Kiss the Bricks Read online

  A woman in the back spoke up for the first time. “Lyla Thomas for Autoweek. Can I get some background? Where you’re from, racing history, that sort of thing?”

  PJ was surprised at a woman being part of the macho press corps. “I am twenty-six, my father is Mexican and my mother is American. I was brought up in the United States, Colombia, and Mexico City. I started racing go-karts at the age of eight, and then I moved into sportscars, then to formula cars. This is my second year trying to qualify here at Indy, because I didn’t pass the rookie test last year.” She glanced at the scoring pylon. “But I am clearly capable this year, no?”

  Some of the men laughed, grudgingly, she thought.

  Lyla Thomas looked up from her notebook. “What does PJ stand for?”

  PJ rolled her Rs. “Patricia Julieta Rosamaria Rivera Rodriguez.”

  The reporter quirked the side of her mouth up. “I see why you go by PJ.”

  PJ nodded at her as the questions started up again.

  “Do you think the other drivers on track stayed out of your way?”

  “Why would they do that?” PJ studied the man’s feeble attempts at a comb-over.

  “So you wouldn’t get hurt,” he replied. “Could that explain you being fastest?”

  Another man slapped his notebook with the back of his free hand. “You’re onto something. That’s gotta be what it is.” He turned to PJ. “What if they won’t race you wheel-to-wheel?”

  PJ couldn’t help herself. “Then they are weak.”

  “You’re talking about champions!” The men were indignant.

  She shrugged. “If they are afraid to race me…”

  A different reporter spoke up. “Kevin Hagan, Associated Press. What do you have to say to the fans who think you shouldn’t be on the track? Who think you’re taking a seat a man should have?”

  “I say this is nineteen eighty-seven, and it is time for this conversation to be over. Women play sports. We race cars. Billie Jean King won the tennis match fourteen years ago, por Dios. If there’s a man who’s better than me, maybe he’d be standing here. Except that I was faster than your men today. Look at the list.” She pointed to the pylon.

  She heard a sharply indrawn breath and saw heads shake. Heard one man mutter, “Not going to get you more fans.”

  PJ met the eyes of anyone who’d look at her. “No one stayed out of my way today. I was faster. Maybe tomorrow I will not be—or maybe I will. But either way, I succeed because I work hard, not because someone gives me a gift.”

  She saw a young crew member signaling to her from the pit box. “You must now excuse me and move so they can take the car to the garage. Thank you for your time.” She walked away, the young crew member scurrying after her.

  The reporters shifted out of the way of the crew, except for Kevin Hagan, who lagged behind and sidled up to the mechanic climbing in the car for the tow to the garage. “How’s she to work with?”

  The crew member settled himself down in the seat. “You know.”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking. What’s she like?”

  The guy in the car glanced around and shook his head. “There’s some as make it easy, and some that make you regret not knowing who the driver is before you sign a contract with a team. I’ll let you guess.”

  “She don’t make it easy?”

  The crew member rolled his eyes. “Off the charts.” He grabbed Hagan’s arm. “And off the record.”

  The reporter nodded. “Anonymous source.”

  “Meet me in an hour behind the garage for a cigarette, and I’ll tell you more.”

  “Done.” Hagan smirked as the car was towed away.

  Chapter Three

  Present Day

  As I changed into the dry clothes Uncle Stan brought me, my thoughts ping-ponged between my own achievement and that of PJ Rodriguez.

  I still can’t believe we were fastest today. That another woman was fastest decades ago—when there were hardly any women around. How much harder must it have been for her? And can I do it again?

  “Good job today,” Uncle Stan said, as I emerged from the bathroom, once again dry. “You figured the car out quick.”

  “I only hope we can do it again. You know what the secret sauce was?”

  He chuckled. “Good driver’s part of it. Other part’s Indy magic. Sometimes it hits. But you can’t ever count on it.”

  I didn’t know what had gone so right with the car either. Our team, like all of them, had unloaded the car and taken a stab in the dark at setup. I knew the others would find speed in the coming days, and some of us would lose what we’d found—or at least not make the same gains. But I’d had this day.

  Before Uncle Stan and I exited the building, another driver came through the doors. The Spanish-born Sofia Montalvo stopped, a patronizing look on her beautiful face. “I suppose I am to congratulate you?”

  Sofia and I had first encountered each other two years prior, when I’d subbed for one of Beermeier Racing’s drivers in the Indy Lights race at Long Beach. She’d been the only woman there at the time, and she hadn’t welcomed me. In general, that was fine. I didn’t expect to be friends or even friendly with every other driver I raced against. But few, male or female, greeted me with such disdain.

  Women can tear each other down in ways men can’t even approach.

  Now we were both in the IndyCar Series, I often regretted we didn’t have a mutually respectful and supportive relationship. But I couldn’t do it alone, and I’d long since realized it wasn’t worth the effort of swallowing her insults to make it happen.

  “I never expect anything, Sofia. But I hope you ran well today.”

  “As if you care.” She sniffed. “Enjoy this attention. It is the last you will receive. Your little team with its pitiful budget, and you, with your inexperience, soon will falter. And the cream will rise to the top of the milk, you see?”

  “You think that’ll be you?” I snapped.

  “Perhaps. I have yet to peak, unlike you.” She smiled and swept out of the room.

  I made an aggravated noise. “I shouldn’t let her get to me.”

  “But she works so hard at it,” Uncle Stan commented.

  I shook my head and pushed open the door to the plaza, where we discovered fifteen or twenty fans waiting. As I did every time I was nearby, I looked up at the iconic pagoda, a tiered steel-and-glass tower that soared over the start/finish line and symbolized the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. I worked my way through the crowd, answering questions, signing autographs, giving quotes, or receiving hugs. I was enjoying the interactions until one over-beered fan shouted from a few feet away.

  “How much did you pay the other drivers to let you be fastest?”

  A passing crew member from another team—which one, I couldn’t see, due to the equipment slung over his back—nodded at the man who’d spoken. “Girls don’t belong here. It’s a sport for men, not for girls pretending to be men.”

  The rude fan toasted the crew member, sloshing beer out of his cup. “Exactly—I mean, are you a dyke or what? Because it’s fishy that a chick who qualified thirtieth last year is suddenly fastest today. Like there was a conspiracy to get the princess and her team more attention.”

  “Am I a lesbian or a princess?” I murmured, signaling Uncle Stan to ignore the taunts.

  The fans around me shouted at the blowhard to shut up and argued with him about my talent and speed.

  “Do other drivers worry about racing you,” he yelled at me, raising his head and voice to be heard, “because they don’t want to wreck a girl?”

  What century is this guy from?

  I shook my head. “Drivers are worried about beating each other—male or female—not about wrecking each other. Plus, the idea of a conspiracy is absurd. No one’s willing to sacrifice their team. We’re all trying to do our be
st. Ask around, if you don’t believe me.”

  Educate, even if it’s a lost cause.

  “And a word of advice. Respect will get you further than insults. We don’t like being called ‘chicks’ or ‘girls.’”

  “Damn straight,” said one of the women nearby, an angry look on her face.

  “We know exactly what you think about us when you say that.” A woman with spiky, hot pink hair turned to me. “Kate, don’t waste your time with him.”

  The rude guy started to bluster about being persecuted for his opinions, and the men and women in the crowd shouted back. As the volume increased, I headed for the garage, encouraging others to follow me.

  One of the IndyCar Series’ defining characteristics was accessibility. Fans had many opportunities to get close to drivers, crews, and teams, from public autograph sessions to open paddocks. They couldn’t walk into team garages, but they could stand at the door and watch the activity, take photos, and see drivers go about their business. They could approach us in the paddock. We liked being close to our fan base, but there were occasional downsides.

  Uncle Stan shook his full head of white hair. “Some idiots never learn.”

  “You’ve seen plenty of them.” I knew he’d been in racing for decades.

  “Always been jackasses in the bunch, pardon my language. Plenty who refuse to change with the times. Fewer of them holding those wrongheaded opinions now.”

  I paused to scribble my name on a program a man offered up. “At least I have people willing to stick up for me.”

  The good-looking fan smiled at me as I finished writing and unleashed an Australian accent. “I’ll stick up for you, protect you, whatever you need, Kate. Just let me know, day or night.” He winked and handed me a card with his personal information.

  Before I managed to respond, another man claimed my attention. “Kate, I want to thank you for bringing awareness to breast cancer. My wife’s a survivor, and your efforts mean a lot to both of us.”

  I thanked both men and kept moving.

  Uncle Stan spoke again as we passed the closed-up concession stands and entered Gasoline Alley, the name for IMS’s garage area. “You have more support than PJ—she never had a strong fan base. It was a different time.”

  “When did she race?”

  “In nineteen eighty-seven, she was fastest in the first practice for the Indy 500.”

  I stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Also the first practice? Thirty years ago?”

  He nodded as we turned the corner to our row of garages. Before I could ask him more questions, we encountered a dozen people wearing Team Kate and Beermeier Racing shirts. They stood in front of our garage taking photos of my car.

  “Congratulations, Kate!” It was almost a chorus as the fans spotted me.

  After more photos and questions, I entered the garage where Alexa, my team owner, stood inside talking with a tall, well-built blond man in his mid-forties. As I got closer, I revised that estimate upward and wondered if his tight jaw owed more to a surgeon than to genetics.

  Not nice.

  He smiled, with lots of teeth. “Kate, Tom Barclay. Great job today.”

  I knew the name. Barclay owned the go-to firm of sports psychologists for racing drivers. “I worked with your group—Dr. Felicia Shields—years ago. But you and I never met in person.”

  His smile got bigger as he released my hand. “Glad we have now. Best of luck this year.” He left the building with a wave.

  The long Beermeier Racing garage occupied the space of seven separate openings: two for each car and one for the hospitality and office areas. There were no walls or dividers, except for partitions separating the office from hospitality and the rest. I entered the office area—a fifteen-foot-wide space containing folding tables and chairs, plus our driver lockers at one side—where my race engineer, Nolan, hunched over his computer, and I pulled up a chair to talk through the day’s work.

  Halfway through that conversation, Holly called me out to the front of the garage for an on-camera interview with a local TV station for the evening news. She managed to hold off the other media outlets looking for comment until after I’d finished debriefing with Nolan, but returning calls took another half an hour. Then I responded to congratulatory texts from my loved ones—my grandfather, father, and boyfriend.

  Finally, when all questions and messages had been addressed—leaving social media aside for later—I sat still for a few minutes and watched the crew pull the engine cover off to check for oil leaks. I sipped water and admired the car. Low-slung, with swooping, aerodynamic lines, it had no bodywork around the wheels—hence an “open-wheel” racecar—and no roof over the cockpit. It was built for speed.

  The bottom half was a medium green containing the Frame Savings and Loan name in large, white letters. The top half, including most of the nose, was white. Wide swaths of pink ran down both sides of the car, separating the white and green sections, coming together on the nose into a giant pink ribbon, the symbol of the fight against breast cancer. Logos for Beauté, my cosmetics company sponsor, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Beauté’s charitable partner, occupied the nose and rear wing, and there were a dozen other logos in various locations around the car, such as our equipment suppliers who gave us a break in pricing, and other companies or organizations that sponsored us at lesser amounts.

  The green, white, and pink theme carried over into our team firesuits and the designs on our pit boxes and carts. Everything and everyone associated with my number 82 car looked alike, and more importantly, we all wore a pink ribbon for breast cancer integrated into our clothing. That sight always lifted my spirits.

  I sat on one of the stools usually occupied by two old-timers who’d adopted our garage and focused on Uncle Stan. “You saw PJ race thirty years ago?”

  “First team job was working on her car. ’Course, they didn’t let me do much at the time.” He grinned, showing the yellow teeth of a lifetime smoker.

  “She was good? How’d she do in the race?”

  “Never made it. Tried a couple of years. Got closest the year she was fastest, in eighty-seven. But she had talent.”

  “She’d have been only the second woman to try to make it into the Indy 500?” I asked. “I know Janet Guthrie was the first to race in the late seventies.”

  “There was Desiré Wilson in the early eighties—but she didn’t manage to qualify. It was a rougher time then for women.”

  I studied him. “You felt sorry for PJ.”

  “Lot of pressure on her, and she didn’t have male anatomy or lily white skin.”

  “Weren’t there Hispanic or Latino men racing at the time?”

  “A couple. Mostly white men from America, with a handful from Europe or South America. Not many different-looking people of any type. But she didn’t care.” He sprayed more cleaner. “You remind me of her.”

  “I’m not that unusual.” I pointed to my black hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. “Basic white girl. Even being female isn’t the same battle now.” I reflected on the recent fan interaction. “Though it’s not all easy.”

  He shook his head. “Not that. Your focus and determination. She wanted this, and she worked hard. Did whatever she could to make it happen. That’s like you.”

  I was proud a crew member felt that way about me—and relieved he understood. Then I thought about the coincidence. “What happened to PJ? Could we get her here to talk about us both leading the first practice, thirty years apart?”

  Uncle Stan sighed as he set down the cleaner and cloth. “PJ set the fastest time that practice. She was dead ten days later.”

  Chapter Four

  May 1987

  PJ knew the next days wouldn’t be as great as the first one had been—couldn’t be. But she didn’t expect outright disaster.

  Second practice: she crashed on her out lap, damaging t
he rear end of the car and finishing her day before it began.

  Third practice: she brushed the wall coming out of Turn 4 three different times, and her team pulled her off the track thirty minutes before the end of the session. Last on the speed chart.

  Fourth practice: she was five miles per hour slower than anyone else.

  At the start and end of every day, PJ huddled with her engineer and team owner, discussing how to fix the car. As the days went on, the men appeared increasingly grim and PJ acted more and more worried.

  “You made the same mistake three times in Turn 4, PJ. You look like a rookie,” her engineer, Jerry, told her on the third day. “You’re better than that. You need to get everyone out of your head.”

  PJ bit back a defensive comment. Then sighed. “Madre de Dios. I know. I don’t know what happens to me. The car—”

  “Some of it’s the car, I’ll give you that,” Jerry returned.

  Arvie, her team owner, put a hand on her arm. “Are you sleeping enough? Hydrating and eating well?”

  PJ shrugged one shoulder, and the men exchanged concerned looks. They’d seen the crowd of people PJ fought through to reach the garages every day. They’d heard the questions. The insults.

  Arvie spoke again. “The garage area’s open to fans—I can’t change that. But we’ll protect you to and from the parking lot.”

  “There’s no need. I can handle it.” PJ gave him a weak smile. “A man could handle it. Besides, some fans have walked with me, defended me.”

  “I don’t care,” Arvie huffed. “I want you at the top of your game. Jerry, make it happen. Get one of the big guys—Jimmy or Donny.”

  “Not Jimmy.” PJ’s response was quick.

  Jerry raised his eyebrows at her, but PJ shook her head.

  “Donny, then,” Jerry said. “He’ll keep people away.”

  “Thank you. When they press in at me, I can’t breathe.” She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “What else can we do?” Arvie asked.

  PJ looked at the two men. “You are doing it now. Being patient with me. I’m sorry about the car, my driving.”