47. A small journey.

"JFK Airport, please," Sid told the driver.

Nan jumped. "What--?" Sid looked at her as though with mild surprise. "The airport?"

"Yes, the airport."

"But--" her mind turned to practical matters, and her voice quieted to a whisper. "Listen, I don't have any money with me." She looked at him. Did he?

As though in answer, he said, "I don't have any either." The cab driver's eyes locked onto them in the rearview mirror. He'd heard fragments of the conversion around the chattering in his cell phone earpiece. Sid glanced at the cabbie's pink identification tag mounted on the divider. "It says here that your name is Sitaram," he said, addressing the driver.

The driver muttered something in another language into his headset, then took it out. "That’s my name."

"I've known a number of people with that name," Sid said. The cabbie's eyes flicked back and forth between the road and Sid and Nan's reflection in the rearview mirror.

The girl looked like a hippie. She had probably taken some course in yoga or the Spiritualism of the East and thought she knew something. And the boy with her...he was dressed just like anyone else his age, and looked unremarkable except for those blue eyes. It was likely the two of them had gone on some college break trip to India, stayed in a hostel and drunk lassi with bhang in it, and now considered themselves experts. "There are a lot of people with that name," the driver said with practiced indifference.

"And none of them are you," Sid said gently, with a trace of humor. The cabbie frowned. Were they going to cause trouble?

"What do you know?" the cabbie said a little belligerently.

"For one thing, that's not your picture," Sid said, pointing to the identification tag. "There's a resemblance, but this man named Sitaram is older than you are." The driver's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. He said nothing. "It's your uncle, isn't it? Your father's brother, I would guess."

The driver remained tensed and pulled up to a stop light on 14th Street. He remained silent, as though hoping Sid and Nan would just open the door and get out of his cab. As the light changed, he continued driving. Nan watched the interaction carefully. Sid was looking out the window in that childlike way of his, as though enjoying the scenery.

"He's old," the driver said finally. Sid looked back at the rearview mirror as though he'd forgotten the conversation of moments ago. "He has arthritis. Some days he can barely open his hands." Sid listened politely. "We--we share his shifts most of the time. He'll go to pick up the cab, drive to a spot a few blocks away, and I'll take over. Then we meet again when it's time to turn it in."

"And sometimes," Sid said, as though commenting on the weather, "he drinks. You can smell it on him when he comes to meet you at the end of the shift." The cabbie's hands gripped the steering wheel hard enough to blanch his knuckles. He was staring at Sid in the mirror now, glancing only occasionally at the street. Nan gripped the armrest.

"How did you--"

"The traffic will probably be worst on the Brooklyn Bridge," Sid said. "You might want to use the Manhattan Bridge instead." The driver made a sharp turn at a yellow light off Bowery. Nan's grip on the armrest tightened. There was silence for a long time.