New York, New York
Chapter 23
9 days until the Indianapolis 500
The Indianapolis Speedrome was a slice of southern Indiana in the middle of the state capital. Haubstadt was dirt and the Speedrome was asphalt, but that was pretty much the end of their differences. Déjà vu swept over Mack as she took in the same rolling aluminum doors over the ticket window, the same cheap red paper tickets used by every carnival in the country, and the same chain-link fence where a sullen teenager waved them through. Mack assessed every element as they passed by: the familiar smell of beer and popcorn, the new LED scoreboard, the grandstands that wrapped almost the entire length of the short track. Leo led them confidently through the crowd, smiling and charming his way across the knees and feet of other spectators until they found a seat in the dead center.
“Did you want anything? Snack or a soft drink?”
Mack pulled a face. “You can probably smell bulk popcorn wafting out of my pores. I haven’t been able to eat the stuff for years.”
When Leo wrinkled his forehead in confusion, Mack explained the connections between the Speedrome and the Haubstadt track. Leo looked around the Speedrome, a little dazed. “It’s crazy that you run a place like this. I can’t even imagine the work that goes into making a race happen. How do you balance that with racing?”
“Running a place like this is my job, Leo. Every weekend from April to October. Racing is a temporary thing.” She paused, unable tostop her brain from turning to her own track. “With climate change doing what it’s doing, we probably should run a longer season. Lately it’s sixty degrees even in February.”
He looked at her with an indiscernible expression, and Mack turned back toward the track in case what she saw on his face was judgment. She wasn’t ashamed of their track or the honest work she did for their family. But what if Leo saw it differently? What if racing and tracks were like that old saying: “Those who can’t do, teach?”Those who can’t race, run a track.She liked the version of herself Leo reflected back, and she didn’t want to see herself diminished in his eyes.
The first cars edged onto the track before Mack noticed the odd orientation of the track’s white striping. When she asked Leo about it, he tilted his head toward her to explain, all laundry soap and warmth, and she struggled to care about anything other than Leo’s leg pressed up against her own. Mack could see the stray copper threads in his otherwise dark beard, and in a flash she recalled the way his beard felt against her skin, the texture and weight of his body on hers. Goddamn, how she wanted to take him home and defuse the stress and jitters swirling in her body. To use his body to make her body forget.
Except Leo was more than a stress screw. Going back to Leo’s house would be unfair to both of them. He was a lot like Shaw, she realized; kind and easy. She’d always been attracted to arrogant, insolent, wild bad boys, but sitting with Leo in a crowd of strangers, Mack understood the appeal of the guy next door. Leo was like coming home after a hard day of work. He deserved better than being used for stress relief. And she deserved to give her own attention completely to the Indy 500.
“It’s a figure-eight race,” he said evenly, unaware of her racing thoughts. “The Speedrome was the first track to host these kind of races. They’re mostly modified stocks, but tonight is a special feature.”
“You said buses?” Mack asked, but the heat race started and there was little point shouting at each other while the first cars took the green flag. They watched and cheered and gasped and groaned as twenty cars raced in a swirling figure eight, narrowly missing each other andoccasionally clipping bumpers. It was loud and chaotic and wildly entertaining. She’d heard about this style of racing but never seen it in person. She involuntarily considered adding it to her track lineup, evaluating recruitment and purse costs, additions to the garages, advertising.
Mack rubbed her temples as the wild racing continued. She didn’t want to think about home but the initial joy of the night was fading fast. Tomorrow, she would buckle into an IndyCar but no matter how well she did, she’d be back at her own track come Memorial Day.
Why did one Indy 500 no longer feel like enough?
Several heats raced, and then the track fell silent while the crowd waited for the special feature. Mack and Leo chitchatted about everything and nothing, from the engine specs of the modified stocks to their projections for who could take the pole tomorrow. Mack shouldn’t have been surprised, but was, when Leo asked, “So how’d you come to own a dirt track?”
“Oh. My dad inherited the track, and after his accident, someone had to run it.” She paused as the announcer revved the crowd up for the bus race, wondering why she felt like telling Leo the thing she had always been too ashamed to say out loud. He waited patiently. “Honestly, even if he hadn’t been injured, I don’t know how long Wes would have run the track.” She thought about Wes’s excitement over the new RV. “He’s not good at staying in one place. Growing up, we lived in a pull-behind RV more than we ever lived in a house.”
Leo’s dark eyes reflected the grandstand light as they widened. He scratched a hand through his hair, and Mack noticed a small scar that cut into his hairline, a perfectly vertical stripe of shiny white. She wanted to know the story behind that scar, and all the others on his body. She wanted to know everything about Leo Raisman.
“My parents still live in the same house where I was born. It’s comforting, I guess, that kind of stability, but I bet your childhood was a lot more fun.”
“I mean, that’s what most people want, right? Stability and comfort.” Mack thought of Shaw. She was trying to give Shaw the steadinessand routine a child deserved. The kind of childhood her sister had wanted.
Leo arched a brow, his gaze as intense as a laser beam, and Mack could picture him with that same look as he zipped through laps at the track. “But not you?”
They were interrupted by a loud cheer all around them, and Mack and Leo stood in anticipation as the spectators rose. Yellow school buses rumbled onto the small oval track, dribbling out from the garages one at a time in a haze of crunching gears and squealing brakes.
A woman behind Mack screamed, “Fuck yeah!” and the crowd around them roared. Mack rolled her bottom lip over her teeth with both index fingers and whistled, getting into the electric vibe of the Friday night crowd. It wasn’t the same rush as booze or sex or driving way too fast, but she felt a surprisingly solid artificial high. She let the energy of the crowd infuse her.
The bus race itself—a dozen buses, some spray-painted and others still bearing the name of the county where they’d been in service, plodding through the figure eight—was disturbingly thrilling for something so slow. The lumbering vehicles barely hit a top speed of forty, but each time they passed through the middle crossing of the track, the crowd gasped. Once, when a decommissioned Dubois County bus clipped the back bumper of another, causing the front vehicle to lose its brakes and the trailing bus to teeter on the terrifying cusp of tipping over, Mack screamed in the same shrill note Shaw hit when she saw a kitten. It was peculiarly exhilarating waiting for a slow-motion disaster.
They were still laughing about the inanity of racing school buses as they walked back to Leo’s car, a sleek silver Porsche Boxster convertible. Mack had admired the car on their drive to the Speedrome, but they’d been in the middle of a conversation about Boomer’s situation. Now, she whistled low. “Laid back Leo Raisman coming in with another sick ride. 2012?”
Leo flashed a cocky grin. “2011 Boxster Spyder 987.2.”
“I don’t know enough about Porsche to know the difference, but your face tells me I’m about to get a lesson.”
Leo explained why the Boxster S 987 was a car nerd’s pick—dual-clutch manual transmission, hydraulic steering, over three hundred horsepower in a lightweight frame—while they drove west toward downtown. Hoosier spring was in full bloom, and the smell of dogwood and clover swirled through the open air of the car as they turned onto Washington Avenue. It was the perfect night to be out, the air fresh and cool, like the night Janet first appeared in Mack’s life. In two weeks, she’d traveled from a small short track in Haubstadt to one in Indianapolis. A part of her heart would always love the small little ovals that dotted the country, the same way she’d always love Indiana. Neither was flashy or demanding of attention, but they were solid, accessible, and rarely pretended to be anything they were not.
A lot like Leo Raisman.
“I can tell,” Leo said. She jumped, unsure how much she’d spoken out loud. “You love the short tracks. It’s a great feeling to go to work and love what you do.”
