“Where are you from?”
“Long Island.”
But I never got to hear that story.
I was trapped in the boondocks of San Francisco, otherwise known as “Outer Excelsior”, where the streets have exotic country names like “Paris”, and if you forget yourself, you might for a moment think you’ve landed in a South American suburb. It was late on a Friday night, and it took an hour to convince the cab company to send someone my way. Just when I was about to give up and adventure my way through the public transportation system, this shifty soul appeared.
He was very chatty. Chatty in the way that I could have been anyone sitting in the back seat, or no one at all. His ramblings segued from one topic to another without reason. First, he asked me what route home I preferred. I hate this question, because it implies a test. If I don’t answer confidently, there is the distinct possibility that he will take my hesitation for ignorance and wind me home in the most elaborate and expensive way he can devise. I had no idea of the most efficient way to get home from Outer Excelsior, so I made something up: “Let’s take Mission to where it splits with Valencia, then hop on Franklin up to Pine.”
He thought about this, and started off in that general direction. Soon though, I got to hear the sob story about how he had left his credit card swiper in his other car, and how driving me all the way across town meant that he’d then have to come straight back to get it before he could risk picking up another fare.
He paused and made beady eye contact in the rear view mirror.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If you let me swing by my car to get my credit card swiper, I’ll turn the meter off and you can just pay me whatever you want.”
I have never been good in pressure situations. This one was two-fold. First, to make a decision about whether to agree to this unorthodox plan. I knew that my smarter friends would never. But I am kind of a sucker, and a people pleaser, and try to think the best of people, even when they are clearly mentally unstable and suggesting that I take a joyride to a bad neighborhood in the middle of the night so they can “get something out of their trunk”. Of course I agreed.
Second, I had no idea how much this cab would have cost in the first place, but I was beginning to suspect that it was going to be shockingly expensive. So I said, “ Fine, twenty dollars.”
In retrospect, I should have bargained him down, but a significant part of me had a hunch I was in imminent danger of getting serial killed, and I didn’t want to piss him off.
There was a definite moment when I was pretty sure my life was in danger. He swung off the freeway into a dark lot under the overpass and jumped out of the cab, rummaging through a car trunk for god knows what. My heart was beating frantically. I’m not going to lie; my primary concern was at what point I would have to abandon my laptop computer and run for it. He was older, and mildly cross-eyed, and looked kind of feeble, and even with a gun or a knife, I wasn’t sure how nimble he would be. But having to desert my laptop and run off in the dark streets of this empty industrial district in the middle of the night really sounded like kind of a pain in the ass. I hadn’t backed up my files in days, and I’d probably end up having to look for another cab all over again, just to get home.
I sat tight, and texted Alex to let him know that I’d probably be late, at best, due to the fact that there might possibly be an attempted rape and mutilation pending. Not surprisingly, he freaked out – as much as one can freak out over text – and sent me a frantic message demanding that I call him and “say out loud exactly where you are and what’s happening.”
Was I overreacting? Possibly. Dude found his credit card swiper and waved it at me with a show of camaraderie, jumped back into the cab, and drove me straight home in record time, lauding my niceness and telling me enthusiastic stories about random flea market purchases.
By the time we pulled up to the house, Alex was waiting outside and came directly over to the cab to rescue me. I waved him off so I could hear the rest of this nice man’s story about how he bought a vintage Jimi Hendrix-at-the-Fillmore poster for ten bucks off an old lady and resold it to Amoeba records for ten times that much.
I gave him twenty plus tip, then went upstairs to bed.
