“Better,” Mac said into the quiet. “That’s you. Bank it.”
I lifted from the belts and wiped a forearm across my temple. The simulator heat clung, stale and artificial. “It never feels like the car.”
“It isn’t.”
“That’s the problem.”
He watched me a moment, and in that moment he looked older than he let himself be. “You’re thinking about something that isn’t the track.”
“It’s handled.”
“By who?”
I stared past him at the wall where the motto glared. “By me.”
He didn’t push. He never did, not head-on. “Lunch. Then you’ve got cameras.”
“Joy.”
He cracked a smile, brief as a twitch. “We can swap if you want. I’ll do the pretty boy poses; you can spend all afternoon reconciling power unit logs.”
“Tempting.”
He knocked on the side of the sim once, two sharp knuckles on carbon. “Eat.”
The PR studio had been carved out of a corner of the building that got the most flattering light. Terri fussed with collar and crest until the logo sat centre chest and every sponsor read clearly.
“We’re going for human,” she said. “Relaxed, confident, not cold. Think… approachable mountain.”
“Mountains aren’t approachable.”
“Of course they are. People climb them all the time.”
Three short interviews. Smiling answers to smiling questions. A slow-motion shot of me walking past the car with a reflective look on my face. B-roll of my hands on a steering wheel that wasn’t connected to anything. A sound bite about Melbourne. A softer one about “respecting the field.” A clean one about “the fans.”
“Perfect,” the videographer said. “Could we get one more take of the smile at the end?”
“That was the smile.”
He laughed and didn’t ask again.
In the corridor, Terri matched my stride, tablet hugged to her chest. “One small thing.”
“Nothing’s ever small.”
“Ross wants you at a sponsor dinner on Thursday with Charles Laurent and a few others. Black tie. He figures it’ll play well given the… noise.”
My fingers flexed, the watch suddenly heavy around my wrist. “Which noise?”
She tried and failed not to flinch. “The kind that sells papers.”
“Cancel it.”
“I can move it,” she said gently. “I can’t cancel it.”
We reached the lift. The doors opened onto our reflections: a man carved into an emblem and his eager assistant.
“One week to Singapore,” she added. “Plenty of time to reset. You’ll be yourself by then.”
