Nonetheless, the week narrows to one all-consuming point.
The Australian Grand Prix.
The street festival begins the night before the race, and the fact that I can hear music through the walls at midnight—meaning Faust can hear music throughhiswalls—almost makes up for having to go to the circuit. “How are you doing?” Mei asks as we walk through the paddock’s back hallways.
“It’s a bit—” I dodge a scampering employee. “Overwhelming.”
“Yeah, true.”
A Formula 1 circuit is not a run-of-the-mill sports stadium. There isn’t really a stadium, period. Currently, we’re in what’s called the paddock, a boldly pretentious term gifted to the area where the teams actually work. A hodgepodge of tents, trailers, hospitality suites, and hidden passageways, that end with the garages lining the track. Cars enter and exit there. For all intents and purposes, the paddock is the F1 battery pack jammed in the middle of as much sellable square footage as possible. Home of the metaphorical horses and horsepower.
Naturally, fans can buy their way into the paddock, too. Have an extra five grand laying around? You might be able to afford a Paddock Club pass, where you can watch a race from above the garages, staring at the poors on the grandstands as they stare back. I manage to side-step around a group of Cavalli racing girls, clad in red, who are taking pictures of aDo not disturb—driver sleepingsign taped to a door. “Faust did okay in Qualifying yesterday. Not bad, not great,” Mei explains, ignoring the girls and the door and, seemingly, all the other chaos.
How is she not more out of breath? I wore sneakers today but, sheesh. “P10 is in the middle of the grid, right?”
“Exactly. The team’s hopeful he’ll be in the points, and Christine’s P11, so they should be able to work together.”
“Do you think they will?”
“Yes, actually. This race isn’t the end all, be all, though. We want to build traction over the season. Brand awareness, hype, sales, wins.”
The four horsemen of social media success. We end up in one of the many private Stark-Benzin hospitality rooms, where the walls are decorated in drab gray posters and television screens streaming what’s going on outside—drivers navigating the long walk down the paddock’s outdoor area, pre-race data talks, influencer-DJs fading Tiesto into barely concealed product placements. It’s slightly dystopian. Like, when you work in F1, there’s no escaping the public perception of the sport, ofus. We’re as much employees as we are characters on the live stream and another set of eyes watching when we aren’t on camera. It’s Schrödinger’s cave allegory.
“Thanks for sending those plans for Japan over, too,” Mei says, eyes glued to her phone while she sits. “I’m impressed with how well you understand Faust. The gray Burberry shirt is going to give people a heart attack.”
I don’t know how to take this compliment. If it’s a compliment to understand that man’s color palette, demeanor, and inherent Burberry-ness. “You don’t think it’s too much?”
“It’s oversized check.”
“There’s red.”
“One stripe of red.”
“Well, thank you.” I tap my fingers on my thighs, then go for my fidget spinner. Clipped it to my bag today. Just talking about him shouldn’t make anxiety pulse at the base of my spine, destabilizing my regular composure, but—oh well.
“Is everything okay?” Mei asks without looking up.
“Oh.” I stop fidget-spinning. “Yeah.”
“Cat.”
“Mm?”
“I will lock you in a serenity room until you have to do Faust’s hair.”
Ah yes. The real reason for my nerves. I have the pleasure of preparing him for his close-up during the national anthem. “I’m fine,” I say, sounding anything but. “And this is really so stupid to ask, it isn’t a big deal, but… has he said anything about me?”
Mei’s soft black eyebrows knit together as her eyes swing up to mine. “What happened?”
“Nothing in particular.” Absolutely shouldn’t have brought this up. Rookiest of rookie mistakes. “I guess it was more so… he doesn’t like fashion, does he?”
That makes her laugh. “Oh. No, probably not. What did he say?”
That I’m fake and I don’t know why and it’s kind of killing me because I am but also—“It was just a vibe. Is he one of those mid-thirties guys who thinks he’s ‘totally above influencers’ when he actually gets all his news from us and also buys anything we link?”
Mei snorts. Better yet, her gaze returns to her screen. “I’ve never caught him listening to a podcast about masculinity and protein milk, so I do think we’re relatively in the clear. Also”—she pauses typing—“he did mentor Christine.”
“Hedid?”
