I decide to text Caleb about it:
I know you can see where I am, and I have to tell you, the view from my Uber is SAD. No cathedrals. Palaces. Monuments. But lots of car showrooms. Haven’t seen one for Collings Motors, though. You should get people on that.
I hit send. I’ve been chatting with Caleb on and off since I landed. He had meetings and testing on the simulators at the Collings Motors World Headquarters today, so our interactions have been sporadic. But I can’t explain the happiness I feel knowing Caleb and I are in the same place.
Buzz!
To my surprise, he’s texted me back right away:
Sounds like you need a tour of London. How about I give you one?
My fingers fly across the keyboard as another car showroom passes by.
How would you do that? You’re kind of recognizable.
Caleb Collings is typing …
I have my ways. I’ll even make it a dinner tour. Can you be ready by 7?
OH YES I CAN.
I tell him yes and give him the address but wonder how Caleb is going to pull this off. I guess I’ll find out tonight.
Before long, the Uber pulls up in front of my new home, and I gaze up at the modern building. The driver pops out of the car and unloads my two large suitcases from the trunk, and I drag both of them up to the entrance. It takes some time to get everything sorted out, filling out paperwork, scanning my passport, getting a key card for my apartment—or ratherflat, as they say here.
“Welcome to your new home,” the woman at the concierge desk says cheerfully as she hands me a packet of information about the building. “Please don’t hesitate to call us if you need anything.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling at her.
Then I make my way to the elevator bank, press the up button, and as soon as the doors open, I step inside. I think ofwhat is to come this week. F1 is off, but I do have a meeting on Thursday at The Downforce Network to go over the shooting schedule forOutside the Cockpitand some other assignments I’ll get for Montreal. I get a buzzy feeling as I think about all the work that is coming my way. I love that I get to do educational and fun assignments. I never wanted to be that reporter in the press conference asking a driver to explain what went wrong in the pits or if their strategy aligned with their race engineer or team principal. I don’t have to pressure them to go into detail about the mistake they made or how their car ended up taking out another one, and have a driver answer in frustration or barely at all, like Caleb does.
That is not the type of reporting I’d be good at.
But this? Having fun with drivers? Getting them to show a little bit of themselves in an unserious way?
This is the dream job for me.
Ding!The elevator chimes on the eighth floor and I step off. I follow the corridor down until I reach 819, my new home for the season.
“Here we are,” I whisper to myself. I touch the key card to the lock. The green light appears, and the door clicks open. I enter the flat and hold my breath. The curtains are drawn, so the space is plunged into darkness. I find a light switch on the wall and turn it on.
Oh my.
I knew it was a studio apartment, but this is tiny.
I leave my suitcases and step inside the one-room space. The kitchen is to my right, basically a one counter row that has an oven, range, dishwasher, and sink. The fridge is off to the side, and I open the door to a closet next to it.
What is this? There’s a washer, but no dryer.
WHAT?
I lean in closer and read the label on the machine. Oh. It’s a washer and dryer. That’s super weird. And totally cuts down on how much laundry I can do at a time. Can’t say I’m in love with that, but it is what it is.
The decor is similar to what you’d find in an office building. Lots of gray and minimalistic. There’s a tiny, dark wooden kitchen table with two chairs. I step into the living room, which has a white sofa against one wall, a square, black wooden coffee table, and a large, modern art print above them that has splashes of orange in it. An orange fabric chair is set next to the window, reminding me very much of an office guest chair.
I move to the curtains and pull them open. Sunlight streams through, and I’m reminded that no, it is not midnight, but late afternoon instead. I turn to the wall opposite the sofa, which has a flat-screen TV hanging on it.
Well, it’s kind of a wall. It’s a half wall. It serves as a room divider between the living area and my bedroom. I walk across the hardwood floor to this section, which has a bed on a black wood platform, with a few orange throw cushions. On the sole nightstand, there’s an orange vase. I open the closet doors, finding wooden hangers.