Which was galling. That night… two sights stuck in her mind, afterimages from looking into the sun of her own emotions. One, Kevin and Ramona, embracing on a moonlit ridge, kissing—okay, enough of that, nothing she could do about it. The other, though: Oscar’s big round face, as she lashed out at him and ran. Shocked, baffled, hurt. She’d never seen him with an expression remotely like it. His face was usually a mask—over-solemn impassivity, grotesque mugging, all masks. What she had seen that night had been under the mask.
So, vastly irritated with herself and the apparently genetic imperative to be polite, she got on her bike after work one evening and rode over to Oscar’s house. The front door was missing, as the whole southern exposure of the house was all torn up by Kevin’s renovation. She went around to the side door, which led through a laundry room to the kitchen, and knocked.
Oscar opened the door. When he saw her his eyebrows drew together. Otherwise his face remained blank. The mask.
She saw the other face, moonstruck, distraught.
“Listen, Oscar, I’m really sorry about that night in the hills,” she snapped. “I wasn’t myself—”
Oscar raised a hand, stopping her. “Come in,” he said. “I’m on the TV with my Armenian family.”
She followed him in. On his TV screen was a courtyard, lit by some bare light bulbs hanging in a tree. A white table was crowded with bottles and glasses, and around it sat a gang of moustachioed men and black-haired women, all staring at the screen. Suddenly self-conscious, Doris said, “It must be the middle of the night there.”
She heard her remarks spoken in the computer’s Armenian. The crowd at the table laughed, and one said something. Oscar’s TV then said, “In the summer we sleep in the day and live at night, to avoid the heat.”
Doris nodded.
Oscar said, “It’s been a pleasure as always, friends, but I should leave now. See you again next month.”
And all the grinning faces on the screen said, “Good-bye, Oscar!” and waved. Oscar turned down the sound.
“I like that crowd,” he said, moving off to the kitchen. “They’re always inviting me to visit in person. If I did I’d have to stay a year to be sure I stayed in everyone’s house.”
Doris nodded. “I’ve got some families like that myself. The good ones make it worth the ones who never even look at the screen.”
She decided to start again. “Listen, I’m really sorry about the other night—”
“I heard you the first time,” he said brusquely. “Apology accepted. Really there’s no need. I had a wonderful night, as it turned out.”
“Really? Can’t say I did. What happened to you?”
Oscar merely eyed her with his impassive stare. Ah ha, she thought. Maybe he is angry at me. Behind the mask.
She said, “Listen, can I take you out to dinner?”
“No.” He blinked. “Not tonight anyway. I was just about to leave for the races.”
“The races?”
“Yes. If you’d like to come along, perhaps afterwards we could get something. And there are hot dogs there.”
“Hot dogs.”
“Little beef sausages—”
“I know what hot dogs are,” she snapped.
“Then you know enough to decide.”
She didn’t, actually, but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of appearing curious. “Fine,” she said. “Let’s go.”
He insisted they take a car, so they wouldn’t be late. They tracked down to southern Irvine and parked at the edge of an almost full parking lot, next to a long stadium. Inside was a low rumbling.
“Sounds like a factory,” Doris said. “What kind of racing is that?”
“Drag racing.”
“Cars?”
“Exactly.”
“But are they using gas?”
Roars from inside smothered Oscar’s answer. Shit, Doris thought, he is mad at me. He’s brought me here because he knows I won’t like it. “Alcohol!” Oscar said in a sudden silence.
“Fueling cars or people?”
“Both.”
“But they aren’t even going anywhere!” Road races at least had destinations.
Oscar stared at her. “But they go nowhere so fast.”
All right, Doris said to herself. Calm down. Don’t let him get to you. If you walk away then he’ll just think you’re a stuffy moralistic bitch like he already does, and he’ll have won. To hell with that. He wasn’t going to win, not tonight.
Oscar bought tickets and they walked into the stadium. People were crammed into bleachers, shouting conversations and drinking beer from dumpies and paper cups. Peanuts were flying around. Lots of dirty blue jeans, and blue-jean vests or jackets. Black leather was popular. And a lot of people were fat. Or very solid. Maybe that’s why Oscar liked it.
They sat in the top bleachers, on numbered spots. Oscar got beers from a vendor. Suddenly he stood and bellowed, in a great rising baritone:
By the time he got to “In-ter-national,” the whole crowd was bellowing along. Some kind of anthem. People turned to yell at Oscar, and one said bluntly “Who’s that you got with you!” Oscar pointed down at Doris. “Dor-is Nak-ayama!” he roared, as if announcing a professional wrestler. “First timer!”
About thirty people yelled “Hi, Dor-is!”
She waved weakly.
Then cars rolled onto the long strip of blackened concrete below them. They were so loud that conversation was impossible. “Rail cars!” Oscar shouted in her ear. Immense thick back tires; long bodies, dominated by giant black and silver engines. Spindly rails extended forward to wheels that wouldn’t have been out of place on a bicycle. Drivers were tucked down into a little slot behind the engine. They were big cars, something Doris realized when she saw the drivers’ heads, little dot helmets. Even idling, the engines were loud, but when the drivers revved them they let out an explosive stutter of blasts, and almost clear flames burst from the big exhaust pipes on the sides. Bad vibrations in her stomach.
“Quarter miles,” Oscar shouted. “Get up to two hundred miles an hour! Tremendous acceleration!”
His bleacher friends leaned in to shout more bits of information at her. Doris nodded rapidly, trying to look studious.
The two cars practiced starts, sending back wheels into smoking, screeching rotation, swerving alarmingly from side to side as the wheels caught at the concrete. The stink of burnt rubber joined the smell of incompletely burned grain alcohol.
“Burning rubber!” Oscar’s friends shouted at her. “Heats the tires, and—” blattt blattt screech! “—traction!”
“Oscar’s bike tires do that when he brakes,” Doris shouted.
Laughter.
The two cars rumbled to the starting line, spitting fire. A pole with a vertical strip of lights separated them, and when the cars were set and roaring furiously, the lights lit in a quick sequence from top to bottom, and the cars leaped forward screeching, the crowd on its feet screaming, the cars flying over the blackened concrete toward the finish line in front of the grandstand. They flashed by and roared down the track, trailing little parachutes.