“What’re you driving tonight?” he said.
“You’re looking at it.”
I didn’t know him from anywhere else, but I’d seen him out there plenty of times when I had my ’64 Polara. Summer before I met Wavy, I was out there nearly every weekend, dragging that old Dodge.
While Billy and his buddies checked out the Cuda, Wavy came up and slipped her hand into mine. Right away, Billy got his eye on her.
“Say, what’s this little girl’s mommy gonna do if you lose her in a race?”
“I ain’t losing nothing tonight,” I said.
“She’s a little young for my taste,” his buddy said, “but she’ll be worth racing for in a couple years. I do like blondes.”
Wavy glared at them, even though it was just a joke. Nobody ever won somebody else’s girl. The drags were strictly about the money and the winning, showing your car was faster. I mean, I’d won plenty of races, and only ever took home two girls. One was done with me as soon as she sobered up. The other one went home with a different guy every week.
Billy wanted to put fifty bucks on our race, so while me and him queued up for the track, Wavy headed off to where all the spectators were.
The track was shaped like a D. A loop around the big gravel pit, then a quarter-mile straightaway. It was a good track, except for this tight spot early on. About a hundred yards from the start, the track cut into the side of a dune. It meant you had to ride close to the other car until you passed it.
As I pulled up in the line, I glanced out of the corner of my eye and caught Wavy staring up at the stars. She was the prettiest girl there easy, with her hair blowing back like a flag. Amazed me how fast she was growing up. She’d be twelve in a couple weeks and she was gonna be long-legged like Val. Every time I looked at her, the gap between the bottom of her skirt and the tops of her boots was bigger. As soon as I thought it, I got to worrying about all the other guys there looking at her and thinking the same thing. We had a minute before the flagger sent me and Billy around the loop to the straightaway, so I called her over.
“Come gimme a kiss for good luck,” I said.
She walked over and rested her arm on the door panel. Leaning in through the window, she pressed her lips to the corner of my mouth, real soft. The wind whipped her hair up, and blew it all around, brushing against my face and my neck. As she straightened up, she tucked it back behind her ears.
“Thanks, sweetheart.”
Then it was time for me to roll around to the start line. I watched in my side view mirror as she walked back to the spectators. She was still smiling when the flagger gave me the nod.
The trick with drags like that is not to win by too much. You wanna feel out the other guy and win by just enough. You go smoking the first couple of guys you race and pretty soon nobody wants to race you, and they sure don’t wanna put any money on it.
Billy had a Trans Am, ’73 I think, and for an automatic, it had some oomph, but when we came outta the squeeze between those dunes, I stepped into the Cuda and kept a car length ahead of him all the way to the finish line. He was a loudmouth, but he was a good loser. Paid up and said, “Not too shabby considering how much weight she’s hauling.”
“Maybe next time,” I said. To remind him he pretty much always lost to me.
I raced four more guys after that. Beat a Camaro, and a Charger same year as mine, and then got my ass handed to me by this scrawny Mexican kid in a Corvette with a 427 under the hood. I knew I wasn’t gonna beat him, which was why I only put twenty bucks on it, but I wasn’t planning on getting smoked that bad.
I only raced him so that when I was paying him, I could give him the number for the shop.
“You bring it around, I’ll give you a good deal. Make it look as nice as it rides,” I said.
“It still beat you, man.” He gave me this chin-up look, like we were gonna get into it.
“Yeah, well, you’d look better beating me with a new paint job.”
After that race, Wavy and me took a break for a while. I sat up on the hood, watching the other races, and she sat down on the bumper while I braided her hair. She never kept braids in it, but my sister taught me how to do it a couple different ways. Just something to do with my hands.
“What is this, a hair salon?” this guy walking by said.
I shrugged him off, but a couple minutes later, he was back.
“You racing tonight?” he said.
“Yeah, I took her ’round a couple times. You wanna go?”
He didn’t say nothing, but he walked around the Cuda, looking it over. When he came back around to the hood, he was grinning.
“Looks like that saying is wrong. I guess you can polish a turd.”
“The question is whether you can beat it,” I said.
“Hundred bucks.”
Now I didn’t have a clue what he was driving, but I didn’t care. Anybody wanna walk up to me and talk that kinda shit, I’ll give it a go.