admin
22 December 2023
Somebody once told me, \"Mac, if you don’t choose a fate, your fate will be chosen for you.\" I laughed in his face when the silly bastard said it, but it turns out he was right after all. I’ve gone through life with my hands in my pockets, just sort of sniffing down my nose at all the opportunities that came my way, like they were minimalist finger foods at a fancy party.
Look at me now. I drive a fucking cab.
I really can’t complain; I sleep very little anyway, and since I spend most of my day behind the wheel, I have nothing to spend my paycheck on, except rent and the occasional vice. Coffee, smokes. No family to speak of, no love life worth mentioning, and my friends are all hacks, just like me.
It’s a little known fact that cab drivers are the priests in the Church of Mobile Wisdom. Where else can you climb into a rolling confessional-- incense and tassels included-- and have men from such ancient citadels of wisdom as Tibet and India give you their definitions of God, or define the Purpose of Truth? Last time I checked, time-shares in ashrams weren’t exactly cheap, and an astrologer might charge you an arm and leg to get all strokey-chin over the dregs in your tea cup. But a cab ride? It’s $1.50 for the first mile, 25-cents for each additional fifth. The wisdom is free for the asking. Yeah, they might not get you to the airport on time, but you can learn a lot about life in a cab.
Myself, I’ve learned a lot about death. I know this sounds weird, but, well... I can see souls. Ghosts. The recently departed. Whatever. It started after a bad fever about ten years ago, and hasn’t let up yet.
Laugh all you want, jerkoff. At least you get to sleep at night.
They’re everywhere they used to be, wandering through alleys and buildings and crossing the streets of the places they miss. They look more like color film negatives than shimmering memories of light as they get older; more like oily bits of fog all stuck together with nothing better to do. Personally, I feel bad for the newer ones; they have this terrified look of confusion in their eyes as they run through the streets with a mouthful of empty screams, trying to get your attention by waving their arms and shouting till the sun goes down. See what I mean about getting to sleep at night?
They just haven’t figured out the basics; that we’re on this side of the mirror, and they’re supposed to be on the other. Driving a cab is the only way I can make a living and not have to deal with them face-to-face.
Take last night, for example. I was headed downtown when I heard the dispatcher call a pickup; I was about three blocks away, so I took it. \"Five green, Queens and Jean.\" As I’m driving along, I could see the old souls hanging off streetlights, leering down from overpasses and the sides of buildings, hissing like snakes and making their usual fucking racket. When they’ve been dead long enough, they stop acting human. I figure it’s because they’ve probably gone stone crazy without the things that made them human in the first place, like weeds of madness choking out an abandoned lot when no one bothers with the maintenance anymore.
So my fare climbs in, and as I pull away from the curb she gives me an address uptown and settles back into the seat. I checked her out in the mirror. Nice looking dame: tall, good cheekbones, long hair piled up on her head, neck like a swan, a smart dresser. Women get prettier every day, it seems, like they’re evolving toward something. She looks a little stressed out, but I decide not to ask her about it. If she wants to talk, that’s fine.
I turned my eyes back to the road, watching the patterns of information flow through the rectangle of my windshield. Lights, laws, ratios, signals, people, signs.
I’m lost in thought, navigating my way through this river of meat, metal, and methane when a flicker of movement catches my eye; a fountain of black in the shape of a man darts out from a blind alleyway to my right, and runs headlong across my path. I see it for what it is, just another crazy soul, so I don’t bother to tap the brakes.
I can’t let on to my fare that anything’s wrong; that a dead guy ran right through my cab’s engine block and out the other side. It’s taken years of practice not to slam on the brakes, but sometimes my foot still gets that twitch to move.
Suddenly, the fare bolts forward in the seat, and all but shrieks in my ear: \"Hey, watch it, asshole! You almost hit that guy!\" How the hell did she see it? By this time, the darkness in question had reached the other side of the street and vanished through a wall. I checked the mirror and stood on the brakes, screeching to a guided halt in the parking lane to the annoyance of other drivers.
\"What?!?\" I faced her. \"What the hell are you talking about, lady? What guy?\" Did she really see the spook? She was half-turned in the seat now, searching through the rear window for a body in the street. When she looked at me again, her face was china white, her eyes big as saucers.
\"The guy who ran right in front of your cab! Jesus, didn’t you see him?\" She was trembling now, the whole thing had given her the shakes, and she fumbled in her bag for a cigarette. The headlights of passing cars swept over her face like a Xerox, sending multiple copies of her shadow hurtling against the door before dissolving into the seat back.
\"Lady, I’m telling you, there was nothing there. Have you been drinking? Are you okay? You want me to drive you home?\"
\"Don’t patronize me, asshole,\" she spat. \"I know what I saw! He ran right out in the street and you didn’t even stop! How much do I owe you, you psycho? I’m getting out of this cab before the cops show up! No, fuck paying. I’m leaving. Unlock the door!\" She was fumbling to grab the doorhandle, aiming for it again and again. Grabbing for it, missing it. Grabbing again, missing it. The bottom of my stomach dropped out. Aw, shit. Not another one.
Without a word, I slammed the gearshift into \"D\" and stomped on the gas, spinning the wheel hand over hand counterclockwise. The car whipped into the turn, the tires puking smoke as the ass end fought for control.
I checked my watch. Almost three minutes. There might be just enough time.
I glanced into the mirror. The g-force had tossed her against the door in an untidy pile; the round of her health-club sculpted ass and the silky-smooth cloth of her expensive skirt offered zero in the way of traction on the pleather seats and she struggled to right herself, all the while swearing a blue streak at me.
I turned the corner at the top of the block and gunned it hard, already knowing what I’d find. There they were: the occulting red lights of the meat wagon strobing brightly against the shadows of a dark, Irish pub called Lorca’s Novena, like the Jehovah’s Witness of Death, knocking on doors and asking people if they’d accepted mortality into their lives lately.
I squealed to a stop and jumped out of the car, running around and yanking open her door as fast as I could. \"Come on! There might still be time!\" I offered her my hand. \"Please, we have to hurry!\"
\"What the fuck are you talking about?\" She shoved me aside and climbed out, putting up her guard. She’d learned to fight somewhere, and right now she thought that I was the reason: the shadow in the backseat, the footfalls in the parking lot. \"I’m gonna turn you into the fucking police, you fucking dick! But first, I’m gonna kick your ass! I’ve never been so--\" She stopped short, looking at something past me.
The EMTs were rolling out a stretcher with a body on it; covered by a sheet and cinched by a belt. Her body. She must have called right before whatever happened, happened.
I grabbed her wrist and ran toward them, feeling her drag against me every inch of the way. She didn’t understand, and there was no time to explain: if I could just get her to touch her own body before they closed the door, she’d make the connection. She wouldn’t become just another screaming ink stain in the street, another hissing shadow with teeth leering down at me from an overpass. But if they closed the door, it was over. Even if I drove balls out, by the time we reached the hospital she’d be locked out for good. It was now or forever.
But, that’s a funny thing about people, one of those little lessons of life I’ve learned driving a cab. We fear what we don’t understand, and we hate what we fear. As hard as I pulled her toward her own salvation, the harder she balked. None of this made any sense. She probably wasn’t a person who did anything impulsively. Nothing wrong with that. Except this time, she’d stopped at the wrong bar at the wrong time, and looking as good as she did tonight, she apparently said no to the wrong person. And no amount of wrongs made any of this right.
I watched helplessly as they hustled the stretcher over the threshold and into the mouth of the ambulance, and then it really was too late. The door was closed. There was no way back. I stopped short, and looked back at her. The apprehension was gone from her face; now she just looked puzzled, and lost as lost has ever been. She put her hands to her mouth, something women do without really knowing why.
\"What happened?\" she whispered. It had just hit her.
\"I’m sorry, lady,\" I said with a sad sigh. \"I can’t help you now.\" I turned back toward the cab. No one could.
\"Wait! Hey, wait a minute! What’s happening to me?\" She was getting the Faint; the lights of the receding ambulance carrying her empty shell were almost visible through her body, like a flashlight through fingers in the dark. \"Please! I have to know!\" She was crying now. \"What’s happening?\"
I looked back over my shoulder at her: the crowd of onlookers was breaking up, and some of them were striding right through her as they paired off to go and be alive somewhere else. The night was young.
\"I have to know!\" She held her hands to her head and bent over, screaming even louder. \"Please, oh, God! Please don’t go! Wait! Wait, please! No! No! Please help me!!!\"
This is always the hardest part, letting the cycle take care of itself, reminding myself that the universe knows what it’s doing, but still knowing the ink spots are coming to tease and taunt and jeer at the new meat forever and ever, until she lost everything that made her human and became one of them.
I walked what felt like a mile back to my cab and steadied my nerves with a cigarette before putting it into gear and heading off into the night.
The sign on the roof switched to \"OFF DUTY\".
Look at me now. I drive a fucking cab.
I really can’t complain; I sleep very little anyway, and since I spend most of my day behind the wheel, I have nothing to spend my paycheck on, except rent and the occasional vice. Coffee, smokes. No family to speak of, no love life worth mentioning, and my friends are all hacks, just like me.
It’s a little known fact that cab drivers are the priests in the Church of Mobile Wisdom. Where else can you climb into a rolling confessional-- incense and tassels included-- and have men from such ancient citadels of wisdom as Tibet and India give you their definitions of God, or define the Purpose of Truth? Last time I checked, time-shares in ashrams weren’t exactly cheap, and an astrologer might charge you an arm and leg to get all strokey-chin over the dregs in your tea cup. But a cab ride? It’s $1.50 for the first mile, 25-cents for each additional fifth. The wisdom is free for the asking. Yeah, they might not get you to the airport on time, but you can learn a lot about life in a cab.
Myself, I’ve learned a lot about death. I know this sounds weird, but, well... I can see souls. Ghosts. The recently departed. Whatever. It started after a bad fever about ten years ago, and hasn’t let up yet.
Laugh all you want, jerkoff. At least you get to sleep at night.
They’re everywhere they used to be, wandering through alleys and buildings and crossing the streets of the places they miss. They look more like color film negatives than shimmering memories of light as they get older; more like oily bits of fog all stuck together with nothing better to do. Personally, I feel bad for the newer ones; they have this terrified look of confusion in their eyes as they run through the streets with a mouthful of empty screams, trying to get your attention by waving their arms and shouting till the sun goes down. See what I mean about getting to sleep at night?
They just haven’t figured out the basics; that we’re on this side of the mirror, and they’re supposed to be on the other. Driving a cab is the only way I can make a living and not have to deal with them face-to-face.
Take last night, for example. I was headed downtown when I heard the dispatcher call a pickup; I was about three blocks away, so I took it. \"Five green, Queens and Jean.\" As I’m driving along, I could see the old souls hanging off streetlights, leering down from overpasses and the sides of buildings, hissing like snakes and making their usual fucking racket. When they’ve been dead long enough, they stop acting human. I figure it’s because they’ve probably gone stone crazy without the things that made them human in the first place, like weeds of madness choking out an abandoned lot when no one bothers with the maintenance anymore.
So my fare climbs in, and as I pull away from the curb she gives me an address uptown and settles back into the seat. I checked her out in the mirror. Nice looking dame: tall, good cheekbones, long hair piled up on her head, neck like a swan, a smart dresser. Women get prettier every day, it seems, like they’re evolving toward something. She looks a little stressed out, but I decide not to ask her about it. If she wants to talk, that’s fine.
I turned my eyes back to the road, watching the patterns of information flow through the rectangle of my windshield. Lights, laws, ratios, signals, people, signs.
I’m lost in thought, navigating my way through this river of meat, metal, and methane when a flicker of movement catches my eye; a fountain of black in the shape of a man darts out from a blind alleyway to my right, and runs headlong across my path. I see it for what it is, just another crazy soul, so I don’t bother to tap the brakes.
I can’t let on to my fare that anything’s wrong; that a dead guy ran right through my cab’s engine block and out the other side. It’s taken years of practice not to slam on the brakes, but sometimes my foot still gets that twitch to move.
Suddenly, the fare bolts forward in the seat, and all but shrieks in my ear: \"Hey, watch it, asshole! You almost hit that guy!\" How the hell did she see it? By this time, the darkness in question had reached the other side of the street and vanished through a wall. I checked the mirror and stood on the brakes, screeching to a guided halt in the parking lane to the annoyance of other drivers.
\"What?!?\" I faced her. \"What the hell are you talking about, lady? What guy?\" Did she really see the spook? She was half-turned in the seat now, searching through the rear window for a body in the street. When she looked at me again, her face was china white, her eyes big as saucers.
\"The guy who ran right in front of your cab! Jesus, didn’t you see him?\" She was trembling now, the whole thing had given her the shakes, and she fumbled in her bag for a cigarette. The headlights of passing cars swept over her face like a Xerox, sending multiple copies of her shadow hurtling against the door before dissolving into the seat back.
\"Lady, I’m telling you, there was nothing there. Have you been drinking? Are you okay? You want me to drive you home?\"
\"Don’t patronize me, asshole,\" she spat. \"I know what I saw! He ran right out in the street and you didn’t even stop! How much do I owe you, you psycho? I’m getting out of this cab before the cops show up! No, fuck paying. I’m leaving. Unlock the door!\" She was fumbling to grab the doorhandle, aiming for it again and again. Grabbing for it, missing it. Grabbing again, missing it. The bottom of my stomach dropped out. Aw, shit. Not another one.
Without a word, I slammed the gearshift into \"D\" and stomped on the gas, spinning the wheel hand over hand counterclockwise. The car whipped into the turn, the tires puking smoke as the ass end fought for control.
I checked my watch. Almost three minutes. There might be just enough time.
I glanced into the mirror. The g-force had tossed her against the door in an untidy pile; the round of her health-club sculpted ass and the silky-smooth cloth of her expensive skirt offered zero in the way of traction on the pleather seats and she struggled to right herself, all the while swearing a blue streak at me.
I turned the corner at the top of the block and gunned it hard, already knowing what I’d find. There they were: the occulting red lights of the meat wagon strobing brightly against the shadows of a dark, Irish pub called Lorca’s Novena, like the Jehovah’s Witness of Death, knocking on doors and asking people if they’d accepted mortality into their lives lately.
I squealed to a stop and jumped out of the car, running around and yanking open her door as fast as I could. \"Come on! There might still be time!\" I offered her my hand. \"Please, we have to hurry!\"
\"What the fuck are you talking about?\" She shoved me aside and climbed out, putting up her guard. She’d learned to fight somewhere, and right now she thought that I was the reason: the shadow in the backseat, the footfalls in the parking lot. \"I’m gonna turn you into the fucking police, you fucking dick! But first, I’m gonna kick your ass! I’ve never been so--\" She stopped short, looking at something past me.
The EMTs were rolling out a stretcher with a body on it; covered by a sheet and cinched by a belt. Her body. She must have called right before whatever happened, happened.
I grabbed her wrist and ran toward them, feeling her drag against me every inch of the way. She didn’t understand, and there was no time to explain: if I could just get her to touch her own body before they closed the door, she’d make the connection. She wouldn’t become just another screaming ink stain in the street, another hissing shadow with teeth leering down at me from an overpass. But if they closed the door, it was over. Even if I drove balls out, by the time we reached the hospital she’d be locked out for good. It was now or forever.
But, that’s a funny thing about people, one of those little lessons of life I’ve learned driving a cab. We fear what we don’t understand, and we hate what we fear. As hard as I pulled her toward her own salvation, the harder she balked. None of this made any sense. She probably wasn’t a person who did anything impulsively. Nothing wrong with that. Except this time, she’d stopped at the wrong bar at the wrong time, and looking as good as she did tonight, she apparently said no to the wrong person. And no amount of wrongs made any of this right.
I watched helplessly as they hustled the stretcher over the threshold and into the mouth of the ambulance, and then it really was too late. The door was closed. There was no way back. I stopped short, and looked back at her. The apprehension was gone from her face; now she just looked puzzled, and lost as lost has ever been. She put her hands to her mouth, something women do without really knowing why.
\"What happened?\" she whispered. It had just hit her.
\"I’m sorry, lady,\" I said with a sad sigh. \"I can’t help you now.\" I turned back toward the cab. No one could.
\"Wait! Hey, wait a minute! What’s happening to me?\" She was getting the Faint; the lights of the receding ambulance carrying her empty shell were almost visible through her body, like a flashlight through fingers in the dark. \"Please! I have to know!\" She was crying now. \"What’s happening?\"
I looked back over my shoulder at her: the crowd of onlookers was breaking up, and some of them were striding right through her as they paired off to go and be alive somewhere else. The night was young.
\"I have to know!\" She held her hands to her head and bent over, screaming even louder. \"Please, oh, God! Please don’t go! Wait! Wait, please! No! No! Please help me!!!\"
This is always the hardest part, letting the cycle take care of itself, reminding myself that the universe knows what it’s doing, but still knowing the ink spots are coming to tease and taunt and jeer at the new meat forever and ever, until she lost everything that made her human and became one of them.
I walked what felt like a mile back to my cab and steadied my nerves with a cigarette before putting it into gear and heading off into the night.
The sign on the roof switched to \"OFF DUTY\".
artid
2666
Old Image
7_1_10minuteslate.jpg
issue
vol 7 - issue 01 (sep 2004)
section
pen_think