Banging Wheels

by Natalie Banks

  Besides, he’d worked too hard to get where he was, and he wasn’t about to give that up now. Motor racing was all he had in life of any substance, and it was all about momentum. As soon as you stopped going forwards in your career, it was all over. You couldn’t afford to stall as a racing driver — there were so many other people surging towards the top, and so few opportunities in the upper echelons. You could still keep racing, but where would you get the money from with no prospects?

  He didn’t know for sure what Callie’s deal was — you had to keep your cards close to your chest in this game — but the fact was that he was paying for his drive in the car, like many people in this league. The supply of young, unpolished drivers outstripped demand at this level, and you couldn’t get paid to drive until you were at a level where the teams could afford to pay, and even then you had to have proved that you were worth paying for; that you were among the very best of the very best. Take too long to rise, and you’d be marked down as merely competent, rather than the cream of the crop.

  His parents had supported him in the lower divisions, while the costs were still reasonable, but they weren’t reasonable any more. Now his fees were paid for by sponsorship, with the big gap made up for by investment from his agent and manager, Bill Arford. And Bill wasn’t doing it for the hell of it — he expected a return.

  In short, he had to be sure he beat her — he couldn’t afford to leave it to chance.

  But how?

  “So,” said Bill, “we’ve got a bit of a problem.”

  In a lot of ways, he didn’t like Bill Arford. It took him a while to put his finger on why, but then he realized it was because Bill was even more manipulative than he was. He remembered well how their contract negotiations had gone. Bill had proposed a 15-year contract where he’d get 50 percent of all future earnings. Outraged, Drake had fought his way down to 6 years and only 20 percent. It was a battle hard won, but he’d gotten there, and left the meeting thrilled at how he’d held his own during the hardball. But later he spoke to another of Bill’s drivers and found that most were on the same or similar terms, and some on even better ones. The thing he’d fought so hard to get to was exactly what Bill was looking for all along. The guy was a cold-hearted so-and-so, and no mistake.

  “It’s not that she’s a better driver than me,” said Drake.

  “No, of course not,” said Bill with a wry smile, twiddling with the ends of his mustache. It always reminded Drake of Dastardly from those old cartoons, not least because he spoke like someone from a bygone age. All he was missing was an asthmatic dog.

  “She really isn’t. But I can’t afford to leave my future career to chance.”

  “No,” said Bill, sitting upright. “You’re right. We can’t have that. I need to protect my investment, so we can’t have some silly little flibbertigibbet ruining your chances.”

  “Don’t call her that,” said Drake. He wasn’t quite sure what one was, but it didn’t sound very nice.

  “When did you start caring?” Bill said, eying him, that evil smirk of his growing by the second. “Do you like her?”

  Drake shook his head at the question and looked away. Bill’s eyes glinted as he took this in.

  “Wait a minute, don’t tell me you two are enjoying a little of the old ‘horizontal refreshment’ together...”

  The look on Drake’s face said it all.

  “Interesting... and you’ve decided that crashing her off the circuit isn’t quite so palatable anymore.”

  Drake’s shoulders fell. He thought he had quite the poker face, but Bill could read him like a book.

  “There’s only one good reason to be philandering with that filly, and that’s to control the situation, but if that’s part of your plan then it isn’t working.”

  Drake went quiet. He wasn’t even sure what he expected Bill to do about all this, but he sensed he no longer had control of the situation. And one thing was for sure — Bill was even less scrupulous than he was.

  “So, what to do...” said Bill, twirling his mustache yet further. “Hmmm. Maybe we could offer him a financial inventive of some kind”

  “Who?”

  “Travis.”

  “Us offer him an incentive? I don’t understand.”

  “The problem right now is that Travis doesn’t really care who wins, as long as it’s one of his drivers.” He let go of his mustache ends and they spun around, ending in an upward curve at each end, making it look like an evil smile. “Let’s make him care.”

  Drake was still trying to understand what that might mean.

  “Leave it with me.”

  “We need to talk,” said the team boss.

  “Okay, sure.” Callie was surprised — she and Drake had had the big telling off already, so what was this all about?

  “We’ve got the best car and the most professional setup,” he began. “Yet somehow, we’re still in danger of losing the championship.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. Drake—” she bit her tongue. She wanted to beat him, but she didn’t want to throw him under the bus. After all, he’d apologized, and it seemed sincere this time. “I think we can race without crashing out now.”

  “Maybe. But we’ve decided on a different solution.”

  Callie waited intently. There was something about the way he was dragging this out that told him she wasn’t expected to like the news.

  “We’ve decided we need to enforce team orders.”

  “What?!” Team orders. The thing every driver dreads hearing. This is where the team tells you what to do. But more specifically, it’s where they give one driver superiority over the other. “We need Drake to finish ahead of you at each of the remaining races.”

  “No way.”

  Travis shrugged at her, like “There it is.”

  “No WAY!” She threw her arms together, and avoided looking at him.

  “It’s in the contract, you can check. If we give you a racing instruction, you must comply. If you don’t, you’re in breach of contract. And you forfeit your drive.”

  Callie felt so angry she barely knew which question to ask first. “Why the hell does HE get priority?”

  Travis didn’t answer. Growing in conviction, Callie pressed the point home. “He’s the one who has been knocking ME off the circuit — why do I have to pay the price?”

  They stared at each other for a while.

  “Because...” said Travis, closing his mouth, then opening it again, then closing it once more, undecided about how much to say. “He’s offered to pay us more,” he said. “Much more.”

  Callie’s heart sank. Firstly, with the realization that there was almost certainly no way of fighting this. But more importantly with the sense of betrayal. After all that had happened in the hospital, how could he do this?

  The boss, drawing on his years of experience, including one incident some years ago when an irate driver took to throwing everything in the trophy cabinet at him, knew when was a good time to stay, and when was a good time to leave.

  The door clicked shut behind him.

  Callie sat at the bar, pushing a drink around on the counter.

  “Smile,” said the middle-aged businessman next to her, leaning in. “It may never happen.”

  “Come out with a cheap line like that,” she said, scowling, “and it most definitely will.”

  The man recoiled and went back to fiddling with his smartphone.

  What an absolute jerk Drake was. How could he do that to her after what had happened between them? God, she was naive. Once a jerk, always a jerk. She shook her head, thought a while, and then shook it again.

  How could he be so two-faced? This was even worse than pushing her off the road — now she was going to be ordered to acquiesce, and she’d just have to back down. She was his poodle, basically. How utterly humiliating. If she did it, then future teams would take note — she was typecast as a beta driver. A backup plan. A supporting act to the big name.

  She was in it to win, not to come se
cond. That was the whole point. She didn’t have a husband, didn’t have kids, didn’t have a house, wasn’t into baking cakes and making clothes and all that bullshit. Racing was what gave her life some kind of meaning. And it was being taken away from her. What’s the point of putting your life on the line if the best you can ever finish is second? Even if you’re the faster driver that day?

  The other option, of course, would be to refuse. But that would be the end of her career, too. Her name would be mud. She’d be the driver that refused to do as the team said. Non-compliant. Bad news. When the chips were down, she couldn’t be trusted to put the team first. Who would want to pay a driver like that?

  She was damned if she did, and damned if she didn’t.

  However it played out, she was going to have to go back to the family and say, “I tried.” And they’d be all understanding, of course, delighted that she was finally going to have to get a ‘proper’ life. She had the talent and the drive — why couldn’t she just be allowed to do her job? It all seemed so unfair.

  She looked around the bar. Off to one side, there was a racing game. Those things always cheered her up. But this time it had the opposite effect. What was the point?

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Okay,” said Travis, his elegant wrist-watch clanking on the desk as he settled into his seat in the meeting room. “We’re here to discuss the details of the team orders.”

  Drake looked outside at the heavy skies and the rain silently spotting the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, conjoining into rivulets that skittered down awkwardly and joined with other rivulets.

  “Are you listening? Because this really isn’t normal procedure for us. We wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t for the financial shortfall caused by your continual crashing. We don’t budget for quite so many repairs across the course of a season. It really is exceptional.”

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “Just between you and me, if Bill wasn’t so important to us in finding new driver talent, I still wouldn’t take this on.”

  Drake hated this. The whole thing was deeply unpalatable. If his career wasn’t so important, he wouldn’t even be considering it. He just wished they could get the damn thing over and done with. He’d rather not discuss the details at all. If you’re going to sell your own grandmother — or in this case, your teammate, and some-time lover — down the river, you’d really rather get it done quickly and quietly and move on, rather than sit down and have a coffee and a long chat with the buyer.

  “You were saying.”

  “We don’t give any explicit orders — the fans and the press hate that. But it’s understood that she won’t try to overtake you — even if she’s close enough and is clearly faster. If you try to pass, she’ll let you go. If she’s way ahead of you or just too fast in general, we’ll give her a radio message to conserve fuel. Which means slow down, because Drake isn’t quick enough — and possibly not skilled enough — to pass you on merit, and needs to pay us to tell you not to drive so darned fast.”

  Drake rolled his eyes. “Okay. Anything else?”

  “Yes. You’d better win this damned championship after all this. If you can’t win a championship with the best car and your nearest rival hobbled, then you may as well go home. You’re a good driver, Drake, but we certainly won’t welcome you back.”

  Drake had thought about this — even with the deal they’d struck, it was still a big risk. After all, Daniels was still a real threat to him, so it was by no means sure that he’d win the championship even with Callie dealt with. And it wasn’t only other drivers that were a threat. Mechanical failures, a lapse of concentration, an error of judgment and a thousand and one other variables meant he could still miss out very easily, despite having practically bought the damn thing.

  Still, the deal was done now. It was what it was.

  Down in the canteen, cutlery clanked onto trays and hot plates of food were handed over. Drake was in a daydream, looking through the glass at the metal containers of spaghetti Bolognese and the like. Was it him, or was there a strange atmosphere? Drivers didn’t normally hang about in the headquarters, like he was today, and when they did, they normally got a lot of attention from the regular staff. Today it seemed like everyone was avoiding him.

  “G’day, champ.”

  Drake looked up — it was Callie’s chief engineer coming past — Ozzie. What was that supposed to mean? Drake shook it off and ignored him. He slid his tray onto a table and sat down. Upon which the light darkened as Ozzie sat down opposite him, with a tray of his own.

  “So, champ,” he said, “I hear you’re going to be the champ, champ.”

  Drake ignored him and shoveled food into his mouth.

  “Must be great to know you’re champ without even having to race or anything, eh, champ?”

  Drake continued to eat. Fucker. What did he know about what it took to be successful?

  “Spaghetti, eh? Is that the dish of champions, is it?”

  “Look — what’s your problem?”

  “Nothing, mate, just thrilled to be able to sit with a real-life champion.”

  Drake ate silently until there was enough gone to realistically claim he’d finished.

  “I’m going off to the simulator,” he said, standing up.

  “No need, mate,” said the engineer. “Just give it some money and tell it to let you be quickest.”

  That evening Drake relaxed back in his apartment, flicking through his favorite music. He couldn’t stick to one song. He’d be twenty seconds in and he’d change it to another. Then he was up and about walking around.

  He picked through the book of motor racing greats he kept on his coffee table — the one that inspired him so much. These guys — they were his heroes. He could always take solace in them. He’d looked up to them since he was just a kid, throwing his pedal powered go-kart around in the back garden, slamming deliberately into the fence and pretending to have accidents. But winning, always winning at the end of it — crossing the line as a hero, and being loved by everyone, his arms aloft.

  He flicked from page to page, the scent of glossy paper filling his nostrils. He always liked to imagine his own face in there. Some of the people were dead, some still alive, but all of them were hallowed company. But he got a strange feeling looking at these guys this time. He felt like he couldn’t look them in the eye. If he were to be in their company now, all chatting about their feats of derring-do, he’d feel like he was hiding something. He felt like he didn’t belong there.

  This was crap, though — it was only ruthlessness that got these people to the top. Why should he feel bad about being ruthless? And hey, politics was all part of it — he wasn’t doing anything wrong! This was a flawed argument, though, and he knew it. Paying another driver to not compete with you crosses a line from ruthlessness into an admission of not being good enough to compete, this despite the fact that he was surely plenty good enough. It was a cowardly act.

  He kept searching his mind for solace in some thought, but nothing stood up to scrutiny. At least this way he’d be champion, he told himself. But then that Aussie fucker had been right about that, too — if he had to pay to win, then what was it worth? Bill was cool with it, though, wasn’t he? And he was a winner. But while Bill might have been a winner, he was the worst kind of competitor. Was that how you ended up if you started out this way? As a twisted, hateful old guy who sees everything as an opportunity to get one over on others?

  Which brought Callie to mind. Beautiful Callie. Sexy Callie. Sassy Callie. She was such a good driver. A damn good driver. And as much as he liked to tell himself he was better than her, all the evidence said it was at the very least incredibly close. Damn it. That was the other casualty of all this. He really liked her, wanted her, respected her. Why did he have to choose between her and the championship? Why couldn’t she be just a bit slower than him? He tried to imagine her, imagined himself gazing into those beautiful eyes of hers. But every time he pictured her, all he coul
d see was a look of disgust.

  He sighed a deep sigh. It was too late now — he’d made his bed, so now he had to lie on it. He’d take the title and move on. Put this whole sorry episode behind him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Hi,” came the voice.

  “Hi,” she said back, instinctively, then looked up and realized it was him, and immediately cursed herself.

  What an asshole. His way of playing it wasn’t just going to cost her the championship, but her whole damn career. It would be back to a normal, pedestrian life doing God knows what, and back to the family dinner table, and the “I told you so” sighs from that god awful auntie of hers who was so damn convinced she knew better.

  The mere thought of the tedium of normality was crushing. Why couldn’t she just want an everyday, boring life like anyone else? It wasn’t something she’d ever understood, but in a way it was irrelevant. That was the way she was wired. If she couldn’t make a living out of this, then what could she do?

  “I know it’s easy for me to say,” said Ozzie. “But don’t let that idiot grind ya down.”

  “Yeah, it is easy for you to say.”

  He stopped, looked up and raised an eyebrow at her.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not your fault. I’m just feeling like my career might be over. And not because of anything I’ve done.”

  “Maybe, but you still need to put on your best show. He’s a right little wanker, doing what he’s doing, but you’ve got no control over that. You’ve got to do what’s right for you. You can come out of this looking like a professional or like a big cry-baby. It’s your choice. Besides, if you finish a minute behind him, no-one’s going to say ‘Oh, it was team orders’. You’ll just look like you’re much slower than him.”