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It takes him months to open the box, knowing what was inside. Viviane had been kind enough to call in advance, knowing the object would be disturbing to find, still she’s the one who sent it. They’ve gotten close over the past few months, he’s helping her set up the foundation and it’s good to feel useful, it’s good to keep busy, everybody keeps saying so. It’s also a space where he can be as devastated as he is. In truth he never expected to be stricken by such grief, but it’s comforting to be surrounded by people who miss Senna, even if he himself feels self-conscious of his “right” to miss him so.
Still the box remained sealed for months.
But, there’s one cold night after the holidays have passed and the new year approaches, like unsalvageable cliff, that he has to face. He has to see it, him. Because the truth is, this piece of metal is almost a body, a skull, a precious piece of the man who eluded him.
So, he sits on his studio on a late afternoon, when his kids have gone to their mother’s house; the chilling wind of winter gnaws at the grey sky, and the tint of blue seeps into every corner as nighttime approaches. The box is massive and simply opening it is a feat, but it’s the unwrapping of it that takes him the longest, he is so gentle, it feels like unbandaging a wound that hasn’t healed, a broken bone that will never truly mend, the fracture of everything left unspoken. When he finally frees the yellow and green helmet from the plastic, he stares at it for only a moment before he is cradling it to his chest and weeping despite himself.
That night Alain Prost sleeps with his greatest rival’s helmet by his side, hugged against his ribs, sobbing so quietly even ghosts wouldn’t hear.
***
He doesn’t touch it again. By sunrise he clears a space on his central bookcase and gently places it there. Despite his aversion to keeping memorabilia in general, he doesn’t like leaving the helmet alone, on the back of his mind he can’t help but think that it will be lonely. The first thing he gets is a picture of them both, 1993 in Adelaide, the podium where they became friends, friendly, close again, but that sits wrong, it’s just the ending of the story, so he gets another one from 1988, the McLaren garage, better.
Soon he finds old photos of Didi and Gilles, and Elio.
Viviane sends a beautiful one from Ayrton’s carting days that he immediately frames.
Then he laminates a photo with their signatures.
Anne Marie calls it a shrine.
“That’s not what it is.”
He takes some of it down that day, but puts it back up hours later. Alain is tempted to light a candle but shakes that notion.
***
On his next trip to Brazil, he tries to visit the grave, but the cemetery is so crowded that he turns the car back, mildly terrified of what Senna’s fans will think about him, even after the funeral.
Viviane takes him on a special afternoon, just for the family, he places flowers and a letter, but he doesn’t weep there. It’s harder to talk to a tomb than to the helmet, but little Bruno asks to hear stories about his uncle and so they stay a long while.
“What do you want to hear? When he beat me or when I beat him?”
“Uncle Beco always won against you Mr. Prost!”
“Not always, that’s what he liked about me.”
Viviane comes sit by them.
“That’s not the only thing Alain”
***
Months pass by, one day he notices a film of dust clinging to the paint and feels horribly guilty. Senna was a dutifully tidy man. He gets a special cleaning liquid advertised on tv as the gentlest and best on the market. He clears an entire afternoon from meetings and polishes the helmet. It’s difficult because he keeps staining it with his own stubborn tears. He’d thought he was done crying. Eventually he cleans the entire room. By nightfall his knees and elbows are sore and his hair clings to his neck with sweat, but he feels content, he’s fulfilled a meaningful task.
He crashes on the couch for the night. Even though his studio lacks heating he sleeps soundly and enveloped in a delicious warmth. The dreams he has are vague but comforting, soft.
***
The first time he talks to him it’s been over two years.
1996
Alain doesn’t mean to. He’s just been on the phone after a 4hour long conference with Ligier and Peugeot and his agent and many more people, too many voices and opinions. There’s a dull ache behind his eyes and his throat is dry, raspy with arguments he didn’t manage to land.
“Putain!”
He curses as he finally hangs up. Everything is starting wrong, but he wants this doesn’t he? Alain paces around the room, tugging at his hair, now too short for it to be satisfying. He stops himself when he realizes he’s biting his nails, he promised himself he’d stop that nervous tick.
“What would you do eh?” He asks loudly, for a second, he doesn’t really know who he is talking to, then he realizes, it’s the helmet, it’s Senna. The knowledge doesn’t unnerve him, if anything it calms something deep within him, the overwhelming sensation of loneliness soothed.
“What am I supposed to do?”
He grabs his chair and pushes it all the way towards the book case and stares at the helmet/Senna with a faintly begging smile. What he’d give to have a reply.
“This feels wrong already”
He stays there for a long time, looking at the shine on that one object that once housed Ayrton’s words, instinct, memories, his will to win, the thoughts piercing his relentlessness together, him. Now it’s full of wind.
“It all feels wrong without you.”
***
When they get home from the hospital, he has to exercise some massive restraint to keep himself from walking right into the studio. There is no logical reason to bring the baby in, it’s cold, it’s dusty, and increasingly more disorganized.
He manages to wait a whole day before Bernadette is asleep.
Alain rocks her softly in his arms, mumbling and cooing to her in French. Maybe someday he’ll tell her about this.
Picking her up to have her eye to eye, he introduces them.
“Ayrton, this is Victoria, the light of my soul.”
***
February 1997
“Well, it’s done. Can’t do much about it now. I’m pretty sure I’ll go bankrupt with this, gonna have to film cheesy adds again. Like back in the 80’s. Should I get a perm once more?”
He passes a hand through his hair and it feels heavy, bigger than his own, callouses that aren’t on his finger anymore scratch the crown of his head and he sighs in relief.
“Will you help me?”
The helmet shines quiet.
***
Being the owner and director of a team is exhausting, and it’s not going fantastically, but it’s fun to be out there. Still, people recognize him mostly as a driver, mostly as Senna’s rival.
“You know people ask me to sign your pictures? Your things? As if I was your representative, or your family”
With the years Alain’s become accustomed to these one-sided conversations. When he is away for a long time, he keeps track of the things he wants to tell him, sometimes he writes them down on post its and goes through them when he is back in Monaco. He usually mixes them up and winds up rambling for hours. He doesn’t mind, and the piece of molded metal shines bright as if pleased with the tales of F1.
“Sometimes I feel like your widow”
***
It’s the beginning of a new millennium 1999 will morph into 2000 and Alain can’t stomach the transition. Every month, every year feels like a stepping stone pushing him further and further away from the people he’s left behind.
The truth is the years pass strangely. Alain feels like there’s a mark on the years he’s lost people, not so much a time, but a place he must find his way back to. Yet the current of the years pushes him away and away, stronger than his will or his might. He’s left them behind, in 86 Daniel, in 82 Gilles, in 87 Didi, in 85 Elio, what a horrible and yet wonderful decade… and then finally he’s left Ayrton alone in 1994. After their phone calls Alain promise to never truly leave him, even retired as he was. Ayrton made him promise.
This night he does take the helmet down, it’s been polished recently but he wants to feel it, to touch it, to know it once was part of Ayrton, to remind himself it was once Senna.
They sit on the couch. Alain uncorks a bottle of champagne and toasts.
“I know you never liked the taste, only the feeling of uncorking it and splashing it around, especially in my face.”
He clinks the green glass to the metal.
“A few times I thought you truly wanted to drown me.”
The liquid burns in his throat, too sparkly to be drunk straight from the bottle.
“I’m sorry for carrying on, no, I’m sorry to leave you behind in the 20th century.”
Eventually he has to rejoin the party outside. Nico asks him if he was talking to Senna again, the boy doesn’t find it weird, although he gets sad when Alain cries.
Everyone is excited for the millennium and raises their glass. The countdown weighs on him, but he looks at his children and reminds himself that the future is sweet, even if the best times of his life are past.
That night he dreams of carting, Bercy, but they are on the same team, like Ayrton wanted. They win everything, and the podium is an F1 in Monaco and Interlagos, the cities mix, as if the ocean was but a lazy stream between them.
Ayrton props him up on his shoulders like a kid, and Alain holds on for dear life. They are drenched in champagne and Ayrton grabs him firmly, steering him towards the bay where thousands of fireworks dance between the sky and their cities. Bruno and Bianca, and Nico and Sacha and little Victoria are there too, shouting in surprise with every new light that bursts on the sky, laughing nervously. He leans down and kisses Ayrton’s forehead.
“Merci mon coeur.”
***
Their conversations resemble their phone calls a lot, but it’s Alain who picks up the phone, in a sense, in a metaphorical or maybe mystical sense.
He begins to receive answers, short replies, not as sound, but as knowledge.
“The foundation is doing a lot of good you know? You’d be so please to see it.”
Thank you for helping Viviane.
“It’s nothing you know I like it, although I’m not a fan of the photoshoots, they made me hold you, well your helmet and you know, it’s odd.”
You look good on my colors.
“They are Brazil colors Senna, you can’t quite claim them. Nelson could say the same.”
The indignation radiates from the yellow and green form.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry, impossible man”
***
Prost GP is officially declared bankrupt and the day is more bittersweet than bitter. It lifts a huge weight off his shoulders, but it’s also a broken dream, a scar of failure, he bears it well, better than others would have.
"I'm glad you are not here to see this."
Alain is packing up a box of legal papers that he won’t need anymore, at least the studio will cease to be such a chaotic mess.
"No, no that's not true. I could never be glad about that"
He’s often wondered if they’d be at odds by this point, or if they’d learn to be friends, friendly, so much more. Viviane certainly seems to think there was more there than there ever was, officially at least. Alain’s often wanted to ask about it, but he is terrified of the answer, and the same time he knows it already.
“But I am taking it better than you would have”
He picks up tape from somewhere on the floor and seals the boxes away.
“Yes, yes I know, if you were here, I’d have Honda, but the engine is not the only issue, you know this.”
I’m more than the contacts I have.
“I know. I know, but you wouldn’t be racing now you’d be ancient”
Only a couple years older than you at your retirement.
“Merde, yes, yes you would be. We’ll never know now…”
He feels a squeeze on his hand. Their still together on this.
***
Nico has a few friends from uni over, some rowdy, bourgeois boys with too much time on their hands and too little love from their parents.
Alain is fine with that, but when he comes back the racket comes from his studio; upon opening the door he’s faced with a collection of blonde idiots grabbing at his personal belongings. One particular asshole is there, center front holding Senna’s helmet like he is about to try it on.
“Get out!” There’s a coldness he can rarely muster in his voice. He’s never directed this sort of anger towards his children.
“Oh papa, we were just.” Nico babbles wasted.
“GET OUT!”
The blonde imbecile drops the helmet on the desk, and makes a loud pang when it hits the wood. He closes the door trembling and quickly holds the sacred object to his chest. At this point there’s little distinction between Senna and this, in a peculiar, peculiar way, this is Ayrton’s remains, closer to his skull than to his uniform.
Alain can’t help but cry in frustration that night, and Nico apologizes profusely, but he doesn’t bring those friends over anymore, and in a way, Alain thanks Senna for it, they were a bad influence on his boy, pretentious and uncaring, nothing that he is. So, he tells Nico not to agonize too much over it, it was his uncle taking care of him from under the grave.
***
The documentary is everywhere and Alain feels like his heart is being wrenched out of his chest. It’s so damning and unnecessarily mean. Multiple friends call him to apologize for having participated. Viviane tries to reach him but he refuses to take the call. It breaks his heart.
Lately his grief has been particularly big and all consuming and this… He beings to wonder if he’s been remembering everything wrong, maybe they never reconciled, maybe he’s been speaking to the helmet of a man who hated him. Maybe this is a horrible delusion.
He doesn’t go into his studio for weeks, better yet he travels for months, not setting foot in Monaco and making a conscientious effort to avoid any and every F1 acquaintance. He throws himself into biking, parenthood, Switzerland, France. Victoria, bless her heart doesn’t even believe him when he tells her he used to drive formula one cars, she’s the best solace in the universe.
Everything becomes muddled, he reads no articles, watches no interviews. The hate mail does come from time to time, and it resurfaces old fears. He panics truly, and feels minuscule against the world, against the memory of Ayrton. Now millions of people have a different recollection, one where he is the villain, one where the actions he most regrets are the focus.
Is it noble to suffer in silence or should he take up arms against this sea of commentary and distorted stories? He shuts the world away and takes sleeping pills to ensure dreamless nights.
It’s late spring when he comes back to the apartment. First, he tries to ignore the it, he just greets it when he opens the studio but nothing more, doesn’t even dust it off.
But he wakes up in the hours between the late night and the early morning he can’t escape it. The darkness engulfs them, but he doesn’t turn on the light when he walks into the stuffy room.
“It’s been a difficult year Ayrton”
He never speaks his name, not to him, to it.
I’m sorry. They have no right…
“I know you would be; you are. I can’t stand it, them, all of them talking as if they understood-”
Sobs interrupt his words; everything is caught in his throat and he covers his face with trembling hands.
“I miss you, God, I miss you. How can I miss you more now than before?”
Well, it has been longer.
“It’s longer every day.”
Because he can’t take the distance anymore, he brings it, Senna/the helmet, down to his lap, where he can press his fingers against the cold surface and see his own reflection, barely.
“I love my life, my children, everything, but sometimes I wish I could go there, into the other side and just-“
To sleep and end the heartache.
“I wish the underworld was real, like those tales, and I could go down and look for you.”
Alain, those tales all end bad.
He is crying now, too loud to speak, sobs wreck his body, and he doesn’t know why he’s not more horrified when big arms pull him into an embrace from behind. The scent of cologne and motor oil fills the room, and he can feel the warmth of Ayrton holding him close.
Querido I’m here. I’m sorry for causing you suffering still.
Alain wants to say something, wants to say it’s suffering he’ll gladly take if it connects them together, but he can’t speak anymore. Words, ideas have escaped him, the pull of drowsiness carries him under, and he distantly registers that he’s been arranged on the couch. Brown sad eyes are the last thing he sees before sleep takes
him; his heart aches with the scene.
“You were always so bloody handsome”
He feels lips on his cheek.
“To think I could have loved you”
You did, I did, we still do.
Maybe this is what he needs to be at ease, to sleep, to dream, perchance to dream of them together.
***
2014
It’s been 20 years. He decides to talk about it. It’s been so long, Ayrton would be 54, what a joy. What kind of man would he have become? Would he have children of his own? Bruno is the closest Ayrton has and Alain cherishes that relationship, even if he sometimes overwhelms the young man with stories and consuming fondness for his dead uncle. He made up with his mother a couple of years back, although he’ll probably never speak to Leonardo again, not that they were ever close, but from what he understands it’s that sibling who’s at fault for the damning representation of Prost on the documentary.
Two decades is so long, yet, at the same time, there is no fear of forgetting, it doesn't happen like that. He's more forgotten old friends and colleagues who are still alive. No, Ayrton is there, ever present. He confers with him through his shrine, his helmet, his pictures, or in dreams, often, often in sweet dreams.
Even if he wasn't as famous, Alain could never forget him. Ayrton is part of him as his limbs are, as his own memories, his brother, but also his children. It’s not a matter of recalling but of reaching out, gently, with laughter, with questions, with annoyance.
And now the internet unearths old information, pictures he’d thought were lost, forgotten, interviews and moments together.
He’s also committed to protect Senna’s legacy, and his along. Senna is Prost and Prost is Senna.
***
2025
The only true marker of distance between one and the ones that are gone is how many things can't be told, how many stories they miss on but, Alain doesn't have that problem, or he has it to a lesser extent. It's been now 30 years of keeping a detailed account of his life and his troubles for a piece of metal that once house one he loved. He can admit it now, he loved, he loved Ayrton deeply.
He’s read about sacred rituals in different parts of the world, the bones keep the spirit, and for someone like Ayrton? Who valued racing above all? Who was Senna and the track, and the car all at once? His emblematic helmet is the keeper of his spirit, Alain is sure. It’s a casket of dreams and unfulfilled desires, memories no one else could tell and now, throughout these years it’s fed on so much of Alain’s voice and tears and love that the spirit is fortified and wander loose. At least that’s the
explanation he gives himself.
Because now, in 2025, Ayrton is everywhere that he is, in a way, in many ways. Sometimes chatting in that particular way of them, with no sounds or words spoken. Sometimes cradling him in his sleep, always when he is sick or anxious, often with his children, and on celebrations.
It’s the reason why Alain has agreed to get behind the wheel again, not to compete, never to compete, because he made a promise and he’s not going to break it, even if the spirit of the man he made that promise to pesters him with the idea of racing again.
“I’m 70 my love! I could break all my bones”
That’s the only thing that quiet him down.
But, showcases, and exhibits are something different, safer. He tries the Red Bull because Ayrton wants to know what’s all the fuzz about.
They are comparing the dutch boy to me all the time
“I believe he was born in Belgium, and also you know how much they like to compare you to the new drivers; you are their legend”
Por favor, uma vez
Alain doesn’t let anyone know that he is fully fluent in Portuguese at this point.
Now he has the chance to get behind the McLaren 1987 again, and he can very much feel Ayrton’s excitement. He never drove that particular car, but it’s close enough. Ayrton begs him to let him take over. It happened before, once when he was on the Ferrari a few years ago, it was pretty scary but nothing bad had happened, and anyways if there is one instance in which to trust Senna completely, well that’s driving. They test it together, and it is pretty fabulous.
“You do know I can’t exactly speed.”
I’ll behave I swear, I just miss it, si?
“You know I’m gonna say yes.”
He feels like he’s been picked up and swung around, peppered with kisses on his face.
“But, afterwards, would you spend your birthday with me?” Sometimes he skips to Brazil.
Sim, sempre