Rally Back: Chapter -3

"We're never going to catch them at this rate," sighed Tina as she slumped back into the back seat.

"Not if we keep missing turns," agreed Tom.

"Or moving decimal points," I chimed in.

"Hey, man, shit happened. That decimal point wasn't there before. I swear it."

"Well, the faster we go, the more likely we're gonna get off course again. This rally isn't an amateur event. But slow isn't gonna help us catch them. So, what's it going to be? Fast or slow? Tina?"

"Fast, but without getting lost again."

"Thanks, Tina. That was helpful. How about not as fast as before? Tom?" Tom seemed suddenly engrossed in his rally instructions, flipping pages back and forth.

"Hold on a minute, Pete," was all he could manage.

"C'mon, Tom, what's your vote? Fast, slow, slowly fast, go home, find Tina a new boyfriend, retire on the beach, what?"

Tom looked up at me with a Cheshire Cat grin. "I vote we retire to the beach."

"Retiring on the beach sounds wonderful, but a bit premature. got any other suggestions?"

"No," said Tom, "not on the beach - retiring to the beach. Look. They gave us these pick-up points in the rally package so we could find a place to rejoin the rally if we got totally lost. Well, I checked and the last pick-up point is at a parking lot at North Dennis Beach in Dennis. From the timing they gave, car number 22 should be leaving there at 4:32. That gives us about an hour to get there. then we just wait for them to show up. With an hour, we won't even have to speed to get there."

"That could work. Give yourself a gold star, Tom. One small problem though."

"Yeah, where the hell are we?"

"Right. So what do we know?"

"We crossed over some main road a couple miles back. The route instructions don't say what it was but we could go back and look for a sign. Then we could check the map."

"That works for me," I said. "Let's do it."

Tina cleared her throat. "I have an idea."

"Does it involve violence?" I asked.

"Very funny," Tina answered. "Why don't we just ask that guy?"

"Ooh," I said. "Good suggestion, lady." I glanced at Tom and winked the eye she couldn't see.

"I don't know," said Tom. "He probably knows how to get there, but it's against the rules."

"The rally rules cover asking for directions?" asked Tina, taking the bait.

"No," said Tom, maintaining a straight face better than usual, "but manly rules do."

"Okay," I interrupted. "We can ask, but be brief. We have a code to uphold."

"We could be taking a big risk. I'll disguise myself," said Tom. With that, he turned his cap around so the brim was in the back. "He'll think I'm just some fool kid who hasn't passed the initiation yet."

"Or a Canadian," I added.

Tina was beginning to doubt us, but maybe not. "What's the initiation?"

"They stomp on your nuts," said Tom, turning his head toward the window to conceal his barely controlled amusement, "and they threaten to do it again if you ever get caught asking for directions. Then you turn your hat around so the brim is in front. It's like the tassle thing at graduation."

"Really?" said Tina. She seemed to be buying the whole thing. Or faking it.

"Okay,Tom," I said. "Go ahead and ask, but try using an accent. A southern one might confuse him."

"You guys," Tina squealed. "I'll ask, okay?" We pulled up to the guy's driveway. He was working some blacktop patching material into some cracks in the pavement undoubtedly caused by frostheaving. Tom rolled down his window and Tina sticks her head over Tom's right shoulder and says, "Excuse me."

Tom looked over at her, pulling his head back a bit since she was so close. He then turned to me. "She smells nice," he said with a boyish grin. Tina turned and gave him a smirk that he couldn't see.

"She's a girl," I said. "They have a code too."

Tina turns back to the guy. "How do we get to North Dennis Beach in Dennis from here?"

The guy looks into the car at Tom and I, as if to say, "What's up guys? Girl gotta ask for directions for ya?" I smile. Tom shrugs.

"Sure," he says to Tina. "Go back that way a couple miles, turn right on Route 134 and when you get to 6A turn left. After a couple miles, you'll come to an island on the right. Turn right before the island and go about a block to Beach Street, and follow that down to the beach. Got that?"

Tom had been scribbling furiously on his scratch paper. "Raht on 134, leyeft on 6A, raht at island, raht on Beach Street, then strayet to the beach." The accent was pathetic.

"That should do it," he said. "You take good notes."

Tom looked up at him and said, "Ah make good grits, too. Bah!" And he rolled up his window.

"Nice try, Tex," I said.

"Yup."

"You guys are too much," muttered Tina.

It took only ten minutes to find our way to the beach parking lot. The guy's directions fell a little short of rally standards so we had to make a couple reversals, but we got there with time to spare.

At the entrance to the parking lot we passed a car near the entrance, which might have been the rally checkpoint team setting up for the arrival of competitors. Otherwise,the parking lot was empty with only a few seagulls wandering the beach. At this time of year there was little for them to find to eat here. The only other person around was a woman walking her dog along the beach about a hundred yards away. That's when Tina's cell phone rang.

She looked at the display and wrinkled her brow.

"What the fuck! That's his fucking home phone number."

Rally Back: Chapter -2

"Roger! Where are you? We're waiting for you. You've been making me crazy!"

Tina wasn't holding anything back. If the beach had been crowded as it would have been on a summer day, everyone would have turned to look, or at least listened intently and discretely. Today I think only the seagulls took notice. Tom and I looked at each other and Tom rolled his eyes. I gestured with my head that we should move away a little and give Tina some space, but the way she was carrying on, space wasn't going to keep us from hearing.

"You're where? That can't be. We've been chasing you all day." Tina looked perplexed, more so than we'd come to expect.

"No, I'm not in New London. I'm on Cape Cod, waiting for you to show up." She turned to look at us and was frowning with confusion.

"Sailing?! Sailing?!! But you were supposed to be on this stupid rally today. The entry list has your name on it."

"Omigod! Do you mean you aren't with Kevin?" Tina seemed a little slow to catch on. But I was intrigued. We'd pissed away half the day, and of course any chance of doing well in the rally, to find this guy and now it turns out he was apparently off sailing somewhere all day instead. No wonder he hadn't been answering his cellphone. But how was Tina going to handle this?

"Roger, I can't believe you put me through this." Tom's eyes rolled so far back into his head that it looked like he didn't have pupils.

"Roger, who is with Kevin?"

"Betty. Who is Betty?"

"His wife? That idiot? No wonder they got lost. That fool couldn't navigate her way out of a Ladies Room."

"Well, now I know a lot about navigating. I've been watching Peter and Tom for the past couple of hours, that's how I know. And Tom is really good." Tom didn't roll his eyes at that one.

"Tom and Peter are these two wonderful guys who helped me find you. Well, we thought we were about to find you. And then, then you show up in New London. I can't believe you are in New London. Roger, why aren't you here?" She was changing color, so to speak. She'd gone from angry at his unexplained absense to somehow sad that she was separated from the guy she'd dumped only the night before.

"Roger? Will you come back to me? I want you back. I've been miserable not knowing where you were all day."

"Uh oh," I thought. This is turning in a direction that smells of schizophrenia. Tina seems already plagued by neurosis, so another psychosis is like putting icing on cheesecake.

"Roger, there's just one thing. You have to stop looking at other women."

"No, I mean it. Aren't I attractive enough for you, Roger?"

"She makes a good point." says Tom. I grab Tom's arm and gently ease us away from this continuing drama, still not fully out of earshot of this fascinating interchange.

"I can't help but wonder how this day started out for Tina. Did she wake up with an overwhelming need to see this guy and apologize for trashing him last night, or did she call him this morning to trash him some more, and when she couldn't reach him, she got concerned about him?"

"My money," responded Tom, "is on the latter. What about you?"

"I'm undecided. She like the wind. One minute it's blowing from over here, and the next it's coming from over there. I think she's suffering from a defective regulator, biologically speaking."

"Are you thinking blown gasket?"

"Nah, that would be fairly consistent. I'm thinking something more like a low transmission fluid level. You know, just difficult some of the time, but a real annoyance often enough to make you crazy, and eventually very expensive to fix."

"I once had an old Plymouth that had a sticking throttle. Is that what you mean?"

"I think you nailed it, especially if it ever caught on fire."

"It smoked a lot."

"Good enough. So our Tina is a cranky old... What year?"

"It was a '63 Belvedere."

"Ooh. Seriously ugly car. Maybe it's not a Tina. Did you ever have a Jaguar that caught on fire?"

"No, but I see where you're going. So Tina is the human equivalent of a British sports car. Good looking but unpredictable, and volatile. Aston Martin?"

"Lotus, I think. More fragile than even a Aston Martin, but racier."

"Gotcha. Speaking of Lotus Tina, what are we going to do with her?"

We turned to watch Tina. She was still visibly animated, but there was a transformation underway. Her gestures were less severe and her tone was softening.

"I think we're witnessing a conversion, my friend, Tom," I said. "She looks like she's headed for a reconciliation."

"I don't care. She's probably more entertaining when she's pissed off. A happy psychotic is a dull psychotic."

"Let's see if we can get her moving. Hey, Tina," I yelled, "Can we wrap this up?"

Tine turned and scowled at first, then seemingly realized that we were not some irritating onlookers, but were instead her ride home.

"Roger, honey," she said into the phone, "Can you hold on a minute? Thanks, sweetie."

Turning to us again, the light side seemed to triumph over her dark side. "Can you two wait a couple minutes? Roger and I are trying to work out some stuff."

"Tina," I said, "It's been a really interesting day, but Tom and I want to get it over with. Please tell Roger that you'll call him back as soon as you get back to your car." I wondered if this would set her off, but she stared at me for a moment and put her phone to her ear.

"Roger, can I call you back in a few minutes? Okay. Don't disappear again."

"Peter," she said, "Let's go then. I've got to get back to Roger before he regains his wits. I'm not at all sure he's convinced to come back to me."

"Gee, Tina," said Tom, "Why would he want anyone else? You're a real catch." Maybe Tina would buy this but I could hear Tom's veiled sarcasm. Tina didn't even seem to hear it.

"Everyone in the car," I said. "Sulu, chart a course to Tina's car."

"Aye aye, Captain," Tom responded.

"Scotty, give me warp factor 4." Being a fictional character, Scotty didn't respond.

We got back into the car and headed for Barnstable. It was a short hop to Route 6 and then about 20 miles south and west before exiting the parkway. Tina was almost silent, seemingly lost in thought. I tried not to imagine what was running through her mind. That could be scary.

By the time we got to Tina's car, which miraculously hadn't been ticketed despite being parked illegally for five hours or more, it was getting dark. We pulled up next to her car and we all got out.

I pulled the plastic Luger out from under my seat and twirled it on my finger. "Tina," I called to her as she rounded her car, "Do you want your gun?"

I sent a stream of liquid in her direction, hitting her in an arc across her chest.

She looked down at her shirt and then slowly looked up at me, without batting an eye. "I'm in a very fragile state right now. I feel like I could fall apart any minute. And you shoot me with dirty water. If this shirt is permanently stained I may have to have you killed. I may do it myself. I know your names. I'll find you."

Sensing a different personality at work, I responded, "We didn't give you our real names."

"I didn't tell you I'm a lawyer," she proclaimed.

"I didn't tell you I'm a professional hitman," said Tom.

I turned and shot Tom between the eyes with a stream of water. "You were a professional hitman."

"Bastard!" Tom gasped as he clutched his head. "How will my family survive?"

"You guys!" said Tina. "You've been great. You gave up your rally for me and you're still making jokes. Do you have any brothers? Single ones? Young single ones?"

"I've got a son," said Tom, "He's fourteen, so I'm sure he'd go for you. Of course he's swimming in hormones, so he's not a good indicator. I think he'd paw his grandmother if he didn't think she smelled like a pharmacy."

"Tom," said Tina, "You really know how to charm a lady."

"It's a gift."

"It's not a very good gift, Tom," I said. "Think about returning it."

Tina blew us each a kiss, got in her car, fired it up and drove away. We got back in the Honda and headed to Route 6 and back toward Orleans.

Rally Back: Chapter -1

"I'm not sure whether I envy that Roger guy or pity him," I said. "Tina reminds me of a pin-up poster I once saw, standard girl in a bikini shot. And under the photo was a caption that read "Somewhere some guy is tired of putting up with her crap." Tina could have been the girl. And I've known enough beautiful women to know the truth in that caption.

"Well, I for one found her very easy on my eyes," replied Tom. "I just wish she hadn't been sitting in the back seat all afternoon where I couldn't get a good look at her."

"She certainly could turn a head, but I had the advantage of having a rear view mirror that I could use. But ya know? I thought she was pretty, very pretty really, but having looked at her all afternoon in the mirror, I was a little surprised when I looked her face to face after we got out of the car."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she looked a lot different when her features were reversed, so to speak. I realized then that she wasn't very symmetrical."

"What are you talking about?" asked Tom. "She looked perfectly symmetrical to me. Draw a line down the middle and you'll find a boob on each side, an ear on each side, an eye, a leg, an arm and an ass cheek on each side."

"Yeah. That's true enough. But her face was off just a little. Not in a big way, mind you. But just enough to break the spell for me. They say that symmetrical features are a common feature in all beautiful people, around the world, regardless of culture. If the nose bends a little to one side or the other, like mine, or the eyebrows are off by a millimeter, or if the smile is crooked, then the net result is something less than ideal beauty. People aren't necessarily aware of it, but they do respond to it."

"Where do you get this stuff?"

"Discovery Channel, I think."

"Well, she looked pretty symmetrical to me."

"But you had to turn and look at her, and you probably saw one side more often than you saw her straight on. From one side or the other, she's a stunner. No question. She just didn't have a matching set."

"Maybe. And maybe her boobs are different sizes, too. I've run into that."

"Where? At a strip club?"

"You were there, too?"

"I was the pole. Where are we going anyway?"

"We're looking for Union Street, South, which should take us back to Route 6. Then it's like 10 or 15 miles back to the motel."

"Are you looking at that map again? You're gonna lose your navigator's license. Shouldn't you be using a sextant or something."

"Ya know? We've been coming out here every year for, what is it, three years now? I know where P-town is, where Buzzards Bay is and where Hyannis is. Just about everything else I have to find by driving around reading these course instructions. I don't really know where I am half the time. We drive around for a whole day and end up where we started and don't know how we got there. There's something truly strange about that. We've seen just about every corner of Cape Cod now, seen some really neat places and I don't know how to find them again."

"If you were really a good indian scout, Little Arrow, then you'd know where we are just by the position of the sun in the sky. But I know what you mean. We've been to Race Point every year and I never have figured out which direction we're looking when we're there. It would help if the sun were shining more often in April."

"Here's 6. Go right after the overpass."

"Thank you, Little Arrow, but I'm not blind."

"Stop calling me Little Arrow, One-Who-Sees-When-He-Wants-To. My arrow is not little, unless it's pretty cold in the quiver."

-----

Ten minutes later we were approaching Orleans and the warm waters of the shower in our room.

Then I saw something.

"Hey, Little Arrow. Sorry, I meant Tom. Did you see that Saab?"

"The orange one?"

"Uh huh. Do you remember seeing it this morning?"

"No."

"Yeah? Well, I do. It was in the motel parking lot. I used to want a Saab Turbo back when they were new and out of my budget. I didn't want an orange one, but when you see an orange Saab Turbo, it sticks with you for a while."

"So? What are you getting at?"

The Saab was now well behind us, having pulled out of a side road and was now following us at a distance of about a hundred yards.

"It has a rally sticker like ours on the right bumper, so it's probably just finishing up the rally," I said.

"Good for him," said Tom. "He probably didn't have a psychotic redhead in the back seat all afternoon, so he stayed on course and beat our foolish butts."

"Yeah, but that means he just came from the finish. If we go back there and follow the last instructions in reverse, we can find our way to the last checkpoint."

"And what, pray tell, does that buy us?"

"At least we can say we finished. I always silently mock the people that appear on the results reports with full penalty points for having gotten lost somewhere along the way and gone home. Actually, sometimes I don't mock them all that silently either. I just want to finish, that's all."

"Okay, fine. Turn around."

I execute a neat little U-turn, careful to signal for the guys in the Saab, although I suspect they weren't expecting me to do it quite so abruptly. I headed back to where they emerged from the side street.

"What's the instruction before the turn onto 6?" I asked Tom, who was trying to find the instruction the Saab had taken to get onto 6.

"Okay. It says 'Turn left at Stop, and says to go 2.6 miles to Coastal Motel on right. So the one before says 'Bear right.' It's .7 miles from the stop."

"Let's hope the checkpoint isn't too many instructions away from 6."

"Maybe it's right along this point seven mile stretch."

"That would be nice, but I'm coming up on point six now. That looks like the 'bear right' up ahead. What's next?"

"Turn left at T. That's not good. What if there are multiple opportunities for a T?"

"Let's take it a step at a time. First let's find a T."

Within a half mile we came to a right turn without a corresponding left turn.

"Okay," says Tom. "Now what? This may or may not be the T we're looking for. It could be a block from here or a mile or more from here."

"Let's wait. I think the orange Saab was numbered in the 50's, so maybe there will be another rally car coming along soon. I think there were 70 or more cars on the registration list." I pulled over onto the gravel shoulder, before the right turn and we waited.

In a minute or two a car came around the bend ahead of us and it clearly had a rally sticker on the right side of the bumper.

"That settles that," said Tom. "Let's see where he might have come from."

I accelerated away, and just as we rounded the bend we saw the checkpoint we'd been looking for. It was the same Datsun 510 wagon we'd seen earlier, seemingly days ago. This time we passed the Datsun at a moderate pace, crested a small hill, and made a three point turn to come back. Once past the checkpoint and stopped on the shoulder, I looked over to Tom.

"No. This time it's your turn, Kimosabe. These are the same guys that harassed me when you blew through their checkpoint at hypersonic speed. You face them this time."

"Little Arrow," I hissed at him as I got out with the time card. I couldn't make out his muted response, as the door had closed, but it was evidently not one of respect.

At the Datsun, I leaned in the passenger side window with my card and said, "Ya know? I used to want one of these wagons. I've got a thing for wagons and hatchbacks. How about you?"

The guy in the passenger seat took my card and wrote in the time. "It looks like you guys took a wrong turn somewhere. Did you fly past some turn too fast to see it?"

I gave Mr. Sarcasm a pleasant smile and said, "No, we rescued a damsel in distress, and she took us to a secret place full of beautiful women who had pledged to pleasure every chivalrous man their sisters encounter. We were kept pretty busy for a few hours." I took the timecard and walked back to the Honda in the most uncomfortable staggering walk I could muster.

Once back in the car, Tom asked, "Did they remember us?"

"Nah."

Rally Back: Chapter 0

We pulled into the Coastal Motel 2.6 miles and five minutes and 12 seconds later (I gotta relax and stop thinking like that.). Turn left into 12th parking spot (Oh my God!). The car was dirty, dented and pulling slightly to the left, but otherwise running well enough to get us home tomorrow, probably.

We gathered our assorted debris, which included empty water bottles, route instructions, checkpoint slips, junk food wrappers, and the plastic pistol Tina had left behind. All was left in the garbage bin by the stairway to the upper level.

"I feel like I've gone weeks between showers," I said as I trudged up the stairs.
"I wish I felt as clean as that," responded Tom.

Fortunately we hadn't lost the key to the room during the course of the day. It would have only been fitting. When we entered the room, it was good to see that the place was neat and tidy. Even our clothes seemed to be fairly well organized, unlike the way we'd left it only twelve hours earlier in our haste to get to registration. It seemed like days ago.

"I need a beer," Tom declared.
"I wish I only needed a beer," I responded. "I've driven all day, not knowing where I was or where I was going or how to get there. That builds a special kind of tension that a beer isn't going to fix. I'm thinking scotch. Several scotches actually. No, bourbon. Yeah, bourbon is better. I'm in a bourbon kind of place. We'll go to the bar downstairs so I won't have to even imagine driving again today."

After half an hour we had both showered, changed clothes, and were in a better frame of mind.

When we got down to the bar we were surprised to see that this was where the rally club had chosen to have their post-rally gathering. Neither of us had even considered celebrating this day, much less reliving it.

The club had taken over the larger seating area within the restaurant in the motel. This wasn't much of an imposition on the establishment since nearly all the rooms in the place were occupied by rallyists anyway. The few non-participants would be happy in the adjoining room. We took a couple stools at the bar but within sight and sound of the proceedings.

Barry Filmore was in charge of the room. He had a portable amplifier and microphone, a total overkill in this room, but he seemed to enjoy using it nonetheless. He was announcing the winners of the novice class. Sometimes novices at these events aren't quite what they claim to be, coming from outside the local area and therefore unlikely to be known by the organizing club. Today, it seemed that the novices that won trophies were just that. The novice class winner had a total of 400 points, an average of 40 points, or 4 tenths of a minute off the target times for each checkpoint. 400 points isn't all that bad, but not a bogus level performance. A novice with acouple rallies under their belt could have turned in a score that good or better. Hell, we were on target for a result nearly that good, and we're not all that good at this rally stuff.

Of course, the obsessive compulsives that do rallies with full rally computers, in the Equipped class, and with years of experience, turn in total scores of 10-20 points, and are disappointed at that. They've already received their trophies and are readying their protests that they should have scored 5-10 points.

"We're now ready to honor," announced Barry, "the trophy for Dead Last But Finished. This trophy goes to the car that scored the highest total points, yet still managed to check in to the final checkpoint. This year, that honor goes to car number 43, driven by Peter Pan, er Peter Panzarini, and navigated by Tom Terrific, er Tom Terisovitch. Are they here?"

I turned to Tom, hoisting the bourbon I'd just been served, and said, "Hey, buddy, we won!"

He clinked my glass with his beer bottle and said, "You go. Navigators are supposed to remain anonymous. Drivers get the glory."

I downed half my bourbon, I slipped off my stool and weaved my way to Barry.

Barry shook my hand and handed me our trophy, a brass seagull obviously purchased at a local tourist trap. But Barry couldn't let it go at that.

Looking at the rally report he held in his hand, he said "Well, Peter, it seems you guys were doing pretty good for the first few checkpoints. Only twenty seven points through the first three checkpoints, which would have put you in pretty good position for a trophy in the Seat of the Pants class. Then apparently things must have gone wrong for you. You were actually quite early into the checkpoint after lunch. I hope you weren't going that fast, and had only found a shortcut. (I winced visibly, I'm sure.) Then you disappeared for a couple checkpoints before showing up at the finish. Is there anything you'd like to say in your defense?"

He thrust the microphone at me, and even though I really didn't want to talk about it, I said, "we made a few bad decisions."

Tom nearly fell off his stool laughing.

I accepted our trophy and weaved my way back to Tom, the bourbon beginning to have its effect on my tension.

"I couldn't have put it better myself," said Tom. "Cheers, and congratulations, pal."

THE END.