Once Around the Track

CHAPTER IX

Badger Jenkins didn’t think anybody would recognize him in the Mooresville Wendy’s. Maybe Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, Jr. got mobbed everywhere they went, but most of the other drivers, when they weren’t wearing firesuits, were relatively anonymous. Although if you were going to be recognized anywhere, it would be in Mooresville, the epicenter of behind-the-scenes racing. Desperate fans on the prowl for NASCAR stars had even been known to mistake local plumbers and lowly shop dogs for Busch drivers, and anyone with a beard could pass for Martin Truex. Even Elliott Sadler. If your autograph book bore the inscription “Casey Caine,” that was a good sign that the blue-eyed young man in the coveralls at the Waffle House had not, in fact, been Cup driver Kasey Kahne.

Since Badger wanted an uninterrupted ten-minute lunch, he had kept his sunglasses on, just in case. He didn’t have much time to eat. They wanted him at the shop in the early afternoon, and he had got busy with phone calls-it was always something-so now he figured he had only a few minutes to wolf down a burger, and then he’d better get over there, to keep Tuggle off his case.

He had just lifted the oozing burger for another bite when a scraggly woman in starling black slid into the other side of the booth. “Badger Jenkins,” she said. “Nice to meet you. I don’t have much time.” She set her cell phone down on the table next to his French fries and scowled at her wristwatch as if it were directly responsible for her shortage of time.

He had no idea who she was.

A fan? Badger set the burger back down on the wrapper and summoned a wan smile. He eased the Sharpie out of the pocket of his jeans and glanced around for something to autograph. It wouldn’t be the first paper napkin he’d ever signed for a fan. This woman seemed more than a little flaky, but you got used to that after a while. “How’re you doin’?” he mumbled, as if her intrusive behavior were completely normal.

The woman eyed the Sharpie with a sneer. “Oh, I don’t want your autograph,” she said.

He blinked. She didn’t look like somebody who would be a fan of his. After a while you could sorta tell who favored whom in racing fandom just by the way they dressed and talked. Come to think of it, he couldn’t even hazard a guess at which driver would attract the likes of her. Well, okay, if he had to guess, he’d say she’d be a Kevin Harvick fan. Harvick was a Californian, and a little unconventional himself. Yeah, that would fit.

The scraggly woman could have been any age between thirty and fifty-and as plain as she was, nobody would have cared which. Her helmet of dyed crinkly black hair framed a moon face with skin the color of library paste, raccoon eye shadow, and carefully penciled-in lips colored clown red. She wore some kind of sleazy, shiny black outfit that might have cost a lot, but if so, the designer was probably somewhere yelling “Gotcha!”

Badger didn’t mind plain, dowdy women, as long as they didn’t lunge at him. He tried to be nice to everybody, and generally he succeeded, but he had hoped to eat his lunch in peace. So he sat there waiting for her to say what she wanted, and he hoped it wasn’t “Kevin Harvick’s cell phone number,” which he didn’t know anyhow.

“Badger, I am Melodie Albigre, and I’m affiliated with Miller O’Neill Associates,” she said, as if that explained everything.

He blinked. If she was expecting a lightbulb to go on in his brain, she’d have a long wait coming. Badger knew all the Cup team names, one or two law firms, a couple of sponsors, and maybe a dozen or so rock groups, but as best he could recall, none of them was named “Miller O’Neill.”

“It’s a management firm,” she said.

Badger adjusted his expression to reflect “shrewd and businesslike.” He was good at facial expressions-like a German shepherd, contriving to look serious and wise in the presence of about-to-be-dropped food. Whether any concomitant thought ever accompanied Badger’s appropriate demeanor was a matter of considerable speculation. He ventured a comment: “Management. You mean like…apartment buildings?”

“No. I do not.” She didn’t look like a fan. She wasn’t smiling or simpering or fishing NASCAR cards out of her purse. She reminded him of a particularly stern grade school teacher he’d once had, one whose pet name for him had been “Insect.”

“Miller O’Neill manages celebrities,” she informed him briskly. “And race car drivers. I am quite well known. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of me.” She contrived to make it sound as if that were his fault. “I do a bit of everything. I write grants, set up television shows. Anything, really. We need to discuss your future-insofar as you have one, Badger.”

“Shrewd and businesslike” was congealing into “annoyed,” but Miss Albigre was unmoved by her listener’s reaction. “You need help,” she said briskly. “I heard that you have been hired by the new women’s Cup team. Congratulations. You have been given a second chance, and you need someone to make sure that you make the most of this opportunity. Someone to generate prospects for you. Commercials. Endorsements. Because you’re not famous, you know, Badger. You’re not Jimmie Johnson. And you’re certainly not getting any younger. You’d better secure your future while you can.”

Badger shrugged. “I do all right,” he said.

“Really?” She had that you-gave the-wrong-answer look that he remembered from sixth grade. “Do you? What provision is there in your contract for, say, appearance fees?”

“Uh. Well…” He tried to smile. “I don’t exactly have everything we agreed on the contract spelled out in writing in the contract. I just give my word.”

She rolled her eyes. “Idiot. How many times have you gone into the wall? No contract, indeed! You obviously need somebody to manage your career.”

“I’m just not sure I can afford-” Badger’s cheapness was legendary.

Melodie Albigre gave him a chilling smile. “You won’t be able to afford anything if you keep going as you have been. But don’t worry. Miller O’Neill pays my salary. It will all come off the top where you won’t miss it. You’re certainly lucky that I am between projects at the moment, aren’t you?”

Badger felt as if the floor were tilting. “Uh…well.”

“Of course, you are. That’s settled. I can handle everything. I will see that you make lots of money. And you’ll need it, won’t you?”

“What?”

In a failed-to-spell-cat-correctly voice, she said, “Well, there’s just a rumor going around that a development corporation is planning to put a retirement community on that north Georgia lake you’re so fond of. Golf course. Two hundred condos. Tennis courts. Roads. I’m surprised you hadn’t heard. But perhaps it isn’t a done deal yet. You might be able to buy the land yourself, I suppose. If you could afford it.” She eyed him critically. “You may be a hard sell in a promotional sense. You’re not very sexy, if you ask me, but I suppose there are people who’d like you. Hicks and old ladies, maybe.”

He tried to speak, but there were too many conflicting thoughts battling for precedence in his head, so that his only response was a feeble croak of alarm.

The human steamroller nodded, as if she spoke croak fluently. “Leave it to me,” she said. “Now, I need your cell phone number, your home number, a team number where you can be reached…Is there anything in your life you don’t want me involved in?”

“Uh, I guess not.”

Looking back on it later, he thought that a portion of that conversation had been skipped over. The part where Melodie Albigre should have asked him if he wanted a manager, and if he was actually consenting to be bossed around by her without limitation. He was sure that he would have said no. But she didn’t ask. She just rolled over him like a Sherman tank en route to Berlin, and before he knew it, he had acquired a manager he hadn’t known he needed. It was like getting a fairy godmother, he supposed, if your fairy godmother could be a dowdy, bitchy woman who didn’t much like you.

If Badger had paid more attention to the vampire movie he saw once at the county drive-in, instead of trying to exchange bodily fluids with his date of the evening, he might have found one of Miss Albigre’s questions quite familiar. “What don’t you want me involved in?” According to folklore, you had to invite a vampire into your residence or else they could not cross the threshold. And while Melodie Albigre was certainly not a vampire, whatever she was, he had just invited her in. But at the time he was not apprehensive about the arrangement. He had someone to run his life and make money for him, practically for free.

He began to scribble all his phone numbers on the paper lining of the Wendy’s tray, and for the first time in their brief acquaintance, Melodie Albigre smiled.