We Create Our Own Karma

The Mark on East 77th Street is a posh, boutique hotel which caters to the well-moneyed and well-connected American Aristocracy of the Upper East Side, and to the Flying Cosmopolitans, mostly Europeans, along with at spattering of celebrities (I’ve picked up two from there - Jane Seymour and, quite recently, Eliot Spitzer). I always have my eye on the place as I drive by as there’s a watering hole at street level from which emerge potential passengers. And of course I’m always looking for that next passenger.

It was there at the Mark that I was waved down by a doorman one night not all that long ago at around eleven o’clock and a rather stunningly beautiful, ebony woman entered my taxi. She was exquisitely well put together: tall, thin, angular features, exotic-looking jewelry, what looked like perfect hair, and an outfit that even I, a fashion moron, could tell was smart and chic, if not elegant. She just had to be a model, I thought, if not a supermodel.

She gave me her destination, Williamsburg in Brooklyn, a twenty-minute ride, and after a brief discussion about the route we would be taking, I thought our conversation was already pretty much over. I’ve found fashion models tend to be rather aloof, so used to men fawning over them that they see us as men-objects, not really people, an interesting reversal on the way we are said to think about them. And also, I must admit, a woman who is perhaps too beautiful can be intimidating to a man simply by her appearance. Those of us who suffer from a deficiency in swaggering confidence see the “ten” as a goal that is automatically out of reach, a no-game condition. We assume we would have to be on a comparable level of good looks as she, or wealthy enough to make her overlook our deficiencies. So we shy away, just on assumption. I’m no different.

After five minutes of silence, however, she surprised me by initiating a conversation. What would it cost, she wanted to know, to take a taxi to Trenton, New Jersey, at six in the morning? And would I be interested?

I told her it would be ridiculously expensive because Trenton is about sixty miles away and it would take an hour and a half to get there if the roads were clear, which might be the case at 6 a.m., but would certainly not be the case on the way back. Hell, you could sit at a bridge or tunnel for an hour in the morning rush, so that had to be taken into consideration on what the price of the ride would be. Off the top of my head I told her I would charge three hundred dollars - a stupid amount of money to spend. And besides, I couldn’t do it. My shift ends at five.

She had a problem, she said. She was a model (you see, I knew it!) and she had to be in Trenton at eight in the morning for a shoot. And here it was, 11 p.m., and she hadn’t yet figured out how to get there. She didn’t even know where Trenton was.

Well, I guess she wasn’t a supermodel after all, not that it mattered. (Assumingly supermodels have managers who handle these logistical problems and, clearly, she didn’t.) So taking on the role of transportation consultant, I told her if I were her I’d take a train, then grab a cab in Trenton.

This sounded like a good idea.

-- Which train?

-- New Jersey Transit.

-- Which train station, Grand Central or Penn?

-- Penn.

-- I’ll take a taxi from Brooklyn to Penn Station, she added.

-- You can always catch a cab on Roebling Street, I said.

Problem solved.

Her smile lit up the cab.

As often happens when people communicate with each other, the level of affinity between us rose and further communication came more easily. I found out she was from Haiti, so we discussed the situation there after the earthquake; she asked me some questions about taxi-driving in New York City; she said something about her sister; we had an amusing argument about the best pizza in the city (take your pick, I say, New York is a pizza paradise). It was nothing more than friendly chit-chat, but friendly chit-chat gives you a sense of the other person and in this case it showed me a sincere, open individual whom I liked for the way she was, quite aside from her beauty.

We arrived at her place, an apartment house on North 7th Street, and she paid the fare with a card, giving me an above-average tip. As she thanked me for the ride and began to leave, I realized something: I myself would be in Penn Station at about the same time as she. I was taking commuter trains home in those days and the earliest one, the one I always caught, left at 6:10. So I told her that she and I might see each other again in Penn Station, wouldn’t that be crazy?

Now she might have responded with a sign of suspicion at my having said that - what is this guy, a stalker? - but she didn’t. Instead she smiled pleasantly, giving me the impression that she thought that if we did happen to run into each other again in Penn Station it wouldn't be a bad thing at all. Not that I had any ideas about this woman. I would have said the same thing to anyone whom I perceived to be a good-natured human being.

She waved goodbye and disappeared into her building.

My shift proceeded as usual. A couple of rides to Brooklyn, a steady passenger from the NY Post to his home in Rego Park, a period of half an hour when I could find no one, and a sampling of tourists, drunks, and bankers working late. At 4:30 I gave up looking for a last-ride airport ride and headed to the Hess Station on West 45th to gas up. My night was over. By 5:10 I was waiting on the line at the taxi garage to turn in the rate card and keys and get paid for the credit card transactions of the night. At 5:35 I was out of there and began walking to Penn Station. At 5:55 I arrived.

I had fifteen minutes to kill before my train departed. I’d almost forgotten about the model who was going to Trenton but then it hit me and, only because she’d been nice, I started to walk over toward the waiting room near the 8th Avenue entrance, which is shared by New Jersey Transit and Amtrak, to look for her - just to say hi because I thought it would be such a unique thing to see somebody twice like that. The station starts to get busy at around 6 a.m., with lots of early trains departing to Washington, Boston, and Savannah, so I had to zig-zag my way around dozens of moving bodies until I finally made it to the waiting room. There are approximately a hundred seats in there, about half of which were occupied.

I looked around.

No, no, no… maybe she left already… maybe she found another way to get there, after all… no, not there.

It already began to bother me that I would never know.

I looked again.

And there she was, sitting there, just a couple of rows away from where I was standing! I must have scanned right over her the first time I looked. Wow! I walked over.

-- Hey, hi, remember me?

-- Oh, yes, hello!

Big smile.

-- So I see you got here all right.

-- Yes, there were taxis on Roebling Street, just like you said. Thank you so much.

-- Oh, you’re welcome. When does your train leave?

She looked at me blankly. That was odd. I looked over at the departure board. There was the Trenton train, Track 2, 6:02, ALL ABOARD. I looked at the clock. It was 6:00! Why was she still sitting there?

-- Oh my God, your train is leaving in two minutes!

-- It is?

I thought maybe this whole train thing was new to her. She obviously didn’t understand how it worked - you look at the board, when it says to get on, you go to the track… she was from Haiti, maybe she didn’t understand the meaning of the words on the board…

-- Come on, you’re going to miss your train! Follow me!

She jumped up. Fortunately I knew exactly where Track 2 was located, not far from the waiting room. She followed me through the mishmash of travelers and in twenty seconds we were standing at the doorway leading to the stairway that takes you down to Track 2.

I opened the door for her.

-- Go on, you can still make it!

-- Oh, thank you!

-- You’re welcome! Go!

She ran down the stairs and for the second time disappeared from my sight. I looked at the clock. 6:01. She made the train.

I had to move a bit quickly now to catch my own train - wouldn’t that be ironic if I missed my own train - but I got there with five minutes to spare which for me, knowing exactly where things are and exactly how much time it takes for me to get to them, was an eternity. After my train pulled out and I did some paperwork regarding the night’s business, I had some time to reflect upon what had just happened.

I thought at first that I had done it, that I had been the watchful angel, so to speak. And to some degree, yes, I had. But really, she had done it. She didn’t have to be open and friendly to a random stranger, her taxi driver. She could have been cold and uncommunicative. But it was the way she was, her good nature, that made me feel it would not offend her if I suddenly showed up and said hello.

We create our own karma.

Speed Of Particle Flow

I had a little episode a few nights ago that could serve as a model for the efficiency that is possible in today's world.  The chronology went something like this...

11:41 p.m. - I pick up two ladies, one a twenty-something, the other middle-aged, coming out of the Mark Hotel on East 77th Street.  They tell me they will have two stops, the first on Central Park South.  As we head downtown on 5th Avenue, I can tell from their conversation that they are business colleagues.

11:46 p.m. - The older woman gets out across the street from her hotel on CPS.  I'm told that the next stop will be the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square.  "Do you know where that is?" the twenty-something asks, demonstrating that she is an out-of-towner.  Any cabbie would be familiar with the gigantic Marquis.  "Sure," I reply, unoffended.

11:47 p.m. - We stop at a red light at 7th Avenue.  Looking at her in the mirror, she seems friendly so I decide to liven up the ride by making an out of the blue comment to her.  "Do you see that building on the left?" I ask, indicating the stately New York Athletic Club. 

"Yes," says she. 

"You know the Christmas song 'Santa Claus Is Coming To Town'?"

"Yeah."

"Thirty years ago I brought the man who wrote that song to that building."

Her eyes widened.  "Really!  Wow!"

Bingo, we were off to the races.  I tell her my J. Fred Coots story as we make the left onto 7th Avenue and proceed toward the Marquis on 45th Street.

11:50 p.m. - As we wait at the red light at the special right-turn-only lane at 45th Street, she asks me what time the stores close tomorrow, a Wednesday - she's catching a plane in the morning and wonders if there'll be enough time to do some shopping.  I tell her I think the stores open at 10, but caution that I can't be sure because I haven't seen that hour of the day for years since I drive the night shift and sleep in the morning.  In fact, I add, I'm not even sure that there actually is a ten o'clock in the morning, a little joke.  She smiles.

11:52 p.m. -  We pull up beside the Marquis on 45th.  Somehow the conversation has meandered onto the subject of what the odds would be of getting a passenger twice in a cab in New York City.  I wind up telling her a story about having had a Major League baseball player from the California Angels in my cab twice in two successive years.  This then leads into a related story about how the only way to have an advantage when betting on baseball is to have some inside information about particular circumstances that could affect the outcome of a game, and that these two rides had provided me with just that.  She appears to be fascinated.

11:54 p.m. - The conversation finally comes to an end.  She pays the $11.00 fare with a credit card, adding a $3.30 tip, then smiles, leaves the taxi, and disappears into the hotel.  I drive off down 45th Street toward 8th Avenue, looking for my next passenger.

11:56 p.m. - Not finding anyone after driving up 8th for ten blocks, I decide to take a break as it is almost midnight and that is routinely when I stop and eat.  I make a few turns and wind up on 59th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues, a quiet block where I won't be disturbed. 

11:58 p.m. - Stepping out of my cab, I continue my routine by opening the back door to search for any debris left by passengers and, whoa, sitting on the seat is an iPhone.  I pick it up and bring it to the front for examination.  I find two things, one good and one bad.  The good is that it is not locked.  The bad is that it says it's down to only ten percent of its charge remaining, which means that if its owner doesn't call me soon, the phone will loose its charge and will likely never be able to be returned.  However, since it's not locked I am able to open the address book and look for the name of the person, I have learned from experience, who is the single best person to call for help.  And that person's name is "Mom". 

12:00 a.m. - I scroll and find Mom.  I call Mom.  The call is immediately answered because Mom thinks her daughter or son is calling.  "Hi, honey," says Mom.  I explain that I'm not honey, I'm a taxi driver in New York City who has just found this iPhone on the back seat.  She thanks me for calling, mentions that she is in Ohio, and tells me it belongs to her daughter.  I tell her the iPhone is nearly out of charge and that I'd like to leave my own cell phone number with her so that in case I'm not able to make contact with her daughter she will still have a way of reaching me after the next time she talks to you.  I give Mom my number, who then says that if she knew what hotel her daughter was staying at, she would call her herself to give her my number.  I tell her that it's likely her daughter was my last passenger and that she's staying at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square.  Mom thanks me again and gets off the line.

12:03 a.m. - I am munching on my grilled chicken and whole wheat bread while adding up the money numbers thus far into the shift .  My cell phone rings.  It is my last passenger calling me from the Marquis.  I tell her I'll be there in ten minutes.

12:11 a.m. - I arrive back at the Marquis.  After a minute of waiting, my relieved former passenger approaches on the sidewalk and is reunited with her precious iPhone, which, in today's world, pretty much contains her life within it.  She thanks me profusely and offers me a twenty dollar bill as her way of showing her gratitude.  Thinking it would be noble to refuse the reward, upon seeing the bill coming toward me I accept it anyway, thinking it's important for a person's self-esteem to be able to keep their exchange in.  We chat for a minute and go our separate ways.  I stuff the bill in my shirt.          

To think that all of this - from picking up a passenger at the Mark Hotel, to having an extended and enoyable conversation with that passenger, to contacting her mother halfway across the country in the middle of the night, to reuniting the passenger with a lost possession - all of this took place within half an hour. 

Amazing.

What a world we live in today.

Islands In The Stream

There are three things that can happen between drivers and passengers during the course of a ride in a taxicab: 1) Nothing. The passenger looks out the window, talks on the cell phone, or (rarely) watches the canned programming on the cab's TV monitor. The driver drives. 2) The driver becomes a fly on the wall and either voluntarily or involuntarily eavesdrops on the voices coming toward him from the back seat, whether it be from multiple passengers talking to each other or from a single passenger on the phone. 3) A conversation takes place. 

In a huge metropolis like New York, where the flow of particles is so continuous, it's quite natural to think of the motion of the city as having a similarity to the current of a river. The river runs, ever onward, and the taxi driver is a ferryman of sorts, his cab a temporary haven on an endless journey to who knows where. People who may or may not ever meet again engage in conversation, as if to acknowledge that it's better to float down the river in the company of others than to brave the waters by oneself. 

If a taxi driver has an affinity for this unique situation he is in, it's this third possibility, the things that can happen through communication, that can make the job so interesting. Some of these conversations, like particularly intriguing islands in the stream, may startle, disturb, reassure, delight, or educate the intrepid explorer. I had three in the course of a single shift a few weeks ago. 

5:45 pm, Penn Station to North Moore in Tribeca 

It was the "survival of the fittest" time of the evening when the quickest and most alert are most likely to get the next available taxi. As I was assisting an elderly gentleman out of my cab at the Long Island Railroad entrance to Penn Station, an attractive young miss appeared on the cab's opposite side and waited with her hand on the door (as if to say, "It's mine!") until the old fellow's delicate extraction was completed. Getting in with a smile, she told me her destination and we pulled into the heavy traffic on 7th Avenue. 

Now, there are certain nuances that tell a driver that the newly arrived passenger is a candidate for a conversation. There's the smile, the return of the driver's "hello", along with, perhaps, an "how are you?"; there's the friendly tone of the voice; there's the position of the seating -- the passenger doesn't slump out of sight behind the partition but, rather, sits right in the middle of the seat, perhaps even leans forward a bit; and often there's eye contact in the mirror. The attractive young miss had all of these, helped, I felt, by some admiration on her part at seeing a taxi driver performing an act of kindness for the fragile passenger who had preceded her. 

Aware of all this, I started in with some common chit-chat - the traffic, the weather, the difficulty of getting a cab at this time of day in Midtown - and this rather magical process we humans are capable of went into gear. Back and forth, back and forth, and then - wham! - suddenly the person on the other end of the conversation is telling you something that's no longer in the realm of the chit-chat mundane - something personal, a bit surprising, perhaps.

Kind of out of nowhere, she tells me she's a boxer. A boxer! This friendly, rather petite-ish, altogether feminine-looking female gets in a ring and tries to punch the beejeebabs out of other women. Not professionally, but at the next level down, in organized matches in gyms, she says. Career-wise, she's in the related field of sports rehabilitation. One of her clients, she said, is the famous boxer Pacquiao. 

It's always kind of fascinating when the way a person is does not match one's own stereotype of what a person does and I will admit that I find the sight of women going at each other quite entertaining (what the world needs is more mud wrestling). So this particular conversation was really holding my interest. And then it did something that communication can do when people listen carefully to each other, acknowledge what is said, and create a space that is comfortable and safe: it led to a further, more insightful revelation about the other person, something that opens a window into their inner world. 

What was revealed was a situation that was eating away at her, something that was consuming her attention the whole day long, a problem that would not resolve. She told me what it was and, to her credit, it wasn't actually her own problem. It was a tangled mess that was endangering the future - perhaps even the life - of someone who was dear to her, her brother. 

Growing up in an environment where one's fists are at least as valuable as one's social graces, he, like his sister, had also become a boxer and a couple of months earlier, at the age of twenty, had turned professional. Shortly after that he had a "bad break-up" with his girlfriend who, to get revenge, did something quite evil - she enlisted the services of some thug she knew to beat the crap out of him. How do you beat the crap out of a professional boxer? You get a dozen of your thug friends to help you. In a modern version of tracking somebody down, the jilted girlfriend gave the thug his Twitter address. He and his gang read his tweet messages to locate him when he was alone, shooting hoops in a schoolyard. Then they ambushed him and battered him so badly that he had broken teeth, broken ribs, a concussion, and needed thirty stitches to close the wounds to his face and head. 

"Did he go to the police?" I asked. 

"No, he's got some goddamned Sicilian code of silence," she lamented. 

Now I understood why she felt a need to talk about this thing. It wasn't over and it wasn't likely to end well, either. Her brother is thick-headed and would handle it "in his own way", which would mean more violence. After that there would be further retaliation and he might be killed or spend the next twenty years of his life in jail. She had the wisdom to understand this, but she had no solution. So she was living each day with a helpless feeling of dread. It was like trying to hold onto someone who was dangling off the ledge of a mountain. 

If I'd thought of it at the time, I would have advised her to find someone to intervene in the conflict, someone whom all parties involved knew and respected, if such a person exists. Or I would have advised her to bring her brother and the ex-girlfriend together in some kind of counseling session to confess what they'd done to each other and to apologize for their actions. That might have handled it. But, as is often the case when someone says something startling, you don't think of the right thing to say until later. In my business people enter and exit rather quickly and I'm often left in the middle of the story. And that is one of the downsides of the taxicab conversation.

1:45 a.m., 47th and 6th to Astoria, Queens

He was a gaunt, middle-aged man -- long, black overcoat, no hat -- who hailed me with his right hand while taking one final drag on a cigarette with his left. Before even entering the taxi, he gave me the impression that he was a "serious" smoker. He was probably coming from a job where he couldn't smoke and since you're not allowed to smoke in a cab anymore in this NO SMOKING city, the time between the workplace and the taxi becomes the time to have that thing you've been craving for all night. 

My impression was confirmed when, just a minute into the ride, he asked me if he could light up a new one. Now, this is a situation I actually enjoy. The taxi driver in New York City is usually taken somewhat for granted and is not accorded the kind of respect that certain professionals enjoy. I mean, you'd never say to a pilot as you entered his aircraft, "I'm late, step on it," right? But a passenger who would ask his driver to break the the rules so he can stick that little white cylinder in his mouth is on the other end of the respect spectrum. This guy is an addict, someone who is living in the moment, and to him the taxi driver is the Gatekeeper Of Bliss, The Man With The Plan. Hey, how ya doin', dude? I mean, sir. If, after observing how the person seems to be, I think he or she has a sense of humor, I have been known to say something like this: 

"Well, I'll consider it, but only under two circumstances." 

"Sure, no problem." 

"I haven't told you what the circumstances are yet." 

"Oh, okay." 

"First, you've got to keep the cigarette inside the cab. Don't hold it out the window." (This is because the danger here is that the driver can be fined if a cop happens to see the passenger smoking in the back seat. I've never heard of this ticket actually being written but, who knows, it might be "Give Tickets To Cabbies Who Allow Passengers To Smoke Week" at the Police Department.) 

"Oh, yeah, man, no problem, no problem." 

"Good. And the second thing is... you've got to beg me." 

"Beg you?" 

"Yeah. You see, this is the only time I can ever get anyone to beg me for anything. It's good for my self-esteem. So if you wanna smoke, you gotta beg."

Now, as I said, I wouldn't say this to someone if they seemed too solid mentally. You've got to size them up before saying it. But so far I haven't missed and they jump right into it with a smile. "Oh, please, please, Mister Taxi Driver, can I smoke a cigarette? Please? Pretty please?" 

"Yes, you may." 

And it's off to Puffland. 

Looking at my current passenger in the mirror, I decided right away, nope, no begging joke with this guy, he looks like he hasn't laughed in two years. So I just told him about the no-holding-the-cigarette-out-the-window rule and not to light up until we got onto the 59th Street Bridge, about a minute away. He thanked me. 

Well, although he may or may not have appreciated my sense of humor, there was something in the way he was that made me curious about him. I wasn't sure what it was. He just seemed to be someone it might be interesting to talk to. So I decided to delve, as is my tendency. 

"You must be a serious smoker," I said, as we were approaching the bridge. Being that smoking was the subject at hand, it seemed like an easy way to get a conversation going. 

"Why?" 

"Well, I've noticed that when people ask me if they can smoke in the cab, it's because they want a cigarette really, really badly." 

"I just wanted to finish the one I started." 

"Yeah, you see, that's what I mean. You're a heavy smoker?" 

"Just three or four a day." 

"Packs?" 

"Cigarettes." 

This surprised me. I would have bet he went through a pack a day, at least. 

"Since I quit." 

Ah, so there it was. I was right. The thing about him that I was trying to put my finger on, I realized, was that it was impinging on me subconsciously that heavy smokers have a certain kind of demeanor. Something about the way they look, their body language, their voice, that has cigarette smoking as a component part of it. That's what was making me curious about him. 

"Oh, so you had been a heavy smoker?" 

"Yes," he replied, rather half-vacantly. Sometimes when people say something you have the feeling they're only half-speaking to you, the other half being diverted to another, invisible, entity. 

"What did you do, a pack a day?" 

"Two or three." 

Heavy smoker, indeed. 

"Wow... well, and now you're down to just a few cigarettes a day?" 

"Yes," he said flatly. There was no sign of pride in his voice at making progress toward an objective. You would have expected a bit of positive emotion here, but this guy was flat as a board. 

"Good for you." 

"Since the cancer," he said, the focus of his eyes extending no further than the partition which separates driver from passenger. 

I had stepped on a landmine and I knew it. 

What the hell do you say to a stranger who's just told you he has cancer? I could say nothing, pretend that I hadn't heard it. But I thought that would be cold-hearted, even cruel. I could acknowledge it -- just say, "I'm sorry" -- and leave it at that. But quite possibly he'd said it because he just felt a need to talk about it with another human being, another island in the stream. God knows the despair and loneliness this man might be enduring, and although listening to him would not be able to do anything to cure his disease, it might help him change the way he dealt with it. And that could be a good thing. I waited until we reached the Queens side of the bridge (so we might be better able to hear each other -- bridges and tunnels are tough on the acoustics inside a taxicab), and then attempted to resume the conversation. 

"What kind of cancer do you have?"  

There was silence. Not just any silence, a dreadful silence. Had I gone too far? Had I trivialized the seriousness of his situation by reducing it to taxicab chit-chat? Or had he just blurted it out and then regretted having said it? I looked at him in the mirror. He had that same solidity, what appeared to me now as a half-dead look, and gave no sign of having heard my question.

What should I do? Ask him again? Probably not, I thought. I mean, what could be more of an imposition on someone than to pry into his perhaps-terminal illness? But he'd brought it up. Wasn't it possible that he simply didn't hear me? What was I going to do, ignore him? I gritted my teeth and raised the volume of my question a quarter of a notch.

"What kind of cancer do you have?" I repeated. 

I watched him in the mirror, almost praying that he'd say something. But he was gone. He sat there silently, his gaze fixated on the parade of darkened buildings passing by on Northern Boulevard. Not only had my attempt at conversation been a failure, my attempt at offering him some comfort had nose-dived into an abyss. The remaining two minutes of the ride, not surprisingly, made my Top Ten List of Most Awkward Silences of All Time. He paid with a credit card, giving me a $1.90 tip on a $13.10 fare. Other than my "thank you", no other words between us were exchanged, and he disappeared into a shadow on Steinway Street. 

He never did light that cigarette. 

A fare like that can haunt you, and some cabbies may conclude that it's better not to attempt to communicate with their passengers at all. I have always resisted this. That's not to say that you have to communicate with everyone. You've got to respect a person's right not to communicate, too. It's just that the interplay with passengers is the essence of this job and to let the occasional disaster shut you down is to lose a lot. So I soldiered on. 

3:45 a.m., 79th and Columbus to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn 

Now here was a ride that from a driver's point of view was just about perfect. For one thing, it was the final hour of the shift and what you want at this point in the night is a good, long, money ride with just enough time to make it back to the garage by 5 a.m., the shift's end. And this ride was that. And for another thing, the passenger, an upbeat, intelligent, well-mannered thirty-something fellow, was as easy to talk to as you as your favorite drinking buddy, if you have such a thing. 

Now, this wasn't a drama ride or a pathos ride like the ones I've been telling you about. This was simply an educational ride, quite common in a taxicab, by which you learn something about life or the world that you didn't know before. Drive a cab for a few years and these conversations accumulate into an impressive reference file, making a cabbie a walking encyclopedia with an opinion about everything. 

I don't know how we got into it, but he started telling me about his wife and her job. He described her as an Armenian by birth ("How did you meet her?" "In a bar."), lovely to look at, highly organized, a go-getter, and she was now working for what he described as a "Russian oligarch". 

"And what is a 'Russian oligarch'?" 

He told me about what's been going on in Russia since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Industries which had been owned and controlled by the state became privatized. This opened the door for big-time entrepreneurship and the accumulation of great wealth and power by a relatively few aggressive individuals in a short period of time. It was kind of like the "robber barons" in the United States a hundred and fifty years ago. And that's what a Russian oligarch is. 

My passenger's wife worked for one of these people. He'd made a fortune as an arms dealer and then legitimized his business by moving into the metal refining industry in a big way. Due to his nefarious background, he can't enter the United States because the State Department won't issue him a visa. But that doesn't stop him from doing business all over the world. His wealth is so great that he owns a private yacht, complete with a crew of five, that he has never set foot on. It's used to entertain clients. The wife's job is to manage the finances of the yacht. She does this primarily from their apartment in Brooklyn, but she does have to travel occasionally to Europe, where the yacht is located, to personally oversee matters. And that's where she was on this particular night, somewhere in France. 

As I said, there was no drama or pathos here. It was just a typical example of a taxi ride that includes a conversation between driver and passenger. As I entered the Belt Parkway and headed back to Manhattan with my off-duty light illuminated above me, I had gained not only an $11.50 tip on a $43.50 fare, but a bit more understanding of the world in which we live. 

Who would ever imagine that, walking down a street in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, you could walk by an apartment building and behind one of the windows of that building would be a woman sitting behind a computer who was managing a yacht anchored off the coast of France which was owned by a modern-day Jay Gatsby with a Russian accent? 

As is usually the case, the stopover at an island in the stream had left me better off for having been there, and happy to have made the visitation. 

********

Looking for a nice little island in the stream of your own? Click here. Plenty of 'em at Pictures From A Taxi.

How I Ended The War

I am a great believer in the ripple effect of communication. That a word whispered into an ear can cause a castle to crumble or another to appear.

I have often wondered, after having had a conversation with a passenger, what effect may eventually be created by that exchange. The taxicab is a unique human situation in that it's a business relationship, but its closeness in a shared space, its anonymity, and its protection from external interruptions can create conditions in which real contact can occur. The only trouble, from the driver's perspective, is that you almost never find out what the far-reaching effect of that amazing conversation may have been (although it does happen every once in a while - click here for a story about that).

So, even though it's quite unlikely I'll ever know if I've specifically changed somebody's life for the better, I like to think that I improve the world by showing respect to passengers, being a good listener, and occasionally offering what seems to me to be a sage comment or two. And that gives me a needed feeling of having "done something about it".

Now, as you know, in New York City every type of human being is wandering around and eventually gets into a taxicab. People get in and people get out in an endless and grand or not-so-grand procession of the human race. One passenger is going home to Queens after staying too late in a bar, the next one tells you he was once declared legally dead, the next one is a professional call girl who has an attentive audience as she discloses inside information about her trade, and the next one says he'd just spent the day chaperoning the President of the United States around in the U.N. (For the story about that, click here.)

With this great variety of humanity coming and going through his doors, a taxi driver every once in a while finds himself in the sudden company of a certain person who is either known by reputation or is discovered through conversation to be a "key player" in some particular sector of the world stage.

The thoughtful driver might see this as an opportunity. "What could I say to this Very Important Person," he might think, "that could create an effect on him and thus on the entire sector of the world in which he is so influential?" Such opportunities are fleeting, indeed. There are only a relatively few moments in which to establish a rapport and make your strike. More often than not, the brilliant things to say are thought of only after the person has left the taxi forever.

But not always.

Many years ago I had such a fare. Its exact location in time is a bit vague to me, but I think it happened in the mid-nineties. I had been cruising down West 43rd Street, approaching 11th Avenue, when I was hailed by two men coming out of the Market Diner. They were Irish - they'd been drinking - (no, I did not say that if they were Irish it goes without saying that they'd been drinking. I would never say such a thing!) - and their destination was 6th Avenue and Waverly Place in Greenwich Village.

These guys were around 40 years old and eager for conversation. Rather than just giving me their destination and talking to each other, they engaged me right from the start of the ride, as if for some reason I needed to be convinced of something. It turned out that what I needed to be convinced of was why it was okay for the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army) to set off bombs and use other violent tactics against the British.

Now, I knew very little about the struggle in Northern Ireland other than what I'd read in the headlines. It wasn't my fight and I never considered it my responsibility to learn the history of the conflict or to form an opinion about who was right and who was wrong. The only real contact I'd had with it, in fact, had been from another passenger who'd been in my cab several years prior to these fellows. She was a middle-aged Irish woman who expressed herself about the situation in Northern Ireland with such passion and outright hatred that I'd always remembered her. I didn't remember which side she was on, but I recognized in her emotion that she'd been personally affected by the conflict, quite possibly by the loss of someone who'd been dear to her. I believed that her passion was fueled by a gut-level, perhaps insatiable hunger for vengenance against whichever side had caused her loss and I had gleaned from her an insight into why the conflict never seemed to end. It was an "I hit you, you hit me, I hit you, you hit me" endless cycle of retaliation. From this insight I formed my only opinion about the whole mess and that opinion was that somehow the individuals involved in it had to overcome their desire for retribution and resolve to learn to live together in peace, for the sake of the future.

I listened carefully to what my two passengers had to say without challenging them. An angry comment one of them made particularly struck me as being a flimsy justification for violence - "the British cannot be reasoned with!" he exclaimed, perhaps trying to convince not only me but himself that this was so - but I didn't attempt to contradict him or even play devil's advocate. These were serious people who were speaking emotionally and, although I didn't know or want to know specifically who they were, I did know with certainty that they were in the I.R.A. and that they were in agreement with and participating in the activity of killing people who were their political enemies. Some would call them terrorists, others might call them freedom fighters, but whatever you call them, they were scary and perhaps drunk and for my own safety's sake I just wanted to be rid of them.

But there was this other thing.

It was the knowledge that words can change minds and changed minds can change conditions.

So I decided to take my shot. And my shot consisted of a single word.

As they were exiting the taxi at their destination in the Village, I said this:

"I have just one word for you guys."

There was a pause. They had just spent the last ten minutes using me as their sounding board and were at least for the moment all talked out. So the moment was right. Their facial expressions seemed to say that they wanted to know what this one word could be and, whatever it was, that they would give it their full consideration. So I told them the word.

"Gandhi," I said.

The one who had just given me a ten-dollar bill for the ride seemed a little stunned by the comment. He thought of saying something in response, but he didn't. Then he closed the door and they were gone.

After that, time went by. I continued to not give any special attention to the conflict in Northern Ireland but eventually I did notice something. I noticed that things were getting better. And then the conflict was resolved and today no more bombs are being set off. The war is over.

Did the comment of a taxi driver in New York City end the war in Northern Ireland?

Of course not.

Or did it?

I write this story not only to overstate my worth to the world and to boost up my always fragile self-esteem, but because it is my New Year's message to you, a much-appreciated reader of this blog. I suggest that we resolve to never forget that thought precedes, and is senior to, action and to further resolve to never underestimate the power of communication. Let us resolve to continue to make our voices heard and to always remember that the easiest way to recognize a tyranny is by its attempts to stifle the free flow of communication.

Best wishes to you for a great New Year and a great New Decade from a taxi driver...

May your best days be yet unseen,

And may all your lights be green.

********

And one other resolution, while we're at it: let us all resolve to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Power of Communication

To the experienced eye of a veteran cabbie, the mere appearance of certain people in the back seat translates immediately into misery. You know instantly that this ride is going to be an exercise in suffering, anxiety, and endurance.

That's how it was a couple of days ago at 6:30 pm at 30th and 5th. A pair of perfectly pleasant passengers were replaced before the door could be closed upon her by a middle-aged woman who said these dreaded words as she settled in:

"Will you take me to Brooklyn?"

She might as well have reached forward and twisted my ear or tweaked my nose. A ride to Brooklyn at this time of the evening to a cabbie is money lost. It means he will have to trek it back to Manhattan through rush hour traffic without a passenger. And that is dead time when he would have been making money during this same time if this damned passenger had not gotten in.

Of course a cabbie can just refuse the ride, even though it is illegal to do so. But then he runs the risk of having a problem with the passenger who may decide to bring the matter up with the Taxi and Limousine Commission which will no doubt fine him hundreds of dollars or even suspend his license for the offense. With this in mind, plus having within me a sense of fair play, I long ago stopped refusing rides. And so, with a tone in my voice that conveyed the emotion of apathy if you listened carefully, I said to her these words of my own:

"Uh, yeah, it's okay."

"Take the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel to the Prospect Expressway, then take Ocean Parkway to Foster Avenue and make a left."

"Okay, got it."

It had gotten worse. Not only did she want to go to Brooklyn, she wanted to go to the Kensington section of Brooklyn, which is relatively deep into the borough. Not as deep as Canarsie or Sheepshead Bay, but it was no quick trip over the bridge, either. It would mean 20 to 30 minutes of dead time, the equivalent of throwing twenty dollars out the window.

I pulled out into the traffic of 5th Avenue with a scowl on my face and took a look at her in the mirror as I headed downtown. Oh, god, no. She looked like the John Travolta character in Hairspray. Chubby, bouffant hairdo, like she'd gotten on a bus in 1963 and never gotten off. Here was a person who, in my judgement, surely spent the bulk of her time eating chocolates and watching the soaps and would also turn out to be self-indulgent and mean. I waited for the sniping to begin.

It didn't take long.

"Do you think the Brooklyn Bridge would be as good as the tunnel at this time?" she asked.

I told her since it was rush hour I thought the tunnel was a better choice because it usually has less traffic than the bridge and brought us out further into Brooklyn, thus enabling us to avoid a section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway which is normally a mess at this time of day. I also mentioned that although there is a $4.15 toll for the tunnel, I thought it was worth it. But that, of course, was up to her.

No reply.

I continued driving south on 5th Avenue and hit a red light at the end of the avenue where Washington Square Park is located. I was feeling some tension in the air so I decided to try to lighten the mood by pointing out a flaw in the statue of George Washington which stands with grand authority at the base of the Washington Square Arch.

"Do you see the statue of Washington over there?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Do you think his head is too small?"

She leaned forward to get a better view. "No, it looks right to me."

I now knew for sure that trouble was coming. I have pointed out Washington's undersized head to a couple of hundred people over the years and with only one exception has anyone failed to agree with me that, indeed, the head is too small. And that one exception confessed a minute later that his own head was too small, so his opinion was jaded. So this woman was actually the first person of all time to disagree. God help me.

I drove on without continuing the conversation. I went west on Waverly Place and hit a red light as we approached 7th Avenue South. And then, her whiny voice:

"Why are you driving west? The tunnel is on the east side."

"No, it's on the west side. You enter it on West Street. Maybe you're thinking of the Queens Midtown Tunnel."

"No, the Brooklyn tunnel."

"It's on the west side, believe me."

"This isn't how the other drivers go."

"How do they go?"

"They take the highway on the east side and then they go into the tunnel."

"If you go that way you have to go all the way around the tip of the island and then come up north again on the west side. It's one way to go but I think this way is shorter and faster. Anyway, the tunnel is on the west side, not the east side."

The silence returned, and this was a bad thing. It was a silence that nevertheless spoke the words, "I don't believe you. You're trying to rip me off." The hostility was now palpable, but I did what any cabbie would do in this situation - I suppressed my own resentment and drove on. I made a right on Leroy Street, following a brilliant route that takes you around the Holland Tunnel traffic by wending through a few curvy streets in Greenwich Village before landing you out on West Street. But my passenger did not appreciate the efficiency of the ride she was getting. She had morphed into a type of passenger I refer to as the evil jockey and was becoming more bold in the saddle.

"Why are we way over here?" she moaned. "We should be on the east side."

I had reached my personal tipping point. "Look," I replied firmly, "you can see for yourself on the map on the tv screen. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel entrance is on West Street. And that's on the west side of Manhattan. You don't even have to take my word for it. " (All NYC taxis now have a GPS tracking map on a television monitor that's in the rear compartment.)

My comment was enough to initiate a new period of stony silence which lasted about a minute. And then, in a voice just loud enough for me to hear it:

"Well, this sure is the long way..."

It turned out to be the breaking point. I made eye contact with her through the mirror and laid down the law: "Look," I said, "I'm taking you on the best route I know. If you keep implying that I'm trying to rip you off I'm going to take it as intentional harrassment and I'm going to end the ride. Do you understand?"

There was a pause much akin to the reaction a boxer might have if he'd just received a direct hit. Her reply was a bit odd. "Yes, sir," she said, "I understand."

We continued down West Street toward the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. Not surprisingly, the atmosphere in the cab had gone from stormy weather to an Arctic freeze. After an exchange like that, in the close quarters of a taxicab, the drawbridges over the moats are drawn up and the hostile parties retreat into their own castles. I knew this would happen, but I'd decided I'd rather endure the rest of the ride in that kind of unexpressed resentment than to put up with all these covert little shots. So be it.

Now, the one thing you hope for in a situation like this is that the ride comes to its conclusion as quickly as possible. The worst thing would be that you'd be sitting still in a traffic jam. So, of course, that's exactly what happened next. There was a jam-up as we approached the Ground Zero area and the traffic was reduced to a crawl. I looked out my window. She looked out her window. A couple of minutes ticked by.

And then the most remarkable thing happened.

"Did you see the convention last night?" she asked, meaning the Democratic National Convention which had begun the previous evening.

Her initiating a normal conversation under the circumstances was completely against the rules of Hostile People Not Speaking To Each Other. I was stunned.

"I saw the highlights on the news," I replied.

"Did you see Teddy Kennedy?" she asked.

"Yes, that was amazing," I said, "what a dramatic moment."

"Yes, he was wonderful," she replied.

The conversation continued into a lively and friendly back and forth about the Democratic Convention, city politics, Obama, Giuliani, McCain, and the way the taxi industry is governed. I couldn't help but notice that the more we spoke to each other, the more we liked each other's company and the mental ridges that had seemed so solid just minutes earlier had evaporated. This change of tone was against all the odds.

The discussion went on, and by the time we got to Foster Avenue it had become one of those rides that I was enjoying so much I didn't want it to end. We even continued the chat for a minute after we got to her destination to make sure all points of the conversation had been adequately finalized. She then handed me the fare with an above-average tip.

I offered her the usual comment I make when an enjoyable ride reaches its conclusion: "Take care, it's been nice talking with you," I said.

"It was nice talking to you, too," she said as she opened the door, "once we made up."

We both laughed at her observation, and she was on her way.

I couldn't help reflecting about this ride as I made my way back to Manhattan. This woman had gone in my reality from an unfortunate stereotype that was living up to its expectation to a likable and enjoyable traveling companion, all because she had decided to change hostility into affinity by communicating.

It shows us how quickly and easily relationships can change for the better. This could be said not only of personal relationships but of relationships between groups and nations as well.

And that is the power of communication.