Pit Lane First

The gig ran long. Some wedding in town wanted the band to play three encores, and the drive back out to the track took forever with the windows down and my ears still ringing. Thirty-four years old, and I was hauling my guitar case up the stairs of an auto shop at one in the morning. That's the glamorous life of a touring musician, right there.

Rashid was still up. He sat at the kitchen table in our little apartment above the bays, reading a manual on suspension geometry like it was a novel. Thirty-eight, my husband, seven years married, and he can fall asleep anywhere but always wakes up when I come in. He looked over the top of the manual.

"Good gig?"

"Fine gig. Long." I dropped my case by the door and sat across from him. My feet hurt. I'd worn the wrong boots again.

He closed the book. He knows that look. Seven years, he knows every look I've got.

"What's on your mind, Al?"

And this was what I had been turning over for about six months, through nine states and a lot of cheap motels. I'd been chewing on it alone in the van, alone in soundchecks, alone in rooms that all smelled like somebody else's laundry detergent. I took a breath.

"I need something new."

"New how? New strings? New town?"

"New. Like, new for me. For us, maybe. I don't know." I rubbed my eyes. "I've been on the road since I was twenty-two, honey. I've played every dive between here and Denver. And I've only ever been with you. Only ever been with a man, period. You."

Rashid didn't blink. He's an engineer. He waits for the whole problem before he solves any of it.

"And I've never been with a woman," I said. "Not once. Not even a kiss. And it's starting to eat at me. I'm thirty-four, and I feel like there's this whole side of me I just... never checked. Like a bay nobody ever opened."

He sat back. Turned his coffee cup a quarter turn on the table. I watched him do it, because I was terrified of what he'd do instead of doing it.

"You want to sleep with a woman," he said. Not a question, but close.

"Yeah. I think I do. And I'm not asking permission, exactly. We're equals in this marriage. But I'm asking how you'd feel. Because I love you and I'm not looking to blow anything up. I'm just looking to stop wondering."

He was quiet for a bit. The fridge hummed. Downstairs I could hear the shop's compressor ticking as it cooled, that sound I hear every night of race season.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Okay. Honestly, Al, I've known you were curious since before we got married. You told me that year we were dating. I've never once held it against you. It doesn't scare me." He turned the cup another quarter. "It scares me a little. But in the way heights scare me. Not in the way losing you would scare me."

I laughed. My eyes were wet anyway, because that's how it goes.

"So what now?" I asked. "Do I just, what, hang around the track and hope?"

"No." He almost smiled. "You know Mai?"

"Mai, your crew chief? Obviously. She rebuilt the brakes on my Honda and told me my jack technique was an insult to the tool."

"That's Mai. She's thirty-six. She's been with men and women both, since she was in her twenties. She's told me about it over the years, she doesn't hide anything, that woman." He looked at me straight. "She's blunt. She's clean about her business. And she's someone I trust completely, which matters more to me than anything else about this. If you want a first time with a woman, and you want it to be safe and honest and not some stranger in a bar in Toledo, she's the best person I know for it."

I sat there with my mouth open a little.

"Would she even..."

"Ask her. That's all you ever do with Mai. You ask her straight and she answers straight."

That was a Friday night, or early Saturday, if we're being technical. Rashid had a test day Thursday. Mai runs the shop on Sundays, mostly alone, catching up on the stuff that doesn't need a crew. So Sunday afternoon I walked down the outside stairs in my work jeans and an old band shirt, and I went into the shop.

It smelled like rubber and grease, always does, and there were two cars up on stands with their guts out. Mai was under the nearer one, just her boots and legs sticking out, a radio playing classic rock somewhere in the back. I stood there a second working up my nerve, then knocked on the fender like an idiot.

"Yeah?" Her voice, echoed off the pan.

"It's Allie."

She rolled out on the creeper. Oil on her forearms, smudge on her cheek, hair tied back with what looked like a zip tie. Thirty-six years old and strong as a dock worker. She looked up at me.

"Hey, Allie. You break something?"

"No. I, um." So much for straight. I looked at a half-disassembled carburetor on the bench and told myself to be an adult about this. "Can we sit down?"

She wiped her hands on a rag that had given up being a rag years ago, and we sat on two mismatched stools by the parts bench. She waited. She's good at waiting. She's the kind of person who lets silence do the work.

"Rashid told you anything?" I asked.

"Nope."

Okay. So. I said it. I told her the whole thing, in about four sentences, standing there twisting a shop towel in my hands. That I'd been on the road most of my adult life. That I'd only ever been with my husband. That I'd never been with a woman and I wanted to know what that was about myself before I got old and never did. That I was asking her because he'd suggested her and because I trusted her, and that if I'd read this all wrong she could tell me to get out and I'd never bring it up again.

She listened all the way through. Didn't interrupt once. When I ran out of words she looked at me for a moment, then took a drink from her water bottle, then looked at me again.

"You asking me for advice," she said, "or asking me for the job?"

"The job," I said. My face was on fire. "If you'd want it. No pressure. Truly none."

"You're not my type, for what it's worth," she said, and my heart dropped through the floor, and then she said, "My type is usually meaner. But you're cute when you're terrified, and I like you, and I've watched you lug gear around this place for years. You're decent people." She shrugged. "And yeah, I'd be into it. If it's what you actually want and not just an itch you're scratching at two in the morning."

"I've been scratching at it for six months."

"Then okay." She checked her phone. "Here's how I do things. We talk first, for real, before anything happens. What you want, what you don't, all of it. Nothing happens you haven't said yes to beforehand. Then later this week. Thursday. Rashid's got his test day Thursday, track's open till nine, he'll be gone most of the day."

"Thursday," I said. My voice came out thin.

"Thursday. Come up here in the morning, not at night, so it doesn't feel like a sneak attack. We'll have coffee. We'll talk. And then whatever happens happens, and if all that happens is coffee and you decide you'd rather not, that's a fine outcome too and nobody's feelings get wrecked over it." She stood up and stuck out her greasy hand like we'd just closed a deal on a transmission, and I shook it, because that's Mai. "One more thing. You tell Rashid everything, afterward. I'm not doing this in a marriage I'm sneaking around in. He's my engineer. I like the man. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Go home, Allie. You look like you slept in your van."

I had, a little, on the drive back. I went up the stairs, and Rashid was at the table again, and I told him the whole thing before I even took my boots off.

He nodded slowly. "Thursday, huh."

"Thursday," I said, and then I had to sit down on the stairs, because it was suddenly very real.

Thursday I woke up before my alarm. Four forty-five in the morning, sky still black over the track, and I lay there staring at the ceiling like it had answers on it.

Rashid was already up. I heard him in the kitchen, quiet on purpose, and when I came out he had coffee made and his bag by the door. Thirty-eight years old and he moves as though he has done this a thousand times, because he has, test days and race weekends, the whole grind. He kissed the top of my head.

"I'll be in the pit all day. Text me, anytime, about anything."

"What if I panic and text you something stupid?"

"Then I'll text back something stupid. It's our system. It's worked seven years."

He left at five thirty. I stood at the window and watched him cross the lot below, the bays still dark, and then the apartment was just mine and way too quiet. I did dishes that didn't need doing. I restringed a guitar that didn't need restringing. Around six I sat on the couch with my coffee going cold and that was when the spiral really started.

Because here's what my brain did, all morning, on a loop. It said, you're thirty-four. You've played every dive between here and Denver, you've slept in a van in six states, you've stood on stages in front of three hundred strangers. And you cannot get through one morning with a woman you already like without your hands shaking.

I texted Rashid at seven. *I'm going to throw up.*

*Don't. Mai will notice and she'll diagnose you,* he wrote back. *You don't have to do anything you don't want. Coffee counts as a win.*

*You keep saying that.*

*Because it keeps being true.*

*What if I'm bad at it?*