The Last Taxi Ride

by A. X. Ahmad

  “Of course, of course. Now listen, Ranjit…” Ali steers deftly through traffic, heading for the Cross Bronx Parkway. Blinking their headlights, the other cabs head for other exits, and Ranjit raises a hand in salute.

  Ali continues, “You should leave town. Get out, fast. I have a relative who runs a motel in El Centro, and—”

  “Shanti’s coming. And Leela is here, with her son and mother. Where am I going to go?”

  “Leela.” Ali sighs. “Leela. I told you, that girl is trouble…”

  “Don’t start now, Ali, not now. Please.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  It is no longer dark now, and the sky is beginning to turn rosy pink.

  A dirty white garbage truck lumbers past, the taciturn garbagemen sitting in the front with cups of coffee in their hands, and Ranjit realizes that the garbage strike is over.

  He takes in a deep breath: the terrible stench of the garbage is gone. The air coming off the East River smells pure, like nectar.

  * * *

  The sun has risen by the time they reach Leela’s street. It is deserted, and there is no one about except for a few crows that fly cawing through the sky. Ranjit sits in the cab with Ali, watching, but there are no signs of life in the faded yellow house.

  Asking Ali to wait, he walks around to the backyard and vaults the chain-link fence, which jangles slightly. The huge tree in the backyard is a dark outline, and Ranjit sees the large, battered heads of the sunflowers, laden now with dew.

  He makes his way around the house, peering in through the windows, but it is too dark to see. The front door moves when he pushes it open with one foot and he enters the house, listening intently.

  There is a low burbling coming from the kitchen, unrestrained and anguished. Something has gone very wrong, and he feels the hair on his arms stand up.

  He moves like a wraith down the empty corridor and pauses by the kitchen door, steeling himself for the worst: Dev’s lifeless body, Auntie slumped in a corner with a hole in her forehead, perhaps both. And Leela—why the hell did he tell her to come back here alone?

  “Leela! Auntie! Are you okay?”

  The crying continues, in fact grows louder.

  He grits his teeth and walks into the dark kitchen.

  The three of them are huddled in a corner: Leela is in the center, with one arm around Auntie’s shoulders, the other clutching Dev tightly. All three are alive, crying steadily, snot and tears dribbling down their reddened, creased faces. Leela must hear him, but doesn’t even look up.

  “What the hell happened? Is anyone hurt?”

  Leela shakes her head no. She reaches over and kisses the top of her mother’s head, and then her son’s.

  “The men were here. Bad men.” Dev spits out the words between sobs. His small chest heaves, and he doesn’t bother to wipe the tears from his round cheeks.

  Ranjit crouches in front of Dev and tries to pick him up, but he clings on to Leela.

  “Leela,” he says, “I want Leela,” and she takes him into her lap.

  Helpless, Ranjit squats on the floor in front of the three of them, his arms limp at his sides. The two women and the child cling desperately to each other, all barriers suddenly gone.

  It feels like a long time before Leela allows herself to be helped up.

  “Lateef’s two men,” she says, “they sat across from my mother, they told her all the things they would do to her, and Dev, he heard it all. When I got here, he was hysterical.”

  “It’s over. I swear, I talked to Patel, and he said—”

  “How can you believe him?” Her face is smudged with crying. “He can come in here anytime and do anything to us. All that man does is lie.”

  “He paid me fifty thousand. Half of it is yours.” Wordlessly, Ranjit puts the plastic bag onto the table.

  Leela shakes the bricks of banknotes onto the kitchen table, then laughs helplessly. “Money? What good is money if we’re all dead? This guarantees nothing.”

  Leaving the money in a pile, she takes Dev and Auntie into her bedroom.

  As the sun rises into the sky, the three of them fall sleep, huddled together. Ranjit calls Ali, who is still waiting in the car, and tells him to go home. Then Ranjit crawls alone into the bed in Dev’s room, looking up at the still mobile of the solar system, the planets above him trembling as he breathes out.

  He tries to remember their correct order—is it Mercury, Venus, Earth, and then Mars?—and is still trying as he falls deeply asleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Two weeks later, the light has changed.

  Sitting in Ali’s taxi on the way to JFK Airport to pick up Shanti, Ranjit notices that the harsh glare is gone from the sky. The softer light of September burnishes the rows of brick houses, shines through the trees, and silvers the sagging electrical wires.

  The cast is still on his arm, but Ranjit is back to driving a cab now, and he feels the change in his customers. The summer tourists are thinning out, and the Hamptons tans on the investment bankers are fading. As the days shorten and fall creeps in, the city will close into itself, and its inhabitants will return to their hidden, fevered pursuits.

  “Hey, Ranjit.” Ali’s voice cuts into his reverie. Despite the cooler weather, Ali is sticking to his Hawaiian shirts: today he wears a blue one emblazoned with white flowers. “Looks like they got away. You think that they made it?”

  By they, Ali means Mohan and Shabana. He reads the newspapers carefully and obsessively watches all the news programs. Each day when he meets Ranjit at Uptown Taxi, he says, No news of them today.

  Ranjit thinks of the two lovers clinging to each other in the gloom of the attic. He hopes that they are finally at peace, wherever they are. “Yeah, I hope they made it.”

  Ali floors the accelerator and they fly down the Van Wyck. “What are you going to do now, Ranjit bhai? Keep driving a cab here?”

  “What else am I going to do? I’ve put a deposit down on that apartment in Queens. Shanti will have her own bedroom.”

  “How are things going with Leela?” Ali’s small eyes squint shrewdly. “You looked pretty upset when I picked you up. Have you two been arguing again?”

  Ranjit is silent. He was heading out to the airport alone, but at the last moment he felt nervous and asked Ali to accompany him. Auntie and Dev waved as they drove off, but Leela stormed back into the house with a furious look on her face.

  “Not really arguing.” Ranjit is lying: they had been up half the night, going over the same thing again and again. “She doesn’t understand why I want to live alone in the new apartment with Shanti. She thinks I’m leaving her, but all I need is some time to sort things out. How the hell can I take Shanti to stay in Leela’s house? It’s a mess. Dev cries all the time, and the old lady is clearly traumatized.

  “Leela’s terrified. She keeps talking about going back to Guyana with Auntie and Dev. That’s crazy, right? What kind of a life will she have over there?”

  “You know what I think?” Ali has grown a wispy gray beard, and he strokes it as he drives.

  “I know you don’t like her. You’ve made that pretty clear.”

  “No, this time I agree with Leela. You know too much about Patel’s operation. That man is like a snake. He’s hiding in his hole right now, but one day he will strike. The brakes on your cab will fail, or else you’ll mysteriously fall down some stairs and break your neck.”

  Ranjit does not answer. He remembers the puzzled look on Lateef’s face as he fell, dead before he hit the floor. Patel’s face was impassive as he turned the gun on Ranjit. I’m sorry about this, Patel had said. It’s not personal.

  “I get your point, Ali. But where the hell do I go? Guyana?”

  “That’s where Leela’s from, yaar. She feels safe there. Why don’t you get that?” The taxi speeds up as Ali grows more agitated. “You need to get over this damsel-in-distress crap. Leela’s tough, she’ll survive. Just admit to yourself that it’s over.”

  Ranjit stares at
the weedy-looking gingko trees that line the side streets, their leaves beginning to yellow, as though the trees are exhausted and ready to shed their loads.

  His voice is hoarse when he replies. “I have a thirteen-year-old girl now. Where the hell am I going to run?”

  “You don’t have to go to Guyana, but you have to go somewhere. I told you, I have this cousin in El Centro, she needs someone to run her motel, it would be perfect for you.”

  “Where the hell is El Centro?”

  “Southern California, it’s on the border, a farming town, lettuce, melons, stuff like that. It has a huge Sikh community, and a gurdwara. You would be safe there.”

  Ranjit remembers that last night in Ruksana’s apartment, and the vow he made to change his life. He tries to imagine himself running a motel, surrounded by fields, visiting the gurdwara each day, praying and meditating and returning to a self he has lost in the madness of New York City.

  “I’ll think about it, okay? Hey, you think this is a good present for Shanti?” Ranjit gestures to the package in the backseat. Inside is an electric pink hoodie from a Japanese store that just opened on Fifth Avenue. Leela said that any thirteen-year-old girl would love it.

  “Why are you so nervous? Shanti will be excited to see you. Girls are easy. Now boys, at that age, they’re like dogs, sniffing around.”

  “Easy for you to say. You’ve got three daughters, you see them every day. I haven’t seen her for so long…”

  They enter JFK Airport and soon the international terminal comes into sight, its swooping metal roof shining in the afternoon light.

  “We’re half an hour early. Look at this fucking mess.” Ali gestures at the cars clogging up the arrivals area, their inhabitants struggling with battered suitcases. “You go inside and get her, I’ll circle. I’m not paying for goddamn parking. And remember—this is strange for Shanti, too. Take it easy.”

  * * *

  Ranjit leans against a column by the arrivals area, sipping from a paper cup. He went to a fancy chain coffee shop and spent some of Patel’s money on a cup of chai, but it still tastes watery.

  Ahead of him automated doors open and close, letting out dribbles of Taiwanese who greet their relatives with tears and silent hugs. The flight from India should have just landed, but it will take Shanti time to clear immigration and customs. He imagines her as she used to be, her waist-long hair pulled back in a ponytail, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. What is she thinking right now, as she stands in the long line, waiting to have her passport stamped?

  The doors open and close soundlessly, and he catches glimpses of the baggage belts, and beyond that, the glassed-in booths of U.S. Immigration.

  He looks around him, seeing no other Indians, just bored livery drivers in dark jackets holding up their cardboard signs. Maybe he should have made a sign, so that he doesn’t miss her?

  Just then a white-bearded Sikh man in a crushed pink turban pushes a laden trolley slowly out of the doors, his wife limping behind him. They have the heavy-lidded look of the deeply jet-lagged.

  “Uncle,” Ranjit says, using the honorific. “Is this the flight from India?”

  “What?” The old Sikh stops abruptly, and one of his suitcases slides off the trolley. “No, no, we’re coming from Dubai.”

  “Let me help you with that.” Ranjit slips under the barrier and, one-handed, hauls the suitcase back onto the trolley. Seeing the panic on the old man’s face, he smiles reassuringly. “Is someone meeting you here?”

  “No. My daughter wanted to come, but she has to work. We’re supposed to take a taxi to…” The old man consults a crumpled piece of paper. “… someplace called West-chest-er. Do you know it?”

  Ranjit glances at the address: a long way from JFK, and the helpless old couple are just the kind of people who will get ripped off by a crooked cabbie. He looks at the digital clock on the wall; he probably has a few minutes before Shanti appears.

  “Uncle, let me help you to a taxi, okay? Shall I push the cart for you?”

  The old lady gives her husband a sharp look. “She said, don’t trust anyone. She said, don’t talk to strange people.”

  “Don’t be stupid.” The old Sikh gestures to Ranjit. “Can’t you see that he’s one of us?”

  Ranjit escorts the couple out to the taxi stand, and finds them a Pakistani cabbie whom he knows. The cabbie swears to take the shortest route, and the old couple drives off, still looking terrified. Oh well, at least they’ll get to their daughter’s house in one piece.

  Returning to his post by the pillar, Ranjit sees a flood of Indian passengers emerging, so many that the automatic door remains wide open. They stream past him, still clutching their passports, and he catches the smell of home, of polyester clothes and coconut hair oil. Craning his neck, he looks for a girl with long hair, but sees only more adults.

  Damn it, what is taking Shanti so long? She has a green card supplied by Senator Neals, and should have cleared immigration with no problems.

  The stream of Indians slows. The door remains closed for longer periods of time and he feels a sickness in his stomach. Has she missed a connecting flight? Has something bad happened?

  He turns to look around, and the unmistakable olive-green of an Indian Army duffel bag catches his attention. It is lying on the floor, secured by the foot of a young woman almost his height. Her back is to him, and he stares at her skinny black jeans and tight black T-shirt, at her black hair cut as short as a boy’s.

  “Shanti?” He walks toward her as though he is in a dream. “Is that you? You cut your hair?”

  “Papaji?” She turns, an iPod clutched in her hand, and yanks her big headphones off. He sees her heart-shaped face and large brown eyes, so much like Preetam’s, but the eyebrows are his, as is the strong curve of her mouth.

  Her eyes widen when she sees his cast. “Papaji, what happened to your arm?”

  All he can think about is the pink hoodie he’s bought her. “It’s going to be too small,” he says. “You’re so tall.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Then she is in his arms, hugging him hard, and he hugs back. He feels moisture on his face and thinks she is crying, then realizes that the tears are his.

  * * *

  “New York City, princess.” Ali, who has a taste for the theatrical, has taken the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, so that the skyline of the city appears on the horizon, shimmering in the afternoon light.

  Shanti is in the front seat next to Ali, and she leans forward with excitement. “Wow, it’s just like I imagined it. Are we going there?”

  “Hey, Ranjit,” Ali addresses the backseat. “We can’t take your daughter straight to Jackson Heights, she’ll think she never left India. What do you want to see, princess? Empire State Building? Statue of Liberty?”

  Shanti screws up her nose and thinks. Ranjit can’t get over how unfazed she is by the journey, how crisp and fresh she looks.

  “I want to go to Central Park and eat a hot dog, like in the movies. Can we, Papaji?”

  Ali smiles. “How about it, Papaji?”

  She wants to go to Central Park. That is fate.

  He manages a smile. “Sure. There is something I need to do there, anyway.”

  * * *

  They park the cab by the Metropolitan Museum, and buy hot dogs from a vendor there, getting extra mustard and mayo. They walk into Central Park, find a shady bench, and Ali and Shanti chat away happily. Well, Ali does have three daughters, he’s had plenty of practice.

  Shanti proclaims that her hot dog is delicious, and after she’s done, she leans her head against Ranjit’s shoulder and smiles up at him. Her big headphones curl around her neck; apparently she leaves them there all day.

  “I can’t believe I’m finally back in America. I love it here.”

  “It’s like a dream for me, too, beti. Now, I told you on the phone that my apartment is very small, but we’re going to move soon, and—”

  “I don’t care, Papaji. I’m here, that
’s the important thing.”

  “You’re not missing home? Your mother? Surely she will miss you?”

  She shrugs. “Mama doesn’t care. All she cares about is Mr. Big and his bullshit.”

  Two young men in tight T-shirts smile at Shanti as they stroll by, and Ranjit feels a sudden apprehension; she’s just thirteen years old, but already a woman.

  Shanti springs up. “Let’s walk. I want to see the park. Look, it’s huge. What do you need to do here?”

  “See a friend.”

  “You have a friend here?”

  “Princess, your father has all sorts of friends.” Ali chuckles and his chins wobble with hilarity. “You wait and see.”

  “Ah, shut up, Ali.”

  The three of them walk slowly along the edge of the Sheep Meadow, and Ranjit keeps a lookout for the nannies, but does not see them. When they are close to the John Lennon memorial, he mumbles that he will be right back, and walks ahead.

  Hector sits on his bench by the memorial, as though he hasn’t moved all summer. His jean jacket is dirtier and crustier than before, and every inch of it is covered with brightly colored pins. He tosses his scraggly hair out of his eyes and his eyes crinkle as Ranjit walks toward him.

  “Bad boy. I thought you were never coming back.”

  “Hello, Hector. Do you still have it?”

  “Do I still have it?” Hector’s head bobs back in exaggerated surprise. “Of course I still have it. I’m safer than a bank.” Bending down, he rummages in a bulging backpack and produces a thick manila envelope. He waves airily at Ranjit. “No charge, this one is on Hector. I’m not even going to ask you what’s in it.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it, even if I told you. Thank you, Hector. And stay out of trouble, okay?”

  Ranjit walks back to Shanti and Ali, who have appeared at the edge of the memorial, and are staring curiously at him. When he reaches them, Shanti peers at the manila envelope.