As Yellow Cabs Sailed By

The sound of the buzzer rattled the apartment, waking her from a long but shallow sleep. Fully dressed, although she had managed to unbutton her skinny jeans, she hung from the sofa like a castaway. A sweet, sickly smell of Chinese take-away hung in the air, the remains of which were scattered on the coffee table between empty beer bottles and second-hand novels. It was still dark and the sound of car horns and heated shouts between a rasp-voiced cab driver and a young bicycle courier floated up from the street three floors below. Her mouth was dry, coated with the stale flavors of last night. For Amy, to wake up during the Friday night rush hour was not an unusual start to the weekend. The buzzer gargled again. She peeled her face from the cushion and an instant pain screamed out from behind her bloodshot eyes. Begrudgingly, she shuffled across the antique parquet floor of her boyfriend’s spacious Greenwich Village penthouse and flipped the latch. Two months early as normal, a rotund FedEx courier with dark patches of sweat across his chest stood wheezing over the annual case of fine wines from her solicitor Father’s office in London. ‘Merry Christmas darling. Love Father.’ Having made no contact with him since dropping out of Sixth-Form and moving to New York four years earlier, she admired his perseverance.
'God damn I hate these walk-ups,' muttered the courier as he took her signature and turned back toward the stairs.  Booting the heavy box across the floor, she lifted an arm and pulled the pit of her Beastie Boys t-shirt to her nose. The candy red lipstick she’d applied almost twenty four hours earlier was gone and her short tousled hair obscured her face and charcoal eyes with jagged layers of Midnight Blue. Even hung-over, she oozed an impish, dishevelled charm that made men of all ages weak at the wallet.

Her hangover followed her down the stairs as she pulled on a heavy tweed overcoat and turned up the collar. The echoes of her footsteps cut through the grumble of the traffic outside and through the dusty dimness of the lobby, she watched the lights of the street pouring onto the rain speckled windows, illuminating each droplet like a marble. Between the rapidly thickening drizzle descending on Seventh Avenue, the cool autumn air carried a nauseating blend of diesel fumes and rotting leaves. Her body ached to turn back. Cutting east along Bleecker, she wallowed in the warm breath of open doorways as the Village crowd slowly filled up the bars and coffee shops. Turning south, the homely neon sign of Joe’s shop reflected in the glistening concrete ahead and the smell of surgical spirits and mosquito buzz of the needle floated down the sidewalk to meet her.

Big Joe was, in her words, the original gangster teddy bear. His huge frame and bulging tattooed muscles would shake most people, even in well lit alleyways, but he had softened with age. He paid well, gave her the occasional afternoon off and even pushed V.I.P. concert tickets her way which sometimes arrived from celebrity clients. In return, she kept fully up-to-date with personal emails and texts and ensured that Google.com remained operational throughout the duration of her shifts.
'Good morning beautiful,' purred Joe from inside his tiny room, his deep, gentle voice always able to soften her mood.
'Hey,' she croaked back, sprawling herself behind the reception counter.

Amy was scheduled to work until three the following morning - Joe’s often attracted late night revelers returning home with alcohol fueled confidence. The shop was divided in two; a reception and consultation space and Joe's workshop. The glow from various neon signs blended stylishly with bright but minimal industrial spot lights which illuminated various antique road signs, B-movie posters and fifties pin-ups in small pockets of light. As the night and the rain enveloped the city, the traffic outside eased and a few drenched souls strode quickly past, hopping between awnings and over the ever spreading puddles, each wrapped tightly around the handle of an umbrella. A man carrying a briefcase clutched a fistful of soggy newspapers over his head and darted into a guest-house. Inside the shop, Joe’s jazz records sizzled endlessly from the vintage Wurlitzer which stood among the gloss red tool boxes. The needle rose, the needle fell. People came, people went. Some moaned with pain, some moaned with pleasure. She watched the minutes pass. The door rattled and a newly-wed couple ran in breathless from the downpour outside. Her frilly white dress hung like a soggy tissue which she gathered up while his name was scrawled across her goose-pimpled behind. She cried. He laughed. One lifetime membership to the cliché club, thought Amy running his credit card through the machine. At around two in the morning, the rain worsened. It hammered at the city. Small rivers soon eddied into subway entrances and puddles in the road erupted, throwing tidal waves up onto the sidewalk as yellow cabs sailed by. Amy looked up from the computer briefly enough to notice a man enter the shop shaking the rain from his jacket. She continued to probe Facebook, ignoring the long list of unread messages and the two day old text from her boyfriend. The man began moving around the shop, his shoes squeaking on the black and white checkered linoleum.
'Terrible weather,' he said from the opposite side of the counter in a soft English accent, an accent Amy hadn’t heard in months and found unexpectedly comforting. 'Hope you don’t mind me sheltering in here for a bit?'  She could smell a tinge of cigarette smoke amid the musty dampness of his sodden clothes. He was looking down at her and running his hands through his wet hair. She looked up yet her eyes immediately darted back towards the computer. With her heart racing, she felt her cheeks begin to blush.
'Um, okay, no worries,' she replied, her throat dry. 'Have a look around. Terrible weather.' Her eyes skipped around the room, to his chest, his coat, the street outside.
'Hey, you are from England,' he said. 'Look, don’t worry about all this,' he motioned with a hand towards his face, 'I’m used to it, have a good gander. You don't see a mug like this everyday.'
'I’m sorry, you...you took me by surprise,' she replied with a timid smile, a visible crack spreading across her usual coolness.  The man’s face was scarred and disfigured. Sagging skin hung down from a broken hairline like cooled lava and his eyelids looked sore, red and paper thin. Like wet fabric, scar tissue stretched tightly across his cheek and a portion of his mouth was tugged upwards into an permanent yet awkward half-smile. Amy bit nervously at her lip.
'I should audition for Phantom of the Opera, right?'
She laughed politely, still trying to gauge his temperament.
'Well, Broadway’s not far, but it’s probably a bit late,' she replied shyly.
'May I ask where you are from?' He looked at her through enquiring, narrowed eyes that seemed to know the answer already.
'London, well, High Wycombe…I,'
'It's Amy, isn't it?' he interrupted excitedly. Her raised eyebrows and open mouth gave him his answer. 'Amy Watts from Hatton Green Senior, I knew it as soon as I came in, what are the chances?'
'You know me?' she asked, his distorted appearance now pushed aside in her mind.
'Reece Leigh,' he replied, holding out a hand. 'We went through school together'
'Did we?' She took his hand hesitantly, scanning her now clouded memory. 'I’m sorry Reece, I can’t…'
'Yeah, don’t worry,' he said with a hint of resigned sadness in his bright blue eyes. 'Not many people do. Not that they’d forget me now of course.' She smiled sweetly. School was a memory of a memory for Amy.

The pair exchanged stories of school, work, of drinking cider behind the Co-op supermarket, ‘isn’t it a small world?’ and such.  As they chatted, the silken melodies of Coltrane, Ellington and Billie Holiday painted the air while Joe buzzed away in his studio like a humming bird, effortlessly casting a flock of oriental dragons across an investment banker’s back. Reece told Amy about the drunken barbecue incident in Ibiza which had robbed him of his face. He then spoke with utter joy about his subsequent marriage to a trainee nurse from Stoke Mandeville hospital. He painted, wrote poems, took evening classes and counseled burns victims among other equally admirable pursuits. Humbly, Amy spoke about her new life in New York with her seldom present photographer boyfriend Jack. Music, drink, hangovers, the usual.

'She said yes first time, no hesitation,' Reece chirped. 'We’re here celebrating our first anniversary, she’s tucked up in the hotel. Yeah, I prefer the dark you know, easier to hide this.' He motioned with his hand in the same way he had done before. 'I often struggle to sleep, so I just wander around and fall into bed as the sun’s coming up.'  Amy’s phone beeped. The frequent jingle was often her excuse to leap from boring conversations, but right then, as she chatted with this disfigured, forgotten character from her past, she ignored it. She was comforted by his frank and disarming tone and unwillingness to censure life. His confidence astounded and embarrassed her often selfish nature. Reece had done more in the past year than she’d ever achieved. She regretted her reaction to his face - a reaction he must see every day - yet she envied him; his life, his undeniable happiness and positive attitude.

'Do you like this kind of music?' Reece asked, nodding his head toward the jukebox.
'Well, thanks to Big Joe,' she said, extending a finger at him through the open door, 'I absolutely love it.'
'I used to be all dance and techno, but I prefer classical nowadays to be honest, Mozart, Chopin, they played it to me when I was in hospital, my face all covered up, to keep my mind busy, stop me from freaking out, that was the idea, it didn’t always work but yeah, it’s weird how things change.' He looked at his watch.
'Do you have to get back?' Amy asked.
'Nah, don’t worry, this time of night is when my dreams are the worst.'
'Dreams?' she replied instinctively. He scratched nervously at the counter top.
'Well, we’re trying for a baby, you see. Do you dream?' She shook her head. 'Yeah, I have terrible dreams, like, it’s normally that the baby’s coming out and it’s screaming, like how I was screaming that day, not just how a baby normally cries, but like, agony…then they’re trying to clean it up and it’s face…it's face is like mine, all distorted, bloody, scabbing, bits hanging off. Then they’re pouring water on it, trying to wash it all off, scrubbing with towels, but it just gets worse.' His eyes flickered back to life. 'I’m sorry, please, no one wants to hear that.'
'It’s okay,' Amy replied, slightly unsure what to say. 'It must be tough.'
'I do my best.'
Big Joe came through from the workshop pulling latex gloves from his hands.
'Looks like a quiet night Ames,' he said, placing a hand on her shoulder while smiling and nodding at Reece without so much as blinking at his appearance. 'Why don’t you go get some breakfast with your buddy then head home?'

'Well Reece,' she said, stifling a yawn, 'I could sure go for a coffee, how about it?'
'You sound like a real New Yawwker,' he replied, mimicking Joe’s accent poorly. Part of his face was unscarred and Amy was surprised to see it redden with embarrassment.

'I'm learning the lingo thanks.'

'A real New Yawwwwker,' he repeated.

'So how about it?'

He looked at his watch again and nodded.

Like her headache, the rain had stopped. Moisture clung to every surface and the sidewalks shone like polished coal. Drunken business men stumbled out of backstreet dive-bars and several weary-eyed students were escaping from a nearby library. Amy suddenly felt uncomfortable escorting Reece, and walked with her arms folded and her phone clutched tightly in her hand. She normally relished attention in the street; maybe at a new pair of designer shoes or with a tantalizing flash of her Japanese tattoo through a vintage summer dress, but this was different – curiosity, sympathy, horror. She felt guiltily thankful for the mesh-work of shadows thrown down over them by the bare branches which swayed over the blazing street lamps. They walked in silence.

'Um, you know what,' said Reece after a couple of blocks, apprehensively looking at his watch in the light of the Night Owl Café window, 'I’ve just remembered, we’ve booked a city tour first thing, I should really go and get some sleep, I’m sorry.' His eyes flashed from left to right, up and down the street, to the sky and to the ground.  His words were rushed and she felt shamed at her sudden relief to hear them. She did like him and felt a little disappointed, she did miss English company, she realized. Dropping her shoulders slightly, she told him not to worry and that she understood.

'Come say hello before you go home,' she said, placing a hand on his arm which seemed to settle his sudden anxiety.

'Yeah, maybe,' he said, his words fading off into the night air as he looked around again, focusing on the street signs.  A garbage truck rolled past, growling and hissing and forcing an uneasy silence between them until it had rounded the corner. They said their goodbyes, exchanged a clumsy hug and walked off in opposite directions. Amy turned and paced backwards for a moment, looking through the shadows at Reece. His head was down and his pace was brisk. He did not turn back.

Her damp trainers had left prints across the apartment, like a snail trail glistening in the amber light of the streetlamps outside. In the darkness, Amy sat listening to a classical compilation she’d found stuffed in the bottom of Jack’s CD rack.  Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro danced through the timber and brick lined space, giving harmony to the waking city as the faintest suggestion of daylight threw gentle hues of grey and dusty blue across the tallest buildings in the distance. A yellow cab rumbled past and cruised along Seventh Avenue. Amy did not see it and above the crescendo of strings and horns its stuttering engine was silent. It rounded the corner at Bedford to pass the Night Owl Café and Joe’s shop which was now closed and dark. It quickly crossed eight blocks, pulling up in a shadowy side-street outside a run-down hotel marked only by a rusting sign and flickering neon arrow which intermittently illuminated the driver’s hands on the wheel. Through a window on the fourth floor, a naked light bulb hung from a high, cracked ceiling. Below it, Reece sat on a single yellowing mattress with rusty stains streaked along its base. He held his disfigured face in his hands and a cigarette burned between his trembling fingers. On the wood-chip desk lay an empty vodka bottle among used syringes and scraps of foil. At the end of the corridor, a young woman was hurriedly descending the concrete stairs on scuffed stilettos. The emergency lighting hummed and revealed a pale face of thickly smudged make-up and her short glittered dress which shimmered in its cold neon glow.