“He was in the way.”

“In the way of what?”

I shrugged. “Nitro.”

“Nitro—right. Why were you attacking Nitro? What’s wrong with you, Jack?”

“With me?” I said. “Are you serious? Nitro—”

“You heard her, chavo,” Nitro said. He’d climbed the slope behind me.

“Fuck you, Muscles.”

Pita said, “You’ve gone over the board, Jack.”

I blinked. “Over the board?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Over the board?”

Her face flushed. “Jack!”

“Why don’t you take a hike, Jack Goff?” Nitro said.

I faced the joker. He was grinning, his barrel chest puffed out like a turkey’s. His eyes drilled into mine, black, taunting. He wanted to start something again because he knew everyone was on his side.

I walked away.

3

I’d met Pita some five years ago when I was twenty-three. Her father, Marco Cuhna, had put together a self-sponsored racing team to compete in the ’96 Busch Series Grand National Division, NASCAR’s minor league circuit, and he wanted me to be his driver. I’d come a long way from the back-of-the-pack kid racing the Monte Carlo on local tracks. The previous year I’d won the American Speed Association rookie title, while the current season I’d finished fourth in standings with two wins. Nevertheless, the big corporate sponsors didn’t want to touch me. I wasn’t fit enough to compete at a more elite level, they said. I bumped too much on the track and drank too much off it. In other words, I wasn’t the whitewashed, polished driver you could put on the front of a Wheaties cereal box. Yet none of that bothered Marco Cunha. “They’re stupid,” he told me simply during our first meeting. “They want someone with perfect hair, perfect teeth, perfect personality. Why? Who watches NASCAR? I tell you, Jack. Beer-drinking, blue-collar young men. And they want someone they can root for. An underdog, a hothead, an anti-establishment figure.” He smiled. “So now you tell me, Jack. Know anyone who fits that bill?”