Racing The Sun

Chapter 1 Intersection

Leila drives through the city streets in the gear of everyday. So much is happening all at once. On her mind at this precise moment is her work to bring together differently abled people in valuable activities and occupations. This is her problem: should she start a formal group and run it, or choose to stay in her career as a teacher?

Ahead of her, a white SUV rockets through a red light, tracking on a line unwavering as the International Space Station. She jams on the brakes, watching it cross the intersection in front of her, a man’s profile in the rectangle of the driver’s window.

The SUV slams into another car, spun around, and launches a star-show of glass and metal into the air.

Her car lurches to a full stop, buffeting her between fear and relief. She checks the rearview mirror and switches on the flasher lights, scrambling out of her seat as a boy bolts from the SUV’s backseat. He runs toward her, arms outstretched.

She catches him and holds him as he collapses to the ground. Kneeling beside him, she wipes away a thread of blood on his forehead. Looks for, but finds no wound.

Can you move your arms? Your legs?

The boy responds, following her eyes, and moving his arms and legs. A man joins her at the boy’s side. Leila stands and walks toward the mangled cars. There’s a whiff of gas, almost sickly, and the crunch of powdered glass.

The SUV is empty, one passenger sitting on the pavement.

All around, as if impregnating the air, a pervasive and penetrating keening sound comes from the other car, a pearl-gray sedan. The keening fades, leaving a silence that lifts off the earth. A quiet Leila has experienced before, in the last moments of her mother’s life.

Leila gathers her strength to move into the heart of the silence. The sedan’s door is crushed and torn open. The keening begins again, very soft and low. She leans inside to see a woman, head back, eyes partly rolled up.

She takes the woman’s hand. Hang in there.

A girl appears beyond the woman, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Leila checks to see if her arms and legs are free: they are.

Help is coming. Can you say something to your mother?

The girl tries to speak but fails. She tries again. Love you. As if emboldened by this declaration, she touches her mother’s shoulder with one finger.

The woman’s eyelids flutter.

Okay, we’ve got it. A man’s voice comes from behind her.

Leila steps back to let the paramedics do their work.

Walking back to her car, she feels as if she’s in a slow-motion film.

A man stands by her car, looking at the scene, one hand over his mouth, rocking back and forth. Two police officers approach the man. He falls to his knees in the street.

The driver of the white SUV.

The police wave traffic around the wreck. Leila settles into the carapace of her car before easing forward. She feels more marooned the farther she goes from the child and her mother.

Her facial and neck muscles twitch. She has a pain in her left shoulder. Checking the rearview mirror, she sees a deep furrow between her eyes.

She is floating back again to the accident scene, seeing the woman sheathed in metal, with her child beside her. A white haze hovered around her.

At the next intersection, Leila swings into the left turn lane, not really knowing why, but following an instinct to take herself off the main route. As soon as she turns onto the side street, she recognizes a road that will take her away from the congested drive home. For the time being, that gives her a sense of respite.

And as she drives, a new vista opens. High, clear buildings and open space, a walkway beside the road where people ride on hoverboards. Nothing is the same, yet all is familiar. Her car is a pod-shaped tube without an engine, it purrs along. Its voice clock says 3:45 p.m. Fourth Quadrant 2084. A man in a wheelchair zips past above the walkway.

She reaches another corner. Recalculate, the GPS female voice would say, if she had kept the device; instead, she dislodged the frog-like apparatus stuck to her window months ago, repacked it in its original box, and dropped it unceremoniously at the Salvation Army.

Flicking on her innate GPS, she maneuvers through the gritty 2016 side streets until she reaches the main road again. Waiting for the light to change, she sees a blue-grey Nissan Altima. She focuses on the car. Her father has one just like it.

A woman with high cheekbones and luxurious brown hair sits in the passenger seat. It is her father’s car, and he is driving. Leila watches the car pass through the intersection.

She drives slowly toward her section of southern Miami, trying to place the woman in her father’s car. Her mouth drops open, and she catches her reflection in the mirror: a surprised giraffe. She has seen that woman passenger before. They met and spoke late last spring on the lawn of the woman’s Key Biscayne home, after the wet and wild conclusion of an errant boat trip.

Leila’s friend Charles had invited her and several other friends for a lunch cruise. A day later they limped back to Key Biscayne, where Charles’ parents, Cran and Berry Birdsall, were waiting. Charles was taken to the hospital, suffering from a concussion. The others were shaken but unhurt. Leila spoke to both Cran and Berry about Charles and the trip.

She turns onto her street. How does her father know Berry, Charles’ mother? And what are they doing together?

Chapter 2 Cran at the Races

Cran Birdsall hops knob-kneed down the steps of his Italianate villa on Key Biscayne, wobbled toward his Aston Martin, giving it a caress before clicking on the key fob in the palm of his hand. The door locks pop open and he leans in to pick up a bag on the front seat. The remote clicks again and Cran carries the bag to the Maserati A6G/54 2000 Frua Spider.

Hello, he whispers. Let’s go racing.

He opens the driver’s door the old-fashioned way, thinking there’s much to be said for the natural design of cars. After folding his large frame into the sports car, he plumps the bag down on the seat beside him. The engine bursts into life, shaking Cran’s bones to the marrow. He has been anxious to get to the Sportscar Vintage Racing Association’s annual competition, this year at Homestead Speedway, but his wife insisted on an early game of tennis. Berry Birdsall is ten years younger, possessing the coordinated flow of a trained dancer—ballet, jazz, modern and ballroom—and both her knees work.

Cran hopes his slight limp, the cadence of old age, is invisible except to his friends, all male and in denial. One declares, It’s because we kicked our way to the top. Laughing heartily, they toddle to the first tee at the country club’s golf course.

The day before, Crandon and Berea Berry Birdsall were told by their son Charles of his engagement to Rose Kallient, a Formula One race car driver. Charles is away on the F1 tour with Rose, known on the circuit as RoK, who often places in the top ten but has yet to win.

Cran speeds across the causeway as if riding a heat-seeking missile, and then takes control and slows to a tempered pace on I-95. Cruising on the interstate, he jostles the bag on the seat beside him with one hand: yes, it’s there.

He wonders if he should try to hide the bag but is more thrilled by the idea of keeping it hidden in plain sight. He smiles at a state trooper who openly admires his car. Cran thinks the trooper wants to race him, as he would like to race the super-hemi police cruiser; it feels good to imagine that.

Vintage race cars buzz around Homestead Speedway like crazed bees. Cran’s gaze lingers on the open wheel oval Indy and Midget race cars. The turbulence of their engines is music to him, as though he can hear the rumble at the center of the universe.

Cran drives by the car show, nosing toward the paddock area of the road races. The public is allowed in that area to see the cars up close and meet their drivers.

He parks beside a 1958 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa. Looking like a Lego version of a human being, he extricates himself from his bite-size car.

A middle-aged man has eyes only for the Maserati.

Cran waits for him to return from Neverland. Hello, Bern. He reaches into his car and pulls out the bag.

Bern pats the car door. Emile said thanks for the gift.

I hope it helps.

When his race is called, Cran Birdsall buckles himself back into the Maserati Frua Spider’s driver’s seat. The heat of the pavement burns Cran’s eyes before he adjusts his goggles. A peppery rush of gasoline makes him high. The Maserati throbs around him as he pulls up in line beside a Porsche 911.

In a hallowed trance he follows the pace car around the track. A tightening in his chest pushes upward through his neck and head, making him feel loopy for just a speedway second. He grips the steering wheel tighter and chugs a deep breath. The pace car dips off the track. His whole body vibrates, and the sense of release is exhilarating when he accelerates across the start line.

The first five laps go smoothly. Cran settles in, watching Emile ahead of him. He drives his car down the banked track toward the yellow line while Emile keeps to his line in the middle. Too late he sees Emile’s car moving down as well.

He feels the impact in his body before it registers in his mind.

Cran’s car lifts off the ground, slamming into the outside wall, exploding in a kaleidoscope of lethal shards.

At the last moment, a stubborn nugget of consciousness, he relives what has happened, and thinks what it will look like. Like he’d tried to kill himself. Like something went purposefully wrong.

Paramedics kneel beside him. Pulse is feathery.

Cran feels the swing of the stretcher and pressure of a band across his forehead as they lift him into the ambulance. He rides into darkness.

Chapter 3 Philosophy of Love

Dov Lindahl whips his head around. He wishes his eyes had zoom lenses. Everyone else in the crowd on Collins Avenue turns into a flowing morass, blocking his line of sight. Suddenly a man with short dark hair in an olive tanktop cuts sideways through the crowd. He looks to one side, giving Dov a clear view of his profile.

Dov’s excitement flips to disappointment: it isn’t Nìco.

In the triangular shade of a hotel’s LeCorbussier cantilever, Dov stops to rub his eyes. This isn’t the first time he’s thought he’s seen Nìco in a street crowd, or in a club, or on the beach.

He knows it can’t be. The man he loves is in Cuba. And that may as well be Siberia. Well, not quite, he calms himself. Cuba is warmer, and within reach of an enthusiastic swimmer.

Leaving the shade, he weighs the possibilities: swim, fly or take a boat ride. He blanches at the memory of the voyage on his friend Charles’ yacht. Dov and Leila, and their friends Ramon and Maria, were all onboard when a pop-up squall blew the yacht off course, and they drifted into forbidden waters.

And there on the warm sands of Cuba, Dov met Antonio. In the shade of a thatched shelter on that humid beach, Antonio, the young bird guide whispered to him, call me Nìco.

Ever since that Lost At Sea trip Dov has been jumpy. He wants Nìco here, can’t wait anymore.

Should I go to Cuba? His hesitation irks him. Are his risk-taking days ending in a whimper? Not yet, he mutters as he leaps into the vortex of the avenue on a late Friday afternoon. Not yet.

Cuba, Florida, the ninety-mile divide.

Embarrassingly, tears come to his eyes. He wipes them away, pretending to himself, and hoping to convince others that they are caused by the bright sun.

Because it is more than personal, it is collective. As a Jew, he thinks, my sense of persecution is probably encoded in my DNA. The Cuban people are being oppressed, with wholesale