ALICE Ch 346

Erica sits in the back of a taxi, exhausted. On her phone, a video from the F1 official reel shows the confrontation between Val and Alice after the race. Big, bold words pop up on the screen, captioning everything the two women say to each other.

“That was irresponsible!” Val scolds.

“You’re irresponsible,” Alice retorts. “Irresponsibly slow. Get over in the right hand lane, grandma. You’re holding the rest of us up.”

Val squares up to her. Erica’s never seen her like this. It’s a little frightening. “You’re tall and stupid! You can walk around with your huge elbows and hit people, but it’s different in a car! Someone could get hurt!” Val rages.

“For such a little shrimp, you’re a pretty big pain in my ass,” Alice replies.

Erica can’t watch more. She leans back in her seat and forces a smile. Maybe Val will have calmed down by now.

FF1

Glynda feels like a paper towel that’s been used to clean up a major coastal oil spill, physically and mentally. She needs a bath and a drink, but it’s all she can do to get to the door of her suite and use the card to let herself in. She drops her backpack and throws her lanyard away, then collapses onto the sofa nearest the door.

In fairness, not everything is going horribly. Alice’s antics are as profitable as they are stressful, and race days aren’t very relaxing even at the best of times. But Glynda needs a sense of control, and she does not have it. She knows there are things going on with her own team that she’s probably happier not knowing about. This film star, Vivian Corbin, lurks around every race like a mascot while Annette is focusing all of her attention on Formula One as though she has no responsibility to the other FUTA programs that have so much more of a footprint.

There’s a knock at the door. It’s probably Lora. Even Lora is an unknown quantity these days. Glynda isn’t stupid; something happened in Japan, and Lora has not chosen to talk about it. Glynda knows that Lora’s been struggling with her own baggage, but it’s never affected her work before. She was so much more focused before Japan and Mio.

Well, Lora isn’t the problem. Alice is. Or is this just what it’s like to have to wrangle a hotshot driver? Glynda used to be pretty headstrong, although she was nothing like Alice in her driving days. There were so few female racers back then that one sort of had to be a bit hardheaded and aggressive, but one also had to at least go through the motions of bowing to the patriarchy. The thought still makes her teeth grind.

She answers the door, finding Lotte in the hallway. Alone. She wears baggy plaid pajama bottoms and a tight undershirt that exposes her irritatingly flat and smooth belly. No bra.

Glynda shakes her head as she shuffles back to her sofa and drops. Not even a pretense of professionalism.

“What is it, Lotte?” she asks.

Lotte shuts the door and joins her on the sofa. “I invited you down. We are watching Bridget Jones.”

“I can’t do that, Lotte. It’s good fun with you and the others, but it’s not correct.”

Lotte snorts. “At least admit what you want.”

“To have fun? Fine. I’d like that, but I can’t. It goes with the job.”

“No.” Lotte leans in, and Glynda stiffens uncomfortably. “That you want to know what happened that night with Ingrid. The rest of the story.”