hover half-way down a staircase, fixated by the middle distance and gripping the banister with both hands?
I hate stairs. Please emphasize the ‘eeste’ – journaliste sounds far more delicious, much more prestigious than the English pronunciation.
All right, Cat McCabe, journaliste, walk on down the stairs and do your thing.
See her taking the stairs slowly, trying to absorb everything that is going on around her without looking quite the goggle-eyed devotee that she in fact feels?
I hate stares. Someone down there is looking at me. Keep walking. Oh Jesus! It’s Luca Jones! I’m going to have to stop again. That’s the medical check. Shit shit – what should I do? What am I allowed to do? What do journalists-istes do? Dictaphone? Yes, of course I have it with me. Ditto notepad. I have everything a journalist on the Tour de France could possibly need. But what I have most in abundance is nerves.
Establish eye contact with Luca, Cat. Why don’t you give him a smile? You needn’t say anything, but a smile today might mean recognition tomorrow, perhaps another smile the following day and huge familiarity thereafter.
I know. I know. I’m metaphorically kicking myself already for being so stupidly shy. But I have over three weeks. I won’t go home till Luca and I are on first-name terms.
We’ll hold you to that.
Don’t. Oh! It’s Hunter Dean! Dark, handsome and utterly Hollywood.
Hunter appears from his medical and beams at the loitering media consisting of six or seven tall men. Hunter really is the personification of his mission statement. Tipping his sunglasses up on to his head, courteously, he permits the clutch of journalists to surround him and systematically attends to all questions and answers them well, with considered replies and great charm.
Fuck fuck!
Cat is in a quandary. She has reached the bottom of the staircase and is so overcome by her proximity to her heroes that she feels much more like running from the building and hyperventilating somewhere in private, than in doing her job extracting soundbites.
What should I do?
They won’t bite.
Shall I just breeze up to the group and stick my dictaphone under Hunter’s mouth?
She ventures over and does just that. It’s the kind of thing a journalist does, Cat deduces from the bouquet of hand-held recording equipment already thrust at Hunter’s lips. She stares unflinchingly at the Megapac logo on the breast of Hunter’s tracksuit top. Hunter speaks, his voice pulls Cat’s gaze to his face while her dictaphone scrounges for soundbites with the best and rest of them.
Hunter’s lips. God, he has a beautiful neck.
Six male journalists stare at Cat who is incapable of controlling a creeping blush.
Oh shit, I didn’t just say that out loud, did I?
Cat nods earnestly at whatever it is that Hunter is saying. She praises gods of all creeds for the invention of the dictaphone because whatever he is saying, that the current thrill of it all prevents her from hearing, she can listen to later anyway. She focuses hard on the bridge of Hunter’s nose, to discipline her desperate-to-flit gaze.
‘Initially, Megapac may be an unknown quantity in terms of the Tour de France,’ Hunter is expounding, ‘but we’ll be the team on the tip of y’all’s tongues by the end – that I can assure you. You can quote me on that. We’re the best thing to happen in American cycle sport since Greg LeMond and Lance Armstrong.’
‘Bonne chance!’ Cat surprises herself by responding unchecked, anticipating that Hunter might very well start to sing the Star Spangled Banner or quote the Constitution.
‘Hey, yeah, right!’ Hunter responds.
With a wink! Did you see that? A wink! I’ve died and gone to heaven. Does a wink come out on a dictaphone?
‘Cute,’ Luca nudges Ben, out of Cat’s earshot. Ben gives Luca an exasperated look that prevents him having to agree and thereby present himself as a contender. Fortuitously, Luca is called through for his medical and Ben can regard the lone female with a certain private pleasure while Luca creates a diversion. He sees her redden as she focuses on Luca.
Bastard boy racer, he frowns to himself, but why on earth wouldn’t she blush? There’d be something wrong with her if she didn’t. And, anyway, it’s proof to me that she’s a healthy, sexual person. And that’s good.
A couple of journalists call greetings to which Luca replies with the victory sign before disappearing into the open arms of the Tour’s medical team.
I should have called out something, Cat reprimands herself. Wouldn’t my voice have stood out, made him stop and perhaps notice me?
Cat looks a little forlornly at the space on the bench Luca has left. Her gaze shifts to the right and clocks a nice pair of Timberland boots, good legs clad in black jeans, a white shirt. Her eyes travel automatically upwards, over a strong neck, ditto chin, to a pair of just parted lips. She finally alights on very dark brown eyes which won’t let her go. She notes a handsome face enhanced by a wry smile, crowned by dark hair cut flatteringly close to the head and quite strikingly flecked through with grey. Momentarily, Cat wonders who he might be. But she knows he’s not a rider so her interest wanes.
Anyway, I have to go. I have to find the salle de presse. I’m working. It’s my job.
Ben watches her leave, rather gratified by the fact that he’ll see her again over the next three weeks.
Thursday. Salle de presse. 1 p.m.
Starving hungry, Cat’s appetite disappeared on entering the press room. Dread instead filled her stomach until fear was a hard lump in her throat and panic was a terrible taste to the tongue. She felt immediately that she had been transported back to Durham University, that she had just entered a vast exam hall and was ten minutes away from the start of her finals. The comparison was apposite but, as in an anxiety dream, disconcertingly twisted too. Noise. Too much of it. You can’t sit the test of your life amidst such a din. There again, you wouldn’t really sit your finals in northern France, in an ice rink requisitioned by the Société du Tour de France.
What had happened to the ice was initially of little relevance for Cat. Rather, she was transfixed by line upon line of connected trestle tables on which, at regular intervals, an army of laptops were positioned, gaping like hungry mouths eager to gobble down the information in any language as long as the topic was cycling. At the front and to either side, a brigade of industrial-sized televisions was mounted on tall stands, surrounding the journalists and perusing the scene like phantasmagorical invigilators.
If I’m not at Durham University, then I’m in a George Orwell novel or a Terry Gilliam film. Am I really at the Tour de France? It’s all so vast – anonymous, even. What on earth am I meant to do now? Where should I sit? This is my workplace for the next three days, how am I ever going to be able to concentrate?
Cat felt much sicker and far less steady on her feet than she had for any exam, or even on the ferry. But she
