Lisa and Jerry
Lisa wakes up early in the morning when the alarm sings. Yet, she still managed to miss her train. Now, she is standing outside, in the fiercely pouring rain, hailing for a yellow cab. Being the busiest weekdays in NYC, Wednesday is no special. The traffic is hot; somehow more than usual, everyone has somewhere to go today.
Taxis become the expensive commodities of the day. Even the stock market has never soared so high like this. She’s waited here for more than thirty minutes now.
“I cannot miss this interview,” she says.
While scouring the streets with her eagle eyes, she sees a taxi a block away, standing on the traffic light. She runs for it.
“I am not going to miss this interview!”
She keeps playing that same phrase in her head like a broken cassette player.
Her hands in the air, almost touching the sky, she keeps running towards the cab. Once the green light lit, as if the cab was also specially ordered for her, it races towards her too.
Meanwhile, she sees someone else also cutting in front of her, hailing for the same cab. But, this is now becoming a deadly war, she won’t afford to lose.
“No way woman,” Lisa rushes as fast as her feet could master.
She takes off her short heels and passes the older grey-haired woman. The woman almost gets in the cab, when Lisa reaches for the door. Lisa then jumps in the cab.
“I am sorry,” she says, feeling so terribly bad when she looked at the lady’s frowned and puzzled face.
“I am sorry, I really do need this,” repeats Lisa, and then hops into the taxi, and closes the door.
After she put away her purse and a light brown folder, she tried catching her breath. She inhaled and exhaled like a newborn baby.
”Where to?” the driver says.
”The New York Times,” Lisa replied; then, the yellow cab speeds towards her future.
The rain worsens over time. She looks at her watch in every turn the cab takes.
The driver notices that she is anxious and worried.
“So what do you do?” politely he asks her.
She doesn’t seem invested in the conversation. So she remains quiet. Seconds later, his question rings in her ears.
”I am sorry, that was rude of me.” She sends him the smile that sparkles from her radiant exotic face. He grins back in an understanding way. She continues.
“I am going for a job interview. But, I am running super late for it.”
The tidy driver in his thirties, with long ponytails and dark hair, with wide grins on his face smiles back at her.
“Well, let’s see how we can get you there sooner,” confidently he sends her his confirmation.
”Thank you, please try.” She grins back.
The driver switches the radio on to 107.6FM, and begins to maze through the traffic, navigating via short-cuts. A smooth jazz song comes on the airwaves. It was one of her favorite songs, “When the sky cries.” Lisa loves smooth jazz. She never sleeps without putting one on each night at bedtime.
The driver watched her reaction to the song, so he cracked up the volume. He sees her relaxing as she puts her head back on the backseat, stopped kicking and shaking her feet, letting time fly by.
Her ears glued to the song, she lets her eyes steal the outside views from the window, frowning at the rain.
“Please, stop for the day,” she begs the crazy moaning sky. “Please!”
Yet, the sky disregards her demands. The rain picks up the pace as if the sky opened more floodgates to ruin her day.
“Thanks a lot!” Lisa says in frustration.
When the taxi reached the NYT building, she was already forty-five minutes late. She pays the taxi fare and gives the driver an extra tip.
“Thank you, for your help,” she says with her big smile.
”Break a leg,” he replies.
She knows that she was late; nonetheless, she zooms into the building anyway. At this point, she got nothing to lose, even though she might’ve screwed up her dream of working for the NYT.
The day flew by. It’s in the afternoon now. When Lisa came out after finishing up with her interview, the city was quieter like a daybreak curfew being ordered. The sky was clear and the ground was dry. The city appeared a locked down quarantine zone. She got puzzled.
“What the fuck? Where did all that rain and people go?”
She’s a bit famished and frustrated. She is in need of some food and caffeine, to come down her anxiety.
Empty taxis are standing on the Taxi Stand by the NYT building. The line is more than fifty feet. She walks to get a ride back to her place. The On-Duty lights on every passing by yellow cab in the city are also on, without any booked fares; they are hunting for passengers like scavengers.
She gets into the first yellow cab standing inline.
“East Village, please.”
Once she hops into the taxi, she begins thinking what has happened today. She can’t turn the clock back now. Though the interview went well, her gut is telling her that she threw away a reporter career out of the window. She thinks they interviewed her out of formality.
The cab takes off like a jet towards Houston and Avenue B. Before she reached her place, she changed her course and asked the driver to drop her off to the famous Molten Cafe Shop on Houston and Mott St.
As soon as she walks into the café, the sky begins to cry heavier than before. She looks outside and frowns, as the thunder lightning flashes with rainbow colors.
She looks up the posted menu behind the counters. Once she checked today’s specials list, she orders half a grilled chicken sandwich on a whole grain wheat bread and tomato soup, with Mocha Latte. Till her number is called, she looked for a sit and found one, in the corner, against the window. She takes off her jacket and sits.
She looks outside, at the pouring rain.
“This is just fucking ridicules.” She says.
As she sits comfortably, she unfolded the events of the day. She dreamed of working for the NYT as long as she could remember it. Since she graduated from City College in journalism, she never applied to any other newspaper reporters, except the NYT. But, somehow, she fucked it up the one chance she ever gotten.
“Idiot, idiot,” she bangs her forehead.
Her order got delivered to her table. She quickly picks up the sandwich and takes a satisfying bite to calm down her hunger. Then, she sipped her coffee as if she wanted to push down the food into her growling stomach. Suddenly, she felt a warm liquid falling down from the corners of her eyes.
She tried to control it, but the tears rolled down like the pouring rain, messing up her massacre.
The small and cozy café is very crowded and busy. No one seems to notice Lisa’s sobbing or cries until Jerry walks in.
Jerry was standing in the long line when he saw Lisa crying. When he assessed the bright loud room, he sees nobody seems to ask her well-being. Everyone kept distance, yet their eyes fully fixated on her with admiration, yet not with sympathy. But, he figured that it had to be because of her magnetic radiant beauty that kept them away. He thought of a story once he read about how some exotic and beautiful creatures have an overwhelming power to intimidate others. Thus, that just fit perfectly here for him, for she looks like a rare breed of creatures that has the power to freeze anything with her wild green eye.
Jerry strides by her table. She doesn’t look up, consumed in her own tears. He stands there for a second.
“Are you okay?” he asks her.
No replies, but she nods her head. He wants to know why she’s crying rivers.
“Are you sure, you’re okay?” he persists, giving her a napkin.
She takes the napkin and sniffs loudly. Yet, she still says nothing back, except send him her cold silent treatment while nodding.
Jerry pulls a chair and sits across her, trying to guess the random reasons that got her into sadness.
”I think I know why you’re crying,” he smirks, as he gets situated.
So, the long battle of his persistence quest started to draw her in.