Then again . . . how close was Detroit to Wisconsin?
It had happened before, and would happen again, for as long as businessmen made money on sport. All the post-race sanctions in the world weren’t going to help that driver in the hospital, and no fines would change the outcome of the inevitable crashes.
The sad, charred hulk of the Ferrari had been towed, its once-proud red paint blistered and cracked; the pit crew was dejectedly cleaning up the oil and foam.
On the track, Jimmy still held his position, despite two attempts by one of the Ford wedges to shove him out of the way. That was the advantage of a vehicle like the Bugatti, as she and the engineers had designed it for him. The handling left something to be desired, at least so far as she was concerned, but it was Jimmy’s kind of car. Like the 550 Porsche he drove for pleasure now, that he used to drive in races, she’d built it for speed. “Point and squirt,” was how she often put it, dryly. Point it in the direction you wanted to go, and let the horses do the work.
The same thing seemed to be passing through Paul’s mind, as he watched Jimmy scream by, accelerating out of another attempt by Ford to pin him behind their wedge. He shook his head, and Dora elbowed him.
“You don’t approve?” she asked.
“It’s not that,” he said, as if carefully choosing his words. “It’s just not my kind of driving. I like handling; I like to slip through the pack like—like I was a fish and they were the water. Or I was dancing on the track—”
She had to smile. “Are you quoting that, or did you not know that was how they described my French and Monte Carlo Grand Prix wins?”
His eyes widened. “I didn’t know—” he stammered, blushing. “Honest! I—”
She patted his shoulder, maternally. “That’s fine, Paul. It’s a natural analogy. Although I bet you don’t know where I got my training.”
He grinned. “Bet I do! Dodging bombs! I read you were an ambulance driver in Italy during the war. Is that when you met Ettore Bugatti?”
She nodded, absently, her attention on the cars roaring by. Was there a faint sound of strain in her engine? For a moment her nerves chilled.
But no, it was just another acceleration; a little one, just enough to blow Jimmy around the curve ahead of the Mercedes.
Her immediate reaction was annoyance; he shouldn’t have had to power his way out of that, he should have been able to drive his way out. He was putting more stress on the engine than she was happy with.
Then she mentally slapped her own hand. She wasn’t the driver, he was.
But now she knew how Ettore Bugatti felt when she took the wheel in that first Monte Carlo Grand Prix.
“You know, Bugatti was one of my passengers,” she said, thinking aloud, without looking to see if Paul was listening. “He was with the Resistance in the Italian Alps. You had to be as much a mechanic as a driver, those ambulances were falling apart half the time, and he saw me doing both before I got him to the field hospital.”
Sometimes, she woke up in the middle of the night, hearing the bombs falling, the screams of the attack-fighters strafing the road— Seeing the road disintegrate in a flash of fire and smoke behind her, in front of her; hearing the moans of the wounded in her battered converted bread-truck.
All too well, she remembered those frantic moments when getting the ambulance moving meant getting herself and her wounded passengers out of there before the fighter-planes came back. And for a moment, she heard those planes— No, it was the cars returning. She shook her head to free it of unwanted memories. She had never lost a passenger, or a truck, although it had been a near thing more times than she cared to count. Whenever the memories came between her and a quiet sleep, she told herself that—and reminded herself why she had volunteered in the first place.
Because her brother, the darling of the Metaphysical set, was hiding from the draft at home by remaining in England among the blue-haired old ladies and balletomanes who he charmed. Because, since they would not accept her as a combatant, she enlisted as a noncombatant.
Some noncombatant. She had seen more fire than most who were on the front lines.
Bugatti had been sufficiently impressed by her pluck and skill to make her an offer.
“When this is over, if you want a job, come to me.”
Perhaps he had meant a secretarial job. She had shown up at the decimated Bugatti works, with its “EB” sign in front cracked down the middle, and offered herself as a mechanic. And Bugatti, faced with a dearth of men who were able-bodied, never mind experienced, had taken her on out of desperation.
“It was kind of a fluke, getting to be Bugatti’s driver,” she continued, noting absently that Paul was listening intently. “The driver for that first Grand Prix had broken an ankle, right at starting-lineup, and I was the only one on the team that could make the sprint for the car!”
Paul chuckled, and it had been funny. Everyone else was either too old, or had war-injuries that would slow them down. So she had grabbed the racing-helmet before anyone could think to object and had taken the man’s place. In her anonymous coverall, it was entirely possible none of the officials had even noticed her sex.
She had made the first of her famous “Duncan dives” into the cockpit; a modified grand jete that landed her on the seat, with a twist and bounce down into the cockpit itself.
“I can still hear that fellow on the bullhorn—there was no announcer’s booth, no loudspeaker system—” She chuckled again. “And coming in third—Isadora Duncan?”
The next race, there had been no doubt at all of her sex. She had nearly died of heat-stroke behind that powerful engine, and she had been shocked at what that had done to her judgment and reflexes. So this time, she had worn one of her old dancing costumes, a thick cotton leotard and tights—worn inside-out, so that the seams would not rub or abrade her.
The other drivers had been so astounded that she had gotten nearly a two-second lead on the rest of them in the sprint—and two seconds in a race meant a quarter mile.
For her third race, she had been forbidden to wear the leotard, but by then she had come up with an alternative; almost as form-fitting, and enough to cause a stir. And that had been in France, of course, and the French had been amused by her audacity. “La Belle Isadora” had her own impromptu fanclub, who showed up at the race with noisemakers and banners.
Perhaps that had been the incentive she needed, for that had been her first win. She had routinely placed in the first three, and had taken home to Bugatti a fair share of first-place trophies. The other drivers might have been displeased, but they could not argue with success.
Bugatti had been overjoyed, and he had continuously modified his racing vehicles to Isadora’s specifications: lighter, a little smaller than the norm, with superb handling. And as a result of Isadora’s win, the Bugatti reputation had made for many, many sales of sportscars in the speed-hungry, currency-rich American market. And it did not hurt that his prize driver was an attractive, American lady.