by Claire Adams
When I get back to the dining room, I avoid my parents’ eyes as I interrupt the hilarity of Mom finding her ring in her locker, “Where it always is.”
“Hey, I’ve got to run to the library for a little bit,” I tell them. “There’s some research I need to do for a paper.”
To them, as long as it’s about school, I pretty much have carte blanche. I get changed into something befitting the evening, a slinky red dress, and I’m on my way.
When I get to the restaurant, though, I’m more than a bit confused.
Given the name of the place, I was expecting something provincial, classy, possibly understated, maybe over the top. What I’m seeing instead are servers dressed up in the height of ’80s fashion down to the men’s blouses and universal big hair while Twisted Sister blares over the sound system.
It’s not so bad, but this is one of those times when a cell phone would be convenient.
A woman wearing torn jeans and a faux-leather jacket comes up to me, asking, “Just one tonight, girl?”
“I’m actually waiting for someone,” I tell her. “We were going to do takeout.”
“Rad,” the woman says and walks back behind the long counter.
Luckily, I’m not waiting too long.
“Hey there,” Eli says. He’s not in ’80s getup like the restaurant’s employees, but he’s dressed down a lot farther than I am. I guess the chic dress was a bad bet.
“Hey,” I respond. “What is this place?”
“Really?” he asks perplexingly. “I would have thought you’d be pretty familiar with the place by now.”
I narrow my eyes a little, peering at him. “Why would you think that?” I ask.
Nobody knows the depth of my love of ’80s hair metal. Nobody will ever know.
“I have a bit of a confession to make,” he says.
Here it comes. The guy’s probably a stalker who keeps a pet bunny in his house as a pet—only it’s not a pet bunny, it’s a raccoon, and it definitely hasn’t had its shots. I bet he’s named the raccoon Gerald, and for some reason, he’s going to expect me to know why he would name a bunny that’s actually a raccoon Gerald, and if I can’t guess the answer, he’s going to let the raccoon loose, it’s going to attack me, and I’m going to die of rabies.
“I was visiting with Mick in the hospital a few days ago and your friend was the nurse covering Mick’s room,” he says. “If it helps at all, I didn’t ask her to give me dirt on you; she mentioned you were a vegetarian. I thought you might like something to snack on while we’re at Grog Hill.”
I’m not sure which meaty dessert I might have been duped into eating, but it’s a nice gesture.
“We’re Not Gonna Take It” comes over the stereo and loud cheers erupt. Eli looks toward the center of the restaurant, and I’m just trying to hide my goosebumps. We should probably go sooner than later.
I’m not really all that hungry, but I do order some baklava, mostly because I’m surprised they have it. Eli gets some vegan chocolate truffles and we’re on our way.
“Ready to go?” he asks.
I briefly consider taking my own car, that way I can always leave early if it’s looking like things aren’t going too well. I like that. At the same time, I did want to see what it was like to ride passenger with a real life street racer behind the wheel, and I did kind of tell Eli as much.
“Just don’t get me arrested. That’s bad first date etiquette.” My voice is wavering a bit.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. “Shall we?”
I nod and we walk out of the restaurant to the parking lot behind.
“So, which one’s yours?” I ask, looking over the dozen or so cars parked in the back.
I’m no expert, but I can usually tell which cars are supposed to be fast. There’s a little red sports car, though it looks a bit small for Eli. There’s a new Corvette—I know those ones—but it’s got a flowery necklace hanging from the mirror.
“That one,” he says, pointing toward the far end of the lot.
“Which one?” He can’t be pointing at the old, rusted-out aircraft carrier with four wheels like it appears he is. “Oh, that black one with the sunroof?” I ask. “What is that, a Honda something?”
“No, it’s the Galaxie right at the end of the lot.”
“Oh,” I say, painting on a smile. “That should be…fun.”
“I know it doesn’t look like much,” he says. “Okay, it’s not much, really, but what it lacks in visual appeal, reliability, functionality, safety, comfort, fuel economy, and decent steering, it more than makes up for it with the experience of the ride.”
“Yeah,” I say. For no reason I’m aware of, I add, “Totally.”
“You’re kind of wishing it had been a French restaurant and that the car was a Ferrari aren’t you?”
The statement is a bit surprising for its self-deprecation, but as we start walking, I see that smile only growing.
“Would that have been so hard?” I ask.
He chuckles. “You’d be surprised at how many incredible things look unappealing before you get to know it,” he says.
“I sense a metaphor,” I tell him.
“What? Oh, you think I’m talking about myself? No, I’m incredibly appealing before, during, and after you get to know me. I was talking about the car. It’s got spunk.”
And there’s the cockiness I’ve come to know and wonder if I could handle on a long-term basis.
For now, my dwindling sense of spontaneity keeps me moving forward.
Inside, the car’s got that same smell that all cars over thirty years old have. It’s the scent of a mustier time. The vinyl seats are cracked, but “Ransom” here was nice enough to set down a towel. My legs still get pinched, but at least I’m not as worried about blood being drawn just by sitting.
When I get home, I’m going to write the words, “Never go out with anyone you meet in the hospital,” a few hundred times.
He turns the ignition without the use of a key, and I’m starting to wonder if I’ve just become an accessory to grand theft auto. As soon as the engine fires up—and it takes a minute—I start to understand what he was trying to tell me.
It’s one of those sounds older people would describe as something you don’t hear anymore. The engine is loud but deep, and the rumble would be a pretty decent massage if the seats weren’t split.
He pulls out of the parking lot, slowly. I anticipate some show of power as we’re pulling out, but Eli just eases it out when he’s got plenty of room and we start going.
“It’s kind of loud!” I yell over the growing noise of the engine.
“What?” he shouts back, and I’m not sure if he’s messing with me or not.
“Where’s Grog Hill, anyway?” I ask. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s a spot I know just outside town!” he bellows just above the roar of the car.
I’ve been so busy trying to read his lips I hadn’t noticed that we’re now doing seventy-five on the forty-mile-per-hour road out of town.
We come to a gentle curve, but Eli slows down for it like it’s a right angle. Going only twenty around the bend, the top of the car pitches violently toward the outside of the curve and for a second, I honestly think we’re about to roll.
Did I mention the car has no seatbelts?
I get the sensation I’m lying down on one of those carnival rides that spin you against a wall, but Eli’s expression couldn’t be more serene.
We come through the curve and the car rocks side-to-side. He’s got his foot back on the gas, and I’m squealing in fear and surprise.
He eases off the throttle a touch and asks, “You all right?”
“Not sure yet,” I tell him. “Why is the car still rocking?”
“The suspension’s going on it. Don’t worry, though. I do this for a living, kind of.”
The sun is already near the horizon. I’m still not sure whether I’m thrilled or petrified cruising along in this boat of his,
but it’s a decent departure from my usual routine of never doing anything exciting ever.
We pull off onto a dirt road that crawls past a tall, grassy hill. There’s a rocky face on the west side, and I’m wondering if this brash guy might actually have a touch of the romantic in him.
When we arrive at a dirt parking lot, there’s a line of people walking toward the hill.
“We’re here,” his lips say, although it very well may be “weird hair.” It’s difficult to tell.
He opens his mouth wide, moving his jaw back and forth. I mimic the gesture and after a few seconds, my ears pop. I wouldn’t say I can hear very well right now, but it’s an improvement.
“How was the ride?” he asks in a reasonably discernible voice.
I just keep trying to pop my ears more, hoping I might be able to follow the conversation a bit better before it’s time to go and his car deafens me again.
“That bad?” he asks. “Maybe we should have taken your car.”
“No,” I tell him, giving up on wiggling my jaw. “It’s fine. It was actually kind of fun.”
It was kind of fun. It was also kind of terrifying.
“You said you wanted a ride,” he says. “If you want, I can drive more like a normal person on the way back.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I tell him as we get out of the car.
“If you wouldn’t mind getting the box from Soeur Torsadée,” he says, “I’ve got some camping chairs and some wine in the trunk I’m gonna grab.”
“What is this place?” I ask, picking up the box from the floor of the passenger’s seat.
“It’s just a hill,” Eli says, opening his trunk. “A while ago, I guess people got into the habit of coming here to watch the sunset.” He pulls out two folding canvas camping chairs and leans them up against the back bumper. “It started as a hippie thing, I think, but then a few more people heard about it and it got pretty big for a while.”
“You’d think there would be a sign or something,” I say, looking at the hill in the distance. From where I’m standing, the hill looks like it grew out of the Earth with the sole purpose of adding to the build-up of the moment. The sky behind the hill is starting to turn, but the sun is blocked from view.
“They tried that a few years ago,” Eli says as glasses clink. He pulls a picnic basket out of the trunk. It’s a strange, if endearing, sight. “Most of the people are just here to watch the sunset, but some of them get a little protective of this place. The sign was up for an hour and thirteen minutes before they hooked up a truck to it and tore it out of the ground.”
“So is this an outlaw thing?”
He laughs, holding the picnic basket in his left hand and carrying the chairs under his other arm. “No. It’s just people on a hill watching a sunset,” he says and we start walking up the hill. “Stoners show up every once in a while, but they usually stay off in their own little area. That’s actually how I first learned about the place.”
“So you’re a pothead?”
“No,” he laughs and shakes his head. “That was a long time ago. I think I was sixteen.”
He kind of made it better by making it worse, but I don’t care too much. We were all teenagers.
We’re walking up the hill and it looks like we’re the last ones arriving. There are about twenty people, each with their own folding chairs set up along the flat, long rock at the edge of the hill.
We get to the top and sun is just kissing the edge of the world and the sky is burst open, paint dripping outward and upward in a silent pink inferno. Thin, high clouds in the distance act as a sharper canvas for the contrasting purple and orange.
“Want to have a seat?” he asks when we reach a space big enough for both of us.
He puts down the picnic basket and takes one of the chairs from under his other arm. Letting gravity unfold it, he sets it down.
“There you go,” he says. “You can put the food down if you want.”
While I’m sitting down and pretending to look for a better place than my lap for the box of sweets, Eli unfolds his own chair and sets it up next to mine.
The wide, green valley in front of us catches the deepening hues of the setting sun, though it’s too lush a green to hold it for long.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks as he opens the picnic basket.
“It really is,” I answer through a very dry throat.
“You okay?” he asks, pulling a bottle of wine from the picnic basket and reaches back in for a corkscrew. “I hope you like pinot grigio.”
“I love it,” I tell him. I’ve never actually had it, but it sounds like the kind of thing I could get behind.
He hands me a glass, uncorks the wine, and pours me some.
The brighter colors are already fading from the sky, and I take my first sip of pinot grigio. I’ve had wine a few times before, but Paz usually buys the stuff in a box.
My expectations are a little too high, though: I honestly can’t tell the difference between this and the other stuff.
I open the lid of the box in my lap and lift it, offering some to Eli. He takes a truffle, but gazes at the baklava.
“Whatever this is,” he says, “it looks delicious, but we probably should have asked if they could hook us up with some forks or something.”
I smile and tear off a piece of the baklava, putting it in my mouth.
“Maybe not,” he chuckles and follows my lead.
“So,” I start, “illegal racing: what got you into that?”
“Car movies,” he says, “definitely. That’s basically what it’s like. People talk about Casablanca and that one with the Italian guy who walks around for a while and then the movie ends as being some of the best movies ever, but racing flicks are basically my life on tape.”
“It’s really hard to tell when you’re joking,” I say, trying to spot any tells.
“It’s really not,” he says with a crooked smile. “The movies are mostly nonsense. Ya gotta respect P-Dubs, though. That guy was awesome.”
“Naturally,” I respond, having no idea what he’s talking about. “What’s it really like, though? Is it as big a rush as everyone says it is on YouTube?”
“It’s a lot of waiting. There are always too many people with too many cars making too much noise. Most of the people there will never get into a race themselves, not for anything worth anything, anyway. Usually, you’re up against some jackass with a trust fund whose parents like to indulge his little ‘hobby’ before they ship him off to Yale.”
“You know my parents are both doctors, right?” I may not have a trust fund, per se, but I’d imagine if I were to take up street racing without knowing Eli, he might just say the same about me.
“That’s different,” he says. “You’re not out there trying to prove how ‘grassroots’ you are. It’s annoying. Besides, you’re not a racer.”
I wonder how I’m going to tell him that a decent portion of why I gave him my number is that I was wondering about being behind the wheel.
Of course, I’ll have to wait to start racing—assuming Eli doesn’t scare me away from it—until I’m out of college and start making some money. I doubt my stock Honda Accord is going to stand up too well against what these guys are racing and it’s not like I have a ton of money just lying around.
I’m not my parents.
“What if I wanted to learn?” I ask.
He takes his eyes off of the darkening sky a moment to look at me.
“That’s different, too,” he says.
“How so?”
“Because I would be the one teaching you, not some stock car driver you had shipped in for a few months. You’d be surprised how not-underground the underground can be.”
He looks back at the view, and I set my hands on the armrests of my camping chair.
A few people are already starting to leave, but the rest seem committed to stay until every unique color is sucked from the sky.
“There’s a bit of a problem, though,�
� I tell him.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t have a car that would go fast enough to come in last,” I tell him.
I see him shrug out of the corner of my eye. “That doesn’t mean you can’t start learning,” he says.
“You’d really teach me?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It may take a while, and we’re probably going to want to start with your car so neither of us ends up killed by the massive fireball that would have been my Chevelle, but if you’re willing to learn, I’m willing to teach you.”
I didn’t know what to expect when Eli called, and I wasn’t much more prescient when I got to the Twisted Sister restaurant, but I’m pretty happy with the way things are headed.
“Okay,” I answer. “Mind if I think it over a little while? I’m getting visions of police lights and handcuffs and mandatory driving courses.”
“It’s not without its risks,” he agrees. “If it helps at all, the first lesson is going to be what to do if you’ve got the cops on your ass.”
“It sounds like you already have a curriculum in place,” I smirk.
“It’s the one Mick used when he taught me,” Eli says, and suddenly everything makes a lot more sense.
The way Eli talks to Mick, it almost seems like he doesn’t respect his easily-injured friend. Still, Eli has been to the hospital almost every day, and he’s the only one. A couple others came in to visit Mick, but Eli’s the only one that ever came back.
“So he’s the master racer, huh?” I ask, feeling more nervous than I already was. After all, Mick’s in the hospital after crashing his car during a street race. If he taught Eli, the chances of me making it through alive can’t be very good.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Eli says. “He’s more on the mechanical end than the driving end. He knows everything you’d need to know to be a great racer, but he tends to let his emotions drive the car.”
“Who’s to say I wouldn’t be the same way?”
“I can’t teach him,” Eli says. “He’s been doing it the other way for too long. I’m not going to let that happen with you, though. If it’s something you’re really interested in doing, I’d be sure to teach you the right way from the start.”