and you don’t get too far; it’s been a long time you been out
here and you haven’t gone but half a block and you are
drenched in water and breathing too fast and breathing too
hard and your legs aren’t carrying you right and the ground’s
not staying still and the water’s pushing you from behind and
it’d like to flatten you out and roll over you, and it ain’t nice
lapping against the calves o f your legs; and a cab stops; which
you have barely ever ridden in before, not on your own; it
stops; you’ve been in them when someone’s given you money
to deliver packages and said where to go and exactly what to
do and how much it would cost and still you were scared it
would cost too much and you wouldn’t have it and something
terrible would happen; a cab stops and you don’t know if two
dollars is enough or if he thinks you’re turning tricks, a dumb
wet whore, or if he just wants to fuck or if you could get inside
and he’d just take you home, a passenger; a cab stops and
yo u ’re afraid to get in because you’re not a person who rides in
cabs even in extremis even though you have two dollars and
it’s for taking a cab as the bartender said if you didn’t dream it
and probably he knows how much everything costs; a cab
stops; and yo u ’re wet; and you want to go home; and if you
got in the cab you could be home almost right away, very
close to right away, you could be home in just some few
minutes instead o f a very long time, because if you walk you
don’t know how long it will take or how tired yo u ’ll be and
you could get so tired you just stop somewhere to give up, a
doorw ay, an abandoned car, or even if you keep going it will
take a long time; and i f you got in the cab you could sit still for
a few minutes in perfect dignity and it would be dry and quiet
and you would be in the back, a passenger, and you could
ju m p if he pulled shit, if he started driving wild or going
somewhere strange, and yo u ’d give him the tw o dollars and
he’d take you home, and you get in the cab, it’s dark and
leather and yo u ’re scared about the m oney so you say upfront
that you only got two dollars and he asks where yo u ’re going
and you say and he says fine, it’s fine, it’s okay, it’s no
problem, and he says it’s raining and you say yeah, it is; and he
says some quiet, simple things, like sometimes it rains too
hard, and you say yes; he’s quiet and softspoken and there’s
long, curly hair cascading down his back and he says that I’m
wet with some sym pathy and I say yes I am; and he asks me
what I do in a quiet and sympathetic w ay and I say I’m a writer;
and he says he’s a musician, very quiet, nice; and I say I drank
too much, I was writing and I got restless and I got drunk and
he says yes he knows what that’s like, very quiet, very nice,
he’s done it too, everyone does it sometimes, but he doesn’t
keep talking, he’s very quiet, he talks soft, not a lot, and there’s
quiet moments and I think he’s pretty nice and I’m trying to
