“Goggles on, ladies!” Roger announced, marching overto us. “It’s almost seven, and we need to get you all on your way by eight when the street is reopened.”
Our goggles had buckles at the back, so I slipped mine on and got them buckled up underneath the veil. Then, with a wave at my parents, I climbed into the backseat with my notebook in hand. Melody took the navigator’s seat while Louise made a great show of getting behind the wheel, her enormous pink-and-cream hat with flowers, feathers, and a couple of fake birds now swathed in veil.
I waved to the crowd and crew members and caught a glimpse of Dixon when he emerged from behind a group of tourists. He was dressed in a dark brown suit with vest and coat and had a derby hat on his head. He looked absolutely at ease in his Edwardian clothes, and I had the worst urge to ask him if they made him wear period underwear, too.
OK. I admit that ever since that kiss last night, visions of him parading around without clothes, Edwardian or otherwise, occupied my mind. I banished those thoughts, knowing full well that although Dixon might be a little flirty, it didn’t mean anything. He’d made it quite clear that he was still mourning his lost love.
“Such a shame, too,” I said to myself as I strapped on very nonperiod seat belts that the insurance people had insisted be installed in all the cars.
“What’s that?” Melody turned around, yelling over the sound of the engine. Although the people who made the cars had used more modern engines so that it wouldn’t take us six months to make the journey, there was no room for things like mufflers (or, as I found out a few hours later, shocks), so the motor was quite loud.
“Go!” Roger said, consulting his watch.
With a cheer from the crowd and a grinding from the gearbox as Louise did the clutch/acceleration dance, we set off, Tabby and Sam right behind us in an open convertible.Clipped to the front of the flat windscreen was a black video camera that caught our conversation and actions in the car. Louise started a stream-of-consciousness talk to the camera, telling it all about herself and how she loved driving, simply loved driving, and was very competitive, and just hoped that the rest of her team would be up for the long hours she planned to spend driving so that we would win the race and all the glory.
Cars honked as we proceeded out of the city. Almost immediately, we were sucked up in New York City traffic and came to a standstill, hemmed in on all sides by taxis, cars, delivery trucks, and lots and lots of people.
“Well, this is disappointing,” Louise complained as we crawled our way toward one of the tunnels out of the city. “You’d think they would have cleared a path for us since we’re filming a show.”
“Reality TV at its best,” I yelled from the backseat, and made a few notes on just what my thoughts were at this exciting moment. Somehow, they ended up being mostly focused on Dixon’s clothes, what he looked like without them, and a speculation of just how long it took a person to stop grieving over a dead fiancée.
The openness of our Thomas Flyer made it a bit difficult to write when we were actually moving, so once we had cleared the city I tucked away my journal, only to find the leather pouch that my father had evidently slipped down beside the seat without me seeing.
“Dammit, Daddy...” I opened up the pouch and saw, as I had expected, a small gun. My father had made sure I knew how to shoot most firearms early on in my life, so I just rolled my eyes at this one, made sure to remove the clip from it, and stuffed it down between the two red leather seats at the same time I made a mental note to hand it over to Roger later.
We had made it out of the city (just) when all hellbroke loose. We’d been driving along at the speed limit, waving when passing cars honked at us and making sure to make some comments to the in-car camera (when Louise wasn’t soliloquizing), but all of a sudden there was an ugly metal sound and the car swerved violently to the right, almost sending us through a guardrail. Louise screamed and started pumping what she thought was the brake but later determined was the clutch. Melody, with presence of mind, grabbed the wheel when Louise covered her face, screaming, “We’re going to crash! We’re going to crash!”
She must have hit the brake in her frenzy of pedal-pushing, because we slowed down almost instantly and Melody got us pulled over onto the shoulder.
“What the hell happened?” I asked, unbuckling my seat belt. Behind us, the convertible with Tabby and Sam pulled up.
“I don’t know, but I suspect it was something to do with the tires or suspension,” Melody said, and looked meaningfully at me.
“Oh. Mechanical stuff. That’s me, huh?” I got to my feet, grabbed the small notebook I’d used to take notes on how to do things on the car, and hopped over the side to the ground. Sure enough, the right back tire looked like an alien had exploded from it.
“We blew a tire!” I yelled over the sound of traffic as it raced past us.
“Well, get busy with the repair,” Louise demanded in a bossy sort of tone that I could tell was going to jangle my nerves.
“Do you need help?” Melody asked, crawling over the front seat to the back.
“No, no, I have this under control,” I said, propping open my notebook and reading the tire changing instructions. “Let’s see, wrench, jack, grease pot... got it.” Iopened up one of the boxes strapped to the running board and dug around until I found the wrench and grease pot. The next box gave up the jack and a long light olive green apron that I was told to put on so as not to get my costumes dirty. I set my hat, veil, and goggles on the seat, smiled at Sam and the camera, donned the apron, and tried out another wrench twirl. “Right! Suffragette power time, ladies and gentlemen.”
“Oh, get on with it!” Louise snapped.
“Sheesh,” I said, kneeling painfully on the gravel. “Hold your girdle on, lady. Er... corset.” I grinned for the camera and, using the hand pump, got the jack under the side of the car nearest the tire. Another car pulled up behind us while I was wrestling with the bolts in the center of the tire.
“Need a hand?”
I glanced up to see Dixon. “Oh, hi.”
“Hello.” He glanced at Sam and Tabby. “That looks like difficult work. Might I lend some assistance?”
I couldn’t hold back a little giggle, saying softly, “That sounded very Edwardian.”
“Thank you. I tried.” He cleared his throat and said louder, “Would you like me to try my hand on those bolts?”
“Sure thing,” I said, handing him the wrench. “These clincher tires are a pain in the butt, if you want to know the truth.”
