I arrive at the house of my next client. I slap myself in the face to psych myself up
“c’mon you can do this!! This will be just like any of the other ones you have done before”.
My name is Jonah Speros, I work as a…well I guess there is no real title to what I do, but basically I write autobiographies for famous people or just try to document them so the fans have something more to remember them by and can hopefully get closer to them. I have done this for numerous other famous people in the past and I rarely get nervous, but today is different. In this world, nearly everything revolves around cars or will include an aspect of cars in it, and drivers are at the peak of it all. If you are somehow able to get your way into being a racing driver, well ...lets just say you aint ever gonna be hungry. The guy i'm meeting today is a racing driver, but he's not just “some famous driver”. He's THE driver, top of the food chain, no one even comes close to being on the same level as him. To be honest with you I don't even know how I scored this, there are plenty of other people that would do a better job of this than be. I glance over at the front door of the house. I take a deep breath.
“Ok let's do this”
I grab my briefcase on the seat next to me and get out of my car. I turn around and take one last look at my car and make sure its locked before I walk up to the front door.
I start walking through the front yard, it’s nicely decorated with some small rock formations and tiles to walk on up to the door of the house.
I finally get to the front door and take one last deep breath and press the doorbell. I try to stay calm and not let my nerves get the best of me.
Finally after what seemed like forever I hear the door knob start turning and it opens. A beautiful woman opens the door and looks at me with an expressionless face.
“Are you Jonah ” she says.
“Y-yes that's me, Jonah Speros” I reply.
“Good, we have been waiting for you” she opens the door. “come in, I will lead you to him”.
I walk through the front door, the woman closes the door behind me. I gulp and think, there's no turning back now. The woman starts walking down the hallway
“follow me”. I follow her.
We walk through the whole house to the back and head through a door that leads to the back yard. We head down a little further to an old looking shed. We stop out the front.
“He’s in here” she says.
She opens the door and it makes a squeaking sound as it’s opened.
I step through the door and its closed behind me once I make it inside. I try to see what's around, my eyes need to adjust because the shed is dimly lit. My eyes finally adjust and I get a better look. It’s an old shed made of tin and wood. Smells of oil, fuel and a mixture of other car related things. I look to my left. I gasp. “It’s the car” I think to myself. I see the dark purple paint glimmer against the low light.
I walk past the car and start hearing a tinking sound, like metal parts being hit together. Then I see a figure sat at a workbench moving his hands around.
“So your him” says an old husky voice.
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“Y-yes i'm Jonah Speros sir” I reply.
“Your the one that’s gonna make my life story into some book or movie, what qualifies you to do such a thing”.
“Well I have done it for a lot of other people, to name some of them, I did one for Toi-”.
He lets out a laugh and turns around in his chair.
“I'm just kidding son, if my daughter approved of you then you must be good”.
I stare at him for a second. His shirt is covered in grease and so are his hands. He's got some marks on his face as well. He gets up out of his chair and walks over to me.
“So what do you want to know ?, i'm sure you didn't come out here just to stare at an old man”.
“Oh umm sorry sir I wa-”.
“And drop the sir part, it makes me uncomfortable, just call me Stevie”.
“Yes sorry stevie”.
He walks past me and starts walking to his car.
“I'm guessing you want to know about this old girl huh”
He walks up the side of the car and brushed his hand along it while staring.
“Yes sir- I mean stevie”.
“I'm sure you already know a lot about this girl, she's been everywhere with me and raced on almost every track on the planet. From what I have been told she's one of the most recognisable things on this earth”
He pauses.
“We have been through alot together, she's been with me ever since I can remember. I built her from the ground up and repaired her many times because god knows I haven't treated her the best”
He lets out a small chuckle and walks to the back of the car.
He looks above me and says “look up there”.
I look over and see a whole bunch of pictures of the car crashed, battered and being repaired.
“I keep those up there to help me remember the hard times and to make me remember that racing isn't always as glamorous as it is chopped up to be. They are also there to make me remember that I wasn't alone and that I had people helping me. I never want to forget those people”.
I look back at stevie and then I look past him and see another car partially covered with just a little bit of the front headlight exposed.
“Whose car is that? Im sure its special if it's in here”.
He freezes and displays emotions of sadness and pain.
“This was…my wife's car”
He pulls the sheet off the car to expose it. It’s a white metallic colour that sparkles in the light.
“Oh your wife's car, where is she now ?” I ask.
He walks up the side of the car
“Shes-”
I see a tear in the corner of his eye.
“She's watching over me, keeping me safe. One day soon I hope to see her again.”
“Oh im sorry, that was insensitive of me”.
He picks up the sheet and starts putting it over the car.
“No it’s fine, a lot of people seem to forget about it, they only want to know about the racing and not about be. But I like it that way, makes it easier to keep my private life out of the news. But at the same time it tells me how much people actually care.”
He starts slowly walking back to his work bench and looks around him.
“Almost everything I care about is in this shed. The fame, the money, the glitz and glamour, doesn't mean anything to me, it never did. I have 2 kids, one of them you have already met and the other one is out somewhere in the world making me proud and beating everyone on the tracks”.
He gets to his chair and sits down. His face turns serious as he looks me straight in the eye.
“I was never one to make appearances on TV, movies, radio or any of them so not many people know me and my life”.
He pauses for a second.
“I might as well be up front with you as to why im doing this all of a sudden. The truth is that all these years of racing, crashing, fumes and various other things haven't done me good and now im dying”.
I get wide eyed as I realise the weight of what he's saying and what im doing.
“The doc said I had 3 months left, and that was 2 months ago. I am feeling my body shut down and I can't do many things anymore. Me doing this life documenting thing or whatever you call it is one last thing I wanted to do for everyone to remember me by. So people will be able to get a deeper look into my life before the fame and stardom and what it was like once it hit”.
I look at him in shock and don't know what to say.
He laughs and says
“C’mon son, I ain't dead yet”.
Then his face goes back to being serious.
“So after all that's been said, I have a month to live and a whole lot of stories to tell. My story is long and won't be easy to summarize in a few short pages, I hope you know that”.
I nod and say.
“I understand”.
“Good”
he says. He leans forward in his chair and says
“so my final question to you is, are you prepared to stick around and hear my stories ? Because I promise you, it will be worth it”.