CHAPTER THREE: CHINA
Andy
I walk into the hotel dining room, the smog so thick outside people pass through it only in shadow. You take stuff like that for granted in the States—actual, breathable air.
The mechanics are loading their plates at the buffet. It looks like they rounded every bar in Shanghai last night and probably have herpes to show for it.
At the back of the room Sara sits scrolling through her phone while a lone croissant watches on.
I grab the three breakfast essentials—bacon, eggs, toast—and make my way over. I place my plate down. “You know they’ve got an actual beehive over there?”
She looks up completely blank. “I do.”
I sit, take a bite of toast. The honey’s actually pretty fucking incredible. “I’ve got a sweet tooth, you see.”
She puts her phone down. Half the battle is won.
Take that, iCock.
“Is that so?” she purrs.
I nod. “Ever since I was a kid. I used to put icing sugar on my salads. Mom said it was the only way she could get me to eat my greens.”
She raises her eyebrows, the aquamarine rings in her eyes daring me to throw her across this table and fuck her senseless. “Hope you grew out of that one.”
“I grew out of a lot of things.”
She takes a bite of her croissant, defies all natural laws by managing not to make a mess. I’ll fix you, witch. “Clearly you didn’t grow out of the whole big-boys-playing-with-their-toys thing.”
Now it’s my turn to raise an eyebrow, placing my toast down. “My, don’t we have our head in the gutter this morning.”
She starts to blush, the ice breaking. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
I wink. “I think you did. I think you can’t get me out of your head. Am I right?”
She looks to the window. “You wish. Like I said, I’m here for business, not pleasure.”
I smile. Gotcha. “So you are conceding I would bring you pleasure?”
“I didn’t say—”
“Your face says otherwise.”
“Could you be any more of an ass?”
I love it when she’s on the offensive. “No. What you see is what you get.”
She runs her hand across the table and all I can picture is it doing the same across my chest, running lower, her slim fingers curling around my cock. I twitch, kneeing the table, the cutlery shaking.
“You okay over there?”
“A little excited, that’s all.”
She changes the subject. “You enjoy Shanghai?”
“The back straight’s a winner. I can easily hit one-eighty-six, maybe more with the new car.”
She rolls her eyes. “I wasn’t talking about the track.”
I lean back, my cock doing its best military salute under the table. “As a city? Sure. There’s this cheese butter lobster they do,” I pucker my lips, “incredible.”
She speaks in what I imagine is fluent Chinese, repeating in English, “It’s actually a Cantonese dish, a Chinese-Western creation very popular in Japan and Southeast Asia.”
Day-um. “Color me impressed. Now tell me you want to see me naked.”
She rattles of a rapid-fire string of Chinese but I’m pretty sure it’s far from ‘You’re a sexy beast, Andy Fortes’.
A passing waitress laughs, smiling at Sara.
“What’s so funny?”
Sara calls the waitress back over, talking with her in the local language, whatever it is. Sara points to me and the woman nods, “Ah, ah,” still smiling. I have no idea what they’re saying.
Sara draws her hands apart and the woman has a fit, nodding with excitement. She starts to thrust her hips and both of them have a grand old laugh at what has to be my expense. She leaves and Sara turns her attention back to me.
“Okay,” I tell her, “so you can speak Chinese.”
“More Shanghainese, but yes.”
“Annnnd, what were you saying?”
She winks. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
She starts to stand.
“Let me drive you to the track,” I offer.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“I’ll let you ask me whatever you want, three questions.”
Her eyes narrow, the curiosity blooming. I’ve got her. “Whatever I want?”
“Anything.” Please ask about my dick.
“I don’t know. All you seem to be interested in is food and sex.”
“You don’t enjoy good food and even better sex? Come on.”
“Okay,” she relents. “Pick me up out front in twenty. I’ve got to shower first.”
“Need company?”
She slants her gaze at me. “Don’t push your luck.”
She walks away.
No, ma’am.
*
As I collect the car from the valet I can’t recall a time when I was so obsessed over a single girl. I really have to work out the supernatural hold she’s got on my balls. She’s hot, off-the-charts attractive, but she doesn’t use it. She dresses well, but it’s with restraint and yet impossibly sexy at the same time. Half the girls I sleep with show up to my room in lingerie, many in nothing at all. What makes her so special?
She’s worldly, which is interesting, but it’s more than that. She’s off limits. That’s why, you fool. You think you’d feel the same way if she begged to blow you the first time you met?
I exhale at the thought of her lips around me. Ice up, big boy.
She’s waiting on the steps in a white blouse and flared pants, a dark leather purse slung over her shoulder and her hair swept up into the same ponytail she always wears. I wonder if she ever lets her hair down, what she does for fun. Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I reach over and pull the latch on the car door. It lifts into the sky like a gull’s wing.
She crouches and slides into the passenger seat, hand running over the ruby leather. “It’s low. What is it?”
The door closes and I lift an eyebrow. “You really have to ask that question?”
“Could be a Honda for all I know.”
I shake my head. “Blasphemy. It’s a Goodall, of course, limited-edition AMG, 7L V8 a little too lethargic for my liking, but the forced induction helps.”
She puts her handbag between her legs. I’d give anything to trade places with it. “It’s all gibberish to me.”
I turn the key, the engine barking into life. “Now you know how it feels.”
I hit the throttle, shooting us out onto the main road, the tail kicking out.
Sara grips the side of her seat looking completely terrified.
I weave through the mid-morning grind heading by the bay, the roadster barking in satisfaction at being let off its leash.
Sara attempts to make small talk, voice squeaky and strained. “I suppose it’s not as fast as a Formula One car.”
I downshift crisply and laugh. “An F1 car is a special kind of fast, but like everything, you get used to it. We have a dual-seater for promo work. I’ll happily take you out some time.”
I take a corner hard, push the tires to the limit of adhesion before reining the torque back in.
“Not unless you want me to puke all over you.”
“Fair enough,” I nod. “What about you? What do you drive?”
She clears her throat. “A Prius.”
I almost stop in the middle of the road. “A Prius? You’re serious? The vehicular equivalent of a pap smear?”
For the first time, she smiles. “I love him.”
“Him?” I question.
“Thomas.
I throw my hands up. “You call your joke of a car Thomas?”
“Like the train.”
“In god’s name, why?”
“He’s dependable, adorable… everything I want in a man.”
“You’re lucky I don’t pull over and kick you out right here.”
The smile remains. “You wouldn’t.”
“Is that a challenge?”
She lifts a finger. “In fact, I recall you saying I could ask you three questions, whatever I want.”
Shit. Forgot about that. “Yep,” I reply, popping the ‘p’.
She turns in her seat, the traffic thinning out on the motorway. “One, if there was any place in the world you could go, where would it be and why?”
“I’ve been around, you know.”
“So they say.”
“Poor choice of words, but to answer your question, there’s a salt lake in Bolivia I’ve yet to see.”
“Salar de Uyuni,” she adds.
“That’s it. Someone once told me it’s the most beautiful place on earth. You been?”
She shakes her head. “No, but I’ve heard about it, like a giant mirror, right? The sky and land as one.”
“Correct.”
“You could fly there in the off-season. You’ve got your own private jet, the means…”
I look at her, desperately want to pull over and press my lips against hers and sink inside her body. “It’s an experience that needs to be shared. Guess I’m waiting for the right person to share it with.”
“Interesting,” she says. “Two, who was your first crush?”
“We’re not in junior school.”
“You said ‘anything’.”
“Fine. Gracey Adams.”
“And?”
“We were like five-years-old. She had this Dora the Explorer backpack I liked.”
She stifles laughter, the ice wall ever so close to collapsing. Come on down, motherfucker. “She was your first kiss?”
“No, that was Amanda Manders.”
“Her name was Amanda Manders?”
“Cruel parents. They owned a chain of sports stores but couldn’t fork out a couple of hundred to fix her buck tooth. Always got in the way when we were kissing, and her braces, her hair…” I laugh. “It wasn’t such a pleasant experience, come to think of it.”
I’m tempted to ask Sara the same question, but no, I have to let her fall into this.
“Three,” she says, genuinely enthusiastic about the conversation now. It’s good timing, Shanghai International Circuit looming in the distance. “What’s your family like, truthfully?”
“I’m surprised. Any question and you go with that classic. You in PR or journalism?”
“Family defines someone, don’t you agree?”
“I define me.”
“You haven’t answered my question.”
“My family’s wealthy, but I’m sure you know that. I’m a single child. Both my parents still live in the States on the ranch they’ve owned since I was a kid.”
“You see them much?”
I shake my head. “No, they don’t really take an interest in what I do.”
“They don’t come out to see you race?”
“Not once.”
“But they say your father pulled strings, got you into Goodall.”
“My old man likes racing, Indy Car more than Formula One, and he has friends in high places. I’m sure he helped, but he’s not the one out there driving. There’s a reason I was headhunted by Renault in my teens, a reason I took out the championship in my second season. It’s because I worked my ass off.”
My back’s up more than it should be, but I can’t stand the insinuation I was somehow handed everything.
“Can I ask why they don’t come out?” she continues, legs pressing together against her handbag.
“I can’t say. Dad’s a good man, but he sees what I do as frivolous, that I’m not ‘making a difference’ in the world.”
“You donate to charity, millions paid out, I’ve read.”
“You have done your research on me?”
She turns sheepish. “I was provided some material, yes.”
“So you know my mother was injured in a car accident when she was sixteen. She hates the fact I’m a turn of the wheel away from hitting a wall at two-hundred miles per hour, and it can get nasty out there. It’s safer than it was ten, even five years ago, but drivers still die. Jesus, this has become far too serious.”
She relaxes into her seat as the gate to the circuit approaches. “I like this Andy, open and honest, far from the pervy flirt.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
She looks at me, eyes smoldering and so overtly sexual I’m certain if I was to stare too long into their depths I’d turn to stone. “Take it however you want.”
*
Shanghai has always been an easy circuit for me, but not this time.
I’m thinking about Sara as I come into the hairpin during qualifying. I’m too late with the change, the rear left kicking out and precious milliseconds squandered. I make up time down the back, but the damage has been done. All I can hope for is that Carl drops the ball.
He doesn’t.
The prick’s on fire out there, carving up the track like he’s driven it his whole life. By the time he crosses the line he’s got me by half a second.
It’s only qualifying, I tell myself, but I’m pissed. I punch the side of the garage wall harder than I should’ve and wind up losing the top layer of skin on my knuckles. I should have been in the game, not thinking about Sara and all the ways I’d make her come. We’re not even together and she’s already messing with my head.
You’ve worked too hard to fuck it all up over pussy.
I tell myself this but it’s not with any confidence. The clean Sara. The organized Sara always with her ponytail and steamed clothes. There’s something about it that draws me to her, makes me want to get those perfect clothes dirty and mess up her ponytail, prove she can’t possibly be that perfect. Is that what I am? Someone who gets off on bringing down beauty, dragging it into my muddy world?
Carl pulls up, handing his helmet over and telling the nearest mechanic to add another degree to the back right, as if he could squeeze his time down even more.
Keep at it, Dolph. No way I’m letting you have the win come race time.
I smile, the Andy Fortes everyone knows and loves returning. Bring it on, Heinz. Fucking. Bring. It. On.
*
Race time and I forget all about Sara as soon as I hit the throttle. It’s a dog fight out there, dirty, but that’s how I like it. Carl’s constantly on my ass, but he forgot the lube. No matter what he tries he can’t get through. I hold pole through the entire race, much to Steven’s displeasure. Fuck him. Fuck them all. They want to win? They best put their faith in the best man for the job.
Carl doesn’t acknowledge me on the podium. I’m starting to get to him, and you know what? I don’t care. After all, on top’s the only position I know.