A Taxi Driver's Christmas

I thought about driving on Christmas Eve, but I'm involved with somebody right now, and that night is truly magical, so I stayed in with my friend and we drank and ate and had sex and went to bed early, a little too old to stay up for Santa Claus. I felt well-rested on Christmas Day. If you're pushing a hack for a living, you've got to drive over the holidays. That's where the money is. I took the car out on Christmas night, with a mind toward cashing in on the well-fed aftermath of the feast.

I picked up a young Chinese couple from Hong Kong at 68th and York. They wanted to go down to Wall Street, to see the Stock Exchange and the gigantic Christmas tree set up in front of it. When we got there, they asked if I could take their picture. What the heck, why not? I parked the cab in front of the Federal Reserve and took a few shots of them, then drove them up to Times Square, where they had dinner reservations at a swank sushi joint. They had never been to America before and had a little time to kill, so I recommended Bar Code, open 24 hours a day at 46th and 7th, which is about as American as it gets outside of Ft. Lauderdale.

A very distinguished old gent got in with a young man, obviously his son, and asked me to take them up to 72nd and Park. The boy was talking about his upcoming schedule at Dartmouth; apparently he and the old man were planning some kind of a trip in the spring. Something elusive in the old man's responses gave away to me his sense of his son's slipping away. I can't put my finger on it, exactly. It was something about the way the boy was struggling to fit this trip with his father into his own accelerating schedule. The old man was faltering slightly in his replies, and the glimpses I caught of him in the rearview mirror gazing out the window as I sped them uptown bespoke a sense of deep passage, the sudden apprehension of a child maturing and slipping out of your grasp. It occurred to me that I've never been to New Hampshire in the winter.

This woman got in at New York Hospital, bound for the west side, and began chattering away on her cellphone, calling everyone she knew from the sound of it. From what I overheard, it seemed that this woman has never been able to walk properly, due to some congenital affliction or another, and had always been told it was inoperable, but now, right here in my cab, she was announcing to her friends and relatives that a doctor had told her that, indeed, he could do it. She apologized to me as we streaked through Central Park. She was apologizing for her enthusiasm. I told her I thought that was the best news I'd ever heard in my taxicab, and it was.

"I have never been able to walk right," she said, "and this is the best Christmas present I ever got."

It was easy to wish her a Merry Christmas. It lifts the heart and is a blessing to be in the presence of a recipient of heaven's generosity. Heaven's generosity is what the whole fuss is about.

It was a good, very busy night, and the tips were consistently lavish. Things started to slow down around 1:30 in the morning. The usual bar crowd wasn't out. Anybody going anywhere was already there. I cruised the Upper East Side and the hotels of the East 50s for a while, and then decided to make one last stab at Times Square before packing it in. I entered at 49th and turned left on 7th, cruising the avenue. I rolled up on Bar Code, where a skinny white guy seriously underdressed in a light suede jacket was negotiating with the driver of another yellow cab. I figured it to be one of these things where the driver doesn't want to cross the water, and I'm figuring to scoop up the fare and blow off the night on something nice and fat. The guy gestured for the driver ahead of me to sit tight, then approached me.

"Hey, how ya doin'," he said. "You're a white guy."

"Sorta," I replied. This guy looked to be hopped up on something, talking a mile a minute and working his jaw. "Where do you want to go tonight?" I like paraphrasing the Microsoft ad when I meet someone hinky.

"I got a bunch of people upstairs with baggage, we're goin' to Jersey, over by the Meadowlands, Ahmed up here's a little nervous about it, says he doesn't know the way, I figure maybe he could follow you. I'll make it good for you, say 40 bucks. Is that okay? You know the way?"

"Lincoln Tunnel, 3 West to 17 North, you'll have to guide me from there."

"Perfect," he says. "You da man."

So I headed over to Jersey with a carload of very odd people, three women in the back dressed as if they just dropped in from 1958, very prim, periodically making fun of this hype sitting next to me in the front seat who won't shut up about all of his various hustles and keeps giggling and sniffling and calling his pal in the cab behind me on his cellphone, uttering inanities and cryptic asides. It was weird, and I was relieved to drop them off in some place called Hasbrouck Heights. The hype handed me a $50 and thanked me profusely.

The other driver asked me to lead him back to the city, so we deadheaded it back at an easy clip. I pulled over on 40th St. and he pulled alongside me.

"I didn't know," he said, "that guy didn't seem right."

"He was on some kind of dope," I replied. "You did right. Better safe than sorry. I'm packing it in for the night. Merry Christmas!"

The young Arab smiled. "Merry Christmas!" he said.

I drove back to Queens through the frigid empty streets and returned the cab. I did not see a single vehicle other than my own as I drove up the FDR and the Harlem River Dr. to my home just before dawn.

It occurred to me that the days are getting longer now. That's good.