a speculative fiction & parable
Yellow Cab is committed to providing the highest
standard of Halifax cab service to all our patrons.
- yellowcabltd.ca
I was used to using cabs to
get around. Where I lived, they were reliable and always available, any time,
day or night. They were a quiet place to look out the window and think about
where I was coming from and where I was going, all the while seeing everything
pass before me, somewhere outside.
I moved to Halifax in July.
I was used to cold, but not this kind of cold.
Especially in November.
I was out with some new
friends, friends who I couldn’t exactly call friends to myself, but would call
them that to other people I knew, knowing full well that eventually I would be
able to call them friends to even myself, because we were getting along so well
and they liked me and I liked them.
But, not having had many
friends growing up, I felt a certain urge to keep myself from being hurt, while
also presenting to the world that I wasn’t one so sensitive as to be hurt,
because, look, I had friends!
I had had too much to drink,
along with my new friends, and we were at a loss as to how to get home to the
various places where we all lived.
We all lived within the same
city, but in varying parts of the same city. Public transportation had shut
down for the evening, and with only one of us with a vehicle (and none of us
properly functioning to legally drive said vehicle) I proposed what I had
proposed to multiple other friends and myself.
“What’s the best cab option
here?”
The response was nearly
unanimous:
“Yellow Cab!”
I pulled out my phone,
asking for the number.
“I think it’s 420-…” one
friend said while spilling her drink on her new dress and interrupting herself
with a “fuck”.
“It’s 420-0000,” another
friend said, dressed in bland khakis and, by that point, mostly unbuttoned
button-down.
I called, and they were
quick to answer. They asked me my location, and I had to ask my friends for
where, exactly, we were.
Someone had ordered more
shots, and I never felt more alone, speaking to a man I could barely hear,
trying to plot out what our plan was in a way that didn’t sound completely
insane to someone outside of the situation.
“I think he said it would be
a 20 minute ETA,” I said, shot in hand.
We did our shots and
laughed. That’s what friends do, I
thought to myself.
20 minutes, and 3 shots
later, we paid our tab and went outside in the freezing air.
I had only brought a light
jacket, not figuring that anything more would be necessary, but a recent blast
of cold air had left the streets feeling desolate and barren, like we were in a
highly industrialized part of town, even though there were spots of neon around
us.
“Fucka, it’s cold,” one
friend, the one in khakis, said blatantly to the night, our perhaps to us, as
his friends, beginning to re-button his button-up.
We huddled around as a
group, passing the one cigarette one of us still had left, thinking that the
lit end might somehow keep us warm.
After about 9 minutes of
this, our cab arrived. Upon stopping, he looked at the group of us, a huddled
bunch of 7 or 8, and we could see him shake his head, wordlessly saying “no
way” and then driving off.
My khaki friend, still
holding the cigarette, ran after the cab screaming something I don’t quite
remember.
What I remember is that he
threw the cigarette at the cab in a pointless act of defiance.
“You just got rid of our
last hope for warmth!” a friend, whose name I can no longer recall, so she
couldn’t really have been considered much of a friend after all, said.
I closed my eyes and asked
if there were any other cab options in the city, trying to remain calm and
still friendly.
No one could come up with
one.
We all ended up walking
home, alone, each in our own different directions.
When I got home, I dreamt
about numbers and points where we went wrong; about how we could have done things
better; about the cold and how stupid cold was, I never liked the cold, and why
did it have to happen in the first place it’s so cold and stupid?
What my friends dreamt about,
I don’t know.
I never asked.
