Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me(20)

I was surprised at being mildly rebuffed. “Of course—must be, I can’t imagine,” I said, trying to make up for my presumptuousness.

“Traffic’s good here,” he added, “but in Midtown? Crazy right now—a game at the Garden.”

A picture came to mind of men in suits and ties, fat cats and their ladies in diamonds, with front row seats on the floor at the Garden, a place improbably filled with flowers of every kind. “You must get totally different customers depending on where you pick them up,” I said, as if it were something fabulous and interesting, something I’d love to see right now—so much so that I thought about asking him to turn around and head toward Midtown.

The cab driver took this in. “No,” he said, “not really—different people everywhere.”

Two strikes. Oh well. But I liked that he was actually listening to my questions and thinking about them, not just agreeing with me.

I watched Manhattan rolling by—the cold city and the streetlights. I imagined I was on a ship—a cutter ship in the Arctic.

“Cross Thirteenth—is that what you want?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

We stopped at a light, a long line of cars. Even at that hour, crosstown traffic was slow.

“You’re like a psychiatrist in this job,” he offered, suddenly, unprompted, “people tell you all their problems, all kinds of things, stories.” With his face lit by the red brake lights of the car in front, he looked like he was running through a few of them in his head, the wilder ones, I supposed.

“Usually, not New Yorkers”—here he made that gesture of sealing your lips—“they don’t say much. But tourists? Tourists talk.”

“So, do you like it when people talk, or no?”

“Oh yes, I do, I like to meet people.”

“You don’t mind that I’m asking you questions?”

“Not at all, boss.”

Boss. That is one thing: I do not feel like a boss. And even if I did—who likes their boss? It doesn’t seem like a compliment. But I get that all the time in cabs.

“I’ve only lived here a few years,” I told the cabbie, “moved here four years ago.”

He looked at me in the rearview. “An infant, like a child, four years old—in city years,” he said with a grin. “I’ve got a daughter your age.”

I laughed. “How about you—how long have you lived here?”

“Twelve.”

“Almost a teenager then!” He turned and gave me a smile. “From where? Where are you from originally?”

“Africa,” he said with a punch of emphasis. “Morocco—Casablanca. Like the film, you know—Humphrey Bogart?”

I watched his face: he was thinking about Casablanca—or maybe Ingrid Bergman.

“So why here? Why New York?”

“Make money, for my family. My wife and kids are back there.”

This was almost impossible for me to imagine—the people you love most living so far away. No one making him dinner. No one waiting up for him at home.

“I think it’s good,” he added, “for them—it’s too hard here. My kids, if they want to come later, when they’re older, that’s okay. For me? I don’t know—I came for the American Dream or whatever.”

He really did say that. People do say things like that—in cabs, at night, at least.

He laughed bitterly.

I felt many things—I felt badly for him; I felt guilty about my prosperity, my good fortune; I felt bad for New York, bad about America. But I also felt lucky that he and I had met.

We approached my street. “You can cross here, I’m up at the corner. Right side.”

I felt like I wanted to keep talking almost, like we’d just gotten started. I told him my name, and asked his. He said, “Abdel.”

I have a friend in San Francisco, Frish, who keeps a running list of the first names of every cab driver she’s had: Cheikh, Akhtar, Alfredo, Mati, Sufian, Manuel, Mohammed, Juan, Raphael … I find that very beautiful. I wish I’d started doing that when I moved to New York.

I paid the fare and gave him a bigger tip than I usually would. Abdel turned to me and said with all sincerity, “We will meet again.”

It was almost spooky, how he said it.

“What do you mean?”

“A ride. It happens. When it’s meant to—”

I opened the door, but sat there for another second.

“—and if you ever want to go to Casablanca, I will tell you where to go.”

“Thank you, Abdel.”

“You’re welcome, boss,” he said.





Fifth Avenue and Thirteenth





NOTES FROM A JOURNAL

8-26-12:

I, listening to Bj?rk on my iPod;

O, reading and writing in his travel journal;

We: drinking champagne on a flight to Reykjavik.

I look over and see O making a list in his journal. He tells me he is writing out all the elements that are NOT present in the human body: He

U

B

Be

Al

Si

Ar

Sg

Ti

V

Ni

Ga