Physics 101, or An Incident in Line at the Brooklyn Public Library Snack Bar

The man at the head of the line was gathering his cheeseburger and his tea from off the counter when he exploded at the man behind him.

"Couldja get a little closer to me? Couldja? Couldja get a little closer to me? Couldja get a little closer to me!?"

The other man protested mutely, giving a little shrug.

The first man stepped over to the coffee station now, hanging his teabag to drip into the cup.

"Fuck!" he shouted.

I watched him impassively. For a moment our eyes met and it appeared he was appealing for sympathy. He turned away quickly when none was forthcoming.

"Shit," he said, shaking his head and stirring his tea. "There's some weird-ass motherfuckers in this library."

I thought it was all over when again he bounded over to his foe.

"Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time!" he cried. "S'physics! S'physics 101!"

Oil & Hay - 14

Before I did as I was told, I poured a glass of water from the little carafe on the shelf. Some of it splashed on my trembling fingers. If I can't fill a glass with water, I thought with dread, how can I drive a car at speed? I gulped it down morosely, the last sip of a condemned man.

I pull out, past the Esso sign hanging at the end of the pits, between the bales of hay that line the straight, and down the hill into the first corner, a gently sweeping righter, feeling alright so far. I contemplate the ditch along the steep bank to my left with a shudder.

And all these patches in the asphalt! Had they been laid in the few hours since I'd last been at the wheel? It alarms me that I am just now giving them a conscious thought. The chassis rattles and skids over them. I can feel every seam.

I can also feel cold sweat through the palm of my glove when I grip the gearshift. It terrifies me to be strapped to this contraption, out here alone among the fields and the trees and the silvery sky, each blade of grass oblivious to me, indifferent as to whether I miraculously navigate the course or fly into the woods. Is it at times like these that a man cries out for his mother? What a stupid thought. In a succession of stupid thoughts: This is the moment; this is it, it, it. This is what a man does. He does what he's afraid of doing. What am I doing? Here comes the hairpin. The Nouveau Monde. Downshift, downshift, downshift, and around, grind a little shifting up, get on the throttle, a bit too soon: the tail goes wavy, then I'm back in shape. I love to climb, to feel the power at my back as it wrenches the car from gravity. What was Melanie telling me? Something new is coming. But it's not lurking in these woods, unchanged for a hundred thousand years but for this sinuous band of asphalt and its rude freight. Or is it?

I'm driving now, really driving. Scared out of my wits but driving. To press the accelerator requires a tremendous exercise of will but I'm damned well doing it. This is what a man does. If I can get around this track a few good times I can step back into the pits, tell Tex what he wants to hear, find a dark corner somewhere to hang my head and cry. And be alive.

Finally they call me in.

As I decelerated and pulled into the box I began to quake with relief. They all looked at me with bewildered expressions. Was the motor on fire? The chief mechanic, Derek Owens, leaned in to me.

"What's wrong with her?"

"Nothing," I replied, taken aback. "Nothing I can tell. Why?"

"Nothing?"

I shook my head as he turned to survey the engine and exhaust.

"Are you alright?" he asked with an air of grim concern.

I felt a jolt of shame, suddenly seeing myself as he must see me: freakish, fumbling, incompetent. I decided to let my pride go. To tell the truth. A little.

"I've felt better, if I'm honest. I'm not in tip-top form."

Derek nodded slowly.

"Why do you ask?"

He showed me his stopwatch.

"You're thirty-five seconds off your pace from this morning," he declared.

Oil & Hay - 13

I sat at the back of the pits at Les Essarts with my hand in my race suit pocket, rolling the soft ball of hashish between my fingers. Von Schlosser had given it to me before taking his turn at the wheel of our newest Star.

"Have you smoked?" he had asked me in his oddly melodic accent.

"Ever? This? Before?"

He nodded.

"No."

"Empty out your cigarette a little bit. Put the hashish inside. Smoke it."

"Thanks, Jürgen."

I decided to do as he said. I was done driving for the day, after all. There was naught to do but watch the car come in and out of the pits, to stand over the motor with an expression of thoughtful concern, to occasionally bow my head into the cockpit, pretending to understand my German teammate's breathless observations.

I took it out back, in the paddock by the lorries. Discreetly ground out some shag from a Gauloise and packed the cylinder with crumbs of the claylike material. I lit it up. The thick, sweet smoke settled into my lungs like a fog. I erupted into a fit of spasmodic coughs and as soon as it was over a curious warmth spread over my face and neck. My mouth grew dry. In the distance I heard the Apogee engine whining against the gears as Jürgen wound through the Forêt de la Londe.

It was a grey day. The cold air moved around my arms in streams as I walked back to the pits. Tex was seated at a table, ruminating.

"I been thinkin' 'bout puttin' wings on the car," he declared.

"Wings?" I exclaimed. "Good Lord. Are we now permitted to fly?"

"Upside-down wings. Think about it."

"Won't that slow us down?"

"Yes."

My mind was aswim. Tex bit off a new cigar and spat the tip of the butt at the cinderblock wall.

"It'll slow us down in a straight line," he said. "Ya get my drift?"

I felt my heartbeat quicken. "No."

"But speed us up around a corner."

As I pondered the implications of his remark I felt as though a new world were opening its doors.

"How'd it feel out there, Mal?" he asked after some time.

"Smashing. Bit of understeer." Why did I say that? Had I said the proper thing? It seemed like a reasonable thing to say. I was aiming for maximum plausibility.

Tex clamped down on his cigar and scrutinised me warily.

"Why, Schlossie just told me he got oversteer."

"That so?"

"Mal, I need your ass back out there."

"Beg pardon?"

"You an' the Kraut, ya gotta getcher stories straight. Car ain't that temper-mental."

I felt the cold sting of panic overwhelming my soul.

"Putcher helmet on, Limey," Tex said as he navigated his wide girth off the chair and back towards the track.

Medical Equipment I Have Seen

The Biosonic US100R ultrasonic scaler.

Here we are on the night of the great trapped miner rescue of twenty-ten.

On Columbus Day we embarked on a series of rather mundane errands in the early evening. The frame shop, the Y to get a discount membership, the grocery store.

They're inserting the rocketlike rescue pod into a hole in the ground. Steam is rising out of somewhere. The terrain is bald, barren rock. O, cruel mother earth! It's like the set of some bad sci-fi movie.

Our kitchen timer rings.

When we left the house it was seventy-three degrees. The rain was pelting the street in fat drops by the time we left our second stop and it was falling steady by the time we reached our third. We parked up close to the automatic doors.

There were few people in the vast supermarket. A surly woman watching over the organic health and beauty department. A couple we kept bumping into. As we left, a stockboy smiled and expressed a cryptic warning about the world outside: "Exercise caution on account of extreme conditions."

It was raining hard, harder than before. We turned the corner out of the parking lot and found the intersection to be flooded who knows how deep, maybe a foot, or maybe fifty. We turned around and found another way.

The streets were matted with yellowed leaves. Weren't the trees still green? It poured in places, it was still and dry in others.

When we turned onto our block it seemed to have been inundated with foamy, toxic waste. It was ice, piling up, leaf-flecked and tire-tracked. It produces a strange effect, a familiar sight appearing incongruously early.

Upstairs, our home was intact but for one thing: one of our window screens was torn to ribbons.

A strange event occurred on the F train as we were soaring above Carroll Gardens on the elevated track. An Indian boy sat across from me, between his mother and his sister, it seemed. I had my eyes on my phone screen when I perceived a mild commotion, voices raised imploringly. I looked over to find the boy lurching toward the passenger seated to my left, a serene old lady with a book. In defiance of the women's protests he reached down to touch her knee. The mother quickly stood up behind him and pulled him away.

"Sorry!" she said. "Sorry!"

"Sorry!" echoed the sister.

The old lady murmured, "It's all right."

At once I was agitated, wary, the reflexive response of the guarded city dweller. I peered at the stocky boy as he settled uneasily into his seat. He had a sheepish smile but he still appeared to be flailing slowly against the restraining hands of his kin. There was something very wrong with this boy; this must be what it's like every time he's out in public. That's what was really going on.

Everything I Touch Turns Blue

Part 1: At Home

Everything I touch turns blue.

I first noticed one morning as I returned my coffee mug to the kitchen. I found a trail of softly glowing ultramarine stains: on the light switch, refrigerator handle, cupboard. I thought of the ink bombs that banks put in the moneybags of thieves: had some inept criminal left his mark around my house?

I placed my mug in the sink and, seeing that it too was spotted, realized with a flash of shame that it was me. But when I looked down at my fingers there was nothing. They were clean.

I leaned over the counter and examined the richly dappled surface of the soapstone. I touched a painted fingerprint; it felt like nothing. Nothing wet and nothing dry. Nothing of substance. Yet when I drew a line it appeared in blue. I made a zigzag and covered it with a spiraling scribble.

Everything I touch turns blue.

Part 2: At the Doctor's

"Everything I touch turns blue," I told Doctor Kleschnick.

"What do you mean?"

"When I touch something, there's blue. Like paint, or ink."

"Are your fingers stained with paint? Or ink?"

"Absolutely not."

"Show me."

I removed the yellow dishwashing glove from my right hand and traced a line across the brittle paper that ran loosely over the exam table, creasing and tearing where I sat.

"Well I'll be goddamned," Kleschnick said.

"What's wrong with me?"

"We're going to have to run some tests."

"What kinds of tests?"

"MRI. CAT. OGTT. CRP. LFT. CMP. CFT. Give me a minute and I'll think of a few more."

"All those tests?"

"We're going to hit you hard and heavy, Garrett."

I gazed at my errant digits, still pristine.

"I'm also going to get you over to a shrink."

Part 3: At the Psychiatrist's

"Tell me what's going on with you."

"Everything I touch turns blue."

"Figuratively."

"Literally."

"Literally?"

"When I touch something, it turns blue. With my fingers."

Doctor Thomashefsky tore a sheet from his prescription pad and handed it to me upside down.

"Make a mark. Show me."

I drew a stick figure of a man beside a burning house.

"Interesting," Thomashefsky commented. "Interesting."

Part 5: At the Shaman's

Kuakito shook a rattle, peering at me gravely.

"Why no touch?" he barked.

"Everything I touch turns blue."

He nodded. As though he'd expected my very answer.

"What do I do?"

The mystic rummaged through a large plastic tub behind his desk. Finally he produced an ovoid, organic object and a sharpened stick. He handed them to me.

"Penetrate it!" he commanded.

"What?"

"Stick it into it!" He pantomimed a stabbing action. I mirrored him meekly, bringing the point just to the surface of the flesh.

"PEN-E-TRATE!" Kuakito howled.

I speared the green gourd and a pus-like substance erupted from its core, streaming down and dripping on my knees. The shaman was pleased.

"Go home you now," he said, accepting the consummated objects unceremoniously and tossing them in the trash. "Today, problem. Tomorrow—" he put his hands together at his cheek, the universal sign for slumber—"problem no more."

"No more? Just like that?"

"Tomorrow."

Part 6: Dénouement

When I awoke the following day I immediately drew my finger across the face of my clock. Could it be? It left no trace!

I walked outside to pick up the paper from my stoop. It was a beautiful day. Clear sky. A little cold. Mrs. Purdy walked by with her beagle, Sam.

"Hey Eileen!" I called. "Hey Sam!"

They did not respond. Though they gazed vaguely in my direction, they did not seem to see me.

"Eileen!" I yelled. "Hey!" I was waving at her now. "Hey! Hey!"

Suddenly she turned toward me. I smiled and continued waving, more frantically now. Why didn't she answer? Her gaze was eerie, vacant. She was looking somewhere else.

It's a pleasure to find oneself at the beginning of something. Football: four weeks in. (Already!) It goes by fast, too fast. But for now, it's just good to be inside of something, not knowing what it is. Are the Vikings so terrible? The Chiefs so good? Each season is a life, lived from summer to the dead of winter.

Though the wind blew the misted air around it wouldn't rain.

Looking left at a certain point in the middle of a traffic jam to the George Washington Bridge on the Garden State: the number 1471 painted on a Jersey barrier, a little pile of trash.

There's renovation going on at the building where I work, up on the seventeenth floor. The hallway's covered with a patchwork of thick cardboard jointed by duct tape; the walls papered halfway up with what looks like butcher paper.

It's unclear what's being done.

On the way out last night I passed two workers near an open door to nothing: some shadowy and dusty space, indistinct, its purpose utterly obscure. The threshold was strewn with mechanical junk - casings, coils, joints - forming a vague trail to a bewildering machine, mounted on stilts, steel-forged, inert.

Oil & Hay - 12

I had the impression of awaking psychically, a fraction of a second before the phone sounded. I knew I'd likely been roused by a phantom first ring, unconsciously perceived, but it was tempting to imagine that I hadn't. Anything was possible.

"Mel?"

"Darling, I know it's late for you. I only have a few minutes."

"Where are you? Los Angeles?"

"Los Angeles. Hollywood."

"When on earth can you get away?"

A breeze blew the diaphanous curtains from the window. The wall across the way glowed amber in the lamplight.

"I'm not sure, Mal. Life wants me tomorrow."

"What for?"

"Interview. Photo shoot. The song and dance."

"I'm testing in Rouen tomorrow," I said dully.

"Maybe I can get away next week. Will you have time?"

"I shall make the time. We'll go somewhere. Meet somewhere. We'll see each other."

"That sounds nice."

"We'll suss it out, Mel. Good luck w—"

"I have something to tell you, Mal."

A spasm of fear seized my heart. In a flash I understood it all: She no longer wanted me. She had another man.

"Yes?"

"I'm pregnant."

A man stumbled aboard the train the other day straight from another era, or maybe the movies. Fedora perched carelessly on the back of his balding head. Too-tight jacket splayed to reveal sweat stains creeping from his pits. Tie loosened a good three inches. His flush face indicated he was drunk. He panted and peered around like a spooked dog. In his right hand he clutched his briefcase, in his left a disheveled section of The Times. He was the harried traveling salesman type, circa 1963. A Willy Loman, caught forever out of time.

A small child was in our home recently, pushing every button in sight, seizing objects and testing their integrity. She dislodged a previously unnoticed panel on the stereo's remote control, revealing a mysterious, second keypad with numbers and obscure controls: the remote within the remote.

Oil & Hay - 11

On Monday I drove the thousand kilometres to Paris in the pouring rain. My hangover didn't lift until I reached Lyon, but when it did I was plunged into a honeyed realm of ecstasy and nearly cried. Still it rained.

When I pulled up in front of 48 Rue de Grenelle I half expected to find her waiting in her soaking pea coat, blond hair matted to her brow. But she wasn't.

Upstairs I mixed a gin and tonic and leafed through my little black book to the page of her ever-changing numbers. The only one not crossed out was for the Hotel Pierre in New York City.

"I'm sorry, sir. Miss Welles has checked out," said the clerk. "She did leave a message for you in the event that you called."

"And?"

"And it reads as follows: Had to fly back to Los Angeles. Publicity for the record. Will call you in Paris."

"Is that all?"

"Kisses."

"What?"

"Her salutation, sir."

"Kisses?"

"Kisses."

I hung up, walked out on the balcony, and lit a cigarette. I gazed out at the intersection, at Boulevard Raspail divided by its treed median. I thought about Mel. Her night terrors, her love of Calder. Her advocacy on behalf of prisoners of conscience. Her past lives. She believed she'd been an emperor's taster in an ancient Chinese court.

"Which emperor?" I had asked her then, chidingly.

"Xian, the last emperor of the Han dynasty. He didn't see the writing on the wall. Also, his diet was overly rich in salt. I adored him though."

Her certitude startled me.

"Were you his concubine as well?"

"I was a male eunuch, Mal."

I remembered another thing she said that night at the party in St. Moritz.

"There's a new world coming. Don't you know that?"

"What in heaven's name do you mean?"

"It's about to be born. Can you feel it?"

"Where is this new world you speak of?" I asked, a bit pompously I fear, as if to say: This world you see is all there is, my dear.

"Not where, what. And when."

"So what? When?"

"We're evolving. We're casting off the old ideas. Sure, it might be rough at first. A bloody revolution in the streets. But the time has come. Are your chakras in order?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Seven energy centers run along your spine."

"Do you know where you are in time and space?" she queried.

"Right here. Right now," I answered. A bit defensively.

"I'm unconvinced, darling. You seem a little fuzzy."

I rattled my ice in mild irritation and smiled a tense little smile. "But I'm not driving, you see. I'm all sorted when I drive."

"You don't have to go around in circles to find yourself."

It struck me that I did. But I kept the thought to myself.

"You should meditate. You should do yoga."

"Will it help me drive faster?"

"It will help you do anything."

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.

Google Docs displays to the author a reassuring message from time to time:

Saved.

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.