You had never seen a taxi line so long. But you'd only been in taxi's twice before and weren't particularly schooled in the ways of big cities. Pregnant, bloated and waist long hair did NOT paint you as a big city sophisticate.
You were alone again, naturally. As you had been for every adventure. Not alone by choice but by chance. And it was suddenly critically important that you not look like the country-bumpkin that you secretly suspected you were.
Lesson number one, taxi drivers do not speak much English, do not seem helpful to clueless pregnant woman and apparently never clean their cabs. But look at the skyline! The names on the signs sound like those you've grown up with watching on TV, the Brooklyn Bridge, Greenwich, Harlem, Times Square. And you find yourself watching the people, staring really inside the relative safety of the steaming, grimy, speeding taxi.
You've never seen that much black clothing, well except for funerals back home – but not clothes like that, or shoes, or makeup. The cacophony of sounds was thrilling, horns beeping like so many motorized sheep, pedestrians yelling with arms outstretched and police whistles that never pause for a moment of quiet. You step out of your yellow car and into the arms of the jostling, impatient, uniformed doorman.
But after only 30 minutes of watching you already know to the bottom of your unsophisticated heart that your best suitcase is shabby and dated. The dress that seemed so nouveau in Phoenix hangs shapelessly out of style, almost embarrassed in it's own right. But you straighten your shoulders, baby bump out in front and from some unknown well deep within your psyche you begin to mirror the haughtiness you see all around you. "It's a cheap little bag" you murmur confidently to the valet "but the silly airline has lost my Louis Vuitton and I'd love it if you could take it for me".
The person formerly known as YOU was about to be buried deep within.
-0-
-0-
No comments:
Post a Comment