Taxi Ride

About ten minutes before the stroke of midday, I headed down the Hill from my office toward the taxi stand in front of Rayburn. The early afternoon sun was warm, the humidity only slightly oppressive. Less oppressive, at least, than the tyranny of needed letter-writing that hung heavy over the office today. So much for recess being relaxing.

Coasting down the sidewalk, I passed by a woman who looked not much older than me, and similarly dressed – in the sense of being in summery clothing that denoted one would rather be traveling than working on this particular day – and guessed from her gait and the passive way she was looking at her blackberry that she was also headed to grab a cab. I sort of felt bad as I passed her by, but I was intent on being punctual for my downtown lunch.

As it happened, there were no taxis at the stand when I arrived, but in a matter of moments one screeched to a halt, not into the stand of course, but in one of the lanes headed east on Independence. I pondered the purpose of a taxi stand, if not to be used, as I scampered to the bright yellow cab.

My driver’s horn uttered a brief yell, and I saw him motioning to someone on the street as I climbed in to the typically stale-smelling vehicle. “You too,” he was saying, “I can take you, too.”

By the time I had situated myself and turned to see who he was talking to, I remembered that clause on the “DC Taxi Bill of Rights” or whatever ridiculous mockery of one of the world’s most important political documents that said cabbies could pick up other passengers if they wished, and it wouldn’t take you too far out of your way. Never before had this happened to me, however, and I was a little embarrassed to see that he was talking to the woman I had passed a few minutes before. She looked at me, half annoyed and half quizzical.

“Where are you going?” she asked – the sensical thing to inquire, which the driver hadn’t bothered asking yet.

“Seventh and H Northwest,” I said.

“Oh,” she replied, a little surprised. “I’m going to “Seventh and F.”

As she climbed in, I noted a satisfied smile on the cabby’s face, as if to say, I’m so good at this. I could pick out two Hill staffers who were going downtown for lunch and now get to make twice as much money. I mused to myself that most anyone on Capitol Hill would be hailing a cab to go downtown, but simply shifted my weight and tried to take a last breath of fresh air before the door closed. The air conditioning in the car was clearly not working.

My fellow passenger and I regarded each other slightly, and I was very self-conscious, wondering whether she thought I was a ____ for walking faster than her in order to catch a cab. I noticed she had a very pretty engagement/wedding ring set and wondered if she was meeting her husband for lunch.

We then engaged in a lovely game of blackberry chicken. Both of us had tucked our tethers away in our respective purses, but it was quite a standoff to see who would be the first to overtly ignore the other’s existence by breaking out the blackberry. I broke before the turn right before the Library of Congress – but only because it vibrated, and having been out of the office for a grand total of five minutes, there was a very legitimate possibility that the world had already exploded.

The cabbie tried to engage us in small talk. I tried, but the other woman was in a very not talkative mood. She engrossed herself fully in her blackberry even as I put mine away and enjoyed the beautiful contrast of the green trees, the white marble of the buildings, and the muted blue of the humid summer sky. I usually enjoyed talking to the cabbies in D.C. and was rather disappointed that my fellow traveler did not feel the same way, but it seemed clear that she wanted silence and I complied.

I wondered what her story was. I wondered how long she’d been on the Hill, whether she was a counsel or an LA like me. I wondered how she’d met her husband and how long she’d been in D.C. I wondered if she was a Republican or a Democrat. I couldn’t pick up enough about her to guess, but her blackberry was new and she was very well-dressed, so I told myself that she was probably a committee counsel who had been significantly promoted at the beginning of this Congress when they took over the majority and she went from working 60 hour weeks doing five people’s work to overseeing a five-person staff. Ah, the spoils of the majority.

We turned onto Seventh, and I remembered how much I like this part of the city. If the Penn Quarter-Chinatown area was about twice as tall, it would seem like a transplant straight out of New York City; but it is a little shorter, and you can see the sky, and that’s why I like it more than New York.

My Democrat counsel friend was discharged at Seventh and F, and the cabbie proceeded to weave between buses and stopped armored vehicles for another two blocks. After shelling out the usual extortionary rate, I slipped out of the cab and took a deep breath of the much cooler air – or so it felt like at this point, having suffocated in the taxi for ten minutes. Approaching the restaurant that was my destination, I spotted Holly, and smiled. Finally. A friendly face.