The Taxi Driver and His Passenger

The toll of my previous eleven-hour shifts five days in a row, with not much money to show for it, meant I let myself take a deserved nap in my parked taxi. After working odd jobs for give-or-take fifteen years, I became sick of staying in one place. Retail, construction, offices, whatever it was. I was fed up. Driving a taxi, even though I’ve got to clean up some drunks puke some nights, get yelled at by entitled white women, and I’m stuck in New York traffic 80% of the gig, I’m always moving. 

Parked in the alley between a barber shop and a Chinese restaurant, I rested my eyes. It’s like my muscles are mud and my eyelashes are magnetic—-yet I still feel so oddly awake. Something deep inside of me is antsy—pressing down on my walls like it’s begging me to look at it, to acknowledge it's there. But I close my eyes, ignoring it. It had been a slow day anyway. Not much work. Not much money.

My eyes jolted open at the sound of the back door opening—damn…was I that tired I didn’t lock the doors? The overhead light turns on and I see a lady—make that a young girl get in. She looks nineteen, twenty-one at most. She’s wearing a short black dress and her hair is crimped and gathered in a messy ponytail. Her heels laced up to her knees and a jean jacket is draped across her shoulders. I open my mouth to yell at her to get out but she points a gun right at my forehead. 

I freeze. 

She doesn’t move—her eyes are stern, intense. She closes the door and the light goes off. “Start the taxi,” she says, now pressing the gun to the side of my skull. I decide not to do anything stupid and start the car.

“Drive to Lenox Hill Hospital,” she demands. I look at her through the rearview mirror. It’s dark, too dark for me to know for sure, but she doesn’t seem at all like she needs medical attention. 

“That’s all the way across the city. It’ll take a while.”

“I didn’t ask. Drive.” I do as I’m told and pull out of the alley. 

She kept the gun pressed against me, her eyes never leaving my face. “Are you going to kill me?” I ask. I look at her through the mirror again, her eyes still grim but now shifting around, like she was deciding whether or not she really was going to kill me. She doesn’t answer.

I stare at pedestrians walking mindlessly as I drive, hoping they’ll catch my gaze and realize I was being held at gunpoint by this crazy girl. But then again, she doesn’t look all that crazy. I’m not totally sure what crazy looks like. 

“Drive faster.” She smacks the gun into my head, making me swerve through the lane. Someone honks at me. I blink, trying to recover from the blow while also paying attention to the road. “I’m not going to repeat myself,” she says, pushing the gun even harder into my skull. 

“Alright,” I say, breathy and shaken. I press on the gas, maneuvering around cars and ignoring traffic signals. With each turn, the wheel screeches against the asphalt. 

I drove along, even passing a few unaware police cars. For the first time in my life, I was hoping to get pulled over. New York is not a quiet place. But the air inside the cab was so thick and heavy with silence, that it nearly felt like I was wearing a winter coat. I guess she felt the same when she said, “Can’t you play some music or something?” She pulled the gun away and pointed at the radio with it. “I can’t stand the sound of your breathing.” 

I press the radio and turn the volume up just enough to break the silence. An Elvis song plays, soft and slow. 

“I love this song,” she says. I peek at her. She leans back into her seat like this song affects her. The gun is still in her hand, finger on the trigger, but resting in her lap. 

“Elvis fan?” I ask. 

“No. My dad is. Crying In The Chapel was his favorite.” 

The song plays. Once it ends she presses the gun back to my head. She moves in her seat, I think adjusting her dress and I can smell something on her—-something familiar to me from working at Macy’s.

“Why do you smell like men’s cologne?” I ask. 

She doesn’t answer right away. “My job makes me smell like all kinds of things.” Silence falls, and the radio plays some generic pop song. Her fingers tap to the beat.

“What’s your name?” I ask. 

“Does it matter?”

“If I’m going to die, I think it'd be sort of nice to know your name. In some odd twisted way.”

She moves her mouth from side to side, thinking for a moment. “It’s Josie.”

“Kind of childish.” Her lips curl at my joke. 

“What’s your name, huh?”

“Mateo.”

“Not much room to make fun of the name Mateo.” I crack a smile and when I glance at her, so does she. “Men like kiddy names. I get more attention that way.”

“Most men are pieces of shit.” 

“Right.”

I drive, the gun still on me but only lightly hovering over my hairs. Suddenly, a man on a bike rides into the middle of the street and I slam on the brakes—the force shoving each of us forward. I stop just inches from him. 

“Idiot!” I throw my hands up. He shakes his head at me in response—when he sees Josie’s gun, he pedals away in a hurry. 

“This is why I hate this city,” she says.

“There’s people like that everywhere. Been living a long time, I know.”

“I don’t want to live long enough to know that.” This forces a deep frown to form on my face. 

“You ought to appreciate your experience on this planet.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about? I’m telling you you’re too young to be thinking getting old is anything else but a gift.”

“You don’t know shit about me, my life, or what I think.”

“You think I’m talking out my ass? There are things your elders say that you ought to listen to,” I say, pointing at her through the mirror. 

“Shut up old man!” She shouts. I close my eyes and brace myself to be hit, jabbed, or even shot. Instead, when I open them, she’s slumped in her seat. Arms crossed and lips pout like a toddler who didn’t get their way. I almost feel a pinch in my heart at the sight. 

“Sorry, kid. I didn’t mean to lecture you like that.”

“You don’t know shit old man. Nothing at all.”

“You could say that. And I’m not that old.”

“Your face is sagging and you’ve got that old man smell to ya.” A guttural laugh escapes me. I shake my head. 

“You don’t hold back, huh?” She doesn’t say anything in response, but she turns, looking at the window like she’s hiding her face. “I’m old, sure. But I got no one to spend all this time with.”

“You not married? No kids?”

“I was married. My wife, she died. She wanted to move out of the city, y’know, stop moving. Settle down and whatnot. Before we could even start saving for a home, we got the diagnosis.” 

“What was it?”

“Brain cancer.” 

“Fuck.”

“Fuck,” I mimic. “Now, whenever I feel still, I get this sickening feeling. Like I have somewhere to be. In reality, I ain’t got many places to go. Just me and my taxi most days. I never got to see her grow old.” 

I don’t get a response, which is normal. What is there to say when someone—a stranger tells you these things? Not much. 

“My dad has pancreatic cancer,” she says. He’s at Lenox Hill. Dying.”

“Shit.”

“Shit,” she mimics. “I don’t actually think he knows I exist. I met him when I was 4 or 5. I remember him being real fat. My mom, she, uh, was in the same field as me,” she laughs to herself but it comes out as tense. “I think that’s how I came to be. She took me to his job one time. I watched him behind a chain-link fence teaching kids how to play soccer.”

“He see you?”

“Nah. I didn’t want him to. I sort of felt like, if he didn’t know I was his kid, then he wasn’t my dad. I regret not talking to him. My mom used to tell me small things about him here and there. The food he liked, music he listened to, shows he watched. Things like that.”

“I’m taking you to Lenox Hill so can you talk to him?”

“Yeah.”

“You realize there are other ways to ask someone to do something for you? Other than holding a gun to their head. For example, getting in a taxi cab and asking to be taken somewhere and then paying the toll.”

She stares at me, her eyes narrow but also full of amusement. “I know. I’m not stupid.”

“Where did you even get that thing? The gun.”

“Men leave things behind all the time. Sometimes they're too dazed or just too dumb to notice. I’ve been doing this for long enough to be smart.” She paused, swallowing. “But not long enough to stay out of trouble. I have no money. No friends. I don’t got nothing at all. If I learned anything about men, they have this weird devotion to violence and hate. Why can’t I?”

“I would have taken you if you asked.”

“Would you have?”

I think for a moment. I sigh. “I want to say yes. But, who knows? I think I’m just glad you’re not pointing the gun at me anymore.”

“You asked if I was going to kill you earlier. I don’t think I would have. You’re the first man I’ve had a conversation with longer than 3 sentences,” she said. “Y’know, since I started working on the street.”

“I’ve been driving this taxi for almost ten years. I’ve never had a single conversation past ‘hey’ and ‘how are you?’ Let alone tell another person about my wife.”

“Boring job,” she says. Another genuine laugh leaves me. 

I continue driving. She sits in the backseat, legs crossed, the gun not even in her hands anymore, but sitting next to her. We don’t talk, I’m sure we’ve got nothing else to say. The radio continues to shuffle through songs, she even hums to one, nodding her head. I drum on the steering wheel, glancing at her through the rearview mirror. The city never sleeps, never turns off, never has a calm moment, yet it feels as if it’s been nothing but this continuous quiet road to Lenox Hill—it almost makes my skin tighten a bit. The city lights are bright, but they seem almost dim shining through the windshield. Each turn I take, every light I stop at, I get this antsy feeling in my gut. 

When I can see Lenox Hill in the distance, I turn off the radio. “What are you going to say to him?”

She thinks, playing with the ends of her hair. “I don’t know. I only found out about the cancer thing two days ago. I like to go read the school newspaper where he works. They were doing a fundraiser for his treatment.”

I pull into the drop-off and put the car in park. Instead of getting out, she sits there. Eyes focused on something—-or focused on nothing, spacing out.

“Hey, kid,” I say. She doesn’t move. “Josie!” She jumps. I look at her, she looks at me. I don’t say anything, she already knows.

“Thank you for driving me. I’m sorry for holding you at gunpoint,” she says.

“I want to say it’s alright. But, y’know, it’s not.” I laugh. She does too. She opens the door, steps out, and walks through the hospital doors. I watch her speak to the receptionist behind the desk and then she disappears beyond my vision. 

I look behind me, the gun is still in the backseat.

I turn the car off and stare at the fluorescent street lamps scattered across the parking lot. For the first time in a while, I just sit. I wonder what my wife would think if she saw me here. What face she’d make if I told her about Josie. I imagine her silver hair. Her thick glasses because her vision has gone bad. The wrinkles across her neck and face. The dark spots on her hands. I don’t move at all. I don’t shift my shoulders or shuffle my feet and feel the sharp antsy pinch in my gut. I slowly drift off into a sleep until all I’m dreaming about is my wife in her old age. 

I’m jolted awake by a loud knock at my window. I turn to see Josie, waving at me to roll it down. 

“You waited for me,” she says, bending down and talking to me through the open window. 

“What he say? You tell him you’re his kid?”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “Unlock the door.” I do and she sits in the passenger seat, twirling her fingers around. “I didn’t.”

I’m taken aback. “Why not?” 

“He said he remembered my mom. He wasn’t one of her clients. They had grown up together. Best friends since fourth grade,” she says with a soft bounce to her voice like she’s immersed in the idea. Then, she hangs her head, eyes drooping down like they suddenly became heavy. “They were in love.” Light bounces off her eyes and I can see tears brimming at her eyelashes. 

“But isn’t that good? He’s not a douchebag! He-he could have been a good father to you. He still can! Why didn’t—”

“He had to end things because she was addicted to drugs. Even after all this time, he was still heartbroken over her. I could tell.” Tears trickle down the contours of her face, falling off her chin and into her lap. “He’s dying. Like dying dying. His skin was all gray and there were tubes everywhere. He started crying when he saw me. He thought I was my mom. I didn’t want to add to his pain.” 

“...Kid,” I trail off, unable to find the words that are supposed to be said. “You did a good job.” She continues to sob, dragging her palms across her cheeks over and over again. “You did a good job,” I repeat, this time stern, trying to make it sound like I mean it. Because I do. 

We both wait. Wait for tears to stop, for emotions to catch up, for time to move so wounds can heal. The sound of crickets muffled chirping from outside and the soft hiccups of her cry are all there is to listen to. We don’t say anything. We just sit. 

After a while, I start the car. She lifts her face from her hands at the sound of the engine, her eyes puffy with her makeup running down her face. “Where are we going?”

“Not sure.”

She leaned back into her seat, sniffling and wiping her tear-streaked face. “Okay,” she whispers, smiling faintly.

I turn the wheel and press my foot against the gas, pushing us both forward.