Oil & Hay - 10

I took a sip of my seventh whiskey sour, feeling uncomfortable. Out of sorts. A little cross. I took out my flattening pack of Gauloises, pulled one between my lips and flickered at it with my faltering Zippo. B.B. Douadji walked over grandly, holding out his immaculately manicured hands.

"And this is the guest of honour!" he exclaimed. "The great Malcolm! The great Wood!"

"Thank you, B.B."

"Allow me the privilege of lighting the cigarette of a winner," he said, holding up his flame.

The crowd formed a circle around us as we spoke, a pocket of deference and exaltation as might befit a warrior hero come to meet his king. B.B. slapped me on the back.

"What a race today Malcolm! What a race! And you, my friend! You are the winner of the race!"

I exhaled a plume of rich smoke from my nostrils. "It was a difficult race today. A sad day–"

"Oh! Lorenzo Maldarelli!" he interrupted, eyes wide. "Vroom! Vroom!" he went, pretending to hold a steering wheel. Then his arms shook as he pretended to brake. "Ee-ee-ee-ee-ee!" he exclaimed in staccato squeaks. "Boom! Whoosh!" Arms flailing in the air. Finally he pinched his nose, closed his eyes and descended into a crouch, his other arm above his head, a pantomime of a drowning man. After a moment in the depths he stood back up and smiled brightly.

"That's right," I said. "That's right."

"You drivers, you are not afraid to die," he stated, suddenly solemn.

"Well, I don't kn–"

"When you die, it is beautiful. When everyone else dies, it is shit."

As he cocked his head and frowned I thought I detected a flash of resentment in his face. I nodded dumbly, wondering how much more of this I was due to endure.

He's a real nowhere man.

B.B. rested his arm around my neck and paraded me along the promenade. It was dark now. Across the harbor the palace sat glowing on the rock.

"Maldarelli's death was a great death, a wonderful death," B.B. continued. "Did you see it?"

"I got there late."

"You should have seen it, Malcolm. I was standing right there on the other side of the boat," he said, pointing. "I saw the death and it was..." He shook his head. "Magnificent."

"You saw his car go in the water?"

"It exploded from the street. Spinning! Burning!"

I drank the last drops of my drink as we leaned on the rail. B.B. sighed and gazed up past the tangle of masts.

"I could have been a driver myself, you know."

"Is that so?"

"My father would not allow it," he said, and spat into the sea.

Oil & Hay - 9

Our host for the evening's formal affair was Bambang Duadji, the louche and dissolute Indonesian playboy, art forger, champion water-skier, alleged arms dealer and heir to a rubber fortune known to friends and others as B.B. I adjusted my bowtie and stepped onto the gangplank to the Virgin of Bali, moored along the Quai des États-Unis, near the chicane, not half a kilometre from Lorenzo's off.

I weaved through the crowd of royalty, near-royalty and lesser nobility to find the bar at the end of the after deck. After ordering a whiskey sour, I joined a group of fellow drivers leaning glumly on the railing: Zé; the American Hasu driver Danny Youngblood; the Spaniard Sergio Martín y Bustamente-García, better known as Checho, Santiago's second at Hewitt-Clark; Rodney Sutcliffe, my former teammate at Hewitt-Apogee; and his teammate Jean-Michel Vaton, the ingenuous French heartthrob with perfect teeth and eyes the hue of the iridescent sea. Straight away Danny started in.

"What did you see, Mal? You were right behind him."

"I wasn't right behind him. I didn't see a thing."

Skeptical expressions flickered on each face.

"How could you not be right behind him?" Danny persisted. "It was lap, what?"

"Lap twenty-four," asserted Checho.

"Twenty-five!" Jean-Michel interjected.

"Twenty-five," I confirmed. "It was lap twenty-five."

"You're tellin' me by lap twenty-five, Zo was outta sight?" As Danny gestured towards me to make his point, gin and tonic sloshed out of his glass to rain on the tips of my shoes. He seemed intent on impugning me one way or the other, for dishonesty or lack of pace.

"I couldn't keep up with Zo. When I turned the corner at Lower Mirabeau all I saw was bits and pieces."

Danny gave me a baleful look. "You ran him off the track."

"I did nothing of the sort!"

Jean-Michel quickly changed the subject. We all need another drink, he said, and so we dutifully queued up at the bar. When we reconvened, Zé made a statement in my defense.

"Danny, I was not too far behind Mal. I do not think he was close to Maldarelli."

"You're one to talk."

"What does this mean?"

Danny slurped his drink and peered over the rim at the Brazilian.

"You hated Maldarelli."

Things happened then in quick succession.

Zé slammed his Martini onto the teak in wordless exclamation. It popped into a hundred shards, the olive rolling God-knows-where. He lunged at Danny, managing to grab him by his tuxedo lapels before anyone could intervene.

"Seu cabrão!" he shouted, slapping the American on the side of the head.

Danny, enraged, now ducked into a charge, wrapped his arms around Zé's abdomen, and heaved him overboard. We watched as he fell twenty feet and splashed arse-first into the Port of Monaco. He emerged sputtering, panting, ludicrously treading water, his jacket floating from his shoulders like a cape.

Zé's submergence broke the bitter atmosphere. Danny quickly unfastened a lifesaver and threw it to his erstwhile foe, then we all took a spot on the rope and pulled the soaking man aboard. It was enough, for now, that one of us emerge from the water alive.

Oil & Hay - 8

When I got to my hotel room I took off my shoes and lay down with her messages unread in my fist. My right hand still gripped the neck of my half-drunk magnum and kept it balanced on the bed. I examined the elaborate mouldings on the ceiling: the chain of decorative beading on the periphery, the stylised leaves in the corners and around the chandelier. I thought about the breach through which Lorenzo disappeared. My racing suit was soaked through with sweat and Champagne.

I perched the bottle on my belly and leaned it to my lips. The fluid tasted alive. Electric. It spilled down my chin and neck, drenching the pillow. I just kept staring at the ceiling and drinking. Finally the bottle was empty and the telephone rang.

"Yes?"

"Mal, it's me."

"Mel?"

"It's me."

"Where are you?"

"I'm still in New York. I was at the studio late last night."

"You must be tired. What time is it?"

"Morning here. Evening there."

"When can you come–"

"You sound drunk. Are you alright?"

"They offer Champagne to the victors."

"I heard what happened in the race."

"Word of my glory travels fast."

"No, Mal. Yes, I know. But I heard what happened."

I kept silent for a moment or two. It annoyed me that she brought it up. I'm rather ashamed to admit.

"So terrible, Mal! I'm so, so, sorry."

"He's the one who deserves the sympathy I should think."

"You really liked him!"

I paused again, resolving to be calm. "He was very quick."

"Mal, are you crying?"

"No, Mel. No."

"But I can hear it in your voice!"

"When can you come over? I should like to see you."

"I can fly to Brussels in a week. Is Spa near Brussels?"

"It's near Liège."

"Can I fly to Liège?"

"I don't know, darling. Perhaps you could fly to Paris?"

"I'll try to fly to Paris."

"I've got to get dressed for a party on a yacht."

"Try not to get too drunk. You know what happens to your energy when you drink."

I sighed. "I'll speak with you soon, Mel."

I hung up and got back on my feet.

Oil & Hay - 7

I parked my car before the royal box, as is the custom, and stepped out of the cockpit in a daze. As I slowly removed my goggles, helmet and fireproof gauze, Tex, the Star team boss, ran over from the pits. When one of his cars won he usually cheered it at the checkered, leaping and tossing his Stetson in the air. Today he hadn't.

"Malcolm. Good race, pal," he said, panting.

"And?"

"And Lorenzo Maldarelli's dead."

I sighed. "Just like that?" I asked. I can only think of stupid questions about death.

"Just like that? I dunno what you mean by just like that. He exited the track."

"Into the sea?"

Tex nodded. "Musta slammed into somethin' first."

"He crashed the wall?"

"He crashed the wall."

"Rolled over? Caught fire?"

"You know how the story goes."

"Then he plunged into the Mediterranean Sea?"

"Frogmen retrieved his corpse."

"What killed him? The fire or the water?"

"Jesus, Mary'n Joseph, Malcolm."

"Are you telling me he couldn't swim?"

"If he coulda swum, he'da swam, goddammit!"

"Did he suffer?" I hadn't meant to ask this question. But then I heard it out my mouth.

"Did he suffer. Jesus motherfuckin' Christ. He died like a man!"

I found myself pressing the point. "But Tex, it's import–"

"Of all the ghoulish goddamned questions! Did he suffer. I dunno. You ever die before?"

"Yes, but – no, but I mean–"

"Mal, he's dead. He died."

A moment passed. I hung my head.

"Thank you, Tex."

The buildings reverberated with the sonorous drone of the announcer revealing to the masses the tragic end of the great Lorenzo Maldarelli, hereafter consigned to legend. There followed a minute of silence. One could hear the rustle of the trees.

Then the speakers came to life anew. It was me they celebrated now. Malcolm Wood of Britain in his Star-Apogee. Winner of this twenty-fourth Grand Prix de Monaco. A blonde darling in a miniskirt and go-go boots approached me and placed a wreath around my neck.

I ascended the royal box's felted steps as the prince and princess stood to greet me. Grace, resplendent in blue and rose and a flowered hat, extended her hand to me and smiled.

Oil & Hay - 6

There's hay strewn about the track on the descent to Portier, the tight right-hander before the tunnel. Debris, too, but not much: Bits of suspension. The solitary silver cone of a rear-view mirror. Marshals scramble for their flags. I step on the brakes, skid into the corner and take it wide, gingerly. To my left there's a hideous gap in the guardrail where the third of four Total banners used to be. Total, Total, nothing, Total. Nothing but the deep blue sea.

As I pick up speed into the tunnel I wonder what happened, who that was. A backmarker? Lorenzo? I don't see him up ahead at the chicane but he did have quite a lead. Maybe he's alright.

When I come round again my pit board says P1. Maldarelli must have flown into the void.

Oil & Hay - 5

I grow more comfortable now, sinking into the peculiar rhythm of the course. There is no respite. There cannot be a breach in concentration, yet there is no time to think. You're always braking, shifting, turning, shifting, turning, braking. The only way to do it is to give yourself completely. To just let go. At other races it's useful to conceive of the car as an extension of your body; here you must think of the entire track that way. Be a blood cell coursing through your veins.

I feel the unexpected cool of a drip of drool emerge out the corner of my mouth.

I remain fixated on the back of Zo's car but find that I can observe certain incidental environmental details with naive fascination – amusement, even – like a child. There's the big Marlboro sign on the footbridge past start/finish. The Campari sign on the bridge after Casino. The banners that festoon the barriers and walls: Martini, Elf, BP, Esso, Total. Cigarettes, booze and petrol. What men buy.

I also discern the spectral figures of photographers, walking blithely along the narrow sidewalks, sometimes turning into a crouch to face us.

Zo's pulling away. Each time I see him in the tighter corners I'm tempted to believe the narrowing gap is meaningful but again he speeds off – down into the tunnel, out of the chicane, out of the Gasworks hairpin and up the front straight. I wish he'd make a mistake. Anything. Anything is possible. I look for his tail to fly out of his perfect drift. It never does.

My pit board says:

P2
-3.7
+1.2
L18

Eighty-two laps to go.

Oil & Hay - 4

I make the rear of my car wide in my imagination. That way none shall pass. I follow Zo up the squiggle of Beau Rivage and left around Massenet. We emerge into Casino Square, the grandstand a jubilant burst of orange, white and red. Over the bump we go, airily down the hill, past the manhole cover, toe the brake, declutch, neutral, clutch, heel the throttle, declutch, second gear, clutch, throttle, right around Mirabeau, close up to the curb but not too close, and down again to the Station Hairpin, slow, slow, slow, turning the wheel all the way, my God it takes forever and there goes Maldarelli.

I can't stand to be left behind.

Oil & Hay - 3

I sat in my Star-Apogee and twice pumped the throttle, the motor roaring venomously at my back. I looked to my left and saw Santiago Bragato, the Argentine, adjusting his goggles in his hunter green Hewitt-Clark. Ahead of us in the first row were reigning world champion José das Chagas in his Cavallo Nero, offset to my left, and Zo at the far left in his. Zo and Zé. Teammates and tempestuous rivals. Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Beyond them Louis Chiron held his hand up: five.

I tried to contemplate the calm between my heart's concussive beats.

Four.

I stepped on the clutch and engaged first gear.

Three. Two.

I pressed the throttle to the floor. The motor noise rose to a continuous shriek of extreme urgency, all its energy lusting keenly for release.

One.

Louis steps aside and waves the Monégasque red-and-white with an extravagant flourish. I release the clutch and my rear wheels spin madly for the merest moment; soon they find purchase and I shoot forward, ducking under Zé. Up to second gear. To third.

How to overtake a car? Pretend it isn't there. View its claim to existence with scorn. Occupy the space that it would occupy. Ignore the laws of nature and they'll concede something to you. Not much. An inch or two. Enough to get by.

Ignore the laws of man as well. You've got to be ruthless in racing. Criminal-minded, really. Every time I overtake someone I feel as though I've picked his pocket. Though he must howl with indignation, I don't care. So what's in my spirit? An airy elation where shame's supposed to be. To race and to win is to be rewarded for sin.

As we approach St. Devote I push Zé out, brazenly insisting on my line. There's Zo ahead of me on the outside. He started like a rocket. I'll slip in behind him like that's the way it's meant to be.

I hold my breath and make it stick. That's one thing I do whilst overtaking: I hold my breath.

Oil & Hay - 2

I was nervous as well. Not in the particularly expressive way Lorenzo Maldarelli was. But I must admit. I was acting calm but I was nervous.

I sat on a folding chair in the pits and gazed at the grid, aswarm with actors and mechanics, reporters, portly officials and women on the make. Lurking among them were the motor cars, arrayed in staggered pairs, a patchwork of reds, blues and greens, sun-dappled by a canopy of maritime pines.

The prince and princess peered down upon the scene from across the boulevard.

I closed my eyes and beheld my apprehension like a wearyingly familiar object. Like a pocket watch. A shoe. What did it look like today? The same.

I placed a cold-sweaty hand to my chest and felt my heart.

Melanie tried to teach me a mantra once. Om et cetera. I didn't take to it, I must confess. Fine, she said. (Just like an American girl.) Make up your own. Really? I asked. Can it be anything? It can be anything you like, she said. So I chose a verse from a popular song:

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody

I thought my mantra three times through and felt a little better.

I'd soon be serene. This I knew. Once we snaked past St. Devote and were heading hopefully up the hill to Massenet I'd become exquisitely calm. Fall into that trance. Easy as pie. Hard to imagine it now, though.

In ordinary waking life my mind was perpetually cluttered by a thousand and one thoughts both frivolous and profound. I was distracted, fickle and forgetful. Inattentive. I'd read half a paragraph of an article in the morning paper only to be charmed by the next sensory event, regardless of importance: A birdsong. Burning toast. The untied laces of my shoes.

But when I raced my consciousness contracted. The world fell off the edges of the track. What remained? The tailpipes of the car ahead of me. And if by luck or merit none were present: the maddening unseen, ever vanishing around the bend or over the horizon. This is what I chased. Was it what I wanted?

Why were this and that so far apart?

Zo told me once, late one night, after we had copiously toasted one of his dominating performances in '63 - was it Monza? - that the entire race, every race in fact, was for him an occasion for hysterical, shrieking panic. He was terrified to the core that he'd die and he grew more certain that he would with each passing lap. He told me he often screamed out loud into the wind whilst downshifting into a particularly devious corner. Out loud? I asked. Si, Malcolm, he replied. Come una ragazza. He was desperately eager for the race to end. Always. How many more laps? Twelve? God forbid. Five? Two? When it was over and he'd bring his machine to a stop – in the winner's circle, often – he'd experience such an elation, such a burst of pure pleasure, that in his efforts to describe it he broke into sobs. I put my hand on his shoulder.

One thing was for certain: he was quick.

On Sunday morning, race day, we were turned away from the grandstand gate for the beers in our bag. We resolved to walk around town and drink them all. We gravitated toward the wall that stretched across a street to block the track from view. The second GP2 race of the weekend was taking place and we could hear the screams of the cars beating against the plywood from the other side. If you got up close you could see through little cracks and gaps; blurs of color flashing by in an instant: red, white, blue, yellow, black. It was almost better to watch the race this way. The mystery was intensified.

We walked up some steps along the wall that turned back into the steep face of the city. Here you could see above the wall a bit; you could see entire cars in a patch between the trees and guardrails. A boy, hands pressed against his ears, sat watching from his father's shoulders.

We finally took our seats at the top of the stands facing out into the harbor. Behind us we could see the front stretch of the track between pine branches, and a little farther down the balcony of the Automobile Club de Monaco where the old-money rich and the well-connected basked in their ennui, undeserving, as always, of their view. In front the track was lined on the outside by gleaming white yachts and on the inside by the many-colored hoi polloi. Wisps of clouds hung in the sky and the sonorous voice of the track announcer droned on intoxicatingly, his Monégasque accent thick as motor oil.

Races begin in satisfying rhythm: every minute or two the lead car suddenly emerges from the farthest corner you can see. The field follows, often trailing by a few lengths. The entire procession roars past in anger but in order, for the most part. This is reassuring. The blue car's behind the red car, like it was before. The black car's catching up. You have just enough time to notice the discrepancies with the lap before: The white car passed the yellow car! Where did the green car go? And soon the back marker straggles past, its engine whining lonesomely as it disappears around the bend. Now there's just a distant hum echoing off the hills or buildings. And then there's silence. And suddenly, it all happens again.

Then races devolve into chaos and delirium as pit stops are made, slower cars are lapped, and accidents and penalties occur. It's hard to maintain the running order; cars are jumbled up, flying past in a ceaseless, shifting stream of gaps and blurry colors. And whereas the start is reassuring, this is beautiful.

Our disorientation in the middle race was intensified by our panoramic view. We were surrounded by mad sound: cars blinking by behind us before we knew they'd passed in front; cars roaring out of the pits into the fray; every momentary attenuation in the engine din filled by the glossolalia pouring out of the PA. Finally the noise subsided and a deep, dissonant chord swelled up to take its place: all the boats in the harbor blowing their horns in a collective exhalation. The race was over.

The period after a race is melancholy. The sudden quiet, stark and eerie, has a bereaving effect. Something was alive and now it's gone. We fought it with good cheer and resolved not to shuffle off morosely to the train station this time. We went to a bar where people were drinking on the street. We hung out with an odd, solitary man with a perpetual smile on his face and two cockney blokes who had flown in for the day. They loved Jenson Button.

"What about Hamilton?" I asked.

"He's a bit... arrogant, ain't he?" one replied.

I came to Lewis's defense but there wasn't much to say to them. It was clear they were happy to have their golden boy. Their white boy. But they were agreeable enough in spite of this.

By the time we left the bar, the track was open. We entered it right behind the start/finish line. I imagined a deep and resonant vibration emanating from beneath my feet, echoes of races past. Some team trucks were parked to the side: Toyota, Red Bull. I peered inside one to find a spotlessly clean, high-tech lab workbench covered with bewildering tools and instruments.

We continued to walk the track, around Sainte Devote, up the hill to Massenet, back in front of the casino where we'd been for qualifying the day before, down the hill and around Mirabeau (where Lewis Hamilton crashed during qualifying), and down to the most famous and beautiful corner in all of racing, the Grand Hotel Hairpin. We wandered into the hotel and briefly considered having a drink in the bar with windows overlooking the sea but the cocktail prices shocked us to the very core of our souls. Sara went to the ladies' room and I waited for her outside. As she walked out she spotted Robert Kubica, her favorite driver, in street clothes, talking to some friends. We shook his hand and chatted with him. "This is your lucky day," one of his friends said upon hearing that he was Sara's favorite driver. "It's her lucky day but it's not his lucky day," I said. Kubica's car was terrible all weekend – he qualified 18th and retired with brake problems. We said goodbye, shook hands again, and I told him I hoped his car got better. "So do I," he said.

We walked up and down Monaco after morning practice, through narrow walkways, hilly streets. You could take elevators from sidewalk to sidewalk, as though the city were a giant building with no roof. We drank white beer; its slightly sickly taste is the taste of summer.

It's a pretty city, but forlorn, inert, insulated in space and time; dominated by the dreary, functional architecture of the sixties and seventies. A city with the means to change but no desire.

We arrived in Monaco after a stint shrouded in mountainous tunnels. Arrived in its clean station, underground. Or in the ground. In the mountain, still, it would appear. We thought about which way to go and then we went there, along the shiny platform. Uniformed persons ushered us further, down the stairs, toward our eventual exit. We rounded a couple corners, curiously makeshift, or in the midst of renovations, and then we were out in the open.

It seemed like it might start to rain.

There was a howling, moaning din out in the distance, reverberating upon the hillsides, in the trees. But in the distance. The sound seemed to present an alternate reality; a strange juxtaposition with mere people in their clothes and shoes, with shops, sidewalks, street lamps and earthy knolls.

The sound haunted us. Got softer and then louder. It was evidence of a fierce intelligence at play out there, unseen, but in our midst. I could not wait to get nearer it.