

“Luke,” he said, and sat himself on the side radiator next to his helmet. She took out her programme pamphlet and scanned the names.

“Luke Brashford. Car number nineteen,” she read and raised her eyes to him. “Beverley Crane,” she introduced herself.

“Beverley,” he said, tasting the sound of her name. He grinned as he unapologetically checked her out, her long willowy features, her white t-shirt with its green neck and sleeve hems, just thin enough to faintly make out the shape of her white brassiere on her modest chest beneath, tucked into faded bellbottom jeans. “So, what’s a tall leggy English chick with a camera doing in the French Riviera on race day?” he asked.

A car engine suddenly started up with a hellacious roar further down the street, putting a jump into her bones. Luke chuckled quietly at her flinching and she smirked back. The car revved a few times and then shut off.

“I’m taking pictures for Still Life,” she told him.

“Still Life?” he shrugged. “That’s not a racing magazine. Not even a sports rag.”

“Yes well, it’s the most popular photography magazine in Europe and there are plenty of good photos here.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. Then he pointed at his face. “Go ahead,” he urged. Beverley smirked at his cheekiness again before changing the angle of her crouch to shoot up at him while getting his helmet into the frame. She clicked. He looked up at someone in a balcony with his blue eyes not much darker than his car as the palm fronds waved in the sun above. She clicked again, adjusted the shutter speed and f-stop and clicked one more time.

“Maestro Extra Milds,” she read the sponsor’s black and white stencilled font on the side of the car’s engine cover.

“Yeah,” Luke scrunched his nose. “You might like ’em,” he shrugged. “Extra Milds are for chicks. But hey, they pay the bills. I just drive the car.”

“I’ve never tried them,” said Beverley.

“You know anything about racing?” he asked, still looking up at the balconies above.

“Not really, no.”

“Then what made Still Life give you this gig?”

“I spent most of February in Rhodesia to capture fast moving cheetahs chasing gazelles. Somehow that made me an expert on race cars,” she explained. “I must say that I’m using a lot of the same equipment, long lenses and fast film and shutter speeds.”

There was a smattering of applause from the balconies above, a small ovation. Beverley looked up the street to see a driver walking towards them. He wore a red racing suit with green and white stripes from shoulder to boot down his left side. He was tall and lean with thick dark bushy hair and sideburns. His smile was affable but smug, his jaw arrogant. A metallic gold helmet hung from his grasp against his thigh.

“Who’s that?” Beverley asked, nodding towards him as he approached.

“Emilio Canaglia,” Luke enunciated with a slow disdain.

“He’s popular, I take it,” she said as she checked her programme. Canaglia was from Italy and drove car number one, one of the red ones that she had taken pictures of at the other end of the pits.

“He won the championship the past two years. That’ll make you popular,” said Luke. “And he won the opening race in Argentina last month.” Then he fixed his blue eyes upon her with his jaw set. “I’m here to even the score.”

“What’s the score?”

“You get nine points for winning a race. Then on down to one point for sixth. Anything worse than sixth place, nuthin’,” he explained. Canaglia strolled past, eyeing Luke with a condescending grin and nod. Beverley framed up the Italian driver in portrait and snapped. The champ didn’t seem to mind the attention of her lens as Luke narrowed his gaze and nodded back at him. “He’s got nine, I got one,” he said after making sure that his rival had passed.

“You guys don’t get along?”

“He barely knows me,” said Luke, “but not for long.”

“You think you can beat him?”

“I know I can. I will. I’m just as fast as him.”

“But you haven’t beaten him yet.”

“The past two years I haven’t had a fast enough car,” he said. “This year I have the car.” Luke patted the cockpit cowling of his baby blue race car affectionately.

“Blame your losses on your car, hm?”

“Never,” he said resolutely. “To get a fast car you gotta prove that you’re fast enough for one. I spent the past couple years provin’ it. Now I got one.” Luke’s eyes narrowed to fix upon her like a viewfinder. “I’m gonna beat that sonofabich. This is my year,” he said, his tapered jaw set with determination.

“All right playboy,” said a stout Englishman with a grey mustache and tufts of greying hair protruding from a navy blue flat cap. His arms were folded across his chest. “Womanize on your own time. You got a job to do.”

“I’m on it Teddy,” said Luke as he stood. The young blonde American wasn’t very tall. He turned back to face her. “Teddy’s the boss. Don’t worry ’bout him. He just doesn’t like it when I call him Teddy,” he winked. The boss shot her a glare and then motioned for a couple of mechanics to help get Luke prepared. “Love those braids,” he smiled as he zipped up his suit and shook out his balaclava. Beverley blushed. Her light brown hair was straight and waist length. The two braids down her chest were merely practical but they seemed to have an effect on him. “See you after the race.” He donned his balaclava and tucked in his hair, his blue eyes aglow betraying his anonymity, and leaned down to pick up his helmet.

“Where? Here?”

“Sure,” he said. Then he pushed his helmet down onto his head and tightened the strap, and she took more shots of him stepping into the cockpit and lowering his hips through the narrow opening and into the seat.

The architecture of Monaco was a peculiar mix of old renaissance stone and modern concrete and glass, built up on the coastal mountainside. Even the people were a mix of aristocratic jet setting upper crust and the legions of common folk who had descended upon the principality to line the streets for the race. She had picked out some spots around the track from which to take photos and had decided on the hairpin as her first vantage point. There was a staircase at the east end of the casino that afforded a bird’s eye view of the corner and was special access only. She was told that the hairpin would be where the cars moved the slowest so she could get away with some slower film there.

Unseen perhaps a kilometer away behind the casino, the hotel and across the harbor, she could hear the first engine starting up, then another. As they revved, more joined in, forming an overture of ferocity like she had never heard before. A few more onlookers gathered around her at the stone railing upon which she had her mini tripod mounted, ready for the cars to come ’round. For several seconds the engines revved and snarled in the distance, like savage beasts yanking on taut leashes eager to attack and pounce the moment that they were set loose. Then they exploded into a symphonic roar and she knew that the race had started. The sound shifted and grew louder. They were getting closer. She could hear them stampeding and raving unseen up the hill to her left. At any second they would be passing by. Adrenaline coursed through her blood. Then the first engines carried with a certain clarity, unmuffled by the stonework and trees between her and them and she knew that they were coming down the hill. The red one with the gold helmeted driver – Canaglia – was first, its tyres skittering as it hit the brakes for the sharp hairpin bend. It passed from the shade of the hedges to gleam into the sunlight and she clicked. The rest of the cars followed, a procession so terribly loud that it rattled her teeth and shook her bones. She kept snapping as the cars passed, the second red car behind the first, then one of the blue cars and one of the black and gold. The fifth car was the baby blue nineteen with the American star helmet. It was Luke. They all screeched into the hairpin, one right after the other, turning away to follow the sharp left bend and disappear down the hill. As the last roar subsided somewhat, Beverley realized that the dozen or so people around her not only were cheering and applauding but had been doing so all along.

The pavement seemed a little blacker with the rubber laid down by the cars on their first lap. Beverley aimed down at the tarmac, focused on the multiple streaks and clicked. A minute later, they all came ’round again, Canaglia’s lead a few yards longer and Luke still in fifth place.

It repeated again and again. The cars would roar louder on the hill above and then rush down into the sunshine of the hairpin, tyres skittering and screeching for their photos before dashing away. Every so often a couple of the spectators would chat amongst themselves, pointing out a change in the running order that Beverley had not noticed, but Canaglia still led and Luke was still fifth.

On the ninth lap there was drama. As Luke came down the hill, the two cars behind him were side by side. The blue number eight screeched down the inside, forcing the number twelve out wide. As they went around the corner the blue car went ahead but it’s rear tyre bumped the the number twelve’s front tyre on the way by, jolting the white car with the big green wings to a stop next to the sidewalk. Beverley snapped a few shots of the action and of the stalled car with its bent front wheel. The driver clambered out and hopped over the fence. His race was over. When they came around again a track worker was standing in front of the stricken car waving a yellow flag. Beverley wondered how much he was paid to stand in the road with screaming race cars. Once they all passed, a full crew hopped over the fence and pushed the car down the hill to a gap in the barrier and behind it.

After the first dozen or so laps, the cars began to space out, the faster ones pulling away from the slower ones. There seemed to be fewer of them as well. Beverley picked up her tripod and case and climbed the steps behind her to head to her next location. It was a ten minute walk past the opulent stone and tall windows of the casino and opera house. Three other photographers were already there when she arrived. The spot was behind the rail at the top of the hill next to l’Hôtel de Paris. It was a terribly dangerous spot and in fact, thick black skid marks scrawled across the tarmac where one of the cars had crashed into the barrier during the practice the day before, the metal guard rail itself hammered and battered back into shape. She had been advised that it would be safer there later in the race rather than earlier when there were fewer cars left. She set herself up and moved her tripod just behind the barrier, to nudge her longer lens with the fourteen inch barrel between the rails and catch straight on closeups of the cars coming up the hill. She would be shooting into the afternoon sun but at least l’Hôtel wasn’t throwing shade over the corner yet.

The first car to appear in her viewfinder was the blue and red striped seventeen. It popped up over the crest of the hill and she snapped it just before it careened around the bend before her, tyres shrieking in protest and leaving behind a trail of dirty exhaust for her to swallow. The next cars followed soon after and she shot them as they popped up and screamed past. Beverley felt safer running with cheetahs in the African savannah but that was what it was all about. If a photographer wanted the best shot, she had to dare. Her blood rushed and her skin tingled.

The next cars roared up the hill and crested the rise. She clicked, zoomed in and with aperture wide, clicked again. It was Luke with the yellow and black car just behind him over his right shoulder. As they passed, bits of rubber tyre flicked into her face. Beverley winced and wiped her eye with her wrist.

For the next few laps, the cars kept coming ’round spaced with irregular intervals and as her fear slowly subsided only her adrenaline rush remained. Beverley settled into the thrill of it all, snapping closeups of the drivers helmets, their gloved hands gripping their wheels as they wrenched their cars skidding left into the corner. She had never given car racing much thought before but being crouched behind the barrier up close to the action gave her an instant understanding of the spectacle and its appeal. Canaglia slowly stretched out his lead with the number two car in second place. The red cars seemed to be the fastest. Then on one particular lap there was a longer gap behind the leader and the next car up the hill was the blue number seven. She checked her pamphlet. Number two was a Canadian named Desbiens. He had apparently dropped out while Mike Pierce of Australia had been promoted to second place. Luke had left the yellow and black car behind and was now challenging the black and gold number three for third.

Her filter was getting dirty. Indeed, she could see the grit and rubber that the cars flung across the track before her. It was collecting up. From afar the machines appeared graceful and spritely. Up close they were ruthless visceral beasts. She changed the clear filter with another from her case and cleaned it with a lens wipe.

The most colorful cars were the two orange ones. They had a yellow and red sunburst look trimmed with black to look the like the fleet of jets of their sponsor Trans-Atlantic Airlines. She knew that one of them was behind the yellow and black car, so she waited for it to come ’round and knew that the orange one was charging up the hill just behind. As it crested the hill, its bright paint vivid in the sunshine, she followed it until it hit gave her a profile and clicked it just before it hit the shade of l’Hôtel de Paris with its rounded tower of renaissance masonry looming upwards into the clear blue above. Heaving in satisfaction, she revelled in the thought that if it turned out it might just be the best one of the day.

Having gotten enough shots from that corner, Beverley began to pack up to move. Just then two cars roared up the hill. It was Luke chasing the black and gold car, driven by a Scotsman named MacAulay. The black car looked slow and Luke’s baby blue went right around and past him and continued on around the casino while the the Scotsman rolled his car to a halt in front of l’Hôtel. With her lenses already packed away, she lifted her backup camera from the strap about her neck, ran along the barrier to get closer and clicked as MacAulay climbed out and stepped over the fence on the other side. A track worker stood behind the car with a yellow flag as puffs of smoke rose from the car’s engine and MacAulay yanked his gloves off in resignation. Luke was into third place but he still had to catch Canaglia.

Beverley moved on. There were two more spots that she had picked out. One of them was the finish line for the finish, but the other was a rooftop that she had passed by early in the morning when scouting for locations. About a hundred yards down the track there was a staircase down to the next street. Monaco had so many hills with a maze of stairs and ramps and bridges and tunnels everywhere. A quick jog across the avenue brought her to the rooftop of the block of flats. There were people milling about on it having a party, perhaps a couple of hundred. It would overlook the harbor and if it afforded as good of a view of the the track below as she had thought, it would be perfect. There was one small issue with it. She would have to jump.

The engines of the cars roared past above and behind her and more screamed past unseen before her along the harbor front below. Beverley approached the edge. There was a railing and on the other side was the rooftop. The party was going on under a large patio that covered more than half of the space, probably whoever lived in the building and whomever they may have invited over, drinking and chattering. Most were at the far ledge leaning over, heads moving left to right as the cars raced past below them. Between the railing and the rooftop were three or four feet of space that dropped five storeys to the pavement and certain death below. If she only looked across, the rooftop was so very close but if she looked down, the drop was so terribly far. She was sure that she could make it but she could very well break an ankle doing so. Certainly a clumsy landing would scrape her up. Her main camera needed re-loading so she changed out the roll for a faster film, giving her time to psyche herself up. She could just give up and head down to the start straight for the last half of the race but that felt like defeat. Of course the thought had occurred to get down to the harbor and enter through the front door but she would lose valuable time getting down there with no guarantee that the door would be open or that anyone would let her in. Instead she thought of the bird’s eye view of the cars as they rushed by all the exotic yachts stretched out in the harbor. The scene in her mind made her blood rush. An ankle could be fixed. The pictures would be lost forever. If she wanted the great shots she had to dare.

Beverley took in a deep breath and then another. The sounds of the engines raced by all around her. Each time that they went around was one less lap that she had to take pictures. Jumping across the gap might not be so difficult, but she also had her equipment. The tripod, she could throw across, but not her cameras or lenses. They were too delicate, and hanging from her neck by their straps would be very awkward and still not guarantee their safety when she landed. She especially was not about to risk damaging her out-of-production and therefore precious 350-XT. She might never find another to replace it. Stretching the neck of her t-shirt, she first stuffed her small camera in. Then her main camera, the 350-XT in its case, and finally the case with her lenses and extra rolls of film. With her shirt tucked into her jeans it was actually working better than she thought. She took one more breath.

Swinging one long leg over the rail, her adrenaline pumped. Her hand trembled. Beverley had told herself not to look down but of course she had to look to find a foothold for her boot heel. In Rhodesia she had come face to face with a cheetah at perhaps twenty yards, roughly the same distance to the pavement below. She didn’t feel any safer on the railing than in the savannah. Beverley flung her tripod across the gap and it clacked to the concrete on the other side. If she didn’t get across, she’d be down one tripod.

“Ne tombez pas!” someone shouted. Beverley looked up.

“I want to get across,” she called back, pointing at the rooftop.

“Ne fais pas ça, belle fille! Vous avez tellement de raisons de vivre!” another voice cajoled. There was some laughter and some heads turned. Two men emerged from the crowd. One was younger, dark-haired and smoking a cigarette. The other was older, thick bodied and with receding hair. He was holding a cocktail.

“I’m a photographer!” she called. “I want to take some pictures!”

“Ah, photographe!” the younger man said. “Oui! Oui!”

“Attendez!” the older man waved at her. Then he turned and gestured to the younger guy who turned and hurried back to the building. “Attendez!” he repeated to her with his palm held up as a stop sign. A minute later the younger man came back out, holding an aluminium ladder over his head as he moved through the crowd. Several people followed him out to the edge where he laid the ladder across the gap, slanted down from the railing to the rooftop and everyone gathered around to hold it down firmly.

“Merci. Merci,” Beverley called to them as they waved her across. She swung her leg over with care and her boot found a rung. Then she crawled onto the ladder and started descending her way across the gap.

“Oh, prudence!” a woman cried out with concern. The ladder shook and flexed with each of her movements and her arms and legs trembled. The ladder shifted, perhaps an eighth of an inch, and gave her a start. Between the rungs she could see the pavement far below. With the encouragement of the crowd, Beverley descended another rung. Then she felt hands on her calves and after another step, the younger man and one of his younger friends pulled her off by the waist to a rousing ovation.

“Bienvenue, photographe Anglaise!”

“Venez! Venez!”

Beverley suddenly felt like the star of the show. Her legs were rather rubbery after the harrowing crossing but she had made it. Then someone handed her her tripod and the group guided her into the party where a cocktail appeared in her hand.

“Merci. Merci,” she thanked everyone. Beverley’s French was passable but she hoped that she wouldn’t have to say much more. She sipped from her new drink. There was a leaf in the glass. It was gin and basil. She’d never had that before. She found the corner of a food table to put it down to retrieve her equipment from her shirt and straighten herself out. “I could use this after that,” she said and downed some more of her cocktail.

The older man was Gérard. The younger man was Pascal who was with his girlfriend Louise. They all went to the edge to watch the race, Gérard and Pascal clearing a path for her to set up her tripod. As she approached, she watched the harbor stretch out before her, all the gleaming white yachts of Southern France’s most well-to-do against the vast blue of the Mediterranean. Then the first car roared past below and another. She peered over the edge.

It was a dream location, better than she could have imagined. The risk’s reward was divine and Beverley’s adrenaline continued to surge. The yellow and black car passed beneath her, its shape in perfect proportions as it slowed down for the dogleg corner to run along the harbor front. She wouldn’t use the tripod. She would just shoot handheld straight down on the cars. Kneeling at the edge, she shimmied right up to the ledge and aimed down, camera strap around her neck of course. The cars sounded a bit different from that spot as they raced through the tunnel unseen just around the corner, then passing into the open air down the hill to brake for the dogleg.

The other black and gold car was next. She clicked as it came into the frame. She could see its driver’s hands on the wheel steering the car through the corner. The next car was the blue number seven of Mike Pierce. It slowed, made the quick left-right and zoomed away. A few seconds later two more cars came by, Canaglia with Luke right behind him, closing right up almost touching nose to tail as they went through the corner. Beverley thought that they were going to collide but they didn’t. She clicked. The party cheered boisterously.

The order of the cars meant that Pierce must have taken the lead at some point while she had been crossing the gap, with Luke in third behind the champ. Beverley took a moment to get some shots of the harbor, with the sunlight glinting off the gentle deep blue waves of the sea. On the other side of the harbor she could see flashes of color of the cars speeding along the track.

Pierce came ’round again and she zoomed in. It would be trickier to keep him in the frame but she clicked the shutter when she saw his hands wrench the wheel to the left and his white helmet cock to the side as he turned for the dogleg. If it turned out it would be amazing. Again, a few seconds later Canaglia and Luke came down the hill. This time Luke moved to the side, as if to try to see a way past, but still followed the red car through the corner. Beverley snapped another shot of the battle.

“Vingt-deux tours…” she heard. Someone next to her had a transistor radio, which was almost impossible to hear with all of the noise. There were twenty laps to go. That meant that she could stay for about ten more minutes.

After a good shot of the white and green car, and another one of one of the orange cars, Pierce came ’round once more. The rooftop crowd knew that the battle to watch was between l’Italien et l’Americain. The two cars howled out of the tunnel and around the bend into view. The crowd waved their arms and shouted wildly as the cars approached side by side. Luke was on the left, just inches from the guard rail, but the red nose of Canaglia’s car was still perhaps a foot ahead. They rushed down the hill and Beverley clicked away. The cars were very close and Luke had no room to move. Then they touched. She saw the baby blue car wiggle and its front wheel snap loose as it brushed the rail. Tyres skipped and chirped and the two cars spun together into the dogleg. The rooftop spectators shouted in amazement as the baby blue car slid across the track and smacked the railing on the near side with a nasty clattery crunk. Beverley’s heart leapt into her throat as she watched Luke’s helmet bouncing about rather violently in the cockpit until the car came to rest in a faint cloud of dust. Instinctively, she kept snapping pictures as the cars completed their spins, the baby blue facing the wrong way with its front left wheel bouncing and slowly rolling adrift behind it and its rear wing hanging loose, and the red car also pointed in the wrong direction in the middle of the track, but couldn’t help her relief when she saw Luke throw his belts off. A white car slowed upon the scene, passing over the fresh black pretzel shaped skid marks, picked a path carefully between the two crashed cars and sped off down the harbor front. Track workers jumped out waving yellow flags. An engine revved and revved again. It was Canaglia’s, and one of the track crew jumped out of the red car’s path as it lit up its rear tyres and spun itself back the right way in a vicious roaring squeal, then sped off to continue the race.

Beverley watched Luke struggle to climb out of the cockpit as the crew waved the flags and more cars filtered past the scene. The cars were a tight fit and seemed difficult to get in and out of. She thought that perhaps they were designed that way to keep the drivers from flying out in a bad crash. A track worker came to help him but Luke shoved him away. He seemed heated about the incident. He pulled off his helmet and balaclava, shook out his sweaty blonde hair and stood by the roadside. Obviously he was all right. The track worker tried to lead him away but Luke again brushed him aside. She supposed that it wasn’t the safest place for him to stand but he looked angry and determined. One by one the cars came down the hill and passed the stricken baby blue car. The track crew tried to push it but it didn’t seem to want to budge. Luke remained at the track edge waiting. Then he stepped out a few feet onto the road as Canaglia came down the hill. He leaned out and flipped the Italian the bird, waving it at him as he passed by, making sure that he saw it. Beverley zoomed in and took the shot. One more time, the track worker tried to guide him away. Luke swatted at him and she got a couple more shots of the blonde American as he stormed off down the waterfront towards the pits.

She packed up her things. It was time to move again. The crowd coaxed her to stay and it was difficult to make out their speech with their foreign tongue, loud engines buzzing about and her ears plugged with foam, but she tried to explain in her broken French that she had to get to the finish line for the end of the race. They guided her to the door to the top of the stairwell, and with all of her gear hanging from her neck she hurried down, blood rushing in her ears.

Out front of the building, the guard rail was right before her. To her right, a tow truck was pulling Luke’s car out of the way. She stopped for a couple of snaps with her backup camera which by then had slower film in it, and then hurried past. It was perhaps three-hundred yards along the avenue with the cars whizzing by just a few feet away on the other side of the trees. Despite her urgency, Beverley had to stop again, unable to pass up a chance at a good shot, and pointed her lens between the tree branches. The greenery hung in the foreground and the white yachts gleamed in the sun behind as the next car’s engine howled down the harbor front. When the white car with the red sides came into the viewer, she clicked, followed it and clicked again.

She couldn’t dawdle any longer. It wasn’t much farther as she could hear the loudspeakers making announcements in between the roaring engines. When she arrived at the corner a track worker waved her away. Beverley flashed her pass and he ushered her on to the staircase. At the top, the blue number eight came ’round the corner with the black and gold number four right behind. She clicked her camera as they flew past and hoped that it would turn out.

Out of the sun, she passed beneath the grandstands and when she emerged, the entire finish line and the pits were in the shade. The colors would be less vibrant and she couldn’t compensate with a slower shutter due to the speed of the cars. A short wall divided the track from the pits and several crew members of the teams stood right at it to watch the cars zoom by. Two policemen were minding the barrier. Beverley flashed her pass. The one policeman tried to wave her off but the other helped her over and made sure that the coast was clear for her to cross the lane and join the onlookers.

She walked along behind them looking for a spot. A black and red car was already being packed up. Its race was over. She framed it up and shot. Further along, the orange number twenty-seven was being worked on, the mechanics alighting around it, talking to the driver, the driver shaking his head. It’s sputtering engine shut off and the driver climbed out. Over her shoulder was the finish line with people crowded around it. A board hung above showing the laps to go. A car thundered past and a boy climbed up to change the number from a seven to a six.

Luke was back at his pit talking to Teddy. He was animated, using his hands to demonstrate how the crash happened. His expression was riled and he was hot under the collar. His hair was messed and sweaty and his racing covers were unzipped and hanging open, showing his white fireproof underlining. She couldn’t hear him but she could tell by his lips that he was using some choice pointed words. Teddy put a hand on his shoulder and settled him somewhat, then gave him a reassuring shake and pat on the back. Luke looked away, stuck his chin out and nodded. As Teddy left him, a telly crew showed up, a camera man and an interviewer in a racing suit with a microphone and clutching a headset to his ears. The crew approached him and Luke told the interviewer the same story about the crash, just with less animation.

Beverley wanted to talk to him to but she still had a job to do. Turning to the crowd at the wall, she elbowed her way in. Reluctantly, the bodies parted and she squeezed into a spot, knelt down and set up her tripod. One of its feet was bent from its crash landing on the rooftop but it still stood up just fine. The yellow and black car sped by sending dust into her eyes. Mike Pierce was next in his blue number seven to the cheers of the crowd and Beverley glanced up to see the young boy change the three into a two. Canaglia came by next with the number eight right on his tail. She snapped the red and blue cars together in the frame. It was time to change film again but with the race about to end she had to hurry. The cars went ’round in about a minute-and-a-half, so she had less than three minutes as she knelt there jostled by the onlookers.

With the camera loaded and back on the tripod, she peered up at the sign once more. There was one lap left. The people around her began to crush up and applaud. A man in a cap and blazer stood on the track to her right holding a chequered flag wrapped about its pole. Beverley clicked as the cars came by, the black and gold, the white with green wings, the orange sunburst, the blue and red stripes, the yellow and black. Then everyone started leaning out over the wall and waving. They could all hear it coming before it came into view. Then to an uproar from the crowd, Pierce in his blue number seven came ’round the bend. Someone leaned on Beverley’s back, jostling her as she clicked away, panning right to follow him across the line where the man in the blazer jumped and waved his chequered flag. She snapped it. Mike Pierce of Australia had won the Monaco Grand Prix.

Soon after, the cars started rolling into the pit lane and shutting down, their mechanics swarming about them as their drivers climbed from their cockpits. The team of the blue cars was jubilant. Not only did their man Pierce take victory but their other driver Johnny Waite finished in third place. The two drivers in their blue coveralls were all smiles as they waded through the crowd to climb over the wall and cross the track to the podium. Zooming in and zooming out, framing and reframing in portrait and landscape, Beverley clicked away capturing the chaos. Across the road the two blue drivers ascended the podium and waved to the cheering crowd and soon Canaglia in red who had finished second joined them. Beverley took their pictures as they were announced and Prince Rainier and Princess Grace themselves handed them their trophies. Finally they were given champagne bottles which they sprayed each other with.

The race was over and the crews were packing up. Searching for Luke, Beverley made her way over to his pit area beneath the palm trees but couldn’t find him. She looked about amongst all the mechanics moving to and fro for anyone that she might know but the only person that she recognized was Teddy.

“Excuse me, Teddy?” she approached him.

“Ted,” he corrected her. “What is it?”

“Ted. Sorry. I was supposed to meet Luke here after the race,” she said. “Do you know where I might find him?”

“You’re probably too late. He’s off with some bird, I’d imagine,” said Teddy as he turned to nod and point to one of his mechanics. “Last I saw he was headed off to the harbor with Pierce. Probably having a drink on his boat.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, not having the heart to ask which boat may have been his. It didn’t matter much as Luke had seemingly forgotten about their sort-of date. She supposed that having such an eventful afternoon was just cause for his distraction. Beverley decided to get a few shots of the crowds as she made her way back to her hotel and call it a day. She was supposed to call up Miles at the magazine and tell him how it all went anyways.

Beverley pulled the plugs from her ears and all of the sounds around her instantly jumped out in crystal clarity. The crowds were walking up the hill in the background over the last yacht in the corner in the harbor. She paused to frame up the shot when he entered. Beverley looked up from the viewer to see Luke standing on the boat. His racing suit was peeled down and tied about his waist and he had a bottle of beer in his hand. He was wearing sunglasses. A moment later a blonde girl popped up from the cabin, stood next to him and peered about. He had made another date. Beverley clicked the shot.

“Oh look,” said the girl as she nodded in Beverley’s direction and smiled at her lens. “The press,” she said. She was small and thin in a simple t-shirt and denim skirt. She wore moon-sized spectacles and her accent was English. His attention directed, Luke looked her way. His expression changed.

“Bev,” he called, taking liberty with her name already, and waved her over. She walked to the end of the harbor and stood at the back of the boat. “Come on aboard.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yeah, come on,” he urged with a subdued smile. Beverley came up the plank and stepped onto the boat just as a young short slender man with ginger hair exited the cabin. He was another driver with his race suit similarly peeled to his waist and she realized that he drove the other baby blue car. The blonde girl took his hand and they shared a kiss. “David, Leigh, this is Beverley,” Luke introduced them. “She’s a photographer for Still Life.”

“Pleasure,” said Beverley. Luke sat and motioned for her to join him. She did.

“I’m glad you made it,” he said.

“So, did you forget about me?” she asked him.

“Nahh, I didn’t forget,” he shook his head. “Truth is I was just in a cranky mood. Didn’t want you seein’ that, I guess.”

“I saw your accident.”

“That was no accident,” he said. His attitude becoming more direct at her mentioning.

“I have pictures,” she patted her case.

“You’ll have to show me,” he said.

“If you knew what I had to go through to get them,” she grinned. “If they turn out, I’ll definitely show them.”

“Ah, that’s better,” said a another man as he stepped from the cabin onto the rear deck running his fingers through his clean damp hair. He was in a trim powder blue t-shirt and khaki shorts. His accent was down-under and it took Beverley a second to recognize him as the race winner. A tall woman with big dark waves of hair came up from behind, slipped her arms around him and handed him a beer.

“Mike, I didn’t ask you,” Luke started. “How’s your wife?”

“You couldn’t just ask her?” Beverley pointed.

“That’s not his wife,” Luke grinned.

“Shh,” Mike winked.

“Oh, sorry.”

“Quite all right,” said Mike. “Just no pictures, hm?” Mike’s woman came out from behind him and handed Beverley a beer. They sat in the yacht and chatted as the crowd slowly dispersed from the harbor. Luke’s blonde hair was dishevelled and she could smell the sweat on him, but he was no less pretty than before the race. He slipped his arm around her and she shimmied in close.

Beverley learned that Mike was a former champion in ’73 and in ’69, was a very respected veteran amongst the drivers and that he was also a sharpshooter at snooker. The ginger haired driver was David Key, Luke’s teammate who did indeed drive the other baby blue car, and Leigh was David’s doting girlfriend. Luke hadn’t ditched Beverley for anyone else after all. Mike’s woman was French and her name was Anne.

“So how many points do you have now?” Anne shifted the conversation back to racing.

“Thirteen,” Mike grinned. Beverley thought it quaint that he pronounced it ‘thair-deen’. “Just two behind Emilio,” he did the math. Luke shook his head.

“That cocksucker cut me off,” he said. “I’d have beat him for sure. He was slow. He must’ve had a problem with his car. The only way that he could stop me was to take me out, so he did.”

“I don’t doubt it, mate,” said Mike. “Did the same to me in Belgium two years ago. That’s just the kind of bounce he is. Next time he tries it just give it to ‘im up the clacker.”

“Well I wasn’t backin’ down,” Luke told Mike.

“But if you hadn’t challenged him then you would have finished and got points at least,” Beverley noted. Luke turned to her.

“And I would have stayed behind him,” he said decisively, his jaw flexing with resolve. “I can’t let him think I’ll just back off when there’s danger. Then all he has to do is show me danger to keep me back.”

“No luck for you today, Lucky,” Mike shook his head. “You’ll get ‘im back soon enough, mate. You’re a damn good driver.”

“I have two points now,” David grinned, remarking on his fifth place finish. “I have more than you,” he teased the American. Luke bit his tongue and smirked.

The afternoon sun moved along and cast shadows across the boat. David and Leigh left hand-in-hand but Luke and Beverley stayed for another beer.

“I guess we better get something to eat before the party,” said Mike as he stood up.

“You go on,” said Luke. “I’m not exactly in the mood to watch that prick get his prize money.”

“Can’t say I blame you,” said Mike.

Luke hopped off the boat and helped Beverley step down.

“I just wanna get back to my room and clean up,” he said. “Wanna go for a drink later?” he asked.

“I’d like that,” she smiled.

“Your face is dirty,” he winked. Then he reached up, rubbed her cheek with his thumb and inspected the slight smudge. The unexpected care in his touch gave her a twinge of goosebumps. “You must have got close to the cars.”

“I didn’t realize how close I guess,” she shrugged with a blush.

“You know where The Regency is?”

“I can find it.”

“Eight o’clock?”

“Sure.”

Her room was in France, which was only a mile and-a-half away. Not even much of a walk if not for all of the stairs and hillside. When she got there she looked in the mirror to indeed find a faint sooty greasy film on her face.

Beverley cleaned herself up and called the front desk to order dinner. She had packed light and didn’t have much for wardrobe options so she hoped that he wasn’t planning on taking her anywhere too formal. Brushing out her long hair, she left it down. Then she slipped into a light turtleneck with multicolored horizontal stripes that clung to her slender figure. Grey bellbottom slacks went over her knee high boots and were cinched with a woven leather belt. She put on her tan plaid blazer, grabbed her handbag and headed out.

In the lobby of The Regency, she didn’t see him right away so she had a look about.

“Bev.”

Over her shoulder, she saw him standing in the doorway to the lounge. He was waving her over with a casual smile. Luke was in a black shirt with fine orange and aqua triangles pointed this way and that. His collar was open showing a thin gold chain. Having wondered if her attire may have been formal enough, she was relieved to see that he was in jeans. Luke took her by the hand and led her to his table at the window where he already had a cocktail. Beverley ordered a drink.

“Gin and tonic,” Luke commented.

“I actually had a gin and basil earlier today,” she said.

“How was that?”

“Not bad,” she said. “But I probably would have drank fermented wood shavings after crawling across that ladder.”

“Oh?”

“To get the shots. I was on a rooftop right above you when you crashed,” she explained. “There was a party on top of the building and they stretched a ladder across a four foot gap for me to join them.”

“You live for danger,” he grinned.

“Oh I dunno. Maybe a bit.”

“The grime on your face,” he said. “How close were you to the cars?”

“Right behind the rail between the hotel and the casino.”

“Yeah, you like the thrill,” he confirmed. Beverley smirked.

“Are you ever afraid?” she asked him.

“Nahh,” he dismissed. “There’s no time for fear. If you’re afraid, you’re slow. If you’re slow, no one will hire you.” Beverley couldn’t deny that logic. “Oh, you’re aware of the danger when you strap in, but once you start rolling down the track…” Luke gave his head a dismissive shake.

“You really love all this, don’t you?”

“You have to,” he said with a glint in his blue eyes. “You’d be nuts to do this otherwise.”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“Fire,” said Luke, his expression turning solemn.

“Hm?”

“Fire scares me,” he said. “That’s the one thing.” He took a sip of his drink. “Adam Rees. Canada ’73. My first race. He was my teammate, a Kiwi. Young guy, just my age now. A practical joker. Peter Wainsgard flew me in to replace Brommelhoff who broke his foot the race before in Italy. It was my big chance. My first day in the garage, Adam filled my helmet with whipped cream. I put it on. Cream everywhere. Had all the mechanics rolling on the floor. I knew we were going to get along great right away,” Luke reminisced fondly.

“But he burned.”

“Second lap. Early race is always most dangerous ’cause the cars are all bunched together and they’re all full of fuel,” he continued. “He came around the final corner and there was a pileup. No way to avoid it. He slammed into it. The whole thing went up into a ball of flame. Everybody got out except Adam. His legs were trapped inside. One of the cars dumped a bunch of oil on the track. That’s what caused the pileup. I hit the oil and spun off or I woulda’ been in it too. It was chaos. Everybody panicked when we counted five crashed cars and only four drivers. We could see him, his head bobbing, his arms waving in the flames. Nothing we could do. They put the fire out after a couple of minutes or so but, you know.”

“Don’t you wear fireproof suits?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. Long underwear too,” he nodded. “It gives you maybe a minute they say. Adam needed more than that.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Worst way to go,” he said and downed a good swig of his drink. “Anyway,” he shrugged it off.

“What’s that?” Beverley changed the subject by nodding at the small gold chain around his neck.

“What this?” he held it up. It was a breaking wave motif in a circle. “This is my surfing wave,” he smiled.

“You surf?”

“Not as much as I used to, you know racing and all,” he said. “My Dad surfed too. This was his. That’s what we do in San Diego.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

“Yep. You?”

“London,” she said and sipped her drink. “Enfield. Working class. Nothing special. Worked a long time in a sweets factory, boxing up the chocolates to pay the rent until the photography earned enough.”

“Bullshit,” he said. His grin was youthful and bratty.

“What do you mean?”

“With a figure like that?”

“Wot, you think we’re all little piggies on the line?” she smirked playfully.

“Oh come on,” Luke teased. Then he sipped again and leaned back in his chair.

“Just how old are you?” she needled him.

“I turned twenty-five in Argentina,” he said, his grin widening. “You?”

“Thirty-one.”

“I like older women.”

“You’d like me if I were twenty or fifty either way,” she volleyed back and drank.

“If I didn’t I’d be blind,” he said.

“Smooth talker.”

“You like me too,” said Luke. He sat there so cocksure, with his blonde feathered California hair, blue eyes and pretty tapered jaw. The daring race car driver had her sussed and all that she could do was blush. He downed the rest of his drink. “Come on, let’s get outta here.”

They took the lift. Luke’s room was on the tenth floor. They stood on the balcony and Beverley leaned her elbows on the railing. Some of the nightlife milled about below and many of the boats in the harbor were lit up, their glow reflected in the water. It would have made a lovely picture but she hadn’t brought her camera. Luke offered her a cigarette. She took it and he handed her his lighter. Beverley cupped her hands around the end and fired up.

“It’s not an extra mild,” he said.

“This an Empire?” she asked, curious about the brand that sponsored the rival red cars.

“Yeah, just don’t tell Teddy,” he said as he lit up and puffed.

“Paying Emilio’s bills,” she teased him.

“I’m on my own time. I just want a good smoke.”

“Fair enough,” she said, exhaling a long plume.

“Tell me about Rhodesia,” he said.

“It’s hot, humid and there’s no plumbing or electricity,” she began. “At least not out where we were. You sleep in the back of a jeep, or in a tent next to a campfire. You think my face was dirty this afternoon.”

“You liked it?”

“It was grand,” she smiled. “You know what they say though, lovely place to visit.” She gazed out at the Mediterranean paradise beneath the half moon and stars. “I met people wearing rags in grass huts, but you know they seemed just as happy or angry or tired as us in North London.”

“It was like a safari thing?”

“Photographing wildlife, yes,” she nodded. “Wildebeest, lions, all kinds of birds. The zebras were fun. I was face to face with a cheetah at about twenty yards. It was not happy to see us.”

“What’d you do?”

“I took its picture and it won the Livingston Prize,” she chuckled.

“So you’re famous.”

“It’s gotten me some notoriety I guess.”

“What happened to the cheetah?” he asked.

“My guide scared it off with a shotgun blast in the air,” she explained. His smoke half done, he dropped it on the balcony concrete and crushed it out with his toe. Then he came close with his nose gently probing in her hair and his palm roaming her back. “Why do they call you Lucky?” she asked him.

“Hm,” he paused his advances. “I was fifteen and racing go-karts. We went up to San Bernardino for a race. They had a local guy there named Andrews. He was their champ and was known up and down the west coast. Real hot shit. It was the first I’d ever heard of him. I beat him right off the start and never looked back and he got all pissed off eating my dust. When they handed me the trophy he fuckin’ spat at me and said ‘you’re not that good, just lucky!’ heh. Then of course lucky and Luke go together and all my buddies made it stick. Since then it just looks good on a helmet. Keeps my profile up.”

“So you’re not really all that lucky then,” she said, finishing her smoke and crushing the butt with her heel. Then she faced him and smiled.

“Sometimes you’re lucky and sometimes your guide tames a wild cat with a shotgun,” he said. Then he brushed her hair aside and hooked it behind her ear. “Or maybe you’re just that good.”

He kissed her, gently but not at all tentatively. Their tongues caressed one another’s and as she shifted to face him, his hand moved to the warmth inside her jacket and found her breast to grope through her sweater as she sighed into his mouth. Beverley’s hand caressed his smooth cheek and her long fingers slipped into his hair.

He backed her up three steps until she was pressed against the railing. As he slipped his hands beneath her top she shimmied out of her blazer. Pinned against her lower back, it flopped to hang over the railing when she shook her wrists free from the sleeves. His palms moved upward and the warmth of his hands spread through the cups of her bra. Beverley glanced up and about, checking for potential witnesses but saw no one. Luke noticed and she chuckled blushingly at his sly grin.

He kissed her again and she grabbed his ass, fondling indulgently and encouraging him to press against her. He did and their hips ground together through their clothes. Slipping his hands around her back he unclasped her bra, then bringing them back to her chest, he palmed her rigorously, burying her taut nipples into the roots of his thumbs and sending a quiver into her hips and mound. Beverley worked her arms in tight between them, unbuttoned his shirt, reached inside and caressed his smooth chest from his surf wave charm down to the light swath of hair in the hollow beneath his sternum.

They continued kissing, nipping and lapping at each others lips, their hot breath escaping where it could. Her pant waist slackened and Luke stuck his hand into her knickers, working his fingers into her pelt, tantalizingly tugging and stretching the skin of her mons. The railing dug in across her lower back as the length of her hair waved freely in the air ten storeys above the ground.

“Ohh,” she gasped breathily as his fingertip found the front of her slit and stroked back over her hood. Then she reached down to work his belt loose, open his fly and stick her hand into his jeans to grab his prick. It was hot in her fist as she wrapped her slender fingers around it and his foreskin rolled up his shaft as she tugged.

Taking a half-step back, he turned her around. She gripped the railing and took in the street lamps along the shoreline reflecting in the black waves far below. Luke pulled her slacks past her hips and they fell to her ankles. Then he worked her knickers down and she pressed her knees together so that they too would fall and lifting one boot, she kicked free. With a hand in the middle of her back, he bent her over the rail. She widened her stance and he got between her thighs, gripping himself to wet his glans on her labia before pushing in.

“Mmmnnnhhh,” she sighed as his hot length slowly sank into her. Beverley regripped the rail to push back. Her blazer began to slip. Instinctively, she reached and clutched at it, but its fall accelerated to drop away and she missed. As she lurched forward, her hair spilled down around her. She tossed it aside to watch her jacket fall, flapping and folding like the pages of a magazine, ten stories down to disappear in the shadows below.

Luke grabbed her by the hips and began thrusting. She pushed back into him, her spine arched and ass jutting, wanting him deeper. Her cunt formed around him, needing and lustful. He leaned over her back and reached beneath her to tug on her small hanging breast.

“Ngh, ngh,” he grunted quietly as he fucked her.

“You’ll have to take it out,” she hushed.

“Is this not the best time?” he asked.

“Not exactly.”

Luke jammed his prick into her with more intensity as his other hand glided it’s way down through her soft bramble to press on her hood.

“Ohhh, Luke,” she gasped as her knees buckled. His enveloping arms and her grip on the rail held her up as she wavered like a rope bridge in a gale. Wedging himself deep into her, he shifted about. Beverley could hear his belt buckle clanking and deduced that he was kicking off his shoes and jeans. Once free, he withdrew and took her by the elbow to coax her back around to face him. She reached her arms to embrace him and lifted a knee to bend her leg about his waist and draw him in. He lined himself and repierced her.

“Uhhh,” she sighed in satisfaction as he stuffed her empty wanting channel. The railing creaked as he pinned her against it once more, giving her a start.

“This railing better hold us,” she hushed.

“Daredevil,” he huffed between thrusts. “The lengths you’ll go to take my picture, urmh… or to fuck me.”

Beverley’s adrenaline pumped. She took his face in her hands, lunged forward and kissed him ravenously. Just then the balcony door above them slid shut.

“Oop,” she chirped as he braced her ass with his forearm and hoisted. Feeling teetery as he lifted her from the railing she clutched him in reflex. Luke turned and carried her that way back into the room and flumped her down onto the bed. Beverley lifted her sweater the rest of the way off, trailing her long hair out behind her, and he removed her bra, leaving her clad in only her tan knee high boots. He took her breast into his mouth. Her back arched and her hands ran indulgently through his hair and to his shoulders to push his shirt collar wide. With his feet still on the floor he bent her thighs back, hilted into her and ground up against her mound.

“Ohh-uhh, ohh, Luke,” she hissed as she rolled her hips to rub back against his pressure. His feet still on the floor, he dug in and jammed harder. Beverley clutched his ass, fingers curling into his tight buttock, urging him to persist. Her breath grew hotter and shorter as their hips crushed and jostled together. Luke buried his face into the bedding at her ear, grunting quietly with his efforts. She could smell the musky heat under his arms as blissful jitters began to ripple up from her core through her chest. She clutched him tighter as he rocked against her and she held her breath for the last few seconds until she finally came apart. “Ohhhh-ohhh,” she cooed as the vibrations washed up from her pussy and through her body putting a tremor most divine into her thighs.

Beverley twisted her neck to kiss him while she washed her hands recklessly through his hair. Picking himself up, he propped her thighs apart to fuck her. His hips slapped against her flesh as his cock stabbed away, taking her with fervor. She could feel her wetness dripping down to dampen the bed spread. Gazing up at him in adoration, she caressed his cheek tenderly, palm flat and fingers spread.

“Unghh, unghh,” he began to grunt, signalling his impending climax.

“Don’t cum! Don’t cum!” she panted.

“But you like the danger,” he breathed. It was true. She felt alive with him, tempting fate together. He readjusted his feet on the carpet and resumed thrusting. Beverley ran her hands up and down the contours of his young lithe physique. “Urm, urmh…” he grunted as he shoved in deep and held. The flinch in his core told her that he was cumming.

“Ohh,” she sighed softly. Then she reached up and pulled him down atop her as his spent body began to relax. His heart pounded against her chest and his lungs heaved in recovery. Crossing her arms over his back and under his ragged shirt, she held him there sweetly in the silence.

He kissed her cheek. She traced her nails lazily on his skin and ran her boot heel gently down his calf. He had taken all of her because he had wanted all of her, and she didn’t want him to let go. Slowly, he softened inside her, shrinking and receding until the subtlest of shifts disengaged them and she flinched at the sensation of letting go. As much as Beverley enjoyed being beneath him, even his smaller stature was beginning to weigh upon her lungs and ribs. She wriggled partially out from under him. The thought of her documentation and why she was so stupid to carry it where she normally didn’t had been nagging at her until it had patiently and diligently made its way to the forefront of her brain.

“I’ll need to get my passport,” she whispered.

“Hm?”

“It’s in my jacket.”

BRITAIN ▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀▄▀

Beverley knew that the pictures were terrific the moment that she developed the first roll. There were a few that didn’t turn out – there always were – mostly due to handheld motion blur. That was to be expected. Luke had made the cover with the shot of him coming up the hill next to l’Hôtel and turning the wheel, with the yellow and black car blurred in pursuit just behind. Beverley referenced the picture to her programme. The dogeared tattered leaflet was unofficial at best, a bootleg typed up and mimeod in a purply ink that she had bought from a child on the street for one franc. According to the paper, the driver of the yellow car was a Frenchman named J-C Rivet.

The car on fire before the race was visceral and intense, bold scary and up close. She didn’t know who the man running past her in the foreground was but the grit panic in his face and the way that his collar stretched with the motion of his arms in full flight spoke volumes. Miles ended up choosing it for the opening spread, enticing the readers to indulge in the next sixteen pages, a vivid montage of cars, drivers, mechanics, spectators and architecture.

Next up was her rooftop shot overlooking all of the yachts in the harbor with one of the blue cars speeding away down the waterfront as a secondary subject. She turned through all of the pages in full glossy color. There were panels with the black and gold car up on jacks before the race, its gold spoke wheels glittering in the sunlight and its mechanics buzzing about it in preparation, of the blue and red car cresting the hill straight on and filling the frame in closeup, and of the driver Rivet getting strapped in.

The next page was the shot of spectators in the terra-cotta balconies against the sky and opposite to that was a split pane with the closeup of Luke under the palm fronds on the left, beside Canaglia strolling in his red suit with gold helmet hanging casually at his thigh on the right. Miles had done a fantastic job with the layout.

The following pages were a postcard collage. The shot of the fire with the smoke rising up against the buildings looked terrific in portrait and was set against various pictures of cars negotiating the dogleg, the procession moving through the hairpin, and cars being worked on in the pits, including the shots of the broken white and green car, the white and red number nine through the tree boughs in front of the harbor and the track worker waving the yellow flag as the Scotsman MacAulay stood next to his smoking black and gold car in front of l’Hôtel.

The full page of the closeup from above of Mike Pierce in his cockpit gripping the wheel for the dogleg was fabulous. It was a difficult shot with extra risk of motion blur being zoomed in as it was, so it was extra satisfying to see such near pinsharp detail. She could even make out the kangaroo silhouette in the fat green stripe on the side of his helmet as he cocked his head. It was technically her best shot of the whole day.

On the opposite page was the orange number twenty-seven as it turned in front of l’Hôtel. With the chalky masonry of the tower rising into the clear stark blue and the brilliant sunburst orange car below it was the most colorful shot of the batch.

Then came the spread of the collision. Miles really outdid himself using shots above and below two main photos like a comic book frame up, showing Luke’s and Canaglia’s cars spinning in sequence. The main photo on the left showed the cars in mid spin, pirouetting like angry jousting ballerinas with faint smoke trailing from their tyres as they laid down black skid marks. The one on the right showed Luke standing on the track leaning out to show his dissatisfaction as the champ drove by. Beverley was a bit surprised that Miles would use the photo containing the profane gesture, but certainly didn’t mind. The whole thing told the story with the simple caption: Anatomy of a collision.

The final pages showed Johnny Waite right behind Canaglia near the finish line, the shot that she took of the people leaning into the sky from their balconies, Pierce winning the race with the official in the cap and blazer wildly waving his chequered flag, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace presenting trophies and then the drivers jubilantly spraying white frothy jets of champagne upon each other.

The June issue of Still Life hit the shelves and the response was tremendous. Letters poured in for more, so not only did Miles schedule another feature for September, he contracted her to the big American magazine Sports World for their July and August issues. The advance that they gave him provided budget to send her back out and follow all the races across Europe for the rest of the summer. In the meantime, there had been a race in France and copies of the issue caused a huge stir there. The Scotsman Fraser MacAulay won with neither Luke nor Canaglia managing to finish due to car breakdowns. The deal with Sports World was finalized just two days before the British Grand Prix, which was less than an hour’s drive up the M1. She’d kept in touch with Luke and was going to meet up with him there anyways, so she wouldn’t need a hotel. In fact, they were entertaining plans to meet up even before then but Miles had sent her to Iceland for a week. The volcano Hekla had been making headlines with its rumblings. She photographed it and the surrounding landscape and locals for five days but ultimately all that it did was steam up much of its snowcap.

When she arrived at the track, Luke had given her a baby blue satin jacket with the Maestro Extra Milds font stitched across the back, and a dark blue cap in the American baseball style reading ‘Goodwin Tyres’.

“So you like the Stones?” he asked her, noting the big red tongue logo on her white t-shirt as she changed out of her corduroy blazer and into her new jacket.

“Who doesn’t?”

“Squares.”

Saturday practice was about to start. The weather was sunny but the breeze carried a chill. Hand-in-hand, they walked up the pit lane past several other cars being readied by their crews until they came to Luke’s garage. His baby blue car was parked in front.

“Show me how that thing works,” he said as he pointed at one of her cameras hanging from her neck.

“Which, this one?” she asked, holding up her main device. “It’s a camera,” she smirked.

“Well there’s gotta be more to it than point and shoot. Otherwise I coulda’ won the Livingston Prize just the same,” he said. “Lemme see it,” he urged, curling his fingers for her to hand it over.

“Why? Wanna take my picture?” she asked as she lifted the strap up over her head with care.

“Yeah. Why not?”

“This is a Nippon 350-XT and they don’t make that model anymore, so don’t drop it,” said Beverley as she handed it over. She gave him a serious look as he gripped it before she let go. “Here, put the strap around your neck,” she said as she lifted the leather loop over his head. Luke examined the apparatus. “Wait, one thing,” she said and she reached to dial the zoom lens back for him. “There.”

“So this is the button here?”

“That’s the shutter, yes. Very good,” she teased. “So how do you want me?”

“Is this a trick question?” Luke grinned before lifting the viewer to his eyes and framing her.

“I’m the subject. You’re the photographer. You’re running the session,” she said. “You have to tell me where to stand, how to pose. You want me with the car?”

“That’s a great idea, sure.”

Beverley strolled over to his race car and heard the shutter click behind her on the way.

“Hey, don’t waste my film,” she wagged a finger at him. “I can’t get paid for a portrait of my bottom.”

“I beg to differ,” he joked. Beverley narrowed her eyes and smirked.

“Shall I sit?”

“Yeah, sounds good.”

Beverley brushed the top of the front left tyre to remove any grit before sitting, facing forward. Then she smoothed out her argyle a-line skirt, straightened her cap and crossed one thigh over the other, her knee high tan leather boot casually dangling.

“Now, check out the light,” she said. “Where is the sun and how are the shadows looking on me? Is maybe my hat brim shading my face? Will the shot look better from a few feet over there, or where you’re standing now?”

“Where would you shoot from?”

“You’re the photographer. You’re in charge. It’s your eye. You decide.”

“I think you’re fine just like that.”

“All right,” she nodded. “Do you want me in landscape or portrait?”

“You mean up and down or sideways?”

“M-hm.”

Luke turned the camera perpendicular for a portrait.

“So now I just click the shutter?”

“Are you sure everything is set right?” she asked. “It’s a 350-XT. Nothing is automatic on it like the newer models are starting to feature. You have to set everything yourself.”

“Just like manual gears. I like that. You get full control,” he remarked. “So, what’s the first setting?”

“First you should set your depth of field.”

“How do I do that?”

“You really are a virgin, aren’t you?”

“Be gentle,” he grinned as he looked up from the behind the camera at her. He had her blushing again as she fought off her own smile. She took a brief moment to reset herself.

“How much do you want in focus?” she asked him finally. “Do you want me sharp in the foreground and the background blurry, or do you want the background sharper too?”

“Never thought of that,” he said. “So should I change the zoom?”

“No, don’t touch that,” she said. “That will complicate things. This is your first lesson.”

“All right.”

“See the ring on the lens with the f numbers on it?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s your f-stop. If you want the background blurred out try f/two-point-eight, maybe f/four. If you want the background sharper try f/eleven or f/sixteen. If you really want you can go f/twenty-two, but you probably won’t need to stop down that far. The bigger the number, the further back will stay sharper, and it’s a long background,” Beverley noted the pit lane stretching out a couple hundred yards or more behind her.

“How ’bout sixteen then?”

“Sounds fine,” she shrugged. “Now check the rangefinder.”

“What’s that?”

“The circle in the middle,” she told him.

“Yeah, it’s a lighter color,” he said. “I thought it was just like a target scope.”

“Is there a double image at all?”

“No, but you’re slightly fuzzy,” he said. “How do I fix that?”

“You don’t,” she told him. “You’re at f/sixteen. There’s no way that I’ll be out of focus. Not from where you’re standing. The zone is too wide.”

“Then why do you look out of focus?”

“Because it’s a rangefinder. The type of camera it is. They make them with prisms now but I prefer the older style, and it’s very hard to find a good rangefinder with a fast shutter so don’t… break… my camera, all right?”

“Oh shit,” he winced as he realized the value of what he was holding. “Gotcha.”

“All right, so on this camera you’re not looking through the actual lens. You’re looking through a separate viewfinder. It’s a guide, not a final shot.”

“Ah, okay. I never knew that.”

“Now at f/sixteen you will have more depth of field but you will have a darker picture. Shouldn’t be much problem on a lovely day like this. Also that camera has 800 film in it.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I’ll be using some utterly preposterous shutter speeds today to stop the cars,” she explained. “So I’m using faster film to collect the light.”

“You sound sexy when you say that,” he grinned.

“Stay focused now. You’re a professional,” she teased back. “See the dial on the top?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s the speed of the shutter. Light shouldn’t be much problem here and the film is fast so you don’t need to go slow, but f/sixteen is pretty small so it will make a difference, so if you go to fast it’ll be dark and the colors won’t be very bright,” she explained. “Your subject is still, so you don’t have to worry about motion, but you’re hand held so if your hand jerks the camera and the shutter is too slow you’ll blur the whole thing,” she said. “At f/sixteen and 800 film, probably set it to 100 or 250. Fifty will start getting risky, especially with that lens. Anything more than fifty you’ll probably overexpose. But the more light, the colors will be brighter too. Bigger number is faster but darker. Smaller number is slower and brighter, but more risk of hand held blur.”

“Okay, a hundred.”

“Do you see the meter up the left hand side?”

“Yeah?”

“Is the little red arrow somewhere roughly near the middle or is it too close to the top?”

“It’s a little bit higher than the middle,” he said.

“Then a hundred will be fine for exposure,” she said. “Now frame me,” she grinned as she braced herself with the bases of her palms on the outside edges of the tyre on either side of her. “The frame of the picture will be the crop marks around the edges. You see them?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything outside those crop lines will not be in the photo.”

“I kinda thought so,” he said.

“Do you want me right in the middle? Do want more sky and have my feet cropped? Do you want me off center? Do you want the whole car or just part of it? Is there anything groovy in the background that might make it more arty?”

“Okay, got it. Should I click now?”

“Do you want me to smile? Do you want me to face straight forward? Is my hair good?” she asked as she gently stroked her trusses down the front of her new satin jacket.

“Pull up your skirt.”

“It’s not porn,” she tisked him.

“Smile but not too much,” he said. “Like you just stole a cookie from the jar.” Beverley demured, pursing her lips and stretching them wide as her chin dipped. “Yeah, just like that.”

“Now, you’re not using a tripod, so hold bloody still when you shoot,” she instructed. Luke clicked the shutter. “One more?” He clicked again. Then he looked up from the viewfinder.

“Hold up your camera,” he said. Beverley still had her secondary camera hanging from her neck.

“Hm?”

“I’ll take a picture of you holding your camera.”

“Wot, like this?” she said and sat up straighter. Then she raised her secondary camera, another Nippon but a different model, up near her chin with both hands and cocked her head at a coy angle.

“Sassy,” said Luke. He clicked and clicked again.

“Come on, get strapped in,” Teddy gruffly interrupted.

“Track’s not open for another ten minutes,” Luke protested.

“We got lots of work to do,” he grumbled. “Make sure this engine is tuned right.”

“Okay, I gotta go drive,” Luke told her as he handed her camera back to her with care. He leaned in and kissed her. “So with all of those pictures that you took with the cars whipping past you at 150, 180 miles an hour you are making all of those decisions?”

“Well you have an idea what the settings will be before you start,” she said. “But yeah, that’s photography. You’re considering everything – light, distance, motion, all of that – and you use the right equipment.”

Luke eyed her keenly, with a new found appreciation.

“Enough chit chat. Come on,” Teddy barked.

“You gotta go,” said Beverley.

“We’ll have lunch in a couple hours,” he said.

Beverley stuffed her ear plugs in and headed down the pit lane to take more pictures. She still had her programme leaflet from Monaco and she scanned her list as she passed the garages. The cars with the blue and red stripes had ‘Texvestment Funds’ in serious white letters across their sides. The two drivers were in the garage. One was a little fair haired guy with a certain spring in his step as he walked about in a white suit with blue and red stripes to match his car. The other was a rather portly older fellow with receding dark hair and an expression of disdain under his thick mustache as he sat on a countertop near the back of the garage. She took him to be Dexter Burroughs and the other to be the Finnish driver Jarkko Aalto. Using her secondary camera, which was setup for more stationary subjects, as opposed to her main camera which was set up to catch the blurry fast cars, she framed them up and focused, capturing the juxtaposition of the two drivers in the foreground and background, then slowed the shutter to brighten the shadowy garage scene, and snapped.

The white and maroon cars had ‘Roma-latti’ boldly painted on them, apparently sponsored by an Italian dairy company. Beverley knelt down low and got a closeup of the sleek glossy paint and body lines.

The next garage had ‘Red Band Kings’ with its little crown logo plastered everywhere, on posters, uniforms and of course the cars. Their space was a beehive. The mechanics were pushing a car out to the pit lane next to the other, both drivers already strapped in and ready to go. The white cars with their bright red sides sat next to each other, the number nine of Cesar Amaral and number ten of Sven Bergqvist. Beverley crouched down again, focused on the Brazilian’s lime green helmet, blurring out the Swedish driver’s yellow one a few feet behind, and clicked the shutter. The mechanics started up the number nine with a deafening blast and she refocused on the yellow helmet, blurring out the green one in the foreground and clicked again. Amaral put his car in gear and drove away as they fired up Bergqvist’s and he too drove off down the pit lane to begin practice.

A white car sat on jacks in the sunshine. It was number twenty-four and it’s sponsor was ‘Londonderry Travel’ in a plain black font. Her tattered programme indicated that this was John Podzolensky’s car but the name stencilled on the cockpit’s side was Eowin Prosser. She wasn’t sure why.

The blue cars were next. The number eight belonged to Johnny Waite. Beverley walked right up to the the nose of the car and hovered over to shoot down on the black numeral in the big white circle with the thick white ‘NorGaz’ logo plastered on the front wings and the rest of the car trailing away in perspective. Mike Pierce’s car had the engine uncovered. She took its picture before during and after a team of mechanics carried out the large piece of blue bodywork reading ‘NorGaz’, fit it into place over the engine and fastened it down.

A car roared past down the track on the other side of the pit fence. Another was approaching. She could hear it in the distance before it rounded the final bend. The baby blue car came ’round. It was Luke. With fast film and lots of sunlight, she could stop down a bit and crank the shutter speed up. Even so, at such speed and at quite close range, Beverley still had to pan follow him as she clicked to have any hope of getting a decent result.

Behind her a car started up, revved a few times and shut off. She turned to see the black and gold number three. Beverley filled the frame diagonally with it from it’s front right in the foreground, stepping carefully back to keep her own shadow at bay, the sunlight glinting off the sponsor ‘Precision’ in gold paint, and snapped. Then she looked up to see the driver approach, broad shouldered, thick-necked and somewhat stocky with light brown brush cut hair.

“Aye, with legs like that, who needs a motor?” he grinned as he put his helmet down on the radiator. If his name embroidered on his suit didn’t give him away as Fraser MacAulay, his Scottish accent certainly did.

“Say cheese.”

“Say anything you like,” he said as he stretched on his gloves. Beverley snapped his picture as he flexed his fingers. Then she stepped back, added his knees and helmet to the composition and snapped again.

“This is good, thank you,” she said. MacAulay turned his helmet over, fished out his balaclava and donned it. She clicked again and once more after he pressed his white helmet with the Scottish flag on the side onto his head and began tightening the neck strap.

“See you after practice, Maisie,” he said and then stepped into the cockpit.

Canaglia’s red car was pushed out of the garage but the champion himself was not around at that moment. The Canadian Desbiens was about, talking to his mechanics. He was a little guy with soft dark hair and fair skin. She framed the scene up with the large red poster of the sponsor’s font ‘Empire Cigarettes’ spanning the wall in the background. Then she knelt down in front of the number one car and adjusted her lens.

“Hey!” someone shouted. She looked up from her viewfinder. “Vai! Vai fuori di qui!” It was an angry Italian mechanic stomping towards her in his red shirt, pointing and waving her away. She framed him up in portrait, refocused and clicked. “Cagna! Vai!” His agitation roused the rest of them and soon a half dozen red clad mechanics all charged out of the garage.

“Get the fuck outta here!” one of them spat in English.

“Wot?” she said in bewilderment. “I’m just the press,” she protested as she held up her lanyard pass and gave it a shake.

“Get lost, bitch!” the English speaking one shouted. They were closing in on her and weren’t stopping.

“No really, seriously,” she insisted, waving her pass again as she got to her feet.

“Fuck off, spy for Ted Whitney!” he shouted. “Get the fuck out!”

“Andare! Andare! Vai! Andare!” They all gathered around her so she could not get a clear shot of anything. The stern rude expressions on their faces told her that they were not joking in the slightest.

“Fine. All right,” she surrendered. Before she could back away the original mechanic reached out and tugged at her baby blue jacket sleeve. He didn’t like the color. She flinched back.

“La Spia!” he shouted and grabbed at her camera. Her reflexes snatched it quickly from his grasp.

“Fine! Fine!” she shouted back.

“Andare! Spia! Va an diavolo, cagna!” they shouted at her as she walked away feeling rather shaken. Beverley realized that the competition was serious.

She set herself up at the last corner and got some good shots of the cars as they came ’round. They were especially good when they slowed to enter the pits and she could get some tight zooms. An interesting one was the black and red number thirty-seven. She snapped him almost in profile with his bright red helmet with two tumbling dice on it. She looked him up on her leaflet and it made sense when she read the name Daiuske Matsuzaki.

Practice was scheduled to end in ten minutes and many of the cars were already back in their pits getting fixed and adjusted. Beverley returned to the garage to find Leigh sitting on a bench under the awning, looking up at a large board of amber lightbulbs down at the end of the pit lane on their right, through her large round glasses that made her baby face appear even smaller.

“David is fourth,” she smiled, almost giddy. “He’ll be so happy.” Beverley read the board as a car zoomed by to start another lap. Here and there a bulb was burned out. A few seconds later the order shuffled and number fifteen moved a couple of places up. The top line read “1 – 1:21.7”. When she saw the fourth entry read “20 – 1:22.6” she realized that the first number was the car number and the rest was the time of the lap. That meant that Canaglia was the fastest so far. Scanning down she found Luke’s time ninth at “19 – 1:23.4”. Fractions of seconds separated the speed of the cars.

“I see,” said Beverley, “but it’s just practice.”

“No, not just practice,” said Leigh. “That’s the starting order for the race.” Beverley looked at her for an explanation. “Whoever goes fastest in practice starts at the front, and next fastest and next fastest and so on.”

“Oh,” Beverley clued in.

“So we want twenty and nineteen to be at the top,” Leigh smiled. “See there are thirty-one cars but only the top twenty-six are allowed to race. If you’re too slow, you don’t qualify.”

“Ohhh!” said Beverley as the revelation hit her. Little quiet Leigh had just taught her something important.

The electronic clock at the top of the board showed just over two minutes remaining until the end of practice. As each lap took well over a minute to complete, that meant that for any cars still on the track it was their last chance to move up for the start of the race. Car number forty was at the very bottom. Its chances didn’t look good.

It became difficult to hold a conversation as two cars whipped past on the track and a number more rolled down the pit lane to park. One of them was David. He turned his car into the garage right next to where they were sitting and shut it off. Beverley looked down the track and saw a baby blue blur, knowing that it was Luke. He was staying out to do another lap and it made sense now that he wanted to beat Canaglia’s time and start in front. She followed it as it snarled past left to right, its turbulence putting a ripple into the trackside banners as heads in the half-full grandstands turned. A couple of seconds later it became a baby blue speck several hundred yards away, bent to the right and disappeared around the corner. She checked the clock at the top of the board. There was a minute and a half left. Teddy was standing out on the wall, stern faced and with arms folded. A couple more cars came into the pits to park and shut down. The board adjusted and car number twenty-seven moved up from sixteenth to thirteenth.

“Enjoying practice?” David asked as he joined them under the awning. He walked past Beverley, sat on the far side of Leigh and the two of them held hands.

“A new experience for me, I must say,” Beverley admitted.

“You’re going to be fourth,” said Leigh with quiet excitement. “It’s your best so far.” They shared a kiss, continuing their best impression of lovebirds.

The last two cars flung themselves around the last corner and zoomed their way to the finish line. Teddy watched solemnly and intently. The first car was white. A few lengths behind it was Luke. They sped past in a blur with twenty seconds left and their engines slowed after they crossed the line. Beverley followed Teddy’s eyes to the timing board and after a couple of seconds the bulbs flickered and the order shuffled.

“That’s a good one!” Teddy growled as he shook a triumphant fist. Luke had moved all the way up from ninth to second with a lap of 1:21.8.

“Oh, you’re fifth,” said Leigh, almost pouting.

“Fifth is still good,” said David. “If I can move up from there I can get big points.”

The clock ran down and practice ended. The mechanics started milling about and Teddy came down off the fence. A couple of minutes later Luke brought his car down the pit lane, parked in front of the garage and cut the engine. As he climbed out, Teddy leaned over to pat him on the head. Luke stepped out and pulled of his helmet and balaclava as the mechanics alighted around the car.

“Damn!” he grit his teeth as he looked up at the timing board. “That close!” he seethed as he held up his thumb and forefinger. “Motherfucker.”

“Second is good,” said Beverley as she walked up and gave him a hug.

“Second is losing,” he said. “It was a good lap. I thought I had ‘im. Dammit.”

The four of them grabbed fish and chips from a concessions truck and brought back to David’s caravan. Luke had explained that the track being in the middle of farmland did not have enough hotels and restaurants around for the weekend crowds and it would be a real pain trying to find a place to eat. It was also why camping was so popular at the race. The two drivers were still in their racing suits peeled down to their waists and in their protective undershirts.

“I’m starving,” said Luke as he dug into his lunch.

“Did you not eat before practice?” Beverley asked.

“Had a little something for breakfast but that was hours ago,” he said. “Never eat before you get in the car.” Beverley’s eyes implored him to elaborate. “If you have a wreck and you’re knocked out cold, that sandwich you just wolfed down can come back up and choke you.”

“Ugh,” Beverley shuddered. “Let’s not talk about that during lunch.”

“You’re the one who asked,” Luke shrugged and took another bite.

“These are amazing,” said David as he leafed through a copy of Still Life’s latest issue.

“See? Look,” Luke pointed out the deliberate collision at the dogleg in Monaco. “Look what he did. Incriminating evidence right here.”

“Shouldn’t he get some sort of penalty?” asked Beverley.

“He’s s’posed to, but you can get away with it a lot. The officials are all half blind.”

“Then cheating must be rampant.”

“Naw,” Luke shook his head.

“Drivers respect each other,” said David. “It’s like a brotherhood.” Beverley could tell that he was from Liverpool by his accent.

“But there’s one tool in every box, right?” said Luke.

“So that’s how he wins?” asked Beverley. “By cheating?”

“No, that’s the stupid part,” said Luke. “He’s damn fast. He’s fast enough he doesn’t have to cheat. He’s just an asshole.” He dipped his chip in the vinegar and took a bite. “Vinegar on fries. Who woulda’ thought?” he mused and swallowed. “Anyways, tomorrow he’s gonna do it again.”

“You think?” asked Beverley.

“If I try to pass him, he’ll cut me off,” said Luke. “I know exactly what he’s gonna do and I’m ready for it.”

“Are you going to have another accident?” Beverley asked with a trace of concern.

“Not if I can help it.”

“You can see right here,” said David pointing at the photos. “He totally pushed you into the rail. Dirty pool.”

“I wanted to protest. Teddy said no,” said Luke. He pulled the magazine spread his way, turned it and pointed at the photo of himself and Teddy talking in the pits. Teddy had his hand on Luke’s shoulder as Luke’s hands mimed the incident. “That’s what we were talkin’ about right there.”

“Why not protest?” asked Leigh.

“He said that it would bring trouble. He’s probably right. See, if they give a guy a trophy on the podium and then take it back a couple days later it makes bad press, and whether we win or lose – and we’ll probably lose just because they don’t want the bad press – they’ll hold it against the team in the future,” he explained. “If the asshole had finished fourth we mighta’ had a chance, or seventh definitely.”

“Who’s they?”

“Grand Prix Association,” said David.

“Palazetti and a handful of his lackies,” Luke smirked. “Bunch o’ snobs.”

Luke returned to his own caravan and Beverley reloaded her cameras with fresh rolls of film to get photographs of the fans camping out. Walking nearly a mile to the back side of the course, beyond the smaller grandstands was an open meadow. Tents, caravans and small buses covered the field. There was no order to anything. They were just scattered everywhere with lawn chairs, blankets and barbecues, beers, baps and sausages. Music played from portable radios and car systems. Some of the camps carried flags and banners. Bed sheets were painted with favorite drivers’ names and numbers. People were drunk in the afternoon sun.

Beverley heard bagpipes and soon came upon a MacAulay fan club, their patron being the Scottish driver that earlier had been keen for her legs. There was a van crudely painted black with gold striping and a large number three. A tent awning was draped with St Andrew’s cross. Men in kilts, thoroughly pissed, half of them shirtless and all holding some sort of beverage were performing drunken highland steps with their piper standing behind them. She stopped to take picture.

“Lass!” one of them called and waved. “Bonnie lass!”

“Wrong jacket! Wrong jacket!” another one shouted. “But look at that skerrt! Lads, she sports the argyle!”

“I’m English. It’s just a stylish look,” she said as she approached with some trepidation.

“Just take the jacket off! You’ll be fine!” the first one called out. “Rollin’ Stones! Toomblin’ dice!” he roused his mates and they began to sing.

“You got to rrroll me and call me the toomblin’ dii-iice! Hurrah!”

“You’re all in your kilts, I see,” she noted.

“Yes and nothin’ else, sweet lassie!” shouted one of the guys at the back.

“The only thing a good Scot wears under his kilt is his wife’s lipstick!” shouted another. He stepped forth and was the first to lift his garment and expose his dangly bits. Two more followed suit.

“Now, that’s a precision shave!” the first one who had waved her over pointed at one of the kilt-lifter’s hairless groin. As she covered her eyes, Beverley clued in that Precision Razor Blades was the black and gold team’s sponsor.

“I’m not taking a picture of that,” Beverley blushed and shook her head.

“Who’s yr favorite driver?” asked the first one.

“I like Lucky,” she said with a trace of nerves.

“Nayyy! The yankee? Lads, she’s got behind the bloody yankee!”

“Naaaayyyy!”

“Arrrse!

“Wanker! Wanker! American wanker!”

“But I like him,” she blushed.

“The bahh-starrrd’s up at the front for the start!”

“Gah, bloody ‘ell!”

“Take a picture! Take a picture!” they shouted as they gathered ’round. A couple of them took St Andrew’s cross down and brought it to the front of the ragged group to hold up and wave. They began to sing and the piper at the back joined it on the melody.

“Fraser MacAulay
Never fear nor fol-ly
He leads the day, all the way
to the chequered flagFraser MacAulay
Scotland’s pride and quarry
Piston broke, a mighty bloke
The trophy’s in the bag

Hurrah!!”

They finished the song holding bottles and cans high in the air and she took the picture.

“You’re a good lass and may your lucky boy yankee finish second to…”

“Fraser MacAulay
Never fear nor folly…”

Beverley returned to Luke’s white caravan with the baby blue stripes. The sun was setting.

“Some of those campers are crazy,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Drunk off their asses.”

“That’s normal,” said Luke. “Wait ’til you get to Germany.” He sat down next to her on the sofa and handed her a cigarette. “See, Germany’s track is also in the middle of nowhere, but the locals are smarter. They built big inns all around it with huge beer halls. You can hear them all night long. Fat Germans sitting around, pissed to the gills drinking steins.” He flicked his lighter and she leaned in and lit up. “I finished second there last year. After the race, went to the party, got my money. After the party we went to the beer hall,” he said and then paused to light his own smoke. “Had these huge wooden picnic tables everywhere. It was one in the morning and it was packed and not slowing down. They recognized me. They sat me down. Had free beer coming my way from all directions. Couldn’t understand a word they were saying.” Luke took a drag and exhaled, then ashed to the tray on the window sill behind them. “Never been so fucked up in my life. When the schnapps came, I swear I got alcohol poisoning,” he shook his head at the memory. “Imagine if I win? I might have to just go to bed early, huh?”

“And you’ll have to find something to do,” Beverley grinned. Then she twisted herself and laid her legs across his lap.

“Gee, what might that be?” Luke teased. Then he set his smoke down in the tray, unzipped her boot and pulled on its heel. Beverley sighed as it eased off and thunked to the floor. Then she lifted her other foot and he did the same. Stretching herself out, she laid back, took another long drag of her cigarette and wiggled her toes in their socks.

He gave her knee a squeeze and then ran his hand slowly up her thigh. Beverley didn’t stop him when he slipped beneath the hem of her skirt. The work for the day was done and they were finally alone. She felt so good to be with him, so excited yet calm at the same time. His touch gave her warm frission. His fingertips found her knickers and she writhed her hips in invitation. He slipped his other hand up the back of her other thigh and groped her bottom before he hooked his fingers into the waistband and tugged her knickers free. Beverley lifted her bum and he pulled them all the way off. Running his fingers deep into her thick bush, Luke pawed at her mound.

“Mmmm,” she sighed as her spine became languid. She took one more drag and reached to put her smoke in the tray. Luke turned his wrist over and traced her slit with his two fingertips while he pressed his thumb into her clit. “Huhh,” she gasped as her spine flinched and head lolled back on the cushion. Slipping inside her, he curled his knuckles, stroking at the soft spot behind her clit. “Ng-ohh,” she blurted as her spine twisted in delight.

“That good?” he asked. Beverley grabbed his wrist, urging him to apply more pressure on her clit with a wiggling motion. Luke bent his wrist and rubbed back and forth over her nub as his fingers flicked and squick-squicked about inside her.

“Nhh,” she sighed as her hips subtly bucked. She lowered her eyes upon him, his soft blonde hair, his subtle grin. Reaching out, she grabbed a fistful of his blue t-shirt and pulled him over her, lifting her mouth to his for a hot wet indulgent kiss. “I want you inside me,” she huffed.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she nodded as she undid his fly and the two of them worked his jeans down to his knees. Luke crawled and and she pulled up her skirt and lifted her thighs.

“Should I pull out this time?” he asked.

“M-mm,” she shook her head. “It’s okay. I got my period the other day,” she blushed.

“Good to know.”

Beverley wriggled her shoulders out of her baby blue satin jacket and Luke pushed her Rolling Stones tee up her chest, leaving a trace of her juice on her skin. Then she reached for his cock and guided him to her entrance, lubing his glans on her dewy petals.

“Ohhh, you feel so good in me,” she breathed as he lowered his hips between her thighs and sank his length into her.

They screwed on the caravan sofa. Beverley ran her hands under his shirt and up his back, passing over the cords of his muscles as they churned to have her. Her walls gripped at his cock each time that it stuffed her, delving to relish in her innermost. Her bra popped loose as he unhooked it and he pushed it up with her t-shirt, exposing the subtle curves of her small breasts. Luke kissed her nipple and suckled, sending jolts of sweet energy down from her chest and through her womb to her clit. Her breath grew ragged and she cupped his ass as it flexed and plunged between her parted thighs. Pointing her toes, she ran one foot along his calf.

“Rmh… rngh…” he grunted as he toiled to fuck her. Then he put one foot on the floor and hooked her thigh up in the crook of his elbow. With the new angle and leverage he began to pile her, his hips striking her with a soft fleshy smack. His aggression was less comfortable but the fervor with which he took her made her heart race and gave her a rush that swept through her body. Beverley just wanted to give herself to him completely.

“Oh Luke,” she sighed as she ran her palms up his chest under his shirt. Then she lifted herself up to kiss him and pulled him down atop her.

“Unghh, I don’t wanna cum yet,” he said as he slowed his thrusts.

“It’s okay,” she hushed. “You can cum. It’s all right.”

With renewed vigor, he dug his foot in and fucked her. Grabbing the back of her knee, Beverley held her thigh up for him and huffed tiny sighs with each impact that struck her.

“Ungh… urrrngh,” he groaned. The shudder in his loins told her that he was cumming. She clutched him tight against her as the sweet warmth of his load filled her insides, and held him there as his prick began to soften. Gradually their panting breath calmed

“I’ve missed you,” she said fondly as she stroked his hair affectionately.

“Yeah, it’s totally been too long,” he said.

The cigarettes in the ashtray had burned down to the filters.

The grandstands were full and the skies were clear for race day. There was less wind and it was warmer, so Beverley just wore a t-shirt with thick blue and white horizontal stripes and bellbottom jeans and topped it with her new Goodwin Tyres hat to shade her eyes in lieu of sunglasses that she preferred not to use when looking through the viewfinder. The mechanics had the two cars up on jacks in the garage and were hovering around them. David and Leigh entered through the back. They were holding hands and she looked up at her beau even more doe-eyed than usual.

“Hey guys,” said David. Luke and Beverley turned around and the mechanics all looked up from their work. “Leigh has something to show you.” Her cheeks were rosy and her face was split with a broad joyous smile. She held out her hand to display the ring on her finger.

“We just got engaged,” she said, sniffing back a tear.

“Oh luv, that’s fantastic,” said Beverley and she stepped forward and hugged her as the mechanics all applauded and cheered. “But sweetheart, now you’ll rhyme!” Beverley whined as she realized it.

“I know!” Leigh pouted. “I’ll be Leigh Key!” she cried with face bright and tears of joy while everyone laughed.

“It must be love then,” said Luke. “Congratz.” He pulled David in for a hug, and then Leigh. Even gruff Teddy had to quietly concede the moment from the other side of the garage. “Tell you what. We’ll both finish in the top three and then we can celebrate on the podium,” Luke told David. “They have champagne there.”

There were handshakes and hugs all around from the crew and slowly everyone got back to work, including Beverley. The crew were fitting the tyres onto David’s car. A mechanic had one of the smaller front tyres on a bench at the back. He applied a pressure gauge with a quick pssht and appeared to be satisfied with the reading. Then he dropped it on the floor and it bounced with a tight bung-bung sound before he rolled it to the front left corner of the car and lifted it to fit on the hub. Beverley found a good angle to catch the glint of the chrome wheel and the smooth black surface of the rubber and clicked as the mechanic pushed an impact wrench firmly into place and with a quick loud whirr, fastened it on with a single large bolt.

“Why do the tyres have no treads?” Beverley asked. “How do they stick?”

“Rubber sticks. More rubber sticks more,” Luke answered. “The treads are just for when it rains. When it’s not raining, you just want more rubber touching the road. Period.”

“Full stop.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Look, I’m going to head down to the first corner for the start,” she said and smoothed his suit down on his chest. “Stay lucky, all right?”

“Sure thing.”

Beverley gave him a kiss on the lips.

Down at the first corner there was a small photographers’ stand on the inside of the barrier. She’d heard a couple of the other shooters that it was a huge improvement over years previous where they were expected to take their shots from the top of the grandstand on the outside of the curve, which was all wooden and would shake to the point that it was unusable for photography. Although only perhaps twelve feet high, it had a great view all the way back to the start and afforded a full pan of the corner against a backdrop of the full grandstand.

The top of the stand had already been taken so Beverley set up her tripod on the third step down. The PA announced that the start was in two minutes. Across the track the grandstand was full of spectators. Bagpipes started and were joined by drums. Fraser MacAulay’s fan club was there filling in three rows down in front and St Andrew’s cross draped from the rail. Kilted and shirtless, some of them had more hair on their chest than they did below their belts as she had been privy to the afternoon before. She framed them up with her secondary camera which was set up for more still shots, and zoomed in to capture the moment.

“Fraser MacAulay
Never fear nor folly
He leads the day, all the way
to the chequered flag”

The engines started up in the distance behind her, growing louder as more cars joined into the savage chorus of revs. The hair on Beverley’s arms began to stand up. Turning the tripod to face the starting line behind her, she zoomed and focused, aperture small for infinite depth of field. Waves of heat came off the cars with Canaglia’s red number one on the right of her frame and Luke in baby blue on the left. A race official stood at the edge of the track and held up a green flag. He jumped and unfurled it in a wild flourish and the cars pounced forth in a fury of exhaust and tyre smoke. Beverley began clicking the shutter, adjusting the zoom as the stampede approached.

Canaglia had started staggered ahead, but was on the outside while Luke had the inside. Just as Luke had predicted the day before, the champ swerved across the track to block him on the inside. Luke darted to the outside and Canaglia swerved hard again but when he moved across the track Luke had already snuck back to the inside and was able to pull up alongside him. Panning to follow them, she clicked away as they slowed before her to turn the corner. Canaglia on the outside had no choice but to drop back and fall behind as they rounded the bend. Beverley snapped with both cars across the bottom of the frame and the grandstand rising up behind them, the spectators on their feet. She could never tell with these pan shots if she had settled the motion blur down enough for them to turn out until they were developed, but if this one did it would be incredible.

The thunderous procession filed past and faded, but never out of ear shot as the cars made their way around the the rest of the track unseen. A minute or so later they came ’round again. This time Luke was ahead by several yards. Canaglia was second, MacAulay was third (to the delight of his drunken kilted fans), Desbiens in the other red car fourth and David was fifth. Each time around, Luke’s lead was a few yards bigger. He was winning.

Beverley spent the first half of the race at the first corner snapping pictures of all the cars as they came ’round. She reckoned that the best one would be of MacAulay with St Andrew’s cross fluttering behind him and his Scottish fan club on their feet in the sunny bleachers cheering him on. The track really wasn’t all that picturesque, unlike Monaco with its Mediterranean harbor and eclectic mountainside architecture. It was just a race track surrounded by farmland, so the only other spot that she wanted to shoot from was the finish line. Luke’s lead was several seconds with twenty laps to go when she picked up and moved back to the pits and set her tripod up on the fence next to Teddy and some of the mechanics.

Luke was catching the slow cars and lapping them down. He came ’round the last corner behind the white number twenty-four, swerved to the side and rocketed past down the straight. Beverley panned and snapped. Teddy stood on the pit fence, gruff as ever as his eyes followed the action. One would never have known that one of his cars was not only winning the race but with relative ease at that point.

A couple of laps later, Luke was a few car lengths behind the Japanese driver Matsuzaki in the black and red number thirty-seven. Matsuzaki’s car drove past the line with a rough sounding engine. When they came ’round the last corner on the following lap, Luke was very close. Beverley could tell that he was ready to pounce and pass him. A little dark puff came out the back of the black and red car and when Luke swerved out to pass, his baby blue car wiggled and slipped. Since Beverley had already lined up the shot to capture the move, she fired the shutter twice before stopping with a sharp gasp as Luke’s car slowly began to spin.

“Oil!” Teddy shouted and one of the mechanics held his hands atop his head in dismay. Luke was still sliding down the track but facing backwards, smoke streaming from his skidding tyres as he continued to gently spin at high speed. Beverley’s heart leapt into her throat before Teddy grabbed her arm and yanked her down off the fence as all the mechanics jumped out of the way expecting him to crash. She wheezed past her outstretched hand as her precious camera teetered and rocked atop her tripod still standing on the pit fence. Luke’s baby blue car slid past and as it began to face forward, miraculously regained traction and continued away down the straight without hitting a thing, to the raucous approval of the crowd before it finally passed the black car just before the turn.

“Atta boy, Lucky!” shouted one of the mechanics as he climbed back onto the fence and triumphantly pumped his fist.

“Bit o’ luck, that was,” Teddy shook his head and patted his chest. Shaken, Beverley stepped back up onto the fence where just like Luke and his car, her camera had survived unscathed. On the track surface, a brown-black glistening spray ran in a trail down the straight before her. The rough sounding engine on Matsuzaki’s car had sprayed oil on the track just as Luke had moved to pass him and it had caused him to spin. From then on, all the cars coming ’round roared past closer to the pit fence to avoid the oil.

On the next lap Luke came ’round with Matsuzaki nowhere in sight. The black car had finally broken down somewhere on the track. The next car was still Prosser (or Podzolensky, she still wasn’t quite sure) in the white car followed by Canaglia who was closing in. Suddenly Canaglia’s car made an ugly noise and slowed. The noise stopped and as the white car sped off down the track the Italian rolled silently to a halt against the pit fence just yards before them. Beverley raised her secondary camera to her eye and framed him up as he tossed off his belts and clambered out, his metallic gold helmet sparkling in the sunshine. She clicked and clicked again while a couple of the baby blue mechanics sarcastically applauded his breakdown. Canaglia doffed his helmet and balaclava and ignored them, his thick dark hair matted with sweat. He hopped the fence and skulked his way back to his garage. Canaglia was out. Everything was going Luke’s way.

The timing board showed that there were six laps left. The mechanics had two sign boards at their feet with plastic letters scattered about. One of the black boards read ‘LUCKY’ in white. The other read ‘DAVID’. One of the mechanics grabbed Luke’s board and spelled out ‘SLO’ beneath his name in yellow letters. Then he held it up and leaned out as Luke went by on the next lap. Beverley wasn’t terribly keen to get into grumbly Teddy’s space, but her curiosity got the better of her.

“What’s that for?” she asked him.

“It means he’s got the race in the bag, a big lead and only a few laps left,” he said warily, with absolute determination to not count his chickens before they might hatch. “No need to keep going like hell and risk a breakdown or a crash.”

That was how close Luke was to victory. Beverley could feel it in her bones. Every time that he came ’round, the fans got on their feet sensing it. The moment was terribly exciting. After the evasive moves at the start and spinning on the oil at 180 miles per hour, it was all coming together. It was Luke’s day and nothing could stop him from getting his first win. She couldn’t imagine how elated he would be, and she was going to be there to share it with him.

Track workers hustled beneath them to push the broken red car down the track past the end of the pit fence and out of the way behind it. Teddy had two cars in the race. With the breakdown of Canaglia, David had moved up to fourth place. He was right behind MacAulay as they went by with two laps to go. Then on the next lap the mechanics jumped up and shouted when David came ’round ahead. He had managed to pass the Scot at some point on the track.

Beverley picked up her tripod and camera and jogged further down the pit fence where she could get a proper angle at the white finish line and the official standing on the track with the chequered flag. She readied her camera and took a breath to calm her adrenaline. She was zoomed in, ready to catch him as he came ’round, but as the sound of his engine approached, the fans all along the grandstand stood up. She zoomed back out and stopped right down to f/twenty-two and got the crowd into the frame. Luke came ’round with the fans as loud as his engine, waving him home. She snapped, stopped up, increased the shutter speed, snapped again, stopped up, increased the shutter, snapped, fingers moving quickly as he got closer and closer to the finish. In the foreground, the mechanics in their white shirts with baby blue stripes all leaned out to wave and shout and the official jumped and thrashed the chequered flag wildly to wave Luke through like a bull as he sped across the line holding up his hand and waving his index finger emphatically. She clicked. Luke had won the 1976 British Grand Prix.

The race wasn’t quite over. The rest of the positions were still to be decided. Luke’s lead was so great that he was already long gone around the first corner when Éric Desbiens finished second in the number two car. Beverley snapped his picture and then got ready for David. He came ’round with MacAulay clearly some yards behind him. He too raced to the line and she shot him with the chequered flag and the mechanics waving.

Teddy was smiling, patting mechanics on the back. Grown men were hugging each other. With her secondary camera she took some shots.

After a couple of minutes, Luke brought his baby blue car down the pit lane to the rousing cheers of the mechanics and fans and parked it in front of his garage. Beverley jumped down off the pit fence, gear in tow to join the mob. Wedging her way in, she framed him up with her backup camera. The heat of the car radiated up at her as she got close. Luke’s helmet jostled about atop his neck as the mechanics grabbed his shoulders and shook him about in jubilation. The whole front of the car, including Luke’s head and shoulders was covered in a faint brown film of oil. The mechanics made way for the boss and Teddy leaned down and patted his helmet. Everyone was crowding, shuffling and shouting. She kept clicking the shutter as Luke slapped his palm down several times on the cockpit cowling. His belts came off and he straightened up to step out onto the radiator. When he pulled off his helmet and balaclava his eyes shone with vivid life and his smile had no end.

“Woo!” he shouted and pumped his fist, then ran a palm through his sweaty hair and unzipped his suit, giving it a flapping to fan himself. Then he swatted high fives at each of the congratulatory hands that reached out to him before spreading his legs into a semi crouch and striking a surfing pose. Beverley clicked away. “Yeah!!” He jumped down from the radiator and his short stature was nearly lost in the chaos. A telly crew waded in and the interviewer shoved a microphone in his face as he shouted over the din.

“James Darling here with the winner of the 1976 British Grand Prix, American Luke Brashford! Luke, congratulations on your first win!”

“Thanks a lot! It finally came together! Now just make sure it’s not the last! 1976! This is my year!”

“You almost crashed there! I suppose you really lived up to your knickname Lucky today! Tell us about that!”

“Yeah, I planned the whole thing just like that! No! The car in front of me had been leaking oil, don’t know if you can see it on me!”

“Yes, we certainly can!”

“And it finally let go right at the wrong moment! I started spinning but somehow it turned the right way around and I managed to keep it going! I don’t know how many guys in history have done a three-sixty and went on to win a Grand Prix but I just did!”

One of the mechanics got Luke’s attention and handed him a smoke. He took it and puffed.

“Enjoying a victory cigarette, hah! You took the lead at the start and didn’t look back! How did that go?”

“Ahh, I knew that f… sorry… I knew he was gonna do that so I was ready for ‘im and I just got the job done!”

“Well, congratulations again Lucky, and we’ll let you get up to that podium!”

“Right on, man! Where’s that big shiny trophy? Woo!”

“Luke!” she called to him through the chaos and reached for his jaw, turning his face to her.

“Bev!” he smiled. She leaned in and kissed him on the mouth.

“You did it! You won!”

“Damn right! Yeah!” He put his arm around her but didn’t pull her in too tight. “I don’t wanna get you all oily!”

“It’s all right!”

“Look, I gotta go up there!” he pointed at the podium platform at the end of the garages next to the timing board. “I’ll see you when I get back down!”