The Last Season

by Ronald Florence

Genres: 20th Century Romance; American Romance

Synopsis

The last season in Newport, Rhode Island is the summer of 1941, just before Pearl Harbor. It is the end of an era of social glitter and privilege. Sera, a young Portugese beauty from nearby Stonington, Connecticut, falls in love with Russell, a young Naval Lieutenant from a socially prominent Newport family, who is stationed at the War College--the naval base near Newport where secret military scenarios are played out by future commanders. She is swept off her feet by the charming Russell who thinks nothing of borrowing secret documents to raise the money his family won't give him to date Sera. But Sera will not stand for that. Sophistocated thrills and romance energize The Last Season, from the author of The Gypsy Man and The Perfect Machine.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Release date: July 14, 2002

Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

Print pages: 352

Sample

The Last Season

Part One
1
Everyone seemed to realize that there would never again be a time like that summer of 1941 in Newport.
A few oldtimers pretended that nothing had changed. Tourists still came in droves, asking directions to Bellevue Avenue and Ocean Walk, wide-eyed in anticipation of the mansions of the Astors and Vanderbilts, infamous monuments of an era before income taxes. Newspaper columnists still reported the comings and goings of Society, and townspeople told the tourists the stories they wanted to hear, pointing out the Coogan house on Catherine Street, the site of a notorious 1910 party to which no one had come, now abandoned as a decaying, weed-infested mess in revenge, or the cottage at the head of Bellevue Avenue that functioned as a discreet though pricey pawnshop for those who lived beyond their means. A sharp-eyed observer strolling Ocean Walk might even catch an occasional glimpse of liveried servants, gilded woodwork, or the preparations for a masked ball.
But behind the stone walls and pruned hedges, Newport wasn't the same. For two decades, there had been an open season for new money, and as nearly always happens, new money drove out the old. The first fortunes in Newport, back in the eighteenth century, had been based on the three-cornered trade of slaves, molasses, and rum. But that was long forgotten, and a century and a half later, the remnants of Mrs. Astor's Four Hundred didn't lookkindly on the new arrivals who had made their fortunes as bootleggers and speakeasy keepers. The truly rich fled Newport for more exclusive summer venues like Fishers Island or Bar Harbor, Maine. Others, facing up to the realities of the income tax and the Crash, closed their Newport houses without finding substitutes. Early in the summer, Rosecliffe, the fabulous mansion the Oelrichs had built at a cost of millions, was purchased at auction by the actress Gertrude Niessen for twenty-one thousand dollars.
The Clambake Club and the Reading Room determinedly kept the same schedules as in the grand old days, but Blanche's infamous whorehouse was gone. Members of the Reading Room watched from their piazza as the trucks carted Blanche's away; when they recognized the faded wallpaper of the Peacock Room, where generations of well-dressed gentlemen had awaited their choice of ladies, they raised their glasses in tribute. The exclusive Gooseberry Island Club, whose fourteen gentlemen members had once retreated to Easton's Point for swims in the nude and catered luncheons with selected women guests, was also gone, a victim of the hurricane of 1938. Newport had changed too much to see it rebuilt. Even Bailey's Beach had been reorganized. The old stratifications of rank were now under such siege that in the newly rebuilt clubhouse they were enforced by formal classes of membership: eighty Class A members had outside cabanas, two-hundred Class B members got the less desirable inside cabanas, and the hoi polloi of hobereaux were restricted to use of the locker room.
For those who stuck it out in Newport, the newspaper headlines conspired against a decent season. France had fallen to the Panzer divisions, England was hanging on by a thread, ferocious battles waged across a thousand miles of North Africa and a two-thousand mile front in the Soviet Union. The outcome of the fighting was so obscure that the newspapers had adopted an all-purpose cynical expression, "as clear as the Russian front." If the U.S. hadn't actually mobilized, the President had already declared a State of Emergency, Hildegarde was singing "The Last Time I Saw Paris" at the Savoy Room in New York with unmistakable emotion, and the talk everywhere had shifted fromif to when the U.S. would enter the war in Europe. Even the weather was terrible. The summer was a relentless series of storms, punctuated by steamy, humid days that stretched tempers to the limit.
People were desperate for diversions. While the rest of the country wondered how long handsome young New York Yankee outfielder Joe DiMaggio's amazing streak of games with hits could go on, or how long the equally handsome Boston Red Sox outfielder Ted Williams could bat over .400, and a few who knew baseball marveled that the great southpaw pitcher Lefty Grove was closing in on his three hundredth victory, the men of Newport pondered the sorry state of the world from the cockpits of yachts in Brenton Cove, where paid hands polished the brasswork to a patina that new money could not buy. They talked of the glorious days of the America's Cup, when the fleet had gathered off Brenton Reef to witness the valiant challenges of Sir Thomas Lipton and T. O. M. Sopwith. The last races for the Cup had been in 1937, and with Britain still cleaning up the rubble left by the Messerschmidts and Heinkels, it looked like the Brits wouldn't be ready to mount another challenge for a long time. How long, the worthies of Newport asked one another, would the damned foolishness in Europe go on?
A stalwart few tried to ignore the signs. Floppy-brimmed hats, pleated skirts, spaghetti straps, and two-piece taffeta bathing suits were the rage in fashion that summer, and boxes were hard to come by for tennis matches at the Casino. Still, no one disputed the harrumphed verdict of Gladys Worthington, veteran of thirty-seven seasons, when she announced that she would no longer accept invitations to parties because they weren't fun anymore.


The third Sunday in July was a day to make Newport forget its woes. There hadn't been a better day for racing all summer. The air was clear and dry, more like autumn than midsummer. Cottony cumulus clouds scattered a chiaroscuro of shadows on the water and crisp northwesterly puffs scudded across the harbor, lifting hat brims and pleated skirts on the varnished spectator boats. Across the harbor the breeze snapped ensigns onthe gray lines of warships that stretched from Fort Adams up to the U.S. Navy Training Station and the Naval War College on Coaster's Island, and shook scales from the patched nets of the tired draggers and trawlers of the fishing fleet tied up two and three deep next to Long Wharf. In the middle of the harbor, a fleet of Monohulls, quick one-man sailboats, danced around the committee boat like moths around a light as the sailors waited for the start of the final race. It was a time for strong young men to show off their prowess to the young beauties on the spectator boats.
Along the edge of the spectator fleet, close by the starting line, Navy Lieutenant Russell Westcott III hiked back as he eased the mainsheet on his Monohull, using the long muscles of his legs and stomach to hold his body parallel to the water. He had anticipated the puff, spotting the dark patch on the water from the corner of his eye; his reactions on a boat were instinctive, as automatic as lifting a foot to take a step. Like most things he chose to do, sailing came easily to Russell Westcott III.
Russell was one of those souls blessed--some would say cursed--by an extraordinary beauty and grace. Even as a child, his hair was thick and blond, his pale blue eyes were set off by long lashes, and his precociously steady smile and gaze captivated visitors and relatives alike. But Russell was only one of many pretty children in Newport. He was adept at sports, when his aggressive competitiveness did not drive playmates away, but his childhood body and face were burdened with a layer of fat that left his face too round and full, and his jaw and neck too fleshy to be handsome. Not even his mother thought him extraordinary as a child.
It was with puberty, when the rapid changes in their bodies left other boys ungainly, that Russell was transformed. In a single summer at Newport, the baby fat seemed to melt away. He grew five inches that summer, and his features abruptly fell into place, as if they had been awaiting the wave of a magic wand. The blue of his eyes deepened, strong cheekbones and a finely lined jaw fought their way out from under the once puffy baby cheeks, and the steady smile, which some had found almost frightening in a child, became a beguiling grin.
His body too changed: the muscles of his back and shoulders and limbs emerged from under the disappearing layer of baby fat to leave him proportioned not as a temporarily mismatched adolescent, but like an athlete at the peak of his training. Those who hadn't seen Russell for even two months were shocked: the pudgy little boy was suddenly a young man of shocking grace and beauty, tall and golden, with skin so smooth and hair of such luxurious curls that he seemed a statue come alive.
Russell was himself unaware of the changes until one August morning when his mother, Sybil, came up to his room early to rattle off her plans for the week. He was standing in his undershorts when she barged through the doorway. A tiny gasp rose from her throat as her eyes traced the lines of his body. He stood as still as a statue, soaking up her gaze as if it were applause from a theater audience.
"We'll talk downstairs," she said. "When you're dressed."
It took Russell a long time to come downstairs. For close to an hour, he studied himself in the full-length mirror he had never used before.
"Try not to strut so," his mother said when he came into the breakfast room. "You're not the only stallion in the stable."
Three days later, a divorced friend of his mother named Caroline Fiske, who fancied herself an artist and for years had tried to organize a salon with Sybil Westcott, asked Russell to pose for some sketches at Bailey's Beach. Caroline had rakishly short black hair, long fingers that were always grazing arms and shoulders, and lips that got bigger and wetter as she spoke. After half an hour of sketching, she said the afternoon light wasn't right and took Russell to her studio in a house near the head of Bellevue Avenue. It took little persuasion to get Russell to pose in the nude under a skylight. He had been admiring his own body for days and welcomed another admirer. Caroline needed no persuasion to take her own clothes off. By the end of the afternoon, Russell's childhood was over.


The spectator fleet that Saturday was bigger than usual, not just the regulars from the Yacht Club, but the blazer set from Bellevue Avenue, the respected souls who knew, as if from hormonalsignals passed down in the blue blood, when one ought to be at the races, just as they knew when to go to the Casino or Bailey's Beach or the Clambake Club. Monohulls, athletic one-man boats that were raced in the Olympics, weren't usually included in the races the Ida Lewis Yacht Club ran on Sundays and Wednesday afternoons. The anticipation of handsome young athletes had drawn a crowd that would have passed up the usual races of sedate Herreschoft 15s.
As he waited for the start sequence, Russell tacked and jibed back and forth around the anchored boats, nodding when he saw familiar faces. Even the mysterious Mr. Raymond was there, on an anonymous but perfectly respectable launch, dressed impeccably, as usual, in stiffly creased white trousers, a jaunty blue cap, and a fine wool blazer with an innocuous crest on the pocket. It was hard to peg Mr. Raymond. He was an outsider, but always correct: somewhere he had learned how to dress and how to behave, even the subtle rules of where to position himself in the spectator fleet, close enough to the starting line to see the races and to be seen, but not so close that it would offend the Yacht Club regulars with their rigid notions of protocol.
As Russell sailed under the transom of a straight stemmed cruiser with a covered cockpit, he heard his name called out.
"Russell!" It was a woman's voice, young and crystalline. "Russell!"
Over his shoulder he could see hanging plants in the cockpit of the cruiser, above a wicker table holding a sterling champagne bucket. At the stern rail, a portly figure in Navy dress whites was engaged in an impromptu lecture to a semicircle of Newport worthies.
"The situation is potentially serious," the voice pontificated. "The Japanese are a bellicose race, in cultural isolation from Western Civilization as we know it ... ."
Behind the dress whites, Russell saw a streak of gossamer scarf float in the breeze. He jibed around, coming alongside the boat as another puff scudded across the harbor. The woman at the rail reached up with a gloved hand for her floppy-brimmed hat. Her other hand halfheartedly batted down her skirt. The effortwas casual enough to reveal long, shapely legs, the ankles thin, the thighs milky white. Inviting was the word that came to Russell's mind as he waited to see the face shaded beneath the hat.
The lecture in the stern went on, oblivious to the flutter of Russell's sail. "Make no mistake. The Japanese are virile and determined, circumscribed by their insular existence, poor in resources. The limitations of their markets and vital supplies may force them into a war, which ultimately ... ." The phrases were naggingly familiar. It took only one more sentence for Russell to recognize the voice of Captain Horatio Breedlove, Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College.
The woman, Russell concluded, had to be Breedlove's daughter Nicole. In his office in Mahan Hall, Breedlove had said Nicole was only seventeen. The emphasis had been on "only," as if she were obviously too young to have anything to do with the randy officers in the junior course at the college. Fathers in Newport had a healthy respect for the effect that handsome Navy officers in dress whites had on nubile young ladies. Russell, with his lean body and easy smile, the effortless charm that came from growing up with money and privilege, rarely needed the extra advantage of the uniform.
One of the worthies on the yacht, with the straw hat and cheeky jowls of an ex-commodore of the Yacht Club, glanced over at Russell. "Well, Westcott! You going to win this regatta or not? That Portagee looks good." The words came out in a blustery gargle. About two hours of steady drinking, Russell guessed.
Without waiting for an answer, the ex-commodore turned back to Breedlove. "Good God, Breedlove! You don't really think That Fellow Down in Washington is fool enough to get us into another war? Bad enough a socialist in the White House; hate to think he's a madman too. We haven't had a challenge for the Cup since '37. At this rate, it'll be ten years before the Brits get another effort mounted!"
"The President may have no choice. The geo-economic constraints on the Japanese ..."
Russell had already turned back to the milky thighs of Nicole Breedlove.
Seventeen? She was a ripe seventeen-year-old. Her thin sweater was a size or two too small--the rage that summer, along with uplift bras made out of thin fabric that revealed the outlines of nipples--and she held her shoulders back, thrusting her impertinent breasts out in a taunt. When she knew she had Russell's eye, she flashed a wide, toothy smile, rolling the tip of her tongue around the corner of her mouth. The gesture, from some movie with Humphrey Bogart, had swept Newport. Nicole Breedlove had it down perfectly.
A cannon fired on the committee boat, signaling the beginning of the start sequence for the third and final race. Russell broke off the flirtation with a quick grin, an open-ended invitation for after the race. Glancing back as he bore away for the start line, he could trace the shape of Nicole Breedlove's thighs through the clinging fabric of her skirt. Women like that, he thought, made up for the inanities of a billet at the Naval War College.


There were fourteen boats in the racing fleet, and only one that Russell worried about: the sailor that the old commodore had called the Portagee. Russell had beaten most of the Sunday Monohull fleet regularly throughout the season. And he had done it his way. The conventional wisdom said the way to win a series was to sail consistently, to place well week after week without taking chances. But conservative tactics weren't Russell Westcott's style. He sailed aggressively in every race, risking gambles that could have left him in a windless hole or on the wrong side of the course when the wind shifted. To the astonishment of experienced observers, he had gotten enough firsts to outweigh the times when he took a flyer and tanked.
The Portagee was on a new boat, not from the club, but launched off the beach just before the race. There had been guffaws from the spectator fleet when an old Ford pickup truck backed down to the beach below the Ida Lewis Yacht Club, and laughter mixed with cheers when the boat slid off the rack on the back of the truck into the water with an enormous splash. The Portagee climbed aboard in the water, wearing a pair of cutoff dungarees and an undershirt instead of the white shortsand polo shirts that were a uniform for the other sailors. He rigged the boat himself, and sailed over to the starting area.
The laughter stopped when the newcomer came in a close second to Russell in the first race. The spectators and the other sailors took a good look then at the new boat, a beautifully finished hull, with coat after coat of hand-rubbed varnish that stood out from the plain vanilla paint of the other Monohulls. Those who had laughed loudest when the boat was launched began covering their bets.
Russell had watched the other boat during the race. Sometimes luck could put a boat into a surprise finish. Being on the right side of a windshift, even if it was an accident, could leapfrog a boat from the bottom of the pack to first place. But the success of the varnished boat was no fluke: the Portagee had good speed and solid tactics, and sailed in a tricky breeze with the decisive self-confidence that separates the winners from the losers in any sport.
Russell asked around in the interval after the race and found out that the Portagee was named Jake Werth. Supposedly, he had built the boat himself. Some said they had seen him in Newport before, crewing on big racing boats. Werth was shorter than Russell, and stocky, with thick, dark hair that stood up like a brush, and the tough, creased hands of a workman. His thighs and biceps looked powerful, not the lean muscles of a college athlete, but the knotted muscles of a laborer. The few spectators sober enough to follow the races had nicknamed him the Portagee because of his tanned arms and face, and his one shrieking fan on an old Portuguese fishing boat on the east side of the harbor. But up close he didn't really look Portuguese. And when he answered a playful taunt of Russell's as they jockeyed before the start, Werth's accent sounded more like an Ivy League undergraduate than a workman.
When the gun went off for the second race, Russell was just able to slap a close cover on the varnished boat, doggedly staying between the Portagee and the next mark. During the first two legs of the race, the boats were never more than a boatlength apart, so close that by peeking under his sail, Russell could check whether the other sailor was rattled by the aggressive sailing.
They rounded the third mark that same boatlength apart. The last leg was to windward, and Russell was sure that the Portagee would initiate a tacking duel, flipping from one tack to the other in the hope that he could break out of the close cover. There was no other way the Portagee could win.
Russell was also sure he could outtack anyone in a Monohull. He had been on his way to the Olympics in 1940, until the war in Europe canceled the games; during the brief training period, he so outdistanced the competition that the coaches agreed that he was headed for a medal.
"May the best man win," Russell shouted as he sheeted in for the windward leg.
Werth smiled back, and Russell thought, or hoped, he detected a trace of resentment, maybe anger, in the quick grin.
As soon as they were around the mark, Werth tacked. Russell tacked to cover, keeping himself between Werth and the finish, and Werth tacked back. When Russell covered that one, Werth held for a minute, tacked, and as soon as Russell followed him, flipped back onto his original tack. In five minutes, they had tacked five times. There was enough breeze to make the tacks hard work. Russell could feel his chest heaving. In the next five minutes, Werth threw four more tacks. This wasn't an ordinary tacking duel.
Tacking slows a boat. The two of them should have seen the rest of the fleet catch up. But they were so quick in their moves, so efficient in the way they used the weight of their bodies to roll the boats into each tack instead of flinging the rudder over, that they were able to maintain their lead over the rest of the fleet. Russell stopped counting at ten tacks. He was concentrating so intensely that he hardly noticed the ache in his legs and stomach, or the pounding in his chest. He was sailing on pure adrenaline.
The duel went on for more than twenty tacks, until the finish line, with the cluster of waiting spectator boats, loomed ahead of them. Werth and Russell were still separated by the same boatlength that divided them at the last mark. When it was obvious that he wouldn't break through, Werth broke off the duel and began to concentrate on speed. In quick glimpses underhis sail, Russell saw the other sailor tweak lines and ooch his weight forward and aft on the gunwale to fine-tune the boat. It hardly mattered. With the boats that close to the finish, Russell knew he was safe. Werth could never squeeze by. At best he might close the margin between the boats. He was beaten.
"Tired?" Russell shouted. The finish line was less than one hundred yards away.
Werth's answer was another tack, done quickly, without a hint of preparation. Russell instinctively tacked to cover, wondering why Werth would risk looking foolish with a desperate and futile gesture at the finish. When he peeked under his sail, expecting to see the other boat safely below him, he realized that Werth hadn't tacked. He had only gone head-to-wind, faking the tack. Russell swung his head around to see Werth still on the original tack, borne off slightly for speed, and heading for the finish. Russell watched, helpless, as Werth broke out of his windshadow into clear air, squirted ahead, and crossed the finish line.
The silence was punctuated only by scattered groans from those who had lost bets. Then a cheer came across the harbor, a throaty, indecipherable shout from a rusty fishing boat tied up on the seawall. By the time Russell tacked back and crossed the line, two full seconds behind Werth, men and women on the spectator boats were laughing, their fingers pointing to the tired fishing boat in the distance, a most unlikely gallery for a yacht race in Newport harbor.
Russell's father was waiting at one end of the finish line in a mahagony runabout. Wes's white flannels and sweater were immaculate. As usual, there was an attractive young woman with him in the cockpit, and an open bottle of champagne in a gimbaled silver bucket on the bulkhead. "Beaten by the Portagee, Russell?" he said. He didn't shout. Russell Westcott, Jr., never shouted. He expected people to listen to him, and to hear what he said.
"He's fast," Russell answered. He was still breathless from the exhausting tacking duel. For a moment he let himself forget that his father rarely expected an answer to anything he said.
"He's not that fast, Russell. He's hungry, and willing to workfor what he wants. That's why he won." Having finished with his son, Russell Westcott, Jr., turned to his attractive companion, speaking loudly enough for his son to hear. "I suppose it's not a bad idea to let outsiders sail in our regattas. Keeps our boys on their toes. Young Russell needs something to focus his energies."
Young Russell. The girl in the cockpit might have been his age. Might. Russell's fingernails dug into his palms as he chalked up one more reason he had to win the final race.


When the boats began their jockeying for the third start, Russell watched Werth up at the weather end of the line. The varnished boat was head to wind, testing the breeze for a last-minute windshift. Werth had done it twice before, at one-minute intervals. It was the right thing to be doing.
The Olympic coaches had told Russell that he was going to have to sail smart if he wanted to win, that in competition at the international level it wasn't enough to be strong and fast. Every day in practice they had given him a checklist of preparations for the starts: check the wind, calculate oscillations, trace shift patterns, test the current, analyze the competition. Maybe they were right, he told himself, but he couldn't bring himself to sail that carefully, to make an intellectual exercise out of sailboat racing. He liked to win by sheer force, by sailing faster, taking more chances, overpowering the other boats. It was like winning a fleet exercise with a frontal attack instead of skirmishing.
Russell had been watching Werth so intently that the final gun of the starting sequence caught him by surprise, a full boatlength shy of the starting line. Werth, closer to the wind, approached the line fast, driving over two other boats so that he was right on the starting line and moving fast at the gun. In seconds, Werth was in a controlling position, ahead and to windward of Russell, close enough to keep Russell from tacking. It was like a rerun of the last race, this time with Werth in the lead.
They sailed parallel to one another for two minutes, until the breeze shifted to the west, one of those dramatic shifts that come in a northwesterly, and that can throw a race to the wary. Werth tacked on the headed breeze, as if he had expected it.Russell followed, and the two boats split from the rest of the fleet to sail toward the east side of the harbor. Russell was half a boatlength behind and a boatlength to leeward of Werth.
Russell debated whether to try breaking through. A tacking duel this early in the race might let someone else in the fleet steal the lead. The smart move was to stay with Werth and wait until the last leg. But being behind nagged.
He tried a quick tack, then peeked under his sail to see if Werth followed. The varnished boat sailed on, with no more than a glance back.
Why didn't he cover me? Russell thought. Is he letting me get away? Russell sailed for two long minutes, concentrating on his speed, before he looked under the sail again.
Werth was still heading toward the east shore of the harbor.
Russell remembered how careful Werth had been at the start. There must be a reason he's holding that tack, Russell thought, as he tacked back to follow the varnished boat. In the shifted breeze, he was farther behind than he had been before he tacked away. I let him rile me, he thought.
As they approached the row of draggers tied up on the east shore of the harbor, just off Long Wharf, Russell heard a shout from one of the rusty tubs, the same throaty voice he had heard when Jake finished ahead in the last race. "You've got him, Jake. He'll never break through."
Russell looked over and saw a figure in dungarees and a blue workshirt, standing under the patched nets at the stern of a boat. Whoever it was knew more about yacht racing than two-thirds of the spectators on the Yacht Club fleet.
"He's in your pocket, Jake. Stuff him!"
The second taunt was enough. Russell tried a pair of quick tacks, hoping to break the close cover. Werth matched each tack, flipping his boat as quickly as Russell. Werth was safely ahead on port tack and safely to windward on starboard. Each tack earned him a cheer from the fishing boat.
"Who's your fan club?" Russell shouted.
Werth glanced over his shoulder at Russell. His smile was easy. The trace of hostility Russell had detected earlier was gone. Werth's concentration was unbroken.
As they sailed on toward the row of draggers, each sailor tried little tricks to eke more speed from the matched boats, trimming lines, bearing off for speed, or hardening up by fractions of a degree in patches of flat water to point closer to the wind. At times one boat would squeeze a few inches, perhaps feet, ahead; within minutes, the other boat would catch up. Russell could see the rest of the fleet far in the distance, on the other side of the course. One big windshift and he and Werth would be tied for last place. But all that mattered now was beating Jake Werth.
And that wasn't looking easy. Russell had squeezed up to leeward of Werth until he was so close he couldn't tack without hitting Werth's boat. If he fell off to give himself room to clear the stern of Werth's boat, he would just be farther behind. Russell had no choice but to sail on, tucked under the other boat, controlled, hoping that if he held off until the last moment, when they were right under the sterns of the draggers, Werth might sail in far enough to lose his wind in the shadow of the hulls of the fishing boats.
From the distance, he could hear frail shouts from the spectator fleet in Brenton Cove. The voices were too faint to make out with the wind ahead of him. His own fans probably, like Nicole Breedlove and the other splendid women in their peekaboo hats and pointed bras. Russell loved the attention, the shouts, the waves, the grand gestures of the old yachting salts who bowed and tipped their hats to a winner. Most of the women rarely understood what was happening on the course, and a good number of the men were so into their cups that they paid little attention to the race until the boats converged on the finish line. Still, they cheered.
Up ahead of him, the shouts from Werth's fan on the rusty dragger, one voice strong but upwind, were clear and loud, the voice hoarse from shouting:
"Go for it, Jake! Sit on him! Give him a dose of dirty air!"
It felt like a conspiracy. Russell was losing his concentration as he fumed over being beaten by the newcomer, the humiliation compounde