"Where to?”

They were always going somewhere, these strange passengers, it didn’t matter where. I always asked, and they never failed to answer.

The brunette rummaged in her purse, small clinks sounding clearly through the rumble of tires on the road and the crinkle of some food wrapper, a weight loss bar I presumed. American women and their never ending goal to loose weight. What are they all running from?

"The corner of 3rd and Stewart." No inflection in her tired voice, no emotion in her posture.

The skin under her eyes was tinted purple, matching the dark color of her irises when they briefly hit mine in the rearview mirror, in affirmation that I’d heard her. New Yorkers always yearned to be heard in that way, with their rushed talk and pleading eyes. This, too, didn't matter just as long as someone listened, and I always did.

My eyes kept darting back, resting on her frame and how she held herself. Slouched, bag sat in her lap self consciously, as if her body was something to be ashamed of. My eyes searched her, and worn hands told me she could be a mother. A working mom who used to change diapers could now be cleaning up the mess of three teenage boys after a day of staring at a computer screen. I imaged those long fingernails trying to wash dishes, type out a meager sentence. No wonder she had broken a nail, chipped the fingernail polish.

“Long day at the office?” I’d asked, because her suit was creased and her knees pointed in, undoubtedly aching in high heels.

Her wrinkles spoke the loudest. They were the quotation marks to the story in her eyes, the parentheses hinting at the deeper meaning of her mouth. Marks of punctuation that needed no words or phrases to show me her life, to break down the walls that she held about her. They made her vulnerable, tired, and I felt solace in their similarities to mine. I watched them, instead of the roads or buildings or street signs, because they were the only things that were new. I'd seen it all before, 4th, 5th, 6th. The streets all stayed the same, but her? She was temporary. How long until she was gone? This stranger with her Special K granola bar and bags under tired eyes, her life would keep on going, leaving me stuck in this cab with nothing but a small pile of creased bills in her wake. Yet she drew me in with her grammatically lined face and I fell in love with the prospect of hearing all the stories it could tell while she slept.

She didn't glance at me when she answered, sighing as if I couldn't possibly understand. "Yeah, you could say that."

She didn't see because she couldn't care to watch, but my eyes still explored her. I listened to her body, obeyed her like traffic lights. The green in her slumped posture, inviting me, a yellow warning in the grease of her hair, and the glowing red stop in the aversion of eyes that held blurred New York City lights. She sat alone and I watched her in the back seat, myself behind the steering wheel, her chauffeur, and I was fuming with jealousy. We were both in a cab, both exhausted from life, from the same buildings day after day, year after year, and from our numb asses that sat all day, but she had everything I wanted. She was going somewhere and I was paid to take her there. To a husband, to kids, or maybe only to a lonely lapdog named Bärli, German from when she took it in school and the irony of the name made her laugh. But either way, she was going to leave, just like all the others. Where would I go once she was finally gone?

With her? Up to her single serving apartment, get to know her through cheap wine, and have Bärli snuggle up to me, between the two of us still naked under thin sheets, as if he could sense the German of his name in my blood and in my mouth, from the thirty-two years when it was all I spoke. I'd scratch behind his floppy ears while half her smile would be hidden as she lay on her side, asking me about my life, where I've been and where I want to go, and I'd know the answer. And she'd recognize my accent and beg for us to converse in my native language, and I’d lie when I say her pronunciation is almost perfect then kiss her on the nose.

It wouldn't happen, just as the other lives I'd imagined with the strangers who slid onto that worn back seat didn’t happen. The possibility would disappear when she did. My life with Sofia, the Starbucks barista, smelled like the coffee she made me, just the way I liked it, and Sundays we’d watched shitty television and I never wore a shirt. Or the time Jacques, the dancer, and I had run away to Paris together and we kissed atop the Eiffel Tower, however cliché, and made love on the darkened stage after his ballet. A life with this woman, this wife, this dog lover, this German aficionado, will be a past experience, remembered fondly with a smile, as if I'd actually lived it.

She won't invite me to her room, or introduce me to her German dog, or ask me where I've been. She won't marvel at my intricacies or smile at my touch. She'll leave in a hurry, and won't look back. Escape through the same door she entered, not seeing the trail my eyes made on her, pleading her to listen. My face held a story too! Between the quotations of my own grey eyes and the grey comma on my bearded chin were words, answers to unasked questions, warped on an aging face and coddled by the years. She won't notice me, with tired eyes, or ask me where I'll go.

The slam of her door didn't phase me, I stayed staring. She punched in the four digit number that unlocked the lobby entrance. That door, too, slammed shut. When two layers of glass and an enumerable amount of floors lay between us, I slammed my cramped hands against the wheel, and let the New York City night drown me.

Where to?

They never asked the question, but I've never had the answer.