Ah. And there’s my anger. Conversation in the lounge…
It feels worse than the thought of him having sex with her. I wonder if he asked her too, as he did with me:Are you shy?If he shared a sip from his Courvoisier and gave her the same wicked smile. If his charming patter with me in Abu Dhabi had been from a playbook of well-tested pickup lines, and once again my heart was swindled by a beautiful scoundrel.
My brain taunts me for my naivete:
Didn’t he tell you as much when he confessed that he gives cash to them all? You’re not special, Natalia Jane Evans. He’s told you what kind of man he is, but you’re not listening.
I wrap my arms around myself. “I’m getting cold. We should go.”
I start down the sidewalk the way we came. Klaus has one arm half out of his jacket, ready to offer it to me, when I stop him.
“I don’t need that.” I lift a hand, warding him off, before knotting it into the cradle of my arms again. Manufacturing a blithe smile—because if he knows how upset I am, it’ll give him an opportunity to change my mind—I tell him, “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your date.”
3
BAHRAIN
TWO WEEKS LATER
KLAUS
My preference has always been to watch races from the garage, but with Edward Morgan—Emerald team owner and my dearest friend—out on medical leave, and Phaedra and Cosmin practically at each other’s throats, my presence is needed on the pit wall to help keep things stable. Facilitating rapport between team members is a big part of my job; at times I feel I’m half therapist.
Phaedra has been terse over the radio but grudgingly professional, and Cosmin is having a strong race. The Bahrain circuit is engineered for excitement, with more opportunity for overtaking than is typical in newer tracks. Sakhir is windy and dusty, which is always a challenge. But the track is a favorite of many racers, with long straights, tight hairpins, thrilling twists, and challenging high-speed corners.
Having started in eighth place, Cosmin has fought his way upto third. Emerald’s other driver, Jakob, is holding steady in P6. A podium for Cosmin so early in the season would be quite a coup.
He roars down the straight after turn 13 with Akio Ono close behind, then brakes early into turn 14—a good strategy that will allow him to pick up speed before the quick but gentle turn 15, then pour on power for the main straight leading to the finish line.
Ono attempts an overtake at the apex of 14, but Cosmin brushes him off easily. I glance at Phaedra, her face lit in an open smile, lips parted to deliver words of encouragement, which go undelivered as Cosmin’s car slows and Ono unexpectedly charges past. It happens so quickly that we are all in shock as a podium finish transforms before our eyes into a still respectable yet disappointing fourth.
“Ce pusca mea… la naiba!” Cosmin snarls over the radio. “No, no,no!What the shit?”
The broadcast version is surely one long bleep tone at his flurry of bilingual cursing. From the look on her face, I expect Phaedra to join in with a volley of her own blue language, but she retains a surprising equanimity.
“It was a solid drive, Cos,” she reassures him a bit crisply. Her keen eyes rake over the data on the monitors as she speaks, trying to determine the car’s sudden loss of power. “We’ll take the points.”
His anguished groan tears over the comms. “What fucking happened? That wasmine.”
“Looking into it,” Phaedra snaps. “Let’s focus on the positive.”
There are smiles and backslapping all around on the pit wall, everyone celebrating the twenty points gained by our two drivers.Glancing over at Jakob’s race engineer—jovial Alfie, known for his almost satiric British pleasantness—I wonder again whether I should have asked him to work with Cosmin this season and had Phaedra switch to Jakob.
Both drivers, I’m starting to suspect, need something other than what they’re getting. Jakob has become cautious since his marriage and is driving so conservatively that a more energetic race engineer might be an asset. And Cosmin is feisty enough that he could benefit from working with someone who might ignore his “noise” in favor of the signal.
The worry that I’ve made a poor call, along with concern for Edward’s health, is getting the better of me… but I cannot possibly show it.
Perception is all.
The face of Emerald must remain polished—it’s imperative not only to team morale but also to the confidence of investors and sponsors.
Knowing that, ultimately, every failure of the team—from the most overarching principle to the smallest detail—begins and ends with me… it is a heavy weight. When Sofia was alive, it was a comfort to remove my armor in her presence. It’s been five years since I’ve felt I could be myself entirely. The closest I come is in the ease of Edward’s affable demeanor.
I’m committed to the team; it has become my family. But a weariness is setting in. Losing Sofia, and enduring the added misery of my grief being public, has already made me question whether I’m happy as Emerald’s team principal. This year in particular, the stress of the job combined with worry for Edward has me restless, dissatisfied, and feeling trapped.
If Edward dies, I think,it will render me an emotional island with no landing spot for visitors.
I recently saw a series of photos in an art gallery: trees that have “swallowed” inanimate objects by growing around them—signs, fences, chairs, bicycles. I stared at them for a long time, unable to shake the sense that my life has “grown over” and absorbed essential parts of me, trapped in the grip of something organic, yet rigidly unforgiving.
