I grabbed the cab that was stopped at the light, a block from the restaurant in the East Village where I’d just had dinner with two old friends. I threw my gym bag, which weighs as much as a toddler, ahead of me onto the back seat, closed the door, and told the driver my address.
“Huh?’
While repeating myself, the driver, his baseball cap almost swallowing his small head, began a dry hacking cough that drowned out what I’d said. He stopped long enough to catch his breath, then it started again.
“Huh?”
It was a long day, then a dinner that lasted past nine, so I knew the dogs were impatient for food. I listened to this elderly man gasping for air. I slowly said my address, louder this time as I scooted forward in the seat, my head almost through the gaping security window.
Cars honked behind us as he continued to cough, then he pulled up and made a right, then another right, then another right and we ended up at the same spot where it all started.
“We just made a circle! What are you doing?” My tone urgent, annoyed.
“Huh?”
“Can you just get to West Street?”
He pulled away again. I mapped it out on my phone on my lap and could see that he’d just turned the wrong way on Houston.
“Where are you going? I gotta get out of here! Please let me out!”
“Huh? Okay. I’ll stop.” But he kept going, the cough louder than ever. His tiny frame slumped, the rattling shook the front seat. I repeated my address again, this time I followed with my neighborhood, and it finally dawned on him that I was headed to Battery Place, not Irving Place.
We made it to West Street heading south, past the World Trade, and I stuck my arm through the security window, waving this way then that, to bring this cabbie to the front of my building. I left him a sympathy tip, grabbed my bag, checked that I had my phone and wished him a good night. He made a U-turn, pulled right past me, the window open, and that awful cough echoed down the canyon of my street.