by C.P. Kemabia
The cab driver was the talkative type. He didn’t get into talking mode right off the gate though. He waited, spied on Antwone a couple times through the cabin mirror. And after they had ridden for a while on West 3rd street, he said:
“Did you get stood up or something?”
“I beg your pardon?” said Antwone.
“Was someone supposed to scoop you up and they didn’t show up?”
Antwone smiled. The cab driver looked like a nice guy. He was probably over fifty. He had a rotund face, a flat nose and thin eyebrows that curved into a half-circle above his straight eyes. His thick hair seemed to grow outward and not so much down on his temples, so that they were practically flat.
All those features made him look nice and chummy.
“Now why would you think someone stood me up?” asked Antwone.
“I don’t know,” he said. “You just looked as if you were waiting for someone when I picked you up.”
“Oh.”
“First time in L.A.?”
“I’ve been here before,” Antwone added. “Once... Years ago.”
It was an insignificant detail and it was uncalled for. He didn’t know why he had added that.
“Oh. And here I was figuring you for an out-of-towner.”
“Really? Do I seem so out of place or something?”
“Nope,” the cabbie said. “You seem like you are where you need to be, right? Except you just don’t look like a L.A. person.”
Antwone feigned a smile and looked out the window.
The cabbie said again, “So you live here or you’re just visiting?”
“Neither. I’m passing through.”
“Well there’s a lot to see around here… Lots of stuff, if you give yourself the time.”
“I bet there is,” Antwone said. “There’s always something to see.”
The cabbie slightly turned around. He said, “I tell you, I’ve been driving this cab for, what, twenty-five years now, and I still haven’t seen it all. And sometimes I ask myself these crazy questions like, how much of his environment can a man see in his lifetime, really?”
He looked ahead at the road again. “I know, I know, there’s the internet and all those crazy new technologies but it’s still crazy when you think about it, right? Seriously, it’s crazy. They say the world’s gotten smaller. Um… What’s the expression again…?”
He searched his brain and couldn’t find the expression.
“The world is a small village,” Antwone supplied.
“Right, right… Anyway they say that but, still, how much of it can you see before you check out, you know what I mean? Even in a smaller context like in a town this sprawled out. There’re people who don’t know what’s outside their neighborhood. It’s just a terrible thing to think about. Like the fish that thinks the pond is the only thing there is and realizes there’s more when it’s jerked out of it. It depresses the hell out of me just to think about how little we see of our environment…”
He laughed. Maybe it was the contagious fruity laughter or the fact that having a little chitchat this late at night in a taxicab made you feel less lonesome, but for whatever reason, Antwone suddenly felt compelled to get the conversation going.
“There’s this weather beacon atop a building off of Hauser Boulevard,” he said. “Has it always been there?”
“I don’t know,” the cabbie said. “I don’t exactly pay attention to these kinds of things.” He turned around again to look at Antwone. “That’s why I’m just a cabbie and not a socialite.”
He laughed. Antwone found the remark strange and didn’t see the correlation with the weather beacon. But then the cabbie looked forward again and added, “They know everything about every goddamned thing.”
“Right––”
“And don’t you fret about the weather,” he said. “It’s always nice out here. My wife just loves it…”
Antwone waited a few seconds.
The car leveled out onto a lighted street and passed by a sandy lot which was hemmed by sods and trees and had this big rock sitting on an elevated cement platform which, in turn, was the one big contrast in the lot.
“You have any kids?”Antwone finally asked.
“Yeah, three…” the driver told him. “You?”
Antwone grimaced and shook his head.
The cabbie said, “Well don’t be too hasty, that’s about all I can tell you.”
“How long have you been married?”
The cabbie thought about it. You could see in his expression that he was carefully counting the years. And it looked like the total sort of surprised him.
“Twenty-seven years,” he said and this slow smile came on his face.
“Twenty-seven years,” Antwone repeated, giving the man some respect.
“Yep, sir. Started out as a puppy love thing though. We’ve known each other for more than thirty five years now.”
“Well congratulations”
“For what?”
“It’s a seldom thing to find a soul mate.”
“Oh, me… You know, soul mates and stuff ––”
The cabbie turned a knob on the dashboard and a slow purring came with a new wave of coolness.
He said, “Back in the days, you know, I didn’t really believe in it. Love, I mean. I mean I saw it in the movies, read about it in books. I just hadn’t seen it. So you bet I didn’t really believe in it.”
“I’m sure you do now.”
“I still don’t,” the cabbie said. “That’s the reason I’m still married.”
“How do you mean?”
The cabbie took some time before he answered. He was really a nice guy. And you could see he was the kind of man who liked to throw out interesting things in a conversation, not to show off or anything, but to simply say something he knew.
Antwone looked at him through the cabin mirror, waiting for his response.
“For people,” the cabbie said, “love is this thing, you know. This pie-in-the-sky thing that everyone’s after. I mean, you have people who fall in love, or think they are in love, and then one day or another they go on and get themselves new partners. So it is what it is; love nowadays is simply not realistic.”
“Twenty-seven years of marriage don’t seem realistic,” Antwone said. “Yet here you are.”
“It wasn’t love that did it. Sure we had our lovely moments; we still do. But it’s the companionship, the camaraderie and the respect. That’s what makes things work in a couple. And believe me I’ve seen a lot couples lose their bonds and go downhill. And some right in the very backseat you’re sitting…”
Antwone kept quiet. He wasn’t about to argue. His own parents had had a big time falling out and, from what he had perceived as a young boy, their relationship had never recovered from it.
He didn’t blame either of them though. He had never known what had truly happened. And he had never cared to know. So he wasn’t going to dispute the cabbie’s arguments which seemingly came from first-hand experience.
“Understand,” the cabbie said again as they stopped at a red light, “I’m very happy and all. And I think I’m a pretty lucky guy.”
“Good for you then.”
The light turned green and the car rode on. Lighted stores whizzed by for maybe a minute. Antwone saw his reflection in the door window. Then it was dark; and he saw his reflection in his mind.
When they came out on South Fairfax Avenue, he realized, by seeing his reflection on the window again, that he’d been thoughtful. And it awfully showed.
“You might have a different view though,” the cabbie suddenly said, smiling. “Are you married?”
“No,” Antwone said. “No, I’m not married.”
“But you’ve got yourself a little lady?”
Antwone’s answer came tentatively, “A lady, yeah.”
“And how’s it going?”
That was a little too personal. Antwone’s shoulders drooped and he sighed heavily in response.
The ca
bbie took the hint and laughed.
Antwone thought that the cabbie laughed too easily. But he also appreciated the fact that he was a man who could apparently laugh about everything. And Antwone even wished that he was born with that kind of easy humor.
They rode on in silence for a little while, and then the cabbie resumed the conversation. Maybe people who got in his car were not good conversationalists, so he was making up for those times. He said, “Excuse me, but I have the feeling that I’ve seen your face somewhere.”
“I really doubt that.”
“No seriously… Like I’m sitting here and we’re talking and I’m like: where the hell have I seen this guy?” He looked into the cabin mirror. “You’ve gotta help me out here.”
“I’m a writer,” Antwone admitted simply. “But I don’t think ––”
“—Yeah that’s it! You wrote that book, huh … ahem … what is it called … hum…”
He snapped his fingers multiple times before recalling. “Knight of Rain… Yes that.”
“Oh, so you read it.”
“No. My wife has. And she’s really crazy about it. Jesus, I have a literary celebrity in my car.”
His head was now bobbing in response to the new excitement and a large grin was covering his face.
“Talk about some cosmic coincidence,” he finally said after he was able to keep himself cool enough to place another word. “That’s going to make for some stories.”
When the car pulled up in front of the hotel and Antwone paid his fare, the cabbie asked him for an autograph. It was for his wife, he said, while looking for a pen and a piece of paper in the glove box.
Antwone signed a page of an old legal pad.
“Here’s my card,” the cabbie said, holding out a small, rectangular piece of stiff paper through the passenger seat window. “Call me if you need a ride.”
Antwone took the card, looked it over and thanked him.
“By the way,” the cabbie said. “It’s unwise to be out on the street late in the night like that. Things aren’t too crazy this side of town, but there’s always a bunch of hoodlums prowling out there, you know. You never see ’em, but they’re out there. You should tell whoever stood you up to keep their goddamn appointments.”
And he drove off. As the car was vanishing around a street corner, Antwone wondered why the cabbie kept thinking someone had stood him up.
Antwone walked up the steps leading up to the hotel’s main entrance.
He nodded when the reception clerk murmured something to him. Then he went straight to his room and took a long, refreshing shower. He still didn’t feel like sleeping afterwards.
Antwone got a great deal of work done, hammering at his old trusted typewriter until he felt satisfied with his output.
He had always preferred the typewriter over a computer. It was his way to emulate the working process of all the great writers of the nineteenth century and onwards whom he deeply admired and whose influences were unmistakable in his own work.
The gears of his mind always worked far more effectively after a good walk. His book was coming together and was beginning to take a nice shape. His prose was not bad at all for a rough draft. With some cleanup, it could prove superior to his previous efforts. And he was happy about that.
At eleven o’clock in the morning, he gave himself a break. He’d been wrestling with the typewriter for six hours straight. His mind had become a fog. But the effect on his body was a mild discomfort in his eyes and a sharp throbbing on the area of his temples.
He still didn’t feel sleepy though. But obviously he had tired himself out in the intellectual battle to conquer the words.
Antwone lay down on the bed, face up, hands behind his head and just stared at the ceiling. He tried to pretend that he was seeing strange pictographs on the drywall. But that didn’t help put him to sleep.
Then he thought of his old travel projects. He had been around the world before, so to speak, but as an odd-jobber on a freighter ship, and opportunities to sightsee beyond port cities’ outskirts were very scarce. This new travel project, which he would experience as a tourist, was very exciting to consider. Maybe thinking of his ideal destinations would induce a dreamful sleep.
For a while now, he’d been meaning to go to Vienna and maybe tour South America too.
But definitely Vienna and Spain were on his wish list. He would make plans for that. When exactly? He did not know. He’d have to seriously think about it if it was ever going to happen.
He still couldn’t sleep…
There were maybe five more chapters left to write to complete the book. And after that, he knew the old restlessness would be back—the restlessness and the itching and the feeling that made you unhinged under your skin and led you to believe you were a loser no matter what your accomplishments were because this feeling had always inhabited you as long as you could remember.
He still couldn’t sleep…
So he half-rose on his shoulder and reached his hand to his coat which was slung over the back of a chair. He grabbed a bottle of pills from the pocket and popped two into his mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbed as the pills slithered down his windpipe. He then reassumed his lying position after punching the pillow on the spot where his head would rest.
Antwone figured he had his hotel room maybe for thirty more days; after which time he’d go back to New York.
For nearly five months he had been going around, city after city, in an attempt to ‘write with the movement’… That’s how he’d always explain it to Ava.
To put movement in his writing, he had to be on the move himself. But he was pretty sure she only half understood what he meant. Perhaps only a fellow writer could see the wisdom in his way of going about his craft.
That’s why he made his life fit into a small roller bag and lived in hotel rooms most of the time to write. It also helped kill a little bit of the loneliness; it helped him not think about it too much. And when he did think about it, it helped him not think about it too hard. Plus he liked the nomadic experience, liked the fact that he was not tied down by anything or anyone.
But right now though, he strangely missed New York. So with this change of heart, he resolved to finish the book here and put to rest his island-hopping routine for a while.
So yeah, he’d go back to New York; go back to watching plays and musicals; maybe take some long walks over the Brooklyn Bridge to view the Manhattan Skyline; seek company of lost friends and dine with them to rekindle the friendship, if it wasn’t too lost or too damaged already. Or maybe he’d just stay here for a little longer and take in some sights of the city. Make a few friends in the process. Why not? Maybe he could have a drink with that cabbie somewhere when it was time to celebrate the completion of the book… Maybe the cabbie would care to join him.
Antwone closed his eyes and the idea of having a drink with the cabbie seemed to please him. After a while lying there on the bed, Antwone vaguely became aware of falling asleep.
The whole time he slept, however, he remained awfully aware of it, and thus didn’t get the rest he was hoping for.
Sometimes, sleeping could be just as tiring as waking. Sometimes it could be as tiring as living too.
3
