Starlight Taxi

by C.M. Lanning

  Chapter 9: A Visit from Mother

  As the driver sat on his black leather couch, he tried his best to convince Karmen to spend the weekend at his house. It’d been about a while since he’d seen her due to their work schedules.

  “Come on, babe. I haven’t seen you in a week,” the driver said.

  Karmen asked, “You really can’t go a week without me?”

  The driver raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s not that I can’t. . . I just don’t want to,” the driver said.

  Karmen sighed and said, “Let me think about it. I’ll call you later. I have to get back to work.”

  The driver couldn’t figure out what was going on. She’d been this way for the past couple weeks, and he couldn’t break through to her.

  In the six months since she’d saved his life by getting him to a hospital when he was attacked by dehydrating parasites, he’d become convinced he was falling in love with her.

  He looked over at Solstice, and she got up and walked over to him, sitting on the floor with her head in his lap.

  The driver sighed and started scratching behind her ears.

  “I don’t know. . . you girls are just hard to figure out. We haven’t had one fight since I spent an entire weekend avoiding her a couple months ago, and now I can’t seem to get her to open up to me,” the driver said, thinking about anything he could have possibly done to anger her recently.

  The more he sat there and thought, the less he came up with. He couldn’t even come up with a crazy theory as to why she’d be mad at him.

  He took every opportunity to see her and make her happy, while still giving her a respectable amount of space.

  “Maybe I just need to ask her in person,” the driver muttered.

  A knock at the door made Solstice’s ears perk up. She walked over calmly to the front of the home to see who it was when the driver opened the door.

  When the driver opened the door, an older woman stood before him. She was wearing the ugliest black dress with a purple floral pattern on it. She had short curly white hair with a little bit of brown still mixed in, trying and failing to retain some flavor of a day gone by.

  “Yes?”

  The woman looked taken back by the driver.

  When she didn’t say anything, the driver got a look behind her and noticed a limousine.

  He thought, What the Hell is that thing doing there?

  “This is going to sound forward, so, you’ll have to forgive me,” the old lady said.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m your mother,” the lady said.

  Now it was the driver’s turn to be silent as he struggled to find his breath. He blinked several times looking the woman over.

  “I know it’s going to be hard to believe, but I can prove it,” she said.

  Another silent minute passed. The driver’s mind whirled. He pictured every foster home he’d ever been in. For some reason, Chris’ picture popped into his head.

  The driver had never been one to care about his past, but now it had knocked on his doorstep. . . allegedly.

  When his mind slowed a little, he asked, “You have proof?”

  She nodded and pulled up her white leather purse.

  “I have a DNA testing machine inside. One prick of the finger will tell us all we need to know,” the woman said.

  “Come inside, and we’ll see what your little machine says,” the driver said, somewhat skeptical.

  She followed him inside and closed the door behind him. Solstice didn’t know what to make of the older woman. She didn’t come over to her, but she didn’t growl at her, either.

  “Oh, could you put that thing outside? I don’t much care for animals,” she said.

  “Strike one. This is my house, and she’s my best friend. You don’t talk about Solstice like that,” the driver said.

  The woman looked somewhat indignant of the driver’s remark at first and then said, “Suit yourself.”

  She sat down on his couch, looking around the humble abode he called his dwelling. She looked at his black leather furniture out of the corner of her eye and frowned a little bit, as if he could do better.

  “Shall we prick our fingers?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, pulling out a small metalic device with a five inch screen in the center. She pushed a button on the side, and it came to life.

  The woman pushed a few more keys on the touch screen, and two small needles came out of the box, one on each side.

  The driver hated needles, but he figured this would tell him what he needed to know about this woman claiming to be his mother.

  He walked over and pricked his left index finger on one of the needles. The woman pricked her right index finger on the remaining needle, and the machine began to compute.

  Within a few minutes, it was beeping, and she displayed the results.

  “Well, that’s a 98.6 percent genetic match,” the driver said, reading the screen.

  “You don’t seem impressed,” the woman said.

  “What do you want me to say. . . Hell. . . what do I even call you?”

  “I suppose ‘mother’ for starters,” she said.

  The driver leaned against a wall in his living room and snarkily remarked, “Mo- mother? That’s a name you earn, not one you get for sharing blood.”

  She put the machine back in her purse and threw her arms in the air.

  “I thought you’d be a little more enthusiastic about meeting your long lost mother,” she said.

  “I wasn’t exactly looking for you. I kind of got the hint that you didn’t want me around when I turned six and learned what a foster home was,” the driver said.

  “Your crass tone is unwarranted. I didn’t drop you off at an orphanage. Your grandfather did. . . the same man who gave you that stupid hat you’re wearing,” the woman said.

  “Strike two. Unlike you, this hat has been with me my entire life. It’s a part of me. You’d do well not to insult it, either.”

  “Listen to me. I came here today for a reason,” she said.

  “Okay. What was it? Did you want a hug? Did you want to make things right?”

  “I came here to offer you a better life,” she said.

  That shut the driver up for a second. He was puzzled by her words. She hadn’t exactly done much to warm up to him since her arrival. In truth, he had a nagging thought in the back of his mind that she wanted something from him. With a few more minutes, she got to explaining just what that thing she wanted was.

  “Your name is Clarence Rider. My name is Shirley Rider, and you’re the heir to Rider Corp., the leader in electron transport technology. I’m here to bring you to your rightful place and turn your life around,” she said.

  “My name is not Clarence. It hasn’t been since I was abandoned in a foster system.”

  The woman sighed and put her hand to her face.

  “You’re relentless, you know that?”

  “Listen lady, why don’t we cut the crap and get down to brass tacks and nails? I’m losing patience quick, and I figure you’re about to hit strike three real soon,” the driver said.

  “Uh, I forget how rude you lower class types can be,” she said.

  An angry growl disguised as a sigh on the part of the driver made the woman get back to the point of her visit.

  “Very well. I’m not here to kiss and make up. You hate me, and that’s your right. I am here to take you back to Senora City on the moon and make you into the new president of Rider Corp. Your father passed away a few months ago, and I need to secure the company’s future into the hands of another Rider. Unfortunately for me, you’re the only one left,” she said.

  “Is that all?”

  “No. Part of securing the company’s future will include you marrying the daughter of our nearest competitor. We’ll merge companies, you’ll wed this young lady who is the heir to her family’s fortune, and everyone will-”

  “Get richer?”
<
br />   “That’ll be part of it, yes, but the bigger picture is both companies will have a sound future.”

  “Hold that thought for a moment,” the driver said.

  He walked Solstice to the back door and let her out. She didn’t put up much resistance, oddly enough.

  Then, the driver walked into his bathroom and felt around to the back of the toilet tank where he had a pack of cigarettes taped. Ripping it free, he walked back into the living room and lit one up.

  “Oh, must you do that? It’s such an ancient and filthy habit,” the woman said, covering her nose.

  “You don’t really get to complain about things being ancient when you just announced your plans to put me into an arranged marriage,” the driver said.

  “Trust me, you’ll like her. She’s very beautiful and submissive. She’ll make the perfect trophy wife,” the woman said.

  “I don’t think my girlfriend would appreciate it if I suddenly got married,” the driver said, inhaling and blowing smoke in the direction of his mother.

  “Of course you’ll separate yourself from the bar trash you’re currently dating in order to get ready for your new life. After that, you’ll dump that mutt somewhere, and you’ll come with me. I’ll get you a new identity and backstory prepared, and we’ll start the arrangements to groom you into a brand new president of a Fortune 100 company,” Shirley said.

  “I see you’ve done your homework. What happens after I dump her?”

  “You become rich and never have to drive that rusty piece of garbage in your driveway again,” she said.

  The driver took one last drag off his cigarette and pulled it out of his mouth. He flicked it at his mother, and she gasped, throwing her hands up.

  “I’m sorry, did I break your train of thought? Oh? You were done talking? Good. Allow me to retort,” the driver said.

  He sat down on his couch and lit another cigarette.

  “You’ve probably guessed what I’m going to say, but, strike six. You get a strike for insulting my dog, my girlfriend, and two strikes for insulting Starla. That is the ‘rusty piece of garbage’ in the driveway. Here’s what is going to happen now. You’re going to take your wrinkled ass out of my house and put so much distance between the two of us that I can’t even sense your evil presence anymore.”

  “Tell me this is some form of a tasteless joke. You heard me say you’ll be rich, right?”

  “That’s one of the first things I hate about you. You don’t seem to care about people. You care about things. . . a company. . . wealth. . . things that don’t mean anything to me. Get out of my house.”

  She scowled, walked over to the driver, and shook her finger at him.

  “Listen to me you ungrateful brat. You don’t get a say in this matter because it’s bigger than you or me. We’re talking about the future of two of the largest companies in existence, and I’m not going to let my plans go awry because you want to be stubborn and thumb your nose at me.”

  She stopped when her finger was inches from the driver’s face and said, “I’ve arranged for your future wife to drop by. I’m convinced she’ll be the deciding factor in your decision to come to your senses. I wasn’t joking about you not having a say in the matter,” she said.

  Almost as if on cue, another knock at the door came, and the driver’s mother said, “Come in, dear.”

  Who the Hell does this bitch think she is? This is my house, the driver thought.

  The door opened slowly and in walked a girl who looked younger than the driver’s career as a cab operator.

  “Clarence, this is Octavia Swanfeld. She is the daughter of Richard Swanfeld, CEO of Electrafeld,” the driver’s mother said.

  Octavia was much shorter than Karmen, very prim and polished. She was wearing a white collared shirt with a small tight black vest over it. Instead of a dress like Shirley, she was wearing a knee-length black pencil skirt. She had extremely long sleek black hair, and around her neck was a pink bow.

  “Hello. My name is Octavia,” she said, walking into the living room slowly, getting a better look at the driver. He searched her face for signs of disapproval like his mother had displayed, but she seemed oddly at ease. The lack of judgment on her part was surprising to the driver.

  “I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. I’ll be gone for a couple hours, and when I get back, you two had better be in love or at least in a place where you can fake it,” Shirley said, leaving.

  After the front door closed, and she was gone, the driver leaned back, causing his couch to groan a little.

  “What a piece of work,” he muttered.

  Octavia said nothing but looked at him.

  “Shirley, not you,” he said.

  “I figured as much,” she said.

  “So. . .,” the driver muttered, unsure of what to say to the woman expected to become his future wife.

  “I take it she explained the situation to you,” Octavia said.

  “She did. . . with quite a lack of grace, I might add. I mean, I never really went looking with my parents. I’m content with my life; why on Earth would I want to complicate it by tracking down the dirtbags that abandoned me as an infant?”

  “Shirley told me that she didn’t abandon you, though. She said you were kidnapped and taken away from her,” Octavia said.

  “Strike one. You stuck up for that evil bag,” the driver said.

  “Sorry,” Octavia muttered.

  “Look. . . Octavia, was it? I don’t know what she told you, but I have a girlfriend. Her name is Karmen, and I love her. I’m not gonna trade what we have for any amount of money. I’m a cab driver and have been for 25 years. I obviously don’t care about the lack of cash in my bank account,” the driver said.

  “I don’t think she’s giving you a choice,” Octavia said.

  “What are you, some kind of robot? There’s always a choice. She doesn’t get to just show up, says she’s my mother, and then immediately boss me around. That’s a load of crap,” the driver said.

  “My parents aren’t exactly going to be pleased with an answer like that. They expect us to end up together and secure the future of their companies,” Octavia said.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t give a damn about your parents. I can count the number of people I care about on three fingers, Solstice, Karmen, and sometimes Chris,” the driver said, finishing his second cigarette. He put it out in the sink and then tossed it in the garbage.

  Pulling out another cigarette, he leaned against the fridge.

  “Can’t you at least give me a chance?”

  “I don’t even know you,” the driver said.

  “Well, I’m right here. Ask me anything,” Octavia said.

  “Is that how you think this works? We play 20 questions, fall in love, and live happily ever?”

  Octavia sighed and said, “No, but we’ve got to work something out.”

  “Why is that, exactly?”

  “Because I care about what my parents think, and they’re riding on this deal,” she said.

  “You don’t just get to come into someone’s life and have them fall in love with you because that’s the plan. Do you know how I fell for Karmen? She found me when I was dying and saved my life by getting me to a hospital. That’s going to be pretty difficult to top,” the driver said.

  He heard his earpiece buzzing, so, he excused himself and walked into his bedroom.

  “Hey,” Karmen said.

  “Oh, hey. Man, you won’t believe the day I’ve had. Please tell me you’re coming over tonight,” he said.

  Karmen said she was, but she didn’t sound like herself.

  Not giving it a second thought, the driver said, “Great. Look, I’m sorry to ask a question and run, but I kinda have something to deal with.”

  “Yeah, I gotta get back to work anyway. I just called to let you know I’d be over tonight.”

  “Sounds great. Talk to you later,” he said, hanging up.


  He walked back into the living room and Octavia was looking out the back door at Solstice lying under her favorite tree in the back yard.

  The driver sighed. He realized this girl was just trying to make her family happy, and she didn’t seem pure evil like Shirley.

  “Are you hungry?”

  She turned around and nodded.

  “Great, you ever had pork chops?”

  She shook her head, and the driver sighed.

  “I don’t want to know what kind of fancy food you dine on, so, don’t tell me,” he said.

  She smirked and said, “It’s probably better you don’t know.”

  While he prepared lunch, they talked casually. She played the cello, had just finished a master’s degree in business, and enjoyed playing volleyball. All in all, she seemed like a normal girl. . . except she was filthy rich.

  They ate, and the driver continued to learn more about her while telling her some about him. He told her about being an orphan and driving a cab through space for a living. He also told her the story of how he got Solstice.

  The more they talked, the more he realized that she wasn’t all that unlikable. If he wasn’t dating Karmen and Shirley wasn’t involved, he might have even given this girl a chance.

  Shirley was right about one thing. She is very pretty, the driver said, noticing her long and silky hair. He didn’t even want to think about how much care she put into washing it.

  As they finished their meal, she even did the dishes, and the driver realized she liked having money, but she could likely survive without it.

  “Look, Octavia, sure, we’ve talked, shared a meal together, etc. You seem like a nice girl. I get that you don’t want to disappoint your family, but I don’t plan on marrying you. I love Karmen, and I can realistically say I will probably end up marrying her down the road.”

  “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind?”

  “No. . .but can I offer you a piece of advice?”

  She raised an eyebrow and nodded.

  “Put some distance between yourself and your family. Take a year off, hide if need be, and live in the real world. Get a job and work for yourself. When you’ve weaned yourself off of your family’s money, I think you’ll see that you don’t want to marry someone just because of your folks,” he said.

  Octavia smiled, and said, “I really do wish I could do just that. There are times I wonder what it would be like to be on my own.”

  “Then why not go and do it?”

  She sighed and said, “I don’t love money like my family does, but I do like the benefits of having it.”

  Before the driver could say anything more, the door opened and in walked Shirley.

  “I trust you’ve become smitten with your new wife?”

  The driver rolled his eyes and looked over at Octavia.

  “I’m only gonna say this once more, so, listen up. As far as I’m concerned, my real family is Chris and Nancy Thompson who took me in as a teen and raised me right. You’re nothing to me, and after meeting you today, I wish to never cross paths with you again. You’re insufferable. No, I’m not smitten with Octavia. No, we’re not getting married. Yes, you can leave now and never come back,” the driver said.

  His mother scowled and clenched her right hand into a fist.

  “I don’t know how you turned out to be so much like your grandfather, but he was that way. . . a poor pathetic sad sack who deemed your father and I to be unfit parents and took you away from us. He didn’t want anything to do with our money or success and died penniless, the old fool.”

  “Sounds like a man I could be proud of,” the driver said.

  “And you share his blind and foolish ways of thinking.”

  “I believe the word you’re looking for is stubborn,” the driver said, smirking.

  “Let’s go, Octavia. We’re leaving this dump,” Shirley said.

  She looked at the driver and then said, “That’s quite alright, Ms. Shirley. I know my way home.”

  Shirley shrugged and looked once more toward her son.

  “Don’t take my leaving today as a sign of victory. You will come around to my offer. I was hoping we could do it the easy way, but you’ve shown that just isn’t going to be possible. Because of that, I’m going to take everything you love from you until you’re so miserable you come crawling back to me for the chance to have some resemblance of a normal life.”

  He lit his last cigarette and grinned from ear to ear.

  “Goodbye, Ms. Rider. Do take care, and don’t let my door hit you in the ass on the way out. I’d hate to damage such a fine door,” he said.

  She scoffed and left.

  Octavia turned to him and simply said, “I kind of wish I really could have a shot with you. . . and not just because of my parents’ demands. You seem like a nice guy.”

  “Karmen would likely tell you otherwise. I have a nasty temper and stubborn streak,” the driver said.

  She smiled and excused herself, leaving not too long after Shirley.

  The driver let Solstice back in and put away the dishes. She growled when she saw the cigarette in his mouth, and he put it out immediately.

  “Sorry. . . trust me when I say I needed it though.”

  Oddly enough, the dog didn’t look as though she bought his logic.

  “Oh you’re a husky. What do you know?”

  She barked, and for a moment, the driver wondered if, by chance, she was more intelligent than she let on.

  Eventually, he let it go and fell asleep on the couch. She jumped up and laid down on his legs, going to sleep herself.

  He began to have a strange dream about both Karmen and Octavia being in a band together. They traveled the world and became famous before having a falling out and breaking apart.

  A knock at the door brought the driver back to reality. He yawned and went to answer it, praying it wasn’t his mother.

  “Dominick, if you’re hearing this prayer, please keep my mother. . . far far away,” he muttered.

  He opened the door and saw Karmen. Her hair was pink, and she was still wearing a heavy amount of eye shadow from her shift at the bar. The fake tattoo above her eyebrow was still on, and the driver smirked remembering she dressed a certain way to keep the drillers of Europa uninterested in her.

  “Welcome back,” he said, motioning for her to come in.

  “Actually, can we talk out here?”

  He shrugged and closed the door behind him, leaning on it once it was latched.

  “What’s up?”

  She sighed and looked down.

  When she looked up, she said, “Listen. . . I don’t have any easy way of putting this. . . so I just have to say it. I think that. . . I need to end this relationship.”

  The driver frowned and asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m breaking up with you,” she said, shifting her weight from one leg to another.

  Feeling like a sack of bricks had just nailed him in the stomach, he was unable to form words.

  He thought, She’s breaking up with me?

  The driver was not an overly emotional guy, but a single tear still formed in his right eye as he thought about what he was hearing.

  “Wh-why?”

  She sighed again, but she didn’t break eye contact with him. She was soft but direct, not beating around the bush with her words.

  “I think we want different things. I think you’re getting a little too serious, and I’m just not in a place where I want to settle down with someone right now,” she said.

  “Who said anything about settling down?”

  “You just told me a few hours ago you had a hard time going a week without seeing me. Meanwhile, I’m fine going a week or two without seeing you. It’s not that I don’t care about you. . . it’s just. . . I think you care more about me,” she said.

  “Can’t we just slow things down?”

  “Do you honestly think you’re capab
le of doing that? Because if you are, then we can keep dating, but I’m getting ready to take a vacation with some friends, and you won’t see me for a few weeks,” she said.

  The driver looked down, knowing he wouldn’t be okay with that.

  “You’re not capable of slowing it down, are you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Had you thought about. . . our future?”

  He nodded slowly, and she said, “You see? I hadn’t really at all. We had lots of fun, and you’re a very sweet guy, but-”

  “You don’t need to say any more. I get it,” the driver said, straightening up and cutting her off.

  She smiled weakly and said, “I guess this is it then.”

  “Yeah. . ..”

  “If you’re ever around Europa, you can feel free to stop by. I’m not going to avoid you.”

  “I can’t promise the same,” he said, walking inside and closing the door.

  As she left, he slid down to the floor and quietly sobbed. Solstice came over and tried to lick his face, but it was buried in his knees. Sensing the depth of her friend’s grief, she simply curled up next to him and lay down.

  “I didn’t want much, Solstice. . .just you and her. That’s all I ever wanted,” he said as tears continued to fall. He sniffed and continued to sit there, thinking about the miserable day he’d had.