Sandro was telling Burdmoore, who was up front, about my motorcycle crash on the salt flats, and how I’d ended up driving the land speed vehicle that his family sponsored, and I sensed he was framing the story as far-fetched, outlandish, but I could have been projecting, since there was a divide between us on the subject. Burdmoore turned around and looked at me with a certain amusement, not unsexual, but not lustful, either. The facts of the story made him a little curious, that was all. A funny thing about women and machines: the combination made men curious. They seemed to think it had something to do with them. This should have been amusing to me, the expression on Burdmoore’s face as Sandro recounted the story. But I was focused on Ronnie and Talia, on the way he was making her laugh. Taxi-dino, innuendo. Pointing out a green-and-yellow Blimpie’s sign, “There! One of ours!” Her laughter penetrating his fake sincerity like carbonation.