Shock Diamonds

by E. R. Mason

  Though I had never driven Daytona, after the first warm-up lap it was like home. My chest pumped up a bit in response to the feeling of fresh masculinity. This was a car any driver could love. Although I had fully expected it, banking into turn one woke me up. It brought all that racing history in my blood to full alert. A second later, I was in euphoria. I hit 150 going into turn three and stayed well clear of the wall. A surge of joyful ambition made me bottom out the pedal, but thankfully good sense stepped in and backed me off. Going into turn one again, the max speed indicator had locked up on 158; the wall came up more quickly, but the car was set up nice and held. By the third lap I was holding 160 and, having found the right line, knew I had a good deal more beyond that. As I came down the front side on lap three, Dr. Exterminator’s car was stopped a few hundreds yards short of the flag stand, waiting.

  Her voice squelched in over the radio. “That all you got, Tarn? How many more laps you going to need?”

  I went around once more, then pulled up next to her. She looked over, visor down. “Twenty-five laps, hot shot, if you’re up to that many. No pit stops unless you get scared or rub a tire.” She was pumping the throttle just enough to be annoying. She started to creep slowly forward. I matched her speed.

  If memory serves me, drivers are limited to 55 mph under yellow or when behind the pace car. We did not have a pace car but the track lights were yellow. The flag stand was still several hundred yards ahead of us. Without warning, the good doctor dropped the pedal and jumped half a dozen car lengths ahead and went past the flag stand wide open just as the lights turned green. I marked the event with the appropriate curse under my breath and stomped down after her. The jump put her halfway through the first turn as I was just entering.

  The vibrating roar of the engine made the car shudder to life. It was the best kind of music anywhere. The strange, indescribable smell of a thousand races, persisting at the edge of time, permeated the air. In the back straight, there was the impulse to leave the pedal down too long to get back some of those lost car lengths. If you do that, once you’re in the turn, it is too late to fix it. You either spin or leave tire on the wall. I reigned myself in and watched as the back of the doctor’s car made tiny zigs and zags trying to hold the corner. There would be no settling- in time for this contest. The doctor was already playing the edge.

  Two more laps left me still half a dozen car lengths behind her, but somehow I had the feeling that bothered her. Though I was not gaining, I had room to spare in the turns. She began drifting higher, looking for a faster line. I decided to hold back a while longer, let the tires wear in, maybe frustrate the competition a bit more. My red, white, and blue number 3 was beginning to feel just a touch tight, but still any driver’s dream, and I could tell she was starting to look loose.

  On lap eight, she dropped down on the back stretch in search of a low line. I patiently followed and closed in a car length coming out of the next turn. It was beginning to be apparent to all involved there would be no lapping of the visitor in this race. Onlookers in the stands were quickly leaving their seats for the fence.

  On lap twelve I used the first turn to get back to the high line while she persisted trying to make it work down low. It quickly gave me back the four or five remaining car lengths, so that I ended up cruising just behind and above her. But she was paying attention. She sideslipped up in front of me by inches and blocked any chance of passing.

  Throughout the intensity of our high-speed mind game, the intercom had remained completely silent, no words even from the spotter. I began to wonder if it was broken. I floated behind her with only inches to spare. In the straights I could have pushed. The pressure must have been weighing on her, or maybe she misinterpreted some of the looseness a touch, because on the fifteenth lap going into turn three, she ever so lightly kissed the wall with her back end, got just a bit squirrelly, and had to work it back straight. Left paint on the wall.

  It was too good a break not to cash in. I dove down low and past her, then came right back up a few feet in front. For the first time the intercom squelched on, just for an instant, just long enough for an unintended four-letter word suggesting dissatisfaction.

  The lead change seemed to jack up her willingness to take risks. It made me begin to wonder if things were getting out of hand. She was on my butt up until lap twenty, the point we both knew made position imperative. Our speeds were approaching those of a packed track NASCAR race. The crowd at the fence had grown larger than anyone could have expected.

  She seemed to be getting reckless, constantly breaking loose and catching it just in time. For whatever reason, my ride was sticking good. She may have been the better driver, but clearly I had the better car. I wondered if it was a gift from the garage guys. We came around on the backstretch and she had dropped to the low line as though attempting a pass. I knew the energy wasn’t there so I relaxed and held my line. As expected, she slid quickly up behind me, but then, with the nose of her Chevy just alongside my quarter panel, the bitch tapped me! It wasn’t much, just enough to make the back end all squirrelly so that I had to get off the gas to get straight. It left me with a pretty good adrenaline rush as she darted past underneath and I heard the com squelch on just enough to pick her up laughing under her breath.

  There are some indignities the male ego will just not accept. There must be some kind of master override built into the brainstem of most men. It triggers when a humiliation too great to live with vetoes all reason and logic. Brainstem authority then prevails. At that point, almost no consequence is of any concern. Remedial retribution is all that matters. Men who have undergone this transformation cannot be reasoned with. Brute force seldom can contain them. It is the same mind-set invoked by a bull elephant defending his colony. Under those circumstances, were you to run an EEG scan on the brains of both man and elephant, it is likely the readouts would be identical.

  I was back on her ass going into the last lap, close enough that I could have given her a push. Instead I held it there, dragging along in the draft. Going into the final turn I dove down as low as I could go, stomped the pedal, unsure I could get back in line coming out, then slid sideways up in front of her so close she had to back off just a touch or get nosed into the wall. This time it was a curse that slipped in over the com.

  But in that final straightaway, she had one more trick I did not expect, a death-wish kind of unwillingness to lose, an absolute resignation to never forfeit. As we stabilized into the straight, heading for the finish line, she was caught behind me, between my rear bumper and the wall. She had no chance of overcoming the drag to get by, even if the energy was there.

  Halfway to the finish line, my victory now all but assured, she jerked the nose of her car into my back end. There was a chorus of grinding, bending metal along with a flush of tire smoke. From that point on, all I could do was keep my hands off the steering wheel to avoid broken wrists. The crash turned me into the wall so that I skidded along it with her front end buried into my crumpled passenger compartment. Her motor was whining so loud it hurt my ears even through the helmet. Hot water from her front end sprayed into the back of my car. Together we skidded almost to the finish line, paint marks, black tire, and grooves in the wall marking our progress. Our two cars, now one, sat in a heap, smoking and making loud ticking sounds of displeasure.

  Still in brainstem mode, I unstrapped, pulled down the net, and cut my left wrist a good one on the net fastener getting out. I looked over at her as she struggled to disconnect her helmet. Our private audience was pressed against the fence overhead, silent. A piece of my rear bumper had skidded ahead just over the finish line. I trotted over to it, turned, and raised my fists high.

  The crowd went wild.

  She was sitting in the driver’s window still trying to get out. She looked over, popped her visor up, and yelled, “No way! No way! We’re under yellow. There’s still one more lap!”

  I glanced up at the crowd, looked back at her, then down at the piece of my b
umper next to my foot, pointed to it, and again raised my fists high.

  The crowd went wild.

  Chapter 3

  “No way, Tarn! No way!” Dr. Pain-in-the-butt climbed from her car and, hands on her hips, began a determined march toward me.

  A drip of blood from my raised arm fell on my face. I looked up to see a considerable red stream running down my sleeve.

  “Oh…my…god! Can’t you do anything without having an accident? What are you, a human wrecking machine?” She came up, causing me to cower back, but instead of taking the expected swing, she grabbed my bleeding arm and pulled it down. After a quick inspection of the wound, she gave me a stolid look. “I don’t believe it. I’m going to have to glue that, you know. It’s too deep.”

  “Will I need to sign a living will?”

  “Come on, you idiot. Here, hold your own pressure on the damn thing. Let’s get over to the medical center. It’s closed but I have a key.”

  “My god, is there anything you don’t have a key to?” I obediently followed along. As she passed by the flag stand, Max was headed in the opposite direction toward the cars.

  She snarled at him, “What was with the loose, Max?”

  “Oh no. You ran the warm-up laps, Catherine. We set it up just like you asked.” The two passed without stopping or even looking at each other.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she called back. I followed along holding my wrist, and as the adrenaline began dying down, I again began wondering how I had come to be there.

  “You gotta pay for those cars, right? You caused the wreck…Catherine.”

  “Nobody said you could use my first name, Tarn. And don’t get your panties all in a bunch. Those two cars were scheduled to be replaced by upgrades next week. They were to be torn down and used for parts.”

  “There are a few you won’t be getting, I think.”

  She stopped to unlock and open a green metal door to a brick building set apart from the garage complex. The environment inside was dark and sterile. She switched on soft overhead lighting and went right to an aluminum refrigerator and began fumbling around inside it. There was a waiting area off to the left with an uninviting, worn-cushion green couch along with equally unflattering chairs. I took a seat on the couch and tried to look innocent.

  “Come here,” she commanded. Only the name Rover was left out.

  I shrugged and obeyed.

  “Drop the fire suit, idiot. Just to the waist. I don’t want to see any more than I have to.”

  I pulled my arms out of the suit and let it hang around my waist, exposing my black T-shirt complete with NASCAR emblem on the pocket. For a moment, the size of the cut on my wrist startled me, but male vanity quickly kicked in.

  “Don’t worry. The blood will wash out of the fire suit. At least there’s no damage to anything valuable.” As she disinfected the wound, her own fire suit kept getting in the way. She paused, unzipped, and dropped hers down to the waist. To my surprise, she was wearing a shear, formal, light green silk blouse. Beyond it was the unmistakable silhouette of black lace capturing a very full, quite perfectly sculpted female upper anatomy. The fabric of both materials was so sheer that by using male x-ray vision developed over centuries of leering, it was possible to make out most, if not all, details concealed therein. I had to turn my head to the side to avoid the primal urge to do so, which left me with the same demeanor as someone trying to avoid smelling salts. I sensed a haughty pleasure in her from that.

  “Hold pressure on there again while I set up the Epi-gun.” She handed me a wad of gauze, then turned and removed what looked like a small laser pistol from a drawer nearby. It looked like one of those things doctors use that might hurt. I tensed up but tried to hide it.

  “No, it won’t hurt, and afterward you can have candy.” She held my arm and drew a bead that any skilled artist would have been proud of. I was disappointed that it really did not hurt at all, thus robbing me of a chance to reaffirm what a man I really was. When she was done, she bandaged the area up to the elbow and taped it off, but with the very last piece of tape, she pinched something and made me jump. With a look of annoyance, she pushed me in the chest and declared, “Big baby.”

  So I pushed her back.

  She pushed again, harder.

  I pushed back harder.

  A look of sincere anger came over her. She reached out, grabbed the NASCAR emblem on the pocket of my T-shirt and tore it down and right off.

  Indignant, I chose to respond in kind. I grabbed the front pocket of her silk blouse, only to my dismay, the entire blouse tore off in my hand, leaving her in only the widely laced black bra, which I was already more familiar with than I should have been.

  This time her expression became rage. With both hands and all her body weight behind them she shoved me backward as hard as she could. Still stunned by the sheer blouse in my right hand, I tripped on a footstool and went over backward, flailing wildly, trying to catch anything that might be in reach.

  Let it never be said that God does not have a sense of humor. As I flailed in the beginnings of my death dive, there was only one thing within reach. My wildly groping left hand found the front of the widely laced black bra. It snapped off but provided just enough leverage for me to regain my upright stance. There stood Dr. Exterminator in all her glory, back arched proudly, completely exposed, a look of fury on her face that would have frightened Genghis Khan.

  She came at me with both fists raised and hammering. Drove me back to the waiting area where I went backwards over the armrest of the worn-out couch, the momentum of it bringing her and her amply exposed figure along with me. We crashed onto the cushions. She continued to hammer all the way down until, at the climax of the fall, I smacked my head a real good one on the opposite armrest. It made a loud enough thud that she had to pause for a moment to see if I was unconscious. With the half-naked doctor on top of me, I winced at the pain, and as it subsided, realized her face was only inches away from mine. She kept the narrow, warlike stare for a moment, but as realization set in that I was okay, her head jutted upward and she broke into hysterical laughter. I stared back like a puppy wondering if I was going to be punished for something I did not understand.

  The laughter suddenly stopped. The stare continued. I braced. My next conscious memory was of her mouth clamped over mine. Jets of hot air from her flaring nostrils were streaming down my neck. The wrestling match quickly resumed, but this time the objectives were different. Clothing was blindly cast into the air. There was absolutely no script and no code of ethics to it. One thing quickly led to the next. Since nothing was taboo, no silent negotiations were necessary. The only constraint was the occasional necessity to breathe, usually done in gasps. It went on and on as though all unknowns had to be tested, all challenges met. It was the closest I had ever been to having my mind placed in complete standby.

  At the end of it, she was back atop me, in a shallow sleep, one arm hanging off the side, the other tucked in alongside. The silent, dreamlike state of it was as good as the passion had been. I do not know how long we stayed that way, only that light from the small clinic windows became orange and then faded away completely. When she finally slid away, it left me so exposed I had to force myself up.

  She was pulling on her fire suit with nothing underneath. She gathered the rest of her things as I stepped into mine. At the door, she looked back hesitantly. “This doesn’t change anything, you know.”

  I stood up straight and tried to sound nonchalant. “Well, that goes without saying.”

  “You’re still an idiot who kills innocent birds, wrecks vintage aircraft, and hurts himself getting out of a car.”

  “Well, I’m so lucky you were there to save the day, Ms. Fender Bender.”

  She zipped up the front of her fire suit, popped the door open, and looked back at me with exaggerated disdain. “Call me if you need some pain medication…or if you get scared…”

  She stepped out and banged the door shut before I could think of anything
.

  On I95, with the full moon guiding my way, I set the Vette’s cruise control, sat back, and tried to figure out if I had won or lost…at anything.

  The next day was devoted to brooding. A month-long trip to the planet Enuro was closing in. In deference to everything that had happened, what a pleasant distraction it was. I picked up things at random, and threw them on the bed, utilities for the trip. After each throw, I would pause to consider the victories of the previous day, taking time to inspect the bandage on my right arm. As soon as confusion began to invade, the search for items resumed. Later, I plotted a rough course through known space, but did not submit it for approval. By evening, the brooding had not subsided. The bandage was beginning to itch. There was no choice but to call the doctor. Really.

  “I took the dressing off. Is it supposed to be this red?”

  “What the hell? You removed the dressing? You idiot! I used the Epi-ray gun on that. It’s a special bandage. Those new stems will curl up and die. You sit right there. I’m coming over to rewrap that. I’m not having any dingbat lawsuits on my hands.”

  She was there thirty minutes later with fresh bandaging materials. She needed a sink and alcohol. We used the bathroom in my bedroom. I sat on the bed as she rewrapped it. On the last piece of tape, she pinched me again.

  The same wrestling match immediately broke out once more, but this time there was no tearing of clothes.

  The next morning, life had changed. I had grown to be ready with a block for any unexpected incoming slaps or fists. I lay in bed, ready, staring at the ceiling, replaying some of the more dynamic events of the evening past. She was curled up next to me, almost in a fetal position. She rolled over to face me. Her long shiny brown hair was draped over her face so that she had to part it with the free hand. Her makeup was smeared a bit, just enough to prod the animal instinct in me.