Chapter 104: Hammer And Tongs

Mark

Ira and I knew better than to interfere. Jenny had just come back from the morning’s free practice and was currently in discussions with Jonjo. She had finished the free practice in second, which on paper was more than respectable in her first ever international race, but what irked her was that the driver in P1 was none other than that other girl from Switzerland.

While the media types were falling over themselves about the fact that the entire Y-chromosome brigade had been a mop, used to wipe the floor with by two teenage girls, Jenny was not best pleased as she had no idea where those final three tenths of a second were supposed to come from. For her being second meant being the first loser.

Jonjo had a few ideas for setup changes, and they kept discussing them. I indicated to Ira that we should perhaps beat a discreet retreat. We weren’t of any help here in any case.

Once we had returned to our stately home on wheels, Ira didn’t waste time and took her shirt and bra off, after closing the curtains between the cockpit and the living area.

“You don’t need to drive today, do you?” she asked, and upon seeing me shake my head she gave me a beer from the fridge.

“Lydia would give me the ol’ side-eye if she saw me drink beer at eleven in the morning,” I said with a chuckle.

“No she wouldn’t,” Ira argued and sat down across from me at the small table. “Lydia told me she always gives you a beer when you need to talk about something. And you, big boy, seem to have something weighing down on you. You haven’t been yourself all morning.”

“I’m not good at hiding it, am I?” I asked back and ran my right hand fingers through my hair. I told her about the crisis Lydia had had just hours before Jenny and I left.

“You and Ian are not really free of blame in all that,” she told me bluntly, after weighing up her response for a while.

“So you too think that Ian and I are shallow oafs, who won’t be giving you the time of day once your boobs aren’t as perfect anymore as they are now?” I asked her and I could tell that I had failed to prevent the undercurrent of hurt in my voice from becoming obvious.

“Of course not. It’s hard to explain, you know,” Ira explained. “Let me put it that way. Imagine Lydia and I were really, really talented cooks.”

“I haven’t eaten any of your meals yet, but in Lydia’s case I don’t need to imagine it,” I interrupted her with a chuckle, but Ira ignored my intervention.

“Now, after each meal you tell us what wonderful cooks we are. You put us on a pedestal from which we can only fall down, because we know the day will come, as we get older, when we won’t be as natural with the spices anymore or our sense of taste gets worse and we will eventually spoil the odd meal. See what I mean?”

“So we’re telling you too often how fantastic both of you look?” I asked. “But if we stopped doing that, wouldn’t that fuel your worries even more?”

“Confession time,” Ira said. “I cheated a bit. I had a pretty good idea what was on your mind, because Lydia and I had a very long phone talk the other day. She was quite downtrodden, because Jenny had apparently given her a right old bollocking.”

“That would mean we are at an impasse here,” I complained to her. “I can’t tell Lydia or you how fantastic you look, so how am I supposed to reassure you that your irrational fears are unfounded?”

“You’re already doing that, you know?” she pointed out. “I took the shirt off for a reason. Okay, I like it that way most of the time anyway, but today I wanted to see your reaction, and it was just what I had hoped for. As soon as I started tugging at the hem of the shirt, you stopped what you were doing and failed miserably at trying not to stare too obviously. Oh, and you grinned like the village idiot, too.”

“Oops.”

“That’s the point though, Mark. You don’t need to verbalize your verdict. All that is doing is just increasing the height of the pedestal you put us on. We’re not naive teenagers. We know the day will come when you’ll no longer stop what you’re doing to look in anticipation. We’re not afraid of that. We’re afraid of the height we’ll fall from on that day.”

“I understand the abstract concept,” I agreed. “Although for the record, I think you’ll both be way past fifty on that hypothetical day, probably more like sixty-five in Lydia’s case. I just don’t understand how that would make things better? First of all, I’m not sure I’ll ever stop being excited when the shirt comes off, and even if that were to happen. Wouldn’t that be just as bad for you?”

“Because you will ease us into it,” Ira explained. “The verbal compliments would stop, from one day to the next. Your bodily reaction however, will evolve. You won’t be looking just as long, or perhaps only once the shirt is completely gone, you won’t be grinning just as brightly anymore, but you will still react.”

“I think I get it, except for some time I will probably be somewhat conscious of my reaction for a while now,” I admitted.

“I doubt that,” Ira said. “I had the very same talk with Ian, and his reaction didn’t change one bit. That’s why it is more important than the verbal compliments. The way you react to our unpacking them is a much more honest compliment.”

“Well, if you ask me, I think both of you are looking for a problem where there is none,” I told her. “I could see where Meri or Esther are not looking forward to hitting fifty, but you and Lydia?”

“It’s not rational, I know,” Ira admitted. “But when you spend years getting a kick out of your man’s excitement, you naturally fear that this might be going away some day and you can do nothing about it.”

“Which just means we need to keep both of you busy to stop you from over-thinking this whole Malarkey,” I said dryly. “Ian seems to have done a fairly good job of it over the winter.”

“Don’t remind me,” Ira replied and rolled her eyes. “It was chaos. I have done so many job interviews the last three months. But at least it pays off. We took a lot of risk last year with all the new planes Ian kept bringing in. Now we’re raking the money in by the truckload.”

“Good to hear,” I said with a smile and looked at my watch. “Oh, maybe you should put something on. Qualifying starts in forty minutes.”

Femke

Watching Jenny at her first international race was a matter of honor. However, things were not made much easier by the fact that the only broadcaster showing that race was some Portuguese niche channel, so the commentary was completely useless to us. All of us together spoke a lot of languages, from Dutch to Sorbian, but Portuguese was not one of them.

Watching a bunch of kids aged fourteen to eighteen ride along that twisty track with their asses just an inch from the road surface was frankly amazing, especially when one considered that these tiny karts were powered by engines powerful enough for a motorbike with two full-grown adults on it.

At the end of it Jenny ended up in second place, a front-row start, which meant she had done extremely well for a debut, but that was apparently not good enough for her. When Jenny didn’t take off the helmet after getting out of her seat, it meant that she was not exactly pleased with the result.