“Come gimme a kiss for good luck,” I said.

She walked over and rested her arm on the door panel. Leaning in through the window, she pressed her lips to the corner of my mouth, real soft. The wind whipped her hair up, and blew it all around, brushing against my face and my neck. As she straightened up, she tucked it back behind her ears.

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

Then it was time for me to roll around to the start line. I watched in my side view mirror as she walked back to the spectators. She was still smiling when the flagger gave me the nod.

The trick with drags like that is not to win by too much. You wanna feel out the other guy and win by just enough. You go smoking the first couple of guys you race and pretty soon nobody wants to race you, and they sure don’t wanna put any money on it.

Billy had a Trans Am, ’73 I think, and for an automatic, it had some oomph, but when we came outta the squeeze between those dunes, I stepped into the Cuda and kept a car length ahead of him all the way to the finish line. He was a loudmouth, but he was a good loser. Paid up and said, “Not too shabby considering how much weight she’s hauling.”

“Maybe next time,” I said. To remind him he pretty much always lost to me.

I raced four more guys after that. Beat a Camaro, and a Charger same year as mine, and then got my ass handed to me by this scrawny Mexican kid in a Corvette with a 427 under the hood. I knew I wasn’t gonna beat him, which was why I only put twenty bucks on it, but I wasn’t planning on getting smoked that bad.

I only raced him so that when I was paying him, I could give him the number for the shop.

“You bring it around, I’ll give you a good deal. Make it look as nice as it rides,” I said.

“It still beat you, man.” He gave me this chin-up look, like we were gonna get into it.

“Yeah, well, you’d look better beating me with a new paint job.”

After that race, Wavy and me took a break for a while. I sat up on the hood, watching the other races, and she sat down on the bumper while I braided her hair. She never kept braids in it, but my sister taught me how to do it a couple different ways. Just something to do with my hands.

“What is this, a hair salon?” this guy walking by said.

I shrugged him off, but a couple minutes later, he was back.

“You racing tonight?” he said.

“Yeah, I took her ’round a couple times. You wanna go?”

He didn’t say nothing, but he walked around the Cuda, looking it over. When he came back around to the hood, he was grinning.

“Looks like that saying is wrong. I guess you can polish a turd.”

“The question is whether you can beat it,” I said.

“Hundred bucks.”

Now I didn’t have a clue what he was driving, but I didn’t care. Anybody wanna walk up to me and talk that kinda shit, I’ll give it a go.

I nudged Wavy and she hopped off the bumper, so I could get up.

“Hundred bucks.” I stuck out my hand and we shook.

“See you up at the starting line, Chief.”

“Asshole,” Wavy said, not really under her breath.

“Somebody oughta wash your mouth out, little girl,” he said.

“You wanna ride with me while I go beat this guy?” I said.

Wavy nodded. We were gonna show that jackass a thing or two.

We pulled up alongside him and I didn’t know what to think. I leaned out my window and hollered, “What the hell is that?”

“Mazda RX-7!” the guy yelled back. Might as wella said, “Martian Armpit Smeller.” Some kinda ricer car.

It looked brand new, but newness don’t count for a thing. My old Polara was proof of that.

Either way, I figured if his car had any go, it’d be at the start, and I was right.

When we came off the line, he was in the lead. I did like always, hung back a little to see what he had. In the squeeze, I was half a car length back from him, but I pushed on through, and coming out the other side to the open flats, I put my foot to the floor. That Barracuda damn near redlined on rpms, the speedometer needle squeezing up past 105. Wavy was laughing out loud, when we reached the finish. Guy in his rice burner ate our dust.

We coasted down to the turn around and circled back to get our winnings.

I pulled up at the end of the row of cars and shut the engine off. Before we got back on the road, I wanted to make sure I hadn’t rattled nothing loose. As soon as I popped the hood, a couple guys come over to look. They couldn’t quite believe I’d hit 105 in the quarter mile.

The guy in his Mazda came barreling in while we were standing there. He threw it into park and jumped outta the car. Didn’t even bother to shut the door.

“You fucking bumped me, asshole!” He grabbed my arm to turn me around, so I put my hand on his chest to make him step back.

“I didn’t bump you,” I said.

“You fucking bumped me in the tight spot!”

“Show me. You show me where I bumped you, because I wanna see it.”

The guy stepped around me and started looking down the side of the Cuda.

Now I shoulda been trying to throttle him back, but I went and popped off with, “New car. Maybe you don’t got the hang of it yet.”

“You fucking bumped me, dickface!”

By then we had an audience. Some of them started looking over the cars, too, but there wasn’t a mark on the Cuda. Because I hadn’t bumped him. He prolly clipped that dune.

“I don’t see anything,” Billy said.