Kiss the Bricks Read online

  “Are you sleeping?” Jerry repeated Arvie’s question.

  “Not well,” she admitted. “When I go to the hotel or to a restaurant, there are people waiting. Reporters. Also regular men who make fun of me or tell me I’m worthless. Once in a while, there is a positive comment. But the bad words, the mean intentions, are always there.”

  Jerry and Arvie exchanged another glance. They’d seen the stories.

  PJ sucked in a deep breath, then exhaled. Did that a second time and squared her shoulders. “No more complaining. I will be tougher than they are.”

  Arvie started to speak, “You don’t have to—”

  She shook her head. “They won’t break me. Tomorrow, I’ll be better, I swear it.”

  She was true to her word, picking up four miles per hour and staying out of the walls—even beating the speed of two other drivers that day. But she looked increasingly brittle. The team members who cared about her worried about the confident, aggressive girl they saw entering the garage and the nail-biting, distraught one they saw inside, out of the public eye.

  No matter her performance—or lack of it—on track, the critical, jeering fans never let up. The stories in the media never stopped.

  “Girl Driver Flames Out After First Day,” and “PJ Proves Females Can’t Drive Like Men,” and “Can Girls Handle Indy Pressure?” ran the headlines in major publications.

  The questions from the primarily male attendees at the track were usually cruder. Most asked if she’d faked her speed the first day or taunted her with her failures in the days since. Some got more personal.

  One morning, PJ heard, “Why don’t you get out of the way and let the real drivers have a chance?” and “Stay in the kitchen where you belong, sweetheart.” But those were typical, and she didn’t so much as break her stride.

  Then one man shouted, “I don’t even think you’re a woman,” which stirred up the group of eight or ten men around her—including Donny, who towered over her and kept a protective arm around her shoulders as they walked toward the garages.

  “I wondered, too,” called another male voice. “Show us your tits.”

  “Maybe she needs a doctor’s note to prove she’s a girl,” said another.

  “I’ve got a better idea—bend over and prove it to all of us,” crowed yet another voice, a closer one.

  PJ felt a hand grab her buttocks and another one fondle her right breast. That’s when she stumbled, her face white and eyes glassy.

  “Back off, assholes,” Donny snarled as he shoved men away.

  The men made kissing sounds and flopped their wrists at him. “Oooh, ladies, look, we’ve upset the mama’s boy and his whore.”

  Donny and PJ shook off the crowd, arriving at the garage at a near-run. Once inside, he grabbed her shoulders with both hands. “Are you all right?”

  PJ took deep breaths, which restored her color. “I am fine.”

  “I can’t believe—I mean, I’m sorry for what they said.”

  She smiled at him and didn’t mention the groping hands she could still feel. “Small minds won’t break me or this team.”

  “We should tell someone from the track. They shouldn’t be allowed to say that.”

  “It’s all right, Donny. We leave it. We have better things to focus on today, like going faster.” She gestured to the blue-and-green racecar next to them.

  “I’m going to tell Arvie and Jerry.”

  She stepped back so his hands fell away from her shoulders. “Don’t bother them. Focus on the car. It is all that matters.” She moved closer to the car and stared into the cockpit. “The speed is all that matters. I can take anything if I can go fast.”

  PJ was last again in that day’s session, slower than the next car by three miles per hour—a closer number than before, but not much good when the rest of the field improved their speeds every day and the number of days remaining before qualifying dwindled rapidly.

  During the first two of four weekend days of qualifying, while half the field entered official times, PJ and the crew continued their work, making slow progress. The car improved. As Arvie remarked, “Given infinite time, we might have a top ten car. But we’ll run out of days before the race to make that happen.”

  Jerry and Arvie stayed late many nights, going through every possible adjustment on the car and coming up with new approaches. One morning, the tenth day of practice, the Tuesday between qualifying weekends, they waited for PJ, eager to tell her about the problem they’d found and corrected. But PJ never arrived.

  She wouldn’t ever get the chance to try their fix. She’d never drive the Indy 500, never taste that kind of speed again. All of PJ’s possibilities had ended earlier that morning when she fell from the roof of a fifteen-story hotel in downtown Indianapolis.

  Chapter Five

  Present Day

  I still felt the gut punch of PJ’s death the next day. I’d spent a restless night imagining the shock everyone in the paddock felt. Imagining the sight of her broken body on the ground outside the hotel. Waking up with a jolt from a nightmare of falling.

  My eyes were gritty as I arrived at the track, and I carried my sorrow over PJ—maybe even carried PJ—with me, using it as motivation to buckle down and work hard. After the euphoria of our first practice, my crew and I expected the second practice day to be rough. We were right.

  Tuesday’s weather was overcast and cooler than Monday’s hot, humid temperatures, and the adjustments we made to the car to compensate messed everything up. For a while, we trailed around at the back of the field, as I repeatedly took to the track and returned for more adjustments. No one was more frustrated than my engineer.

  I caught sight of him during one stop and radioed to Alexa, the only one who spoke to me on the radio besides my spotter. “Nolan’s got no more hair to lose.”

  She looked at him and smiled. True to form, Nolan’s left hand clutched the fringe of short hair above his ear. Alexa pulled her aviator sunglasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Not the day to break the habit of a lifetime.”

  I watched Nolan’s agitated movements and Alexa’s calm, measured response and was grateful again for my team. Concerns, ideas, and pronouncements fizzed out of Nolan Oshiro like endless soda froth. Alexa Wittmeier, in contrast, moved in slow-motion, never getting wound up or overly excited—which made her ideal for talking to me on the radio as I circled the track at more than 220 mph. Alexa was a little more than a decade older than me, a successful veteran of IndyCar who’d driven for six years and then changed her focus to building her own team. She’d run it on her own for a handful of years before joining forces with Tim Beerman—a move that propelled the team from also-rans to serious competitors.

  “We’re trying to get you back up on speed. No one can work out how we lost it from yesterday.” She slipped her glasses back on. “Changing tire pressure and taking more front wing out. Give us a sec. We’ll send you back out to see how it works.”

  The answer, two laps later, was it didn’t. But three more adjustments—plus more hair-tugging from Nolan—and we started to make progress. We ended the day in thirtieth place—a dramatic comedown from first the day before, but still not last of the thirty-four cars practicing. And we’d started heading in the right direction.

  When I wasn’t driving the car, my thoughts centered on PJ Rodriguez. Wondering what she was like and being sad for everything she missed out on. I’d searched for information online the night before, and I’d been transfixed by photos of her, partly because we were similar in appearance, with our short height and black hair—though she was curvier. But I was also caught by the look of determination in her eyes—a look I understood. I felt an instant connection to her that went beyond our shared accomplishment, straight to our experiences as women in a male-dominated world. With those photos, I felt I knew her.

  Beyond images, my Internet search yie
lded basic information, but not much insight. However, some of our crew had been in the paddock at the time, on different teams, and they’d told me what they knew about PJ.

  “I saw her in the garages and pits,” said a fifty-something tire expert who went by Banjo and spoke in a slow Southern drawl. “She had the best and worst luck all at once.”

  Bald John—to differentiate him from the John who had hair—snapped his fingers. “I remember. If anyone was ever jinxed at the 500, it was her.”

  “You had more days of practice then, didn’t you?” I asked.

  Banjo nodded. “The whole month of May, not only the two weeks we have now. This PJ, who no one’s ever heard of—Mexican, I think, and let me tell you, we didn’t see many Hispanics or women in those days, so she stood out—she’s fastest right out of the gate, first day. Shocked the stuffing out of everyone.”

  “Then nothing,” Bald John said. “After that, she was barely competent on track. Dead-last, day after day.”

  “Then she was just dead.” Banjo shook his head. “Killed herself. Couldn’t handle the pressure.”

  “I don’t understand how she stopped wanting it,” I put in. “But it must have been tougher for her—Uncle Stan said she was only the third woman to try to make the race.”

  Bald John rubbed his polished head. “The stories around the paddock about her weren’t great. Now I wonder if they were personal or simply the usual.”

  I sighed. “I know the usual.”

  The corners of Banjo’s mouth pulled down. “They don’t say nothing bad in our hearing, I promise you.”

  I smiled at him. “I appreciate that, but I know it happens. I’m a bitch because I’m focused and not afraid to be aggressive.”

  “PJ got labeled the B-word, too.” Bald John shrugged. “Maybe she was.”

  “Or maybe she had to be to get what she wanted,” I replied.

  We definitely need a thick skin, I thought later, as I answered questions after practice for a small group of press. The regular IndyCar journalists covered the basics—how I felt about the car, what had changed from the day before, and where we’d go from here. Those questions were fine. As I’d heard one broadcast journalist put it, they allowed me to retain my dignity by asking for information without judgment.

  The rest of the reporters weren’t so considerate.

  “Did the pressure of being fastest yesterday get to you and the team, Kate?”

  “Can you actually find the speed to keep up with the rest of the cars who’re picking up the pace?”

  “Was yesterday a fluke?”

  “Sofia Montalvo was faster than you today, so you’ve lost the title of fastest woman here. Any comment?”

  “Are you aware you’re polling behind Sofia for sexiest driver?”

  I gritted my teeth and smiled.

  Then I heard the last question. “Are you doing a PJ?”

  I felt my smile fade. “What do you mean?”

  A paunchy man with greasy, bowl-cut hair looked up from his notebook. “In eighty-seven, she was fastest in the first session and the next day, last. She crashed coming out of the pits that day, and you didn’t, but still. She was last the next four or five days. I figure history’s repeating itself.”

  I felt Holly bristle beside me, and I glanced at her.

  Stay calm.

  “What’s your name?” I asked the journalist.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Rick Ollie.”

  “Hi, Rick Ollie, I’m Kate Reilly. Which means I’m not ‘doing a PJ,’ I’m doing a Kate.” I smiled, making it a joke, and saw answering grins from other journalists. “First of all, I qualified for and raced in one Indy 500 already. Second, track conditions changed, maybe we bumped something on the car, who knows? By the end of the session, we were making progress, so we’ll be headed back up the order.”

  “Sure you will,” I heard Rick mumble as I walked back into the garage.

  Once safely away from press ears, I turned to Holly. “Who do these people write for? Is that how a journalist behaves?”

  “Not that I don’t agree with you, but he’s not the only one asking the question.” Holly glanced at her phone, and I knew what was coming.

  “The Ringer has it?” Racing’s Ringer was a blogger known for his anonymity, his inside scoops on the motorsports world, and his outrageous level of snark. The fact that I knew his real identity didn’t stop him from making me a target, though he’d also defended me against attack at times. He wouldn’t be able to resist this situation.

  Holly nodded and turned her phone so I could see it.

  I read the headline aloud. “‘Time Travel or Supernatural Possession? Is Kate Channeling 1987’s Doomed Girl Driver?’” I took a deep breath, smelling the mixture of hot rubber, race fuel, and solvent that permeated the garage. I exhaled and did it again. Didn’t help.

  Uncle Stan walked up and studied my face. “Didn’t mean to depress you by comparing you to PJ. You’re not her.”

  “Try telling that to bloggers and social media.” Holly wiggled her phone in the air. “I’ll post an upbeat message about today and see if we can head this off.” She wandered away.

  I turned to Uncle Stan, who looked confused. “The problem isn’t you—though hearing what PJ did makes me sad. Makes me wonder if she thought she was jinxed.”

  “Plenty of her team thought so.”

  “How well did you know her, Uncle Stan?”

  He rocked back on his heels. “Mechanic on her car, my first IndyCar job. Youngest guy on the pit crew. PJ and I were about the same age—maybe she was a couple years older. Both new. Won’t claim we were friends, but we connected over being fish out of water in the garage.”

  “Who else was around then?”

  “Some of our senior engineers.” He scanned the room. “Banjo and Bald John, like they told you. Ron and Chuck.”

  “Are those our mascots? The two older guys usually sitting here?” I gestured to the two empty stools in a corner of the garage near my car. “What’s their story?”

  “Ron was involved as a kid for a lot of years, later owned teams—including PJ’s. Then he got out for a while, and now he’s back for the entertainment value, he says. Chuck started Gaffey Insurance years ago and recently turned it over to his son. He and Ron have been friends forever—still like being near the action.” Uncle Stan nodded toward a woman straightening up the food table. “Ask Diane Wittmeier, she’ll tell you stories.”

  “Alexa’s mom?”

  He nodded. “She worked for PJ’s team doing hospitality.”

  Alexa called me over to confirm timing and other details for the next day, and after we were done, I went to Diane.

  “Thanks for today’s celebration cookies.”

  She beamed at me from behind her red-framed glasses. She had a sleek bob of ash blond hair that I envied because the ends curled under perfectly. Unlike mine, which went everywhere. “Sorry they didn’t bring you more luck. But you’ll find your speed again. I’ve seen it many times.”

  “Uncle Stan said you’ve worked in racing for a long time.”

  “My father was involved, so I don’t remember life before the track. Grew up here and never left.” She eyed me. “You’re hearing the stories about PJ.”

  “You knew her?”

  She sighed. “The poor kid.”

  Chapter Six

  May 1987

  The morning of the fifth day of practice, Donny returned to the garage alone. PJ’s engineer, Jerry, saw him and frowned. “Where is she?”

  “No idea. But her car’s in the lot.”

  “Did you look around?”

  “I came back here to tell you.”

  Jerry bit back an expletive. “You told me. Now go back and make sure you didn’t miss her somewhere.” He surveyed the garage as Donny left, then crossed to the food ar
ea where a slight woman in her early thirties rearranged snacks and utensils. “Diane, will you look for PJ?”

  “Where do you think she’s gone?”

  “If I knew, I’d go there.”

  Diane raised an eyebrow at him and fluffed her blond, permed hair.

  Jerry blew out a breath. “You can go places Donny and I can’t. Girl places. Please, check the bathrooms or something. Anything.”

  Diane rolled her eyes. “Girl places? You can’t do better than that?” She held up a hand and slipped on her Ray-Ban Wayfarers. “I’m going.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Diane sat down next to the lone figure in the grandstands, above pit lane near the pagoda. She pushed her sunglasses up to hold her hair against the light breeze. “You’re tough to find.”

  PJ nodded, never taking her eyes from the empty track.

  “You must have gotten here early today,” Diane said, turning to look at the last vestige of the formerly all-brick track. The famous “yard of bricks” was a three-foot-wide strip—nine rows that crossed the track at the start/finish line, ran through pit lane, and continued through the pagoda plaza in the infield.

  “It was simpler that way.” PJ sighed. “They sent you to find me?”

  “They’re worried.”

  “That I am sorry for.”

  Diane shrugged absently as she tried to count individual bricks on the front straight. “What do you see when you sit here?”

  PJ looked from right to left, up and down the long front straight, lined from end to end with grandstands. “I see history. Racing’s history.”

  “Your own history.”

  PJ glanced at Diane with surprise. “I suppose this is true. My history also.” She was quiet a moment. “If I half close my eyes, I can see those cars that came before me.”

  “So many dreams,” Diane murmured.

  “So many drivers—and now me.” PJ faltered. “It used to give me hope.”

  “And now?”

  “My whole career has been difficult, and I knew this would be harder.” PJ shook her head. “I did not understand how much more this would be—but this place is so much more.” She turned to Diane, gesturing wildly toward the track with one arm. “Of course this is more difficult, more pressure, everything, because the race itself is more everything. The Indy 500 is like a test. Only the strongest survive here.”