He stared back at the parked yellow Mercedes that was waiting patiently for him. He decided to wait five more minutes, just to spite the man. But in the end, Scrooge was the one standing in the cold instead of a heated luxurious car, so he gave in.
“Quick as you like, take me home,” Scrooge said, rubbing his hands together.
The taxi driver simply rubbed the tip of his moustache.
“Oh fine. I accept the damn reprimanding ride. There. I said it. Happy now?”
The driver grunted in approval and turned the ignition on. The classic car rumbled in a deep satisfactory purr.
They got into traffic and moved in the city roads. “I’m obligated to inform you about this ride. The AI that monitors our clients and helps us provide a better service for you, has flagged you for this reprimand. At the end of the ride, you will be taken home. Until then, we will do a small detour.”
Scrooge waved a hand and stared outside the window. “Whatever. Let’s just be done with it.”
The taxi took on speed and moved into the dark afternoon.
“Where are we?” Scrooge demanded, looking around at the place. It seemed familiar, but it must have changed so much over the years, so he couldn’t really put his finger at it.
The driver pointed at the big and flashy entrance to the Titania Hotel. It was lit up, decorated to perfection, a warm welcoming to their guests.
“Oh right,” Scrooge said, and a few buried emotions seemed to stir inside him. Just a bit.
The driver tapped a few buttons and the monitor for the back-seat passengers turned on. It showed a distorted image, a wide-angle view of the inside of a taxi. It wasn’t this one, but it was something quite similar. A couple was sitting in the back, you wouldn’t call them young, but they weren’t elderly. In their late thirties was more like it. Scrooge squinted and put on his reading glasses.
Why, it was him! A young Scrooge! With his fiance Beth! This was years ago. The young couple had just entered the taxi, and the woman was staring firmly outside, her lips pursed together and her arms crossed over her chest. She looked upset.
“What is this? How do you have this recording of me?” asked Scrooge with irritation in his voice.
The driver replied in a straight tone-of-voice, “As I said Sir, everything is recorded for your protection and also ours. This is only in case of emergencies, or to parse data so as the service provided to you be as smooth as possible. It’s all in the Terms-”
“Terms and Conditions, yeah yeah,” Scrooge interrupted. “It’s still wrong, keeping a recording of me for so long.”
“Please pay attention to the video or we’ll have to go over it again,” the driver said and then went silent.
Scrooge grunted but couldn’t keep his eyes off the recording even if he wanted to. There is something mesmeric in seeing yourself, more so if it’s something so old, almost twenty years ago. A part of your life that you had half-forgotten yourself.
In the video, the young Scrooge said, “Come on now Beth, it was a steal! Double dot they call it, charging twice the price for the very same dinner as always! I will not be subjected to their marketing ploys like that.”
Beth was quietly sniffing a handkerchief, trying to fight back her tears. “It was all lovely until you ruined it all. I never asked for any expensive presents, or clothes. I don’t nag like other women to take me to fancy restaurants. It was just this once, to have a romantic Christmas Eve, us together.”
“We can go somewhere else, where they aren’t price gouging so blatantly,” young Scrooge explained.
Beth cried and said, “But it was my dream, to spend a perfect dinner with you up on the Olive Garden, in full view of the Parthenon, the lit Athens below, us tasting wine and taking in the moment.” She rubbed her eye and her makeup got blurry. “It wasn’t about the cost, you know me damn well. I just wanted an experience for us, something to treasure.”
Young Scrooge sighed it away. “We’ll just go to a nice gyro place, warm and cheap.”
“I’m not going to a gyro place dressed in a gown!” she cried out in surrender.
“It’s better to be overdressed than under, I say.”
Beth now cried out loud and was going through the taxi’s handkerchiefs like a river. “I’m sorry,” she gulped. “I know this will seem that it’s about the fancy date, but it’s not. It’s about you. I know you’ll always love money more than me. I know you’ll always feel cheated because my father has no dowry to give for our wedding. I know that you have placed me and our upcoming wedding in a balance sheet on your mind and are feeling an itch about it, constantly.”
Young Scrooge just stared at her. Of course he had, it was how he viewed the world.
“You are bitter, you just are. You don’t care for a romantic evening, just once in our life, because you don’t think it’s worth the cost. You don’t think I’m worth the cost,” she ended and exhaled through a stuffy nose.
“No darling, don’t think-”
“We are done. We are breaking up. Because I love you, and you’ll never be happy loving me. So I release you. There. No more ‘girlfriend expenses’ for your balance sheet. Merry Christmas my love,” Beth said and demanded to be left out the taxi. A few seconds later, she got out, young Scrooge running after her. There were some muffled sounds coming in the video. After a while, young Scrooge got back into the taxi, alone.
Just as his young counterpart, Scrooge himself was staring out into the window, deep in thought. The driver didn’t say anything, he just started up the car again and went into the flow of traffic once more.
Beth, his ex-fiancee. So long ago. He shuddered as he remembered how warm she made him feel. The touch of her hands, the tenderness. The love he never acknowledged. Scrooge just took in the dark roads, illuminated by red lights and green lights and yellow lights, all in a Christmas Eve.
“Why are you taking me back to my office?” Scrooge said wearily.
The driver nodded, “The reprimanding route is decided by Supertaxi’s AI. I’m just taking you there.”
They stopped right back where they started from, at the corner beneath his office. The driver tapped something and the video screen showed another recording.
It was Scrooge again, young like before, in business clothes. Beside him was an older man, sitting calm.
Why it was Mr. Fioretti! His old boss, the man who treated him like a son.
“Mr. Fioretti,” Scrooge said and tears came to his eyes. He explained their relationship to the driver, who was listening in silence. “He was so good to me. This is the day he came with me to the capital, because I was too scared to come alone. He told me I was the best, that I could do anything I wanted.” The two men in the video were calmly taking in the sights of the big city, though young Scrooge wasn’t that calm. He was straightening his suit and tie all the time, rubbing his papers, his CV.
Mr. Fioretti put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Don’t sweat it, you are the best partner he could ever ask for. We just have to show him that.”
Scrooge told the driver, “This is the day I came to do the interview with Marco. It all went well, we became partners and I worked in his startup business. He did the computer stuff, and I did the accounting. I own the business now, Marco is long gone,” he sighed. “Mr. Fioretti is gone now as well. He is built like an ox that man, but something in his arteries, I don’t know. He took me in, trusted me with his finances, let me work around Economics school, get my degree. Then he pulled all the strings he had to get me interviews in Athens. He even came with me for moral support. It was the last time I saw the man in person, that Christmas Eve.”
The video showed the anxious Scrooge rehearsing some stuff he wanted to say in the interview, and Mr. Fioretti nodding in approval and raising his thumb, patting him hard on the back. Then they got out, at the same spot Scrooge was now sitting in, and got up to Marco’s little accounting startup.
“I would have bolted if it wasn’t for him,” Scrooge said. “I would have given
up, I was that afraid.”
“I’m afraid there’s more,” the driver said and tapped away on his tablet.
Another video showed up, but this time it wasn’t Scrooge. It was Clara. She seemed different somehow. It took him a long time to place it, but then he got it. She was prettier, plump cheeks, eyes filled with energy. Her hair was dyed blonde. She was riding in the back of the taxi, filled with anxiety, leaned forward, gripping the headrest.
Scrooge then noticed something, and looked around the cabin. It was the same taxi, the same car. Clara in the video waited for the taxi to stop, stormed outside, leaving the door open. Sounds from a playground could be heard, maybe a school? Yes, that sounded right, a school. The car in the video shook and another door thumped. After a minute, a man leaned in carrying a child. Clara’s boy. The man was old-fashioned, with a thick moustache.
It was his current driver! Scrooge raised his gaze at the actual man but he just lowered his head and sat deeper in his seat.
“Oh God, is he alright?” Clara said in the video.
The driver calmed her down, “Don’t worry, I’m taking you to the hospital.”
“I have no money! I’m not getting paid until-”
“Don’t think about that. Think of your boy. Now now, get inside,” said the driver in his deep assuring voice.
She hugged her son and was holding him tight, moving back and forth. She was cleaning his mouth from some vomit. The boy was just going along, unable to sit up.
“Timmy, Timmy. Mommy’s here. We are going to the doctor, to see how sick you are, OK Timmy?” Clara was terrified.
The video was cut and showed them both a few hours later, riding back on the taxi. Timmy was sitting upright this time, Clara was holding his little hand, gripping it tightly as if refusing to let go.
“How are you showing me this?” Scrooge asked. “This isn’t about me, this is personal information.”
The driver said calmly, “It gets charged in your business account, so it all gets filed under the same policy. I think it’s like that, anyway,” he waved a hand.
The driver had began moving again, and Scrooge had the feeling they were heading to the hospital in question.
Timmy in the video spoke, a faint voice, barely heard. “Am I sick mommy?”
“Yes. You are, but we are going to take medicine and see some doctors and you’ll get better,” she said, her voice sweet but firm. Then she turned to her driver and said, “Thank you Sir, for everything. I don’t know how to repay you.”
The driver’s deep voice in the video said, “It’s alright Miss. If something like that had happened to my boy I want to believe someone would stay and help. That’s what Christmas is for.”
“When was this?” Scrooge asked.
“Last year,” the driver said in a hushed tone, and not a word more.
Timmy in the video raised his eyes to his mother and she wiped off her tears. “Mommy, is that bad man Mr. Scrooge going to give us enough money for the doctors?”
Scrooge felt a dagger plunge into his heart.
Clara held her boy’s head to her chest and said, “I don’t know honey. I’ll ask. We’ll see.”
Then the video ended. Scrooge’s eyes focused through the black monitor, blurring his vision.
He whispered, “I didn’t.”
Stave Three
“This is where you get off Mr. Scrooge,” the driver said politely. They had parked at the side of a main avenue, nowhere near Scrooge’s home.
“But why?”
“Another driver will take you from here. He’ll be around any second now.”
Scrooge got off and stood in the sidewalk. Cars wheezed past in moderate speed, not so slow like the central Athens roads but not faster than the highway.
The cold was bearable now, even though it must have been a few degrees lower since he got in the taxi. He had absorbed enough heat to make him soldier on the short wait. The Mercedes went back into the road and disappeared into the traffic.
Another taxi came and stopped beside him. It was a modern model, smaller, nothing like the vintage Mercedes. This was short, easy to steer, easy to park. Sleek lines, modern accents. Scrooge stepped in and it was nice and warm. Unlike the old cars, that required heavy modification into the cyborg vehicles that being a taxi required these days, this one had built in tablet surfaces, sleek hidden antennas, integrated electronics in the dashboard, GPS, everything. You couldn’t realise it when watching one of the old modified cars, but they were actually a mess of cables and clunky slapped on devices. In there, they were all part of the design. The seats didn’t squeak with the sound of leather, but they felt nice.
“Well,” Scrooge said. “Are you going to take me home young man?”
The driver was indeed young. He was more casually dressed, no facial hair, a modern haircut from some footballer that every man was sporting these days. Scrooge studied him, until he was pretty sure he was of Albanian origin. It wasn’t easy to tell, but there were some signs.
Scrooge grunted in disapproval.
“You are still in the middle of the reprimanding ride, Mr. Scrooge,” the young man said, a hint of scoff in his voice.
“Why the change of a ride? I don’t get that.”
“The previous driver was about your past, Mr. Scrooge. I’m all about the present,” he said and smiled.
“Bah! Nonsense. Let’s be done with this charade.” He opened his coat, letting the warm air in his body. “Have we met before?” Scrooge squinted.
“Yes we have. You had requested I never get sent to you again because of my Albanian origin,” the young man said, studying his features through the mirror.
Scrooge lowered his head a bit. “Well, it is within my rights. I’m the customer, after all.”
“Yes, that you are,” the man said and drove.
Some time later, they arrived to Goudi area, across the street from Paidon Hospital. A children’s hospital, dedicated to Saint Sophia. It was a big place, busy with people, packed with cars and comings and goings.
The taxi parked next to the row of other waiting taxis. Scrooge craned his neck around and looked towards the racket at the entrance. A Santa was going inside, a pack of children all around him, screaming and laughing and waiting for their turn to get a present from his bag of gifts.
It was his cousin! He was throwing out little presents and sweets and chocolates out of his bag in handfuls. The children were ecstatic, going back to their parents to show what they got, wide smiles in their faces. Camera flashes were going off constantly, as if Santa was a celebrity. The kids were taking selfies with their Santa, or between themselves. Apart from the Greek kids, some were Asian, some black. A few Pakistani with their ears refusing to stand anywhere near their skull. A pale ginger one who could only be British. Some of them had tiny little crutches, others had bandages, but they were all having fun as if everything would be alright.
“Ho ho ho! I think you’ve been naughty,” cousin Santa said to a girl and pointed at her.
“No Santa, I promise you! I’ve been nice all year. Ask my teachers,” she protested.
“Oh OK then, here’s your candy,” Santa said and picked her up for an impromptu photoshoot as she laughed.
Scrooge stooped down and said, “I don’t really want him to see me here, please let us go.”
The young driver tapped a button somewhere and a slight pop came from the windows. “There. They are tinted now, he can’t see us.”
Scrooge disbelieved that for a second but he could notice a slight change in the light coming in the window. He stood up again and watched.
His cousin Santa managed to get inside without trampling any of the sick kids, and went to talk to some lady in the reception. After a few minutes, the whole chaos had been moved to the first floor and the kids who had been properly sweetened up had dispersed along with their parents.
Scrooge was still looking outside. “OK fine, I can see the joy my blasted cousin brings to the sick children. Are we do
ne?”
“A few minutes more,” the young driver said and sat comfortably in his seat.
Scrooge looked around absent-minded. Then he noticed his assistant Clara, holding some papers in her hand and talking on the phone. She was quite close to him but he couldn’t hear clearly. The driver pressed the button and the window lowered a few centimetres so the outside sounds could be heard clearly, but was still blocking them from being seen.
“But I don’t make enough money to cover that. Those amounts are insane! Who can actually pay that much health insurance?” Clara said on the phone, very upset. “No, that was my Christmas bonus. No I can’t make a payment before the end of the month. No, you listen to me. This is my son’s treatment we are talking about. You can’t- Yes, I’ll hold.”
Scrooge watched her with interest, as if it was the first time after seven years that he laid eyes on the woman. She was thinner than the video of her last year. He hair was untended, simply brushed back. Her eyes were sunken. She was snapping angrily at everything.
She was in despair.
He tried to dig out his memories. Had Clara asked him for money to cover her son’s treatment? She must have, but he had dismissed it. Probably. Deep in his own accounts, his balance sheets. He was paying her what was due, what the law dictated and a good enough raise as she was getting experience. But had she explained to him how much she needed the money? She must have tried. The woman was spending half her day in an office right next to him, for God’s sake. An opportunity would have arose. Or was she so scared she might lose her only job that she didn’t even dare to ask. To ask him. The bad man. Scrooge rubbed his face hard, as if scratching away the layers to get down into his memories. He couldn’t even remember. Such an important fact about the only other person that was so close in his life, and he didn’t even remember. He dug up some calculations he’d done at some point about her salary, he had given her some extra pay for overtime. But it was nothing, a few euros here and there. The health insurance must have been asking for thousands.
MOAB � Mother Of All Boxsets Page 69
