after Marie Howe
Sometimes the driver waits for me to buckle my seatbelt. They usually don’t. Sometimes I note the flag hanging from the mirror, ask, “Are you from [country]?” because it gets people talking. Except I don’t always know the flags, because American schools treat America as the only country. America is not even a country. Sometimes it’s not a flag but a crucifix. Or the music playing is about Jesus. Then I wonder what kind of Christian the driver is, if he believes marriage is between a man and a woman. Sometimes I ask the driver about his worst passenger. The story usually involves vomit. One time I feel the mushroom pizza I’ve eaten coming back up just as we are zooming over the Brooklyn Bridge. I don’t want to be anyone’s worst passenger. I swallow it. One time a driver says, “You smell so good,” and I am so uncomfortable I pull open the door while the car is still moving, spill out onto some glum corner, wait until the car is gone then order another. One time I am stuck in traffic for so long the app asks me whether I need help, and I consider pressing yes just to see what will happen. One time my driver rear-ends someone, then follows me as I walk away from the wreckage, calling, “Baby, baby.” One time I cry silently in the back of the car until I get home and get a notification: “On a recent ride, we heard you received a low star rating.” One time while manic my breath hitches at the beauty of the city glimpsed from a Lyft—the jack o’ lantern windows, the Christmas lights of traffic. Everywhere I see the Lyft lights on the dashes, amoxicillin-pink. That drug disrupts cell walls, and taxis break down the walls between us, get me talking to people I’d never meet. But soon there will be no drivers, only machines. Growing up all I heard was don’t get into cars with strangers. Now I do it all the time. No matter how we vote, we must believe most people are good. Or we wouldn’t ride. The Jesus-music drivers, maybe that’s their kind of faith. That you’ll get where you need and don’t even need to go in one piece. That it will be alright when you place your life in strangers’ hands, strangers’ cars. Five stars. A kind of grace