DRAG STRIP DATE (third installment)

Here is the third installment of Drag Strip Date.  The plot thickens.

Synopsis:

Darla Rigs is a freshly minted medical doctor with a bright future.  She’s escaped a bad relationship and moved to Victoria, British Columbia.  But now she’s met Luke Bertolucci, a philosopher/stone mason.  Darla likes Luke a lot, but will she be able to put the past behind her and start fresh?

DRAG STRIP DATE (third installment)

by Jerry Donaldson

“So, then what happened?” Carol said over the phone, a few hours later.  As she’d promised, Darla had phoned her sister as soon as she’d returned home.

“Oh, not much,” Darla replied, “We sat and watched the races and talked and ate popcorn, and I thought it was the greatest thing. Drag racing has a lot to recommend it, really.  It’s very involving.”

“Don’t be thick,” Carol said. “I want details.”

“Hang on a sec. Sparks wants food.”  The cat was swishing around and between Darla’s bare legs, meowing loudly.  Darla put the phone down, went into the kitchen and poured some dry food into his bowl.  Sparks crouched over the bowl, crunching and purring.

“So,” Darla said, back on the line, “What were you asking?”

“Darla, tell me or I’m going to bust.   Did you and the philosopher do the dirty or not? I haven’t been laid in a year, and you’re my only connection to the dating world, so spill.”

“Truth?”

“Of course. Let’s have it.”

Darla took a sip of the Perrier she had opened upon arriving home at midnight, and then she continued. “No, we didn’t have sex.”

“No?  Why not?”

Why not indeed?  After leaving the track Darla and Luke had driven back to his place in her little Toyota.  Luke rented a furnished bachelor suite in a very large, old frame student house just off campus.  Darla had not been inside Luke’s place.  She was sure tonight would be the night they got between the sheets together, but it was not to be.  He had said something about “an early morning tomorrow”, which was Saturday.  He confirmed she would meet him at the faculty club at 7 pm the following day for dinner, and then he kissed her passionately and got out of the car.  Left her there feeling very confused.  As soon as Darla returned to her condo, she phoned Carol.

“I don’t know why not.  We’ve been getting along famously.  Lordy he’s hot, Carol!  I’ve never experienced anything like it.  I just want him so much.”

“You’re just a little stale is all.”

“No, it’s more like he knows me, knows everything about me.”

“Did you tell him about Conor?”

“No,” Darla said, “Not yet, but I will.” And then she remembered about the symphony.  “But, check this out. His prof’s wife plays first violin in the symphony, so she probably knows Dave.  We’re having dinner with the MacDougalls tomorrow.”  There was silence on the other end of the line.

“Carol,” Darla said, “does that freak you out?”

“Nooooo,” Carol said after a pause.  “Victoria’s a small city, everyone knows everyone it seems.  I’ll manage.  It’s not as if it’s you’re dating Dave, or anything like that.”

“Well, that’s good then. I guess you must be pretty much over the divorce now.”

“Yes, I am,” Carol said, after another strange pause.  “It’s been years now.”

Then why don’t I feel convinced? Darla thought. You’re hiding something. But that’s okay, you’ll tell me eventually. Tonight I want to talk about Luke.

“So,” Carol said, “what is up with this drag racing thing?  Is he a diehard, lifetime fan?”

“No, he’s not.  He tutors a couple of undergrads for walking-around money, and one of them took him to the drag strip a couple years ago.  Luke goes there a few times in the summers.  He says the noise and smoke induces a “meditative state” for him.  I think he may be pulling my leg about that though.”

“I don’t know,” said Carol, “I’ve heard stranger things.  Dave used to say something similar about television.  He sometimes rehearsed his viola in front of the set.  He refused to use the TV Guide, or be in any way selective about what he watched.  ‘You have to let the experience wash over you’ he used to say.”

“Crazy,” Darla said.  But she thought, Hmm, Dave again.  Curious.

“And Luke’s not a violent nutcase like Conor?” Carol said.

“No.  At least, I don’t think so.  My instincts around that are not the best, as history shows.”

“Well,” Carol said, “how is he around other people?  Do they like him? Does he seem slippery or cagey, or anything like that?”

“Doctor MacDougall seems to like him a lot, but I’ve only seen them together once,” Darla said. “But a funny thing happened last night as we were leaving the track.  We were walking past the snack bar on the way out, and there was a frazzled looking woman standing there with two kids, one a baby in her arms, the other about 2 years old clutching the woman’s leg, and both of them crying their heads off.  I think her husband was in the restroom.”  Darla took a sip of Perrier.

“And then?” Carol said.

“It was weird, a bit.  Luke stopped there about 6 feet in front of the three of them, and he sort of waved his hand and gurgled at the baby.  Carol, it was amazing. Both kids stopped wailing and stared at him, transfixed.  The look on the mother’s face was priceless.  And then we walked away.  I looked back and the toddler was sucking her thumb.  Both kids were quiet.”

“Weird,” Carol said.

“Luke said ‘It’s a gift’ when I asked him about it in the car. He was kidding, of course, but still, it was impressive.”

“And so….”

“Oh, so what!” Darla said. “I’m thinking he would make a good father, so sue me!”

Carol chuckled.  “You’re smitten, that’s for sure.  Just be careful, Sis.”

“I guess you’re right,” Darla said.  “But that’s for later.  Right now I just want to get it on with him in the worst way!  Maybe tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, yes,” said Carol, and then she yawned.  “Tomorrow comes early for me, so I’d better ring off.  And tomorrow night, I want more details.”

“I’ll do what I can, Darla said.  “Good night.”

“Nite.”

Darla then turned off the lights, turned up her white noise machine, and slipped between the sheets for the night.  She fell asleep thinking about Luke.

The following morning Darla was up at 7.  She didn’t set her alarm on Saturdays, because she didn’t have to be at the clinic until noon, but she always woke up early anyway.  Her father used to say, “The key to success is to get up at the same time every day.”  Yes, the late Carl Riggs had had a saying for every occasion.  Darla’s relationship with her father had been difficult from as early as Darla could remember.  She was the fourth of four daughters: Naomi, Rebecca, Carol and Darla, and perhaps Carl had been frustrated that he was not going to have a son.  There had been complications with Darla’s birth, and her mother Diana had nearly died.  In the end Diana was rendered sterile, and there would be no more children.  Maybe Carl secretly blamed her for Diana’s troubles, or maybe he harbored resentment over some other transgression, real or imagined.  Or maybe he was just a natural-born s.o.b.  He died when Darla was 14; a forklift truck toppled onto him in the warehouse where he worked.  Darla did not remember feeling anything at all, no emotion one way or the other, throughout the experience or since.  And she suspected her mother viewed Carl’s passing as a relief.

Because Carl Riggs had been a drinker and an abuser.  Darla did not recall her father behaving inappropriately toward her personally, but she had clear memories of his drinking, his towering rages and the screaming matches with her mother that were a regular occurrence.  Many nights Carl would come home from the bar drunk, her mother would say the wrong thing and the fight would start.  The four sisters were all roughly 2 years apart.  Eldest sister Naomi would gather up the three younger ones and they would go down to Naomi’s room in the basement, watch videos and try to ignore the racket upstairs.  Sometimes Darla thought she saw bruises on her mother’s arms or legs, but never on the face.  Later on Darla realized her father only struck Diana where her clothes would hide any damage.

And it was not lost on Darla that her experiences with her father probably shaped her expectations around relationships with men, and that it probably contributed to her attraction to Conor.  She’d attended many sessions with a therapist after she and Conor split, working her “stuff”.  “In affairs of the heart a human being seeks the familiar,” her therapist had said.  “One’s upbringing shapes one’s decisions about relationships made in adulthood, perhaps at the most subconscious level.”

“So,” she had said to her therapist at the end of one particularly painful, tearful session, “I’m doomed, is that it?”

“Not at all,” the therapist had said.  “You begin by acknowledging the early experiences that affect decision-making in adulthood.  And you learn to recognize self-destructive behaviour before it gets out of control.  But the process of self-realization is a life-long project. Some positive steps you can take are very basic.  Get plenty of sleep.  Don’t forget to eat.  Take time for yourself.  Be careful around the substances, especially alcohol.  And love yourself.”

She was in therapy when she met Brad, but she’d not mentioned Brad to her therapist, not at all.  Her intention, then and now, was to bury the Brad Business deep in the past and not mention it to anyone, ever.

“Alrighty, now,” she said to Sparks, who was lying on the bed by her feet.  “That’s just about enough of that sad crap.  Time to get up and at it.”  Sparks just stretched and yawned.  Her cat’s plan for the day, Darla knew, involved sleeping in the sun that poured through the sliding doors to the tiny deck on her little fourth floor condo, with short breaks to groom himself.  She, on the other hand, intended to make the most of her day.

(to be continued)