I looked across at the line of go-karts at the starting line. The go-karts were dejectedly rusted through in places and slopped together with cannibalized spare parts. You could see fresh weld marks along shiny new strips of thin steel over rusted breaks on the stress points of the chassis. A Malay mechanic was squatting next to one of the karts, he jerked on the pull start and black smoke coughed out its tail pipe.
“I don’t want to do this,” I whispered to Jamie, I had never driven a go-kart before and feared screwing up on the first day and losing the entire race. I thought that Jamie would be loose from the drive and more suited for a reckless go-kart race. If I had to compete in the mini-race, I knew it would be a lackluster event at best. “I’ll drive to the next pit stop and perform in the next competition if you’ll do this one. Please, please, I don’t want to lose this for us,” I pleaded with her.
She let out of a huff of air.
“That’s fine, Abi, but you can’t continue to get cold feet. From here on out, no complaints, do your share. It’s a friggin million dollars we’re going for here. If you screw this up for us, I’ll never talk to you again,” She threatened but her threats were hollow. I’d heard it all before. This was the pattern of our relationship.
I handed her the helmet and squeezed her hand, “Thanks. I promise I won’t chicken out again.”
We hardly noticed the camera taking in our conversation, pointing over my shoulder as the film continued to roll.
We walked up to the rest of the racers standing around Gemma who was in the middle of announcing the event for the main shot. She was glowing in her tight silver mini-skirt and matching silver riding boots. I thought she looked spectacular. Caught up in her sensuality, I barely heard the rest of the event’s introduction.
“… the go-kart race! Only one member of each team will be competing in this event. It’s quite simple. The race will consist of three laps around the go-kart track. The order of finishers will determine the order in which the teams will leave to our next destination. There will be a three minute interval between each team’s departures. So the winner of this event will leave followed by second place three minutes later and followed by third, fourth, fifth and six. Last place in the go kart race will be eighteen minutes behind the frontrunner and in danger of elimination. The order will be critical for the next pit stop because last place in the today’s final competition will be sent home.”
“CUT!”
I was growing a bit tired of the production and eased away from the cast and crew members to get some alone time. The rest of the teams separated into drivers and spectators, I trailed behind the other spectators to the bleachers and stood at the bottom of the wooden structure behind the chain link fence. Norris and Lydia climbed up to the top of the benches and then hoisted themselves up onto the steel roof of the building behind the bleachers, which was home to carcasses of dead go-karts and other useless rusted out equipment.
Norris took his shirt off and began to wave it in the air, hamming it up for the camera. I’d say he was literally hamming it up as he was piggish looking with his pasty white skin, exposed hairy gut and A-cup man boobs, quite the opposite of his well built athletic teammate. He looked like an idiot. As he was hooting and yelling, his cameraman stood on the bleachers filming him from below.
“Ugh, he’s so white he’s translucent,” joked Ted as he squinted up at the shirtless half-nude Ang Moh above, his alabaster skin shining brightly in the sun, “Maybe he’ll fall and break his neck.”
What an awful thing to say, I thought.
Not wanting to seem any less supportive of her own teammate, Lydia lifted her arms high in the air and began gyrating her hips and stomping her trainers on the steel roof. She was smoking a smelly clove cigarette and she kept unconsciously breaking from her bitchy character as a look of concern flickered on her face when she brought the cigarette to her mouth. And I noticed that she couldn’t help biting the skin around her thumbnail from the pent-up stress.
The racers, all suited up in their battered motorcycle helmets, climbed into their go-karts and the Malaysian track worker secured them tightly with tattered belts held together with gaffer’s tape. Another worker pulled the ignition for each and a haze of pollutants had gathered around the karts.
The racers sat in their carts in order according to their teams arrival at the track; first Derrik, then Ted, Meng, Quaid, Jamie and finally Yvonne.
Once the go-karts had been given a chance to warm up, Gemma strolled out to the centre of the track with a starting pistol in hand. She had changed yet again into a red halter top with a red CARS visor sitting atop her head, but still had on her silver mini-skirt and matching knee high racing boots.
She’s so gorgeous
, I thought, wondering about the soft skin of the back of her neck. I violently shook my head and tried pushed the inappropriate thought away.
Gemma raised the pistol and fired.
The go-karts were off, Meng’s kart stalled immediately, causing Quaid to lose a few seconds to Jamie and Yvonne as he tried to negotiate around the immobile bodybuilder and the Malaysian workers who jumped onto the track to assist.
Derrik and Ted were already far ahead and neck and neck.
As soon as the race began, Ahmed began bragging to the rest of us spectators that Ted’s favorite hobby was go-karting. “Ted’s been racing nearly every weekend for the last two years around mini-tracks back in home. He even owns his own go-kart and keeps it at a private track for members only in Pasir Ris,” he boasted. It came as no surprise to me. I mean obviously Ted and Ahmed came from money. You could see the glow of privilege on them just by taking note of their branded clothes and expensive sporty man bags. And the grape vine confirmed it. A couple of days earlier, Kip had been in a gossiping mood at a luncheon after shooting webisodes and had told us that Ahmed was a successful investment banker and hit it off with Ted while helping to administer his trust fund a few years earlier. That’s why they’re such jokesters, I thought, I’d be telling jokes all the time too if my life were so carefree.
Poor Yvonne didn’t stand a chance in this race of jackals. She was driving her kart around at half speed. Competitive racing was not her forte and it was a mystery to me why Tucker hadn’t chosen to race instead. He stood there a few meters away, gritting his teeth and trying to shout encouragement to his girlfriend above the howling din of the two-stroke engines.
Quaid quickly passed Jamie in a roar of speed.
I didn’t know if the producers had set it up intentionally but it looked as if Quaid’s go-kart was riding on twice the horsepower of the others. He rapidly caught up to Derrik and Ted even though they were going full throttle on a straight away. Quaid came whizzing up behind them. As an enthusiast for the pseudo-sport, Ted realized his kart was underpowered compared to the one roaring up his behind. Quaid tried to pass then but Ted played defense and blocked him from advancing by purposely remaining dead even with Derrik.
And that was how they zoomed past the bleachers on the first lap with Ted and Derrik neck and neck, Quaid on their heels and Jamie about four kart lengths behind Quaid. Meng remained at a quarter of a lap back but was gaining and Yvonne continued putt-putting along at the halfway mark.
It was during the second lap that the accident happened.
Ted, Derrik and Quaid were recklessly flying around hairpin turns, nearly colliding on the straight-aways. They seemed oblivious to the three other racers. But when they came upon Yvonne it was in a straight-away they easily avoided hitting her. She knew they were coming and braced for impact, eyes tightly squeezed shut as they flew by. But the three daredevils failed to see Meng’s go-kart had again stalled at the apex of the next blind hairpin curve. Meng had undone his safety harness and taken off his helmet and was climbing out of the kart as the three approached. Everyone at the bleachers screamed at him to ‘Watch Out!’ If he climbed out, there would be no place for the other drivers to steer around him. The karts were like banshees screaming around the track. There was no chance he could hear us.
The three racers turned into the hairpin.
It was Ted who first saw the stalled kart. He jerked right and hit the steep incline of the shoulder, crashing through a barrier wall made of tires. A dust cloud erupted from the crash, obscuring our view of the impact, loose tires rolling down the hill and onto the track.
Derrik, distracted by Ted’s sudden move to the right, didn’t see the stalled kart or Meng who was now standing next to it scratching his big meat head. Derrik’s kart careened into the right wheel of Meng’s kart and flipped completely over, skidding along some twenty yards, sparks flying off the roll cage as it scraped a long divot into the asphalt before coming to a grinding halt.
Nearly too late but finally realizing the danger he was in, Meng leapt off the track using his powerful gluteus maximus and bounded over the tire barrier winding along the left side of the track. Quaid narrowly missed him by centimeters, squeezing between the tires and the dead kart, whooshing by Derrik’s upended vehicle and taking a deciding lead.
Lydia and several roadies from the crew ran to Derrik’s aid. She was screaming at them, expecting the worst, “Turn the kart over! Turn the kart over!”
They grabbed the side and flipped it over with Derrik still strapped inside.
Due to the intense heat of the day, Derrik had decided to wear the minimum amount of clothes allowable for the production. He was wearing nothing but a helmet, t-shirt, Bermudas and trainers. Not much protection from accidents. So now Derrik’s legs and bare elbows were a bloodied mess of road rash from scrapping against the pavement when the upended kart had skidded along the tarmac.
But even after flipping and being set upright his little kart was still running.
Lydia screamed at him, “Get going, you fool, you have to finish!”
Derrik was used to Lydia ordering him around and took off just as Jamie navigated around them. After a couple of seconds, Derrik accelerated ahead of Jamie and was back on the track in second place behind Quaid.
Yvonne was now in fourth, far behind Jamie.
Ted, covered in a fine mist of sand and dirt from head to toe, was also back on the track. He picked up speed near the bleachers into the third lap and was in fifth place and then fourth as he easily passed Yvonne. Everyone had been so focused on Derrik’s accident that only Ahmed had seen what happened to Ted. After hitting the tires on the incline, his kart stalled then slowly rolled backward onto the track. Ahmed ran to help and was able to restart the kart going using the pull start, getting him back into the race.
At the end of the competition, with Gemma waving them in with a checkered flag, a dusty and shaken Ted had managed to secure third place behind Quaid and Derrik who came in first and second respectively. Jamie came in as fourth place followed by Yvonne and Meng, his kart dead, finished last. Even though it was unfair and his loss due to mechanical error, Meng still had to spend an extra humiliating twenty minutes pushing his kart around the last lap and a half with Esther steering in the driver’s seat to make his finish official.
With the teams standing around her, Gemma announced the outcome of the race and we filmed the obligatory final shots at the winner’s circle then she retired to the air-conditioned comfort of her trailer. We watched as her driver drove her RV out of the parking lot and into formation with Kip and half of the crew vehicles as they got a head start to the next event location.
When the shooting of individual team interviews were wrapped up, we were starving so the teams and the remainder of the crew walked over to an open canteen across the road from the track. The canteen was sparse, consisting of an overhead awning, picnic tables and a partitioned area with a large butane stove, two large buckets of tepid water and a few stacks of colored plastic dishes and bowls, meant to serve as a kitchen. We waited while the cook filled green plastic bowls with a local version of mee rebus and we ate together in the heat collecting under the metal roof, our faces shiny with go-kart exhaust and sweat. The teams tried to engage in polite chit-chat while they ate; knowing that the next pit stop was an elimination leg and one of them would be going home.
In hindsight, it’s rather interesting that none of the teams even thought to mention the contagion ravaging much of the country they were racing in. We were so hyper-focused on the competition we’d lost all interest in our surroundings and the current epidemic sweeping the countryside was far from our minds.
“Yeah, it’s the friggin Ang Mohs’ fault,” Lydia’s voice could be heard rising in anger as she complained to Sheldon at the head of the table. “Look at his injuries, lah!” She nagged, pointing to Derrik’s bloody legs. “If the Ang Moh wasn’t so reckless, he wouldn’t be in such pain.” You could hear resentment in her voice as she protested. She was angry, but we all knew it wasn’t about the relatively trivial accident on the track earlier. She was angry about their third place finish in the race. She seemed to believe that if she yelled loud enough, they might receive special consideration considering this was a Singapore production, they were Singaporean and the Ang Mohs were foreigners and, in her opinion, undeserving to win the million dollar prize. I noticed that she mentioned nothing about Tucker racing dangerously close to Derrik for half a lap, choosing to focus her complaints and anger on the white guy instead.
Quaid and Norris were quite oblivious to her tirade. They sat in the far corner of the canteen laughing loudly, on an emotional high with their current first place performance. Those two weren’t so bad, I thought. They had a more innocent quality about them than your average expats. I’d read their team profile and knew that they were merely English teachers working in Singapore, not expat snobs on lucrative pay packages which was the picture Lydia was attempting to paint.
“Lydia,” Sheldon sighed, “when you look at the tape you can see it was an accident. Quaid had absolutely nothing to do with the crash.” He was looking less than interested in the conversation as he texted on his business handphone in one hand and slurped up his noodles with chopsticks in the other.