“Then why is their go-kart so much faster than mine? You guys in cahoots?” she yelled, waving her finger at Sheldon then at Quaid and Norris who were still laughing, enjoying their win. “You fix the winners of the race oledy is it?”
Sheldon stiffened at this, little bits of noodles expelling from his open mouth as he let out an angry laugh. He couldn’t allow a contestant to talk to him in front of the cast and crew in this way, berating him with accusations of fixing the results of the go-kart race. His authority needed to be clear. Every reality show director knew that sometimes you had to tweak events a bit to make the show interesting. Only this time he’d done no such thing. He couldn’t be under suspicion from the very first event. It would make it that much harder to use such tricks later in the competition. He had to shut her down now.
Sheldon slammed his hand down on the table and everyone snapped to attention, “Do you want to be disqualified?” Is that what you want?” Sheldon’s voice rose so that everyone could hear. All eyes were on him, “Read your contract, Lydia, we can disqualify participants for any reason. Even for complaining too much. Back off!”
There was a momentary silence as we watched Lydia’s reaction to being told off. She got this sour look on her face, turned away and slinked back to Derrik, lighting a cigarette and dabbing a moist towel on the scrapes blazing trails across his right knee.
Unconcerned about the argument, Norris guffawed in the corner as Quaid whispered and motioned towards me and Jamie, making some crude gestures that no doubt carried a sexual connotation. The cameramen went back to their conversations in Malay, comparing their assignments and arguing, which one was working with the best team, with Felix the focus of envy for getting to travel with the two young beauties.
We finished our noodles and waited for Sheldon to start the next` event.
Like before, the teams gathered in front of the rally cars and were handed envelopes for the next race. I was going to drive the next leg, so I got to read the instructions from the large cardboard card into the lens of the camera, “You will now proceed to the Gunang Ledang Rendezvous Retreat and take part in a series of physically strenuous competitions. You’d better hurry, though. The last team to finish the events will be eliminated. For now, practice the art of patience and wait for your departure time to be called.”
Jamie gazed at me lovingly for the imaginary audience and gave me a big camera hug.
“You drive,” She kissed my cheek, “I’ve been to Gunang Ledang Rendezvous Retreat before. My family used to holiday there when I was in primary school. Don’t you worry, I’ll plot a course. You just put that pedal to the metal.”
Felix gave us the cut signal.
Now there was nothing to do but wait for our turn.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tucker and Yvonne kissing intimately for the benefit of their cameraman’s camcorder with slow caresses and loving stares into each other’s eyes. I nudged Jamie and she stuck her finger in her mouth and made gagging sounds.
Derrik had about twenty little plasters stuck to the scrapes on his legs. What a wimp, I thought. Lydia was beside him, now smoking an extra long menthol cigarette, puffs of smoke drifting out of her obnoxious mouth over the hoods of the remaining five cars awaiting their turn as the Ang Moh’s sped away.
“Look!” Ahmed gasped and pointed to departing Rally Car 4, “They’re going the wrong way!”
Ted chuckled, hacked up a wad of phlegm and spat on the ground, “Stupid Ang Mohs. They know nothing.”
On the contrary, the Ang Mohs knew exactly where they were going.
Norris had purchased literally dozens of maps of Malaysia the day before the race and had been studying the roadways of the Johor state late into the previous night. In fact, all day he’d taken advantage of every opportunity to sneak away to study various routes and roadways. Even when he went to the toilet, he’d slip in a few minutes of road revision within the confines of a bathroom stall. Norris’s plan was to anticipate each day’s events beforehand and study potential areas in a radius around where they’d possibly drive on the next event. It was a solid plan considering the other teams had no plan at all. Quaid and Norris hid their maps well, deciding the night before that their best strategy would be to pretend they didn’t really care about the competition, and open and friendly with the other competitors but in reality take every advantage they came across. After all, it was a million dollars.
As for driving in the wrong direction, Quaid was actually driving to a newly constructed strip mall that wasn’t on any map except for a recently published report on vanishing Johor marshlands that Norris had pulled off the net. Buried within the report was a small aerial map of the strip mall and surrounding neighborhood on the second page. The engineers designing the infrastructure of the strip mall had wisely built a thru-way connecting Jalan Kota Masai with Jalan Keris which led to Tebrau Highway, which intersected to the J1 Expressway, the main artery to the north. The strip mall was about five kilometers east and required Rally Car 5 to back track to a little known slip road, which was why it looked as if they were traveling in the wrong direction.
Once it was our turn to get on the road, three rally cars had already left. But it was a short ten minutes before we were right behind Rally Cars 6 and 1 who were stuck in yet another all-too-common Malaysian traffic jam. Jamie and I laughed and I said, “Ai yo! It didn’t matter that they’d had head starts.”
Up ahead, the four lane road was being diverted down to a one lane bottleneck where both sides of traffic had to take turns going around a horrific crash involving a large lorry, three sedans and a scooter. One of the sedans was jammed under the trailer of the lorry and the front end of the scooter was stuck in the windshield of another. The third sedan was lining on its side in the culvert, fire engulfing the rear. The scooter driver was lying on the ground immobile and most likely dead, his torso twisted in an unnatural position. Around the body were secondary students in pressed powder blue uniforms gawking at the finality of death. The fate of the other drivers and car passengers were unknown as they had already been rushed away by two ambulances with ‘Kecemasan’ printed on their sides, which meant ‘Emergency’. Meanwhile, we sat in our rally cars watching the temperature gauges slowly rise as the cars sat idling with the air-conditioning blasting on high to keep the interiors cool enough to hold back the constant perspiration.
By the time we were clear of the accident, Felix was out, snoring in the back seat.
Jamie squeezed my leg and put a finger to her lips quietly whispering, “Shhh.”
She reached into the waist of her red daisy dukes and pulled out a tiny handphone the size of my thumb that she’d concealed in a hidden pocket she’d sewn into her shorts and began typing a text message. My eyes kept darting back at Felix through the rear view mirror, making sure the cameraman still sleeping. My blood started to boil as I watched Jamie risk our chance at a million dollars. We’d be automatically disqualified if Sheldon found out we were using mobile technology. One of the Felix’s duties was to watch us and report any cheating. They were even paid a bonus if they caught their team being deceitful or using mobile tech for any reason.
I was fuming but I still had my head in the game and knew at this point I couldn’t make a big deal out of it, lest I throw off our luck. Thinking Jamie was trying to find a quicker way to the expressway, I mouthed, “What did you find out?”
Jamie shifted the phone so I could read her text.
Her message said, “Miss you! See you soon! XXOXXOO”
She was sending a mass text to her boyfriends.
I slapped her leg hard and she giggled.
I couldn’t believe she’d risk our chance for a million dollars to send that stupid message. She shut the phone off and slipped the phone back into the hidden pocket and gave me a wink.
“Just in case, just in case,” she whispered.
There was a snorting sound in the backseat. It was Felix waking from his nap.
“Did you have a good rest?” I asked as he yawned and stretched.
He smiled back at me. I’m not sure if he understood any English at this point. I mean, he could even participate in a little small talk, couldn’t he? It’s what makes the civilized world go round.
There were dark clouds forming on the horizon.
We were headed into a storm.
Small droplets began to hit the windscreen and then larger ones until it was an all out deluge, making it impossible to see more than a few meters ahead. I flipped the wipers on high with little effect.
Continuing to speed along Jalan Stulang Barhu at a solid eighty kilometers, I paid no heed to the lack of visibility and sliced through the deepening puddles of rain water. I passed many slower moving lorries and Protons, which were crawling along trying to avoid hydroplaning on their bald tires on oily rain slick covering the street. The two rally cars up ahead also continued at a high rate of speed, trying to keep us in their rearview. Our three rally cars formed a mini Cera convoy with our flashy racing strips and huge numbers on the doors and we continued driving that way onto the sidewalk on the left-hand side of the road, oblivious to Malaysian traffic laws. It wasn’t long until we came to a T-junction. Our group made a quick right, left, then right again and we were finally racing up the onramp and onto the J1 expressway.
We were about four kilometers past the strongest part of the rainstorm and, thankfully, it was letting up to clearer skies the further we drove on the expressway. We were out of the rain at nearly the same time we reached the Johor Bahru city limits.
“Let’s show these poindexters how to drive, Abi,” Jamie egged me on. Felix was back to pointing the lens in my face waiting for my response.
“Okay, watch this.”
I made my move.
I accelerated swiftly and veered our weak four-cylinder ‘rally car’ across three lanes of traffic, nearly pushing the other rally cars off the road. I could see Ted flipping the bird at me and mouthing some coarse language that, even silently voiced, would have to be censored from the Tua Kee Media broadcast with a line of pixilation across his mouth. Derrik was equally enraged, his pockmarked face contorted uglier than usual as he stared daggers into us, complaining to Lydia who was driving their sedan. She tailgated us as close as she possibly could, even trading a little paint in a bumper kiss. It was Lydia we had to worry about, I thought. She wasn’t going to be bested by two younger, cuter girls who were everything she wasn’t.
“We need to watch out for Lydia,” I voiced my concerns, “She’s dangerous when she loses face.”
Felix turned the camera back out the rear window to film the rally cars behind us, who were still in a mini-convoy, but now it was a race to see who would be the car leading the rest to Gunang Ledang Rendezvous Retreat.
Jamie sighed loudly knowing this was going to be a tedious yet frantic drive up the expressway. It would take us at least thirty minutes to get to the off-ramp that will lead us to Gunang Ledang Rendezvous Retreat and we had to maintain our lead or risk getting behind in the events Sheldon had in store for us there. All I could do was keep the pedal to the floor and try to drive faster than the other two cars dared. I slipped over to the emergency lane in the centre of the expressway and floored it to just over one hundred forty. I could see Jamie white-knuckling her seat belt and I knew she secretly wished she’d taken the wheel earlier. We both knew she was the better driver.
I focused on the road.
I didn’t want to be the weak link in our team and had to show her and rest of the teams I could hold my own or they’d eat me alive during the week of driving competitions. That is, if we weren’t the first team to be eliminated today.
The Ang Moh team really got a shock as we came up behind them. They had been cruising along at a brisk one hundred and twenty kilometers towards the resort, oblivious to the advancing rally cars. Norris was studying a bunch of maps of the Johor state stacked on his lap and Quaid was daydreaming. Neither Quaid nor Norris had ever driven in Singapore or Malaysia. In fact, Norris had never driven on the British-style right hand side before. Which was why, after a straight up discussion on strategy, it was decided that Quaid would drive as much as possible and they’d alternate taking turns with the solo physical events. Anyway, Quaid was much better suited for racing because, back in England as a ‘bobby’ he’d gone through a series of courses in high speed chases as well as training in offensive driving. He was the logical choice to be behind the wheel as much as possible.
But right now, Quaid’s instincts were dulled by the uninteresting view along the expressway and due to the fact that after that short cut the two Ang Mohs believed they had a comfortable lead. They were relaxed and happy; cheesing it up in front of the camera, trying out catch phrases that they hoped would become super trendy in Singapore after the show aired.
So you can imagine it was quite a surprise when Rally Cars 5, 6 and 1 blew by them in quick succession. Quaid recovered quickly and slammed on the gas. He was not only a competent driver, he had that wild risk-taking attitude that Singaporeans were generally adverse to. So while the teams raced ahead at one hundred and forty kilometers, Quaid was comfortable taking their car to a screaming one hundred and ninety, about the limit that the red-lining, overheating Cera sedan could go. It took them about five minutes at that insane speed before they found a gap between the road hogging hazard-flashing lorries and late-model sedans to pass the other teams and regain the lead.
When they passed us, believe me, it was game on.
I did my best to keep up with them and the other two teams stuck close behind not wanting to seem timid for fear of losing face on camera.
We got right behind them and I could see Quaid winking at me in their rearview mirror. It was exhilarating and terrifying to drive so reckless and fast.
Jamie was in a tizzy, nervously flinching and jerking around in her seat and making panicky gasping sounds whenever we came within a few centimeters of the slower vehicles driving at normal speeds along on the road. Felix was flipping the camera’s view back and forth from the Ang Moh car ahead, to our facial expressions, to the rally cars trailing behind us.