The Perils of Paulie (A Matchmaker in Wonderland)

  “If that’s a gun,” I said, pointing at the small leather pouch he tried to press into my hands, “then I absolutely will not take it. Dad, I am not in any danger. The film crew will be with us, and I’ll have Melody and Louise with me all day long, and Melody says she has a black belt.”

  “What about night?” he asked, his scowl black with suspicion. “English stays with you?”

  “I’m sure he’ll be at the same hotel, but if you are asking if we’ll be spending the night together, then you can just stop being so worried. I have no intention of hooking up with him. He’s just a nice man.”

  “Hooking up? What is?”

  “Sex! As in, having sex with Dixon! Which I won’t be doing!” I said loudly, slapping my hands on my skirt-covered thighs. Lucky me, right at that moment not only did Sam and Tabby come over to film us getting into the suffragette car, but so did the local news station.

  Everyone stared at me for the count of four.

  Tabby raised her eyebrows and looked at Sam, who had lowered the camera. “Five bucks says they’re shacked up before we get to the other coast.”

  “Ten says they won’t even make it that far,” Sam answered.

  I pointed a finger at them, saying, “Don’t you start with me! I’m in a corset with my internal organs smooshed together and have a deranged father to deal with.”

  Tabby laughed.

  “You take,” Dad said, and shoved the leather pouch at me.

  “No!” I kissed Angela on the cheek, then turned to repeat the gesture with my father. “Go home. I’ll e-mail and text you periodically and let you know I’m alive, have all my fingers, and haven’t been kidnapped. I love you both. Good-bye.”

  Dad started making a fuss, but Angela pulled him back. Sam resumed filming and caught about a minute of Melody and me posing next to our gleaming white car, which now had a huge decal on the hood announcing we were part of the New York to Paris race. The car itself was heavily laden with various boxes strapped to the running boards containing things like tools, spare water and oil, a tiny bit of gas in case we ran out in an inhospitable place, a first aid kit, some emergency food and drinking water, and a waterproof map. Onto the back were strapped six spare tires and a small American flag.

  Louise, who had been posing with her father while the news crew interviewed him, hurried over when she saw Sam and Tabby and immediately began telling them what an honor it was for her, the leader of this team, to be the person to start the race.

  “Think she’ll lighten up any during the trip?” I asked Melody in an undertone. She was wearing a cute black-and-white shirt and skirt, with a straw boater hat bearing the purple and green colors of the suffragettes. My hat was a big cream affair with lashings of white net veil and a pair of goggles in cream and brass.

  Melody wrapped her own modest bit of net around her hat, anchoring it to her head with a long hat pin. “We can hope, but I rather doubt she’s going to let any chance in front of the camera escape her. Does it bother you much?”

  “Not really. I don’t mind being in the background. It gives me a chance to watch everyone and take notes.”

  “Goggles on, ladies!” Roger announced, marching over to us. “It’s almost seven, and we need to get you all on your way by eight when the street is reopened.”

  Our goggles had buckles at the back, so I slipped mine on and got them buckled up underneath the veil. Then, with a wave at my parents, I climbed into the backseat with my notebook in hand. Melody took the navigator’s seat while Louise made a great show of getting behind the wheel, her enormous pink-and-cream hat with flowers, feathers, and a couple of fake birds now swathed in veil.

  I waved to the crowd and crew members and caught a glimpse of Dixon when he emerged from behind a group of tourists. He was dressed in a dark brown suit with vest and coat and had a derby hat on his head. He looked absolutely at ease in his Edwardian clothes, and I had the worst urge to ask him if they made him wear period underwear, too.

  OK. I admit that ever since that kiss last night, visions of him parading around without clothes, Edwardian or otherwise, occupied my mind. I banished those thoughts, knowing full well that although Dixon might be a little flirty, it didn’t mean anything. He’d made it quite clear that he was still mourning his lost love.

  “Such a shame, too,” I said to myself as I strapped on very nonperiod seat belts that the insurance people had insisted be installed in all the cars.

  “What’s that?” Melody turned around, yelling over the sound of the engine. Although the people who made the cars had used more modern engines so that it wouldn’t take us six months to make the journey, there was no room for things like mufflers (or, as I found out a few hours later, shocks), so the motor was quite loud.

  “Go!” Roger said, consulting his watch.

  With a cheer from the crowd and a grinding from the gearbox as Louise did the clutch/acceleration dance, we set off, Tabby and Sam right behind us in an open convertible. Clipped to the front of the flat windscreen was a black video camera that caught our conversation and actions in the car. Louise started a stream-of-consciousness talk to the camera, telling it all about herself and how she loved driving, simply loved driving, and was very competitive, and just hoped that the rest of her team would be up for the long hours she planned to spend driving so that we would win the race and all the glory.

  Cars honked as we proceeded out of the city. Almost immediately, we were sucked up in New York City traffic and came to a standstill, hemmed in on all sides by taxis, cars, delivery trucks, and lots and lots of people.

  “Well, this is disappointing,” Louise complained as we crawled our way toward one of the tunnels out of the city. “You’d think they would have cleared a path for us since we’re filming a show.”

  “Reality TV at its best,” I yelled from the backseat, and made a few notes on just what my thoughts were at this exciting moment. Somehow, they ended up being mostly focused on Dixon’s clothes, what he looked like without them, and a speculation of just how long it took a person to stop grieving over a dead fiancée.

  The openness of our Thomas Flyer made it a bit difficult to write when we were actually moving, so once we had cleared the city I tucked away my journal, only to find the leather pouch that my father had evidently slipped down beside the seat without me seeing.

  “Dammit, Daddy . . .” I opened up the pouch and saw, as I had expected, a small gun. My father had made sure I knew how to shoot most firearms early on in my life, so I just rolled my eyes at this one, made sure to remove the clip from it, and stuffed it down between the two red leather seats at the same time I made a mental note to hand it over to Roger later.

  We had made it out of the city (just) when all hell broke loose. We’d been driving along at the speed limit, waving when passing cars honked at us and making sure to make some comments to the in-car camera (when Louise wasn’t soliloquizing), but all of a sudden there was an ugly metal sound and the car swerved violently to the right, almost sending us through a guardrail. Louise screamed and started pumping what she thought was the brake but later determined was the clutch. Melody, with presence of mind, grabbed the wheel when Louise covered her face, screaming, “We’re going to crash! We’re going to crash!”

  She must have hit the brake in her frenzy of pedal-pushing, because we slowed down almost instantly and Melody got us pulled over onto the shoulder.

  “What the hell happened?” I asked, unbuckling my seat belt. Behind us, the convertible with Tabby and Sam pulled up.

  “I don’t know, but I suspect it was something to do with the tires or suspension,” Melody said, and looked meaningfully at me.

  “Oh. Mechanical stuff. That’s me, huh?” I got to my feet, grabbed the small notebook I’d used to take notes on how to do things on the car, and hopped over the side to the ground. Sure enough, the right back tire looked like an alien had exploded from it.


  “We blew a tire!” I yelled over the sound of traffic as it raced past us.

  “Well, get busy with the repair,” Louise demanded in a bossy sort of tone that I could tell was going to jangle my nerves.

  “Do you need help?” Melody asked, crawling over the front seat to the back.

  “No, no, I have this under control,” I said, propping open my notebook and reading the tire changing instructions. “Let’s see, wrench, jack, grease pot . . . got it.” I opened up one of the boxes strapped to the running board and dug around until I found the wrench and grease pot. The next box gave up the jack and a long light olive green apron that I was told to put on so as not to get my costumes dirty. I set my hat, veil, and goggles on the seat, smiled at Sam and the camera, donned the apron, and tried out another wrench twirl. “Right! Suffragette power time, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “Oh, get on with it!” Louise snapped.

  “Sheesh,” I said, kneeling painfully on the gravel. “Hold your girdle on, lady. Er . . . corset.” I grinned for the camera and, using the hand pump, got the jack under the side of the car nearest the tire. Another car pulled up behind us while I was wrestling with the bolts in the center of the tire.

  “Need a hand?”

  I glanced up to see Dixon. “Oh, hi.”

  “Hello.” He glanced at Sam and Tabby. “That looks like difficult work. Might I lend some assistance?”

  I couldn’t hold back a little giggle, saying softly, “That sounded very Edwardian.”

  “Thank you. I tried.” He cleared his throat and said louder, “Would you like me to try my hand on those bolts?”

  “Sure thing,” I said, handing him the wrench. “These clincher tires are a pain in the butt, if you want to know the truth.”

  “I’m sure they are.”

  “What the hell is going on?” Kell stormed over, saw the cameras, and immediately ratcheted up his anger a few notches. “Do you have any idea of how much time we are losing, Ainslie? Not to mention the fact that you are helping the competition.” He turned to face the camera dead-on. “I’d like to formally complain that my teammate is trying to sabotage our team!”

  “Oh, for god’s sake,” Dixon said, grunting when he put his weight on the wrench. One of the bolts was being obstinate, but he got it loosened just as Kell was demanding to see Roger to have Dixon thrown out of the race.

  “Look, buster,” I said, getting to my feet. Louise, who realized that a scene was being enacted and wanted to be a part of it, had climbed out of the car and was twirling her veil while standing next to Kell. “I realize this is a race, but it doesn’t mean that people have to act like asshats.”

  Tabby snickered. Sam raised an eyebrow.

  “Can I say asshat on TV?” I asked them.

  Sam shrugged.

  “You stay out of this, you . . . suffragette,” Kell said, hissing the word.

  I straightened up. “Dude. This is my tire that Dixon kindly—because he’s a gentleman, not a poseur—is helping me with. So take your drama elsewhere, preferably out of hearing because I have things to do.”

  Kell sputtered a few choice phrases. Louise nodded and preened for the camera. Melody, looking over the edge of the car, smothered a laugh.

  “Where’s the spare?” Dixon asked, having successfully removed the offending bolt. He pulled the tire off and looked up expectantly.

  “Right here, but I can put it on. You guys had better get on your way, so Mr. Antsy-Pants there doesn’t have a stroke because you were being thoughtful and nice.”

  “Are you sure? I can—”

  “We are leaving,” Kell announced, and stalked back to the car. “With or without you!”

  “Go,” I said, shooing him after Kell. “It’s way too early to encounter this sort of trouble.”

  He smiled and took himself off.

  I picked up one of the spares I’d removed from the rear of the car and called after him, “Thanks for your help, Mr. Ainslie. Good manners and sportsmanship are always pleasing to witness!”

  “Nice touch,” Melody pronounced, nodding her approval.

  “Is this going to take much longer?” Louise asked, frowning when Dixon’s car rolled past us. “I don’t want us to get behind. We have something to prove, after all.”

  “Not long,” I said, forcing the wheel onto the plate. “Just have to tighten the bolts a few times . . .”

  The “few times” took five minutes before I was convinced the wheel wouldn’t fall off while we drove at high speeds, but at last we were on our way, Tabby and Sam in their convertible zooming on ahead to catch up with some of the other racers.

  “That was just annoying as hell,” Louise said, gritting her teeth as she ground the gears together trying to shift up. “Just my luck, I get saddled with the lame car.”

  “It’s not lame,” I said loudly, winding my veil around my head a few times before tucking it into itself. “It’s a gorgeous car, and incidentally it’s the same kind that won the original race.”

  “Hrmph,” she said, and spent the remainder of the day telling the windscreen camera her every little thought, from what it was like to have all the responsibility of success on her shoulders to how stupid Thomas Flyers drove and how she wanted to race in a sixties sports car and call her team Vlad the Impala.

  With a brief stop at a Starbucks for some much-needed caffeine (and a potty break), Melody took over driving a few hours later, and I took my turn late in the afternoon.

  “Hey,” I said about an hour into my stint at being the driver. “That looks like one of us ahead.”

  “Where?” Louise, who had been reclining on the backseat with her phone, sat up straight.

  I pointed to the side of the road about an eighth of a mile ahead and began to slow down.

  “What are you doing? You can’t stop!” Louise shrieked, pounding me on the shoulder.

  “Are you kidding? Did you forget that Dixon stopped to help us just a few hours ago?” I pulled up behind them, putting on the massive hand brake. “I’m not going to just blaze past them.”

  “That was the English team’s choice. Our team is going for the win. Don’t you dare leave this car! Paulie! Dammit! Melody, stop her!”

  “Sorry. I’m with Paulie on this,” Melody said, following me. She had the presence of mind to snag the big flat metal key that was used to trigger the ignition mechanism.

  “You guys need some help?” I asked, approaching the car ahead of us. The three Italians, dressed in sporty white Edwardian motoring suits, each embroidered with their names, turned, their goggles glinting in the afternoon sun.

  “The radiator, she is not happy,” the one named Luca said, flashing me a brief smile.

  “It’s not the radiator—it’s the gas. We are out,” said Carlo.

  “We have some extra gas—” I started to say.

  “No! We do not!” Louise stomped over to us. She punched me painfully on the arm. “You are not giving away our gas. What if we need it? Then we’d be stuck and would lose the race, and all because you want to play hide the Italian salami with Rico here.”

  “The name is Carlo—” he started to protest.

  “You are seriously offensive—do you know that?” I told Louise. “I just hope the cameras didn’t get any of that, because you’ll be hearing from the Italian-American community if it did.”

  “It is not petrol,” the third member, Francesco, said. They all spoke English very well, but had thick Italian accents that, had I not preferred a nice crisp English accent, might have melted my knees. “We have petrol.”

  “I thought we all had extra emergency petrol?” Melody asked, glancing at their car.

  “We have, yes,” Francesco said. “It is something with the engine.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m not going to be much help with that,” I said.

  “It??
?s all right,” he said, giving his car a rueful look.

  “I wish there was something we could do to help you. I have a cell phone if you need to call Roger—”

  “Speak of the devil,” Melody said, looking behind us. “There’re the Germans, and Roger is right behind them.”

  Indeed, at that moment the German ladies drove by with a blast of their horn and friendly waves. Behind them drove the sedan bearing Roger and an assistant. Their car pulled up in front of the Italians, and Roger emerged with Graham the mechanic.

  “Oh, good. The cavalry has arrived, gentlemen.”

  Immediately they went to consult with Roger and Graham, and with nothing more to do, we returned to our car. Louise said nothing more about the incident, but I felt her glaring daggers into the back of my head as we drove along.

  Driving the Thomas Flyer was kind of a mixed bag: it was a fun old car, and people honked and waved and gave us thumbs-up signs, but the actual act of steering, not to mention shifting into other gears, was a huge strain on the shoulders and arms. We agreed to limit our driving time to just two hours before switching to eliminate fatigue.

  “All right, but if the cameraman is with us, then I drive,” Louise said, punching viciously at her phone. “After all, I am supposed to be the driver.”

  “I’ll be happy to let you have my shift if you’re so anxious to be seen driving,” I said sweetly, pulling into the parking lot of the hotel we were to stay at that night. At the far end of the lot, a station had been set up for the racers to check in. I glanced at Melody as we rolled over to the waiting crew. “How bad is it?”

  She consulted her watch and a clipboard holding the race information. “Well, we’re twenty minutes late. That’s two infractions. But given that we had a blowout, I don’t think that’s too bad.”

  “Two infractions?” Louise’s voice went up a whole octave as I pulled up. “Two effing infractions? This is bullshit! Where’s my dad? I am not going to stay with a team that can’t be bothered to try to adhere to the rules. Two infractions on the first effing day!”

  “Team Sufferin’ Suffragettes,” the crew member said, checking us in. “I’m afraid that you are twenty minutes past your allotted time.”