The Deadly Season
Fuel injected flash fiction
The Deadly Season
By Spyder Darling
“It must be nice to have so much to live for,” I remember Cassavetes saying to me before for the Monaco Grand Prix, which we would both be competing in later that Sunday morning. I had a pole position. Cassavetes would be to my left on the starting grid.
As racing luck would have it, our pits were next to each other and since Cassavetes had always been a hero of mine, I didn’t miss a chance to pick his Prosecco-infused brain, take an Instagram or bring him another Red Bull from my team’s endless stash if he asked. And he did. So I did. Gladly, much to the cross look I’d get from Red Bull team principal Robin Turner.
“C’mon Giovanni, you’ve got a lot of racing left in you,” I remember telling him under a sky as blue as the Mediterranean Sea we would soon be racing alongside. “If you didn’t, papa Ferrari wouldn’t have signed you for another five years,” I said, handing him his energy drink.
“Sean, first of all, call me Maestro, as I’ve told you at least three times today,” Giovanni said, then finished his drink in one long gulp and handed the empty can back to me. “Bah, how can you drink this swill? Clearly, no Italian had a hand in the recipe.”
