Like all significant people, she was often made to suffer, and yet she would not have traded her lot for all the freedom in the world.
Daddy Longlegs scurried unseen, along the bottom of the plexiglass.
She rarely envied ordinary people for the cruel happy-go-luckiness, with which they blundered through life. To the driver, this smog filled inertia into which they were glued couldn’t mean much. It was too much a part of his life. Even this heat – he seemed not to sweat it. An unnatural man, made of non-melting chocolate.
It annoyed her to think that, objectively speaking, she probably smelled worse than him. She wondered if his armpits were itchy like hers, and was shocked in the very same instant, to realize that she had nearly let this thought arouse her.
Perhaps this uncanny self-awareness was her gift. Perhaps it was the source of her incredible self control to which (if only she’d admit it), she owed so much of her success.
Looking at the cars now, each in its own way exactly like the others, she tried to make herself believe that it was the entire world that had ground itself into universal gridlock, where fumes were as static as the cars that produced them. Planes were frozen in the sky, trailing vapour that would never dissipate.
Fingering once more the passport destroyed her momentary escape from what felt like non-reality to begin with. She was forced to admit that planes were still flying, the rigidity of their schedules mocking the way she was being abused by time.
She inspected her ticket in the light. Under normal circumstances, the document in her fingers might have re-assured her. Now it was having the opposite effect. She held the paper unnaturally high, that he might catch a glimpse of it in his mirror. Wanting to remind him, that she had somewhere to be.
Responsibility. She wanted him to feel that familiar sting. She might have reminded him that it was not her job to move this cab, but a plexiglass wall kept them separated, sparing her the embarrassment.
“Which one of us is this thing supposed to protect?” she wondered out loud into this block of dead air, that had the power to kill even the sound of her own voice. Perhaps they had already violated each other, in another time and place.
Another hot flash. With a wave of relief she noted that the walls of this taxi let strains of the outside cacophony seep inside. Yet somehow she missed the irony in this; that the pent up energy of these wailing automobiles was being transformed into pure sound, and that it was this noise alone that had the power to deliver her, if only from the brutality of her own thoughts.
It was not just the armpits now. An itch, she knew, was nothing but an excuse to touch oneself in public. She allowed this thought to tickle her. Every one of her garments was damp, sticky and wrinkly in all the wrong places.
She searched his rearview mirror, daring eye contact. But the mirror was something he had no need for. If he was at all aware of her presence, he chose not to show it.
She hated him now because she couldn’t help imagining that his underwear did not itch. She hated the fact that neither this heat, nor this traffic become non-traffic, made his pores leak. She knew it was hopelessly selfish to expect him to feel personally responsible, but was it also too much to hope that he might feel a part of her predicament – if not sympathy, then at least a connection of some sort? But the stained plexiglass between them made a mockery of this uncharacteristically idealistic thought.
In all likelihood, the pane bothered him more than her. Sociability came easier to his kind. Looking at the plexiglass more closely now, she noticed for the first time Daddy Longlegs, making his way up.
She was not one to hurt a crane fly, or even panic at the sight of one. Calmly she reached for her purse, digging out a paper napkin with one hand and rolling down the window with the other. The toxic air made her cough.
She set him free, napkin and all, to fend for himself on the hot pavement. In this gridlock, he stood a chance. Secretly, she hoped the driver had been watching. She hoped that he had noticed she was the kind of person to rescue this least respected of all God’s creatures. If he knew she was kind to animals, would that shatter every assumption he’d made about her? She acts tough, he would think, but she can’t even hurt a crane fly.
A strange barometer for kindness, really. To not hurt an ant, all one has to do, is to refrain from smoldering it with a magnifying glass. To not hurt a crane fly, involves not plucking each one of its legs, one by one, to watch it stagger more and more inept, until it has become a “Daddy No-Legs-At-All”. These cruel games she had played as a child.
But higher life-forms are easier to break. Careless footsteps weave a destructive path through the muck of human souls. And while she knew regret to be a useless emotion, she was not above letting it cripple her, from time to time.
For all she knew, she was heading for his homeland. Perhaps, if it weren’t for this stupid plexiglass, they could have had a real conversation. Or had he already renounced his origins in the third world? How many worlds in this world, really? Even in the confines of this taxi, they were worlds apart. The plexiglass merely formalized something that was tangible and real. Two compartments: hers, and his.
She noticed now, that his meter was running on a clock. She was paying by the minute, not the kilometer. Like a lawyer or a consultant, he was charging her for his time, not his service. There would be no refund, if she never got there at all.
She started hyperventilating, acutely aware that she’d never, ever had a panic attack not ultimately caused by the cruel, steady passage of time. His door flung open. No need to park the car; it was already parked.
“Are you alright ma’am?”
“It’s the heat,” she said, fantasizing that he would lift her in his arms and carry her to the airport. “You do realize my plane leaves at 1:45.”
“The hottest time of day,” he nodded. Behind them someone started honking, as if his having left the wheel had anything to do with their stagnation.
“Will I still catch my plane?”
He sighed. “Sometimes planes are late.”
She tried to grasp this – to allow reality to seep into her brain. But the search for alternatives only led to a further system freeze. A fatal computing error that expressed itself in a twisted grimace.
“Please lady, you must try to breathe.”
Stupid at thirty-six – a sad trajectory she could not bear to contemplate. For a moment she wished for some grave disaster to befall them both; the sudden unwinding of the universe. A lyric from and old pop tune forced its way into her mind.
“If a doubledecker bus, crashes into us, to die by your side, what a heavenly way to die…”
If it is possible to have such a seemingly random thought, is it possible to have any other kind?
“… and if a ten ton truck, should kill the both of us, to die by your side, well the pleasure, the privilege is mine.”
Nonsense. A ten ton truck couldn’t make any more headway than they could. The solution would not come. Frantic honking behind them signaled the possibility of movement.
“Get back in the car,” she said a little too brusquely. “There’s no point in giving up.”
What made her soldier on? She knew that her inspection of the new facility would include everything but an actual tour of the plant. This was for her own protection- a safeguard for her lingering sanity. “I had no idea” she would say, years later, under oath.
Suddenly, almost imperceptibly, the taxi crept forward. A few inches were gained, and then, once more, all was quiet on the Western Front.
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