Shut Up and Talk

Chapter 2

I flipped through its pages, searching for the cover story. I found what I was looking for and not even a paragraph in I was rudely interrupted.

"Are you going to buy that?" said a voice in Italian. The bitchy little sales clerk was now standing next to me.

I jumped, nearly throwing the magazine at her. By accident, of course.

"Because if you aren't going to buy it, put it back. They are for sale only!"

I set it down, my hands trembling. I took one step back into Ian who had seemingly materialised from out of nowhere. "Ready?" he asked, oblivious to me, the magazine and the sales clerk.

"Uh, yes."

"I'm gonna grab a paper."

I put back the magazine and joined him in the short line, my foot tapping nervously. He picked up on my change of demeanour.

"Something wrong?"

"I'm just anxious to get on the road."

He paid the clerk who batted her long eyelashes at him. He didn't seem to notice as he scooped up his change. I had so many questions and the moment we were in the car I blurted them out. "Why didn't you tell me who you were?"

His blue eyes blinked at me. "You never asked."

"I never asked? What? You tiptoed around an answer."

"Didn't think it your business."

He had a point, and what difference would it have made that his face was on the cover of magazines? He was a Good Samaritan. "You're right, it isn't important. I thought that maybe you were trying to make fun of me."

He scoffed. "Once a person knows who I am, he or she overanalyses everything I say or do. For once it was nice not having someone waiting for me to fuck up."

"Will you tell me more about yourself now? I promise not to judge or dissect anything you say. Nothing will leave this car."

"It won't end up in a newspaper tomorrow?"

"You haven't found out my secret, have you? My plan was to leave Toronto, move to Cortese for a few months, buy a crappy Fiat Uno, fill it with all my possessions, have it break down on the highway and hope to God that Ian O'Neill drove by and stopped. And after he offered a ride to Rome, I'd get his life story and spill my guts to the tabloids the next day. Then I'd write a tell-all biography and make millions."

He chuckled. "You mock me."

"I understand you're sceptical. Consider it solicitor-client privilege."

"You aren't my solicitor."

I found a fifty cent euro lying on his newspaper. "My retainer. You can fire me when we get to Rome."

He smiled. "What do you want to know?"

"Start with your job."

"My job," he said, sighing heavily. "I race cars on tracks all around the world and Donato, the team I race for, pay me lots of money to do it."

I waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. "That's your story? I could make up something better than that. I bet it's exciting and you must have throngs of adoring fans. And the travelling! You must have seen the most beautiful countries in the world."

"Yup, lots of fans and loads of travelling. Big bloody headaches, too. Sometimes I feel like I eat and sleep in cars. We've got testing, sponsors to placate and people's arses to kiss. If it's not my back seizing, it's my neck aching. I'm thirty years old and I feel like I'm eighty."