“Stop”

Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash

I didn’t want to take the LL back to the Port Authority after midnight, so I called a cab to get back to Manhattan.

My ride was a typical Checker cab with cracked leather seats that smelled of various biological fluids and a rear floor carpet matted down with so many spills it might have been leather.

The cabby was a quiet guy but started to get some radio messages from dispatch informing him of a personal call they were…