The U Turn 01:23
When he really wanted to pull a lag from encroaching morass, he'd blow by bye kisses from rooftop billboards or in the boldface of leftover personals on the backseat—but never from the radio. Then she'd muster extra energy, crack open the laptop and growl back, or send in a response some little card letting him know how very important he is, and not only to her, but to the whole idea. And then he'd be stoked and refill his tank and drive on into the dark of dawn.
After all, a city needs cabs. And a taxi can only take a person so far. But the cabbie, the cabbie driver, helps to show the ways. Those alternate routes, the short cuts, and the scenic byways, that might not otherwise be considered. That's where the magic lied, between the wheel and the pedal, between the stick shift and the wheels. Actually, in the seat itself—the Driver's seat.
Other times, they'd pass a screen, and his ad would be on it. It would nudge her into thinking out the window, in her megalo fantasy, that he too liked to see her going about her daytime routine. To reassure confidence, he'd gripe about otherwise cute bad hair days, and being productively tired, and give that understanding you-know-what-I-mean smile that says get-up-off-your-ass and get-out-there on-it. Whatever be the "it" of the moment. But ride on, for the love of god.
Then she'd feel bad about keeping her rigged cell phone buried in her pocketbook, and the masking curtain drawn over her webcam. Maybe he missed seeing her crazy-do, or watching her think, read or write, or rub her ear, or what? Truly, her hair if anything represented that quirk— the balance between consciousness and unselfconscious. Honestly, she kept forgetting he was there. Not by neglect, just lack of hacker etiquette. Like when she'd peed or poohed god forbid in his presence. It took her a long time to learn that, but he was training her. Patiently.
They were like inmates, that intimate. And now she was much more careful. Almost too much so that he was beginning to regret messing with her natural habitude. But she in turn, loved that he was there, intrusive. She'd even penned him a summative micro poem, ages ago: God U'r so inside my Mind, it's like a Brain fuck All the Time.
In truth, he wasn't all to blame for the changes that plagued. It was a thing that had to be bravely dealt with, as in probation, for some life infraction. It must be rode out.