Chapter 2 – The Taxi

They also say that "the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets, for it is in London, San Diego, New York and Norway, that our scene will lie, rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

"You didn't write that—It was a dark and stormy night—you stole that line. There's not a cloud in night."

Fine, be that way. So, on this moonlit, cloudless night, a Traveler stumbles through a jagged mountain pass above a bone-chilling fjord. He sets down his ragged camping gear and squints through a crack in the mountain, grappling with the unsettling urge to answer the call of the void and fling himself into the icy abyss below. Jumping to conclusions had never been so tempting.

The moon shames the stars to sleep. One star loses its grip and falls into the fjord.

In the water below, the Traveler sees a fish vault from the sea, drawing a white arc of water. The water-arc disintegrates into spheres that linger in suspension before rejoining the flow.

If only the Traveler had realized, it had not been a fish—it had been a whale—and his life's decisions had diverted him onto a dangerous precipice.

The Traveler looks down and notices purple reflecting off the rolling ringlets of water radiating from the splash. He looks up to the sky to locate the source.

A blue necklace of atmospheric ice rings the moon. The angle of his head occludes his blood flow. Blood tries to pulse through his carotid artery, pummeling his nerves, unleashing vertigo's vortex.

He hears the winds and sees nearby branches bending. He looks further up, while his thoughts fly on golden wings into the Milky Way, and he imagines looking down from far above the plane of the elliptic. He sees himself surrounded by a thin blue light.

Click.

"No, double click."

Click, click.

The Traveler lifts his hand to his head to steady his disorientation and feels the first puff of wind blow through his hair. However, it's too late; for this traveler had slipped at the moment of boarding.

With a roar, the wind uproots a nearby tree and flings it into the fiery embrace of another, like an over-enthusiastic bartender tossing a match into vodka. And just like that, the Traveler is plucked from the ground, lifted into the air like a sad, bewildered rag doll, flailing above the fjord as nature decides it's his turn to become airborne.

The creature has claimed another victim and the winds spirit the Traveler to a black castle topped with two twin towers.

Inside the towers, the scratch of a flint punctures the quiescence, and an orange flash erupts within a puff of smoke.

"Please, can you take the smoke outside?"

***

Thunder reeled Sofia from dream's abyss.

"What was that?" she whispered in the whirlpool of the after-dream. "I don't want to go. I want my shadow back."

The eight glow-in-the-dark planets and stars on her ceiling soothed her until one star, unglued, lost its grip. It fell, hit a balloon on the floor, bounced up and momentarily meshed with another star, also unglued, falling. In their stellar collision Sofia perceived the connection at the center of the galaxy's geared drive train, before it flitted away (e.g., "I saw the meaning of life, one thinks; "But forgot to write it down," one whispers the next morning).

"I closed that door before going to bed," Sofia thought. "Now it is open," she whispered as she pulled her blanket to her nose, four fingers over, thumbs under.

Atop her desk, beside a toy trebuchet she had constructed for a science project, a bright red rubber ducky and a brown starfish lay near the balloons she had used to inflate her blanket the week before last: a cloaking device, as she hid beneath the bed, pranking her dad that she had been kidnapped by aliens from beyond the Kuiper belt.

"Ransom notes should not have the same font throughout," dad had pontificated that next morning as Sofia released gas from one of the balloons.

Her father had dismissed his daughter's gas release with a subversive smile at a girl just like himself, while trying to force severity, hands on hips, redoubling his lecture,"You have to make it look like a cut out from a magazine; and can you stop squeezing the balloon's air into that whistle, it is distracting my explanation," at which point, Sofia released the balloon which zipped around the room, before landing on her father's head.

"Daddy," she whispered as she turned toward the closet; the door now closed again. The storm had ended. Her breathing slowed. She looked toward the ceiling from which her stars had fallen, but counted nine planets, not eight.

"Pluto?" Sofia whispered. "Who put Pluto there?"

Then she remembered her father's scientific opinion that he would express with conviction over family dinner—"Pluto is a planet, dammit," he would insist, as often as he would ask, "Why have I never seen a baby pigeon?"; all convenient ruminations, her mom would insist, to forget to mow the lawn.

Fear eased its grip, and Sofia returned to slumber's more pleasant dreams of a duck snatching an ice cream cone, cats, pigeons on the grass, alas, alas, and a father who had a habit of never tying his shoelaces tightly enough.

Hours later, the sun kissed the clouds, and Sofia woke for the day's journey. She showered, ate breakfast, bulls-eyed the outside cat with a finger-flicked blueberry, brushed, dressed (in blue), clipped her yellow star to her belt, and packed her water coloring set—her dad loved finger painting and he had asked her to bring it on the trip; and approached the idling taxi.

The driver, a young guy, each ear adorned with an orbit of ruby red earrings, was waving his hands in silence, mouthing words. Strands of dyed blue, green and yellow hair graced a purple shirt.

Sofia opened the car door as the driver knocked a dream catcher from the front rear view mirror as he shouted, "Contender!"

A tattoo in the form of a question mark graced the right side of the driver's neck. His perspiration blended with the citrus Calabrian bergamot of Dior's Sauvage Eau de Parfum—a peppery, masculine scent for young men going places; one that one would never expect in an Uber (the Parfum, not the young man going somewhere).

"Sincerest apologies, for any discombobulation," the driver said as he caught the catcher. "I was practicing my solo-lilo-quy. Enter; and grace this chamber with your celestial presence," he continued while re-attaching the catcher. "There, pull down the strap, your majesty, and insert the metal fastener into..."

"I know how to buckle a seat belt," Sofia interrupted, as she closed the door, looked up at the peace and love stickers stuck to the roof of the taxi, and snapped her seat belt, thinking, "Your majesty? Seriously? Great Scott!"

In the early morning hours, the storm's remnants lingered as a fine mist. However, this was San Diego, so enough to cause multiple collisions for those forgetting how to approach the 163/5 freeway split to the airport.

Rain drops accumulated on the car's glass window. Sofia saw facets of herself in each—her eye in one, joy in another, a pink flamingo in yet another—and wondered if she would come together amidst the melancholy, she had been experiencing these last few days of summer; while also curious as to who had reset the pink flamingos she had uprooted from the lawn, the evening before.

"I can't soar," Sofia thought as a backpack slid down on her, "when everyone's baggage is falling on me; and why was this driver shouting in this car? And who put those two flamingos back in the grass and where's the third one? And what did he mean, 'write my story'," she wondered as she pushed her backpack back atop the pile of luggage between the two rear seats.

A single stream rolled down the window from droplet to droplet, as if asking each one "will you join us?"

Sofia wanted to leave the banks of the river that had been her home. She wanted to be a traveler but was afraid to take the first step—fearing the slightest slip into the abyss.

The hedges on the front lawn jostled but Sofia wrote it off to the last of the winds. She noted a pink light sliding into the bushes as she whispered, "Strange—that pink glow."

"Look at that flamingo, go," whispered the driver.

She refocused her eyes toward the smaller drops in the path of the river on the window, as her parents emerged from the house and locked the front door.

"Don't they see me?" Sofia whispered as her parents approached.

"Right? There's the drama juice. I could have been a..." said the driver, diving back into fantasies.

"I could have been going to the same school with my friends," Sofia nearly lamented, as she traced one of the rivers on the window with the finger of her right hand and curled her hair with the other. Then she repeated herself louder, "I could have been..."

"...a contender, word! m'lady," shouted the driver as he raised his arms and flared his fingers. "True that, most righteously," he added, setting the dream catcher swaying—the mere appearance of Sofia's parents approaching, enough to shake loose his self-restraint, as he surfaced from the sea of his disorders.

The water was deep.

"Whatever," Sofia whispered, accustomed to the driver's eccentricity, having had lived-experiences with her dad—e.g., Pluto, shoelaces, and pigeons in the grass.

"Dad's, deeper."

"Pardon my discombobulation, your majesty," the driver said, turning back to Sofia, twisting the question mark on his neck. "I was out of containment just now, having received a response of jubilation to inflate my soul. I must now re-combobulate, like that pink flamingo, sliding into the grass, over there, getting outta Dodge," as he pointed to his heart with one hand, his hair with the other, and a nod to the two plastic pink flamingos still left on the lawn.

"No worries," said Sofia. "You're about to meet my dad," she added, gazing at the question mark tattoo, thinking, "He's going to answer that question on your neck. And who took that flamingo from the lawn? Why are there only two?"

"Answer? He doesn't even know the question."

Sofia rolled the window down to clear her memory of what had happened the previous day; and to teach the river on the window who was boss.

"I love the smell of cut grass," she whispered to herself.

"I love myself the sweet fragrance of grass, too," answered the driver.

"I bet you do," thought Sofia.

"But here comes a' 'da judge, and there goes the flamingo across the street," the driver added as he nodded toward Sofia's approaching father.

Sofia's father, first; a most handsome man, youthful appearance, yet solid, and with a build like a brick house, a full head of thick hair, large hands with long fingers, and a sparkle in his eyes in a finely shaped head resting atop a frame almost six and half feet tall that he ported with grace and power; very handsome, broad shoulders, muscles like a brick house, with long feet, but finally accepting hearing aids which he was not wearing—so not completely accepting; green shirt, brown cap above thick hair, a Sequoia of a man, and extremely handsome (as we said), well-defined pecs, long arms, wearing stuffed beige cargo shorts (because a husband can never have enough pockets when his wife prefers to wear jeans), exceptionally good-looking, and a smile bearing the only possible greeting to the question mark in the driver's seat.

Her mother followed, ensuring her dad did not get into a discussion with a passing pigeon.

"Right there? Now do you see the problem? It's all about him."

"So, we have to go back one more time?"

"Yes. Mom needs a good night's sleep."

Mom approached the idling taxi, engine humming, wondering how many life stories had played out in the car; how many ghosts it had ported over Asphalt Rivers with Charon the Question Mark, the driver.

She came around to the rear driver side seat and her father, to the front passenger seat. She looked over the top of the car toward the jostling hedges and said, "I think we need to get animal control—there, in the grass, they're back. And one of your flamingos is missing and your shoelace, untied."

Then mom froze in place and looked toward the sky when she heard the discordant notes, this ominous day of wrath. She searched the clouds for the source of the somber trochaic F minor, followed by a half-step down, then a half-step up to the first note, and one-and-a-half-steps back down—that little four note ditty that portended the rise of the Grim Reaper from the earth's bowels.

"Dad?" Sofia asked her mother who was shaking her head and pulling her earlobe.

"He's down there," mom replied, pointing to the front.

"Why can't they make laces for shoes with more friction?" demanded Sofia's dad, as he rose after retying his laces, and entered the car.

"Could be moose and squirrel ran off with them," added the driver, "Welcome aboard!"

"No one understands me," Sofia thought, while marveling at how her mom could open the door, enter the car, sit, close the door, pull the strap, and buckle the seat belt in one graceful, continuous motion, as if it were choreographed in the heavens.

"Where's the damn buckle?" her father shouted as he twisted left and right, then, looking over the lawn, adding, and "I can never find the buckle. Those hooligans stole my flamingos again."

"Peace, pard'ner. May the range be calm, and the cattle be fat," said the driver, hoping to soothe the search, "Y'all best be keeping an eye out, 'cause them flamingo rustlers are-a-plenty 'round these parts."

"Now there's two of them?" Sofia's mother whispered.

"Two flamingos! I knew it," Sofia said.

"No, not the flamingos. Them," Mom answered, ping-ponging her pupils between her husband and the driver.

"Dad, why does cut grass smell sweet?" Sofia interrupted.

"Let me explain," her dad replied, still searching for the seat belt.

"Look under your butt," Mom interrupted, to plug her husband's word faucet.

"Pluto," Sofia snickered with a diabolical smile as the driver leaned over to her father.

"Not now, Sofia, not now," whispered her mother, "Don't launch him."

"What did you say, Sofia?" Dad asked as he lifted himself up and reached beneath, "I don't have the hearing aids on. What did you say? Where is this other seat belt? I didn't hear, Sofia," her dad finished, out of breath, exasperated by his struggle with the meaning of life the seat belt (i.e., the meaning of life).

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"Nothing daddy," Sofia said as her mother pinched her, leaned over, and whispered to her, "Don't get him started with the driver."

"Pluto," Dad said as he turned to Sofia (because sometimes, people with hearing loss can hear, but lack the patience to listen; and saying 'What?' is a lot easier than paying attention), while continuing the search for the seat belt, muttering, "Pluto," softly, then loudly adding, "Should have been a plan..."

"... a contender, exactly," the driver interrupted, sitting back up, with a shout and a fist slam on the steering wheel.

Sofia's mom leaned back from the blast, and raised her brows, fascinated by the driver's outburst, thinking, "So the driver has the launch code?"

Dad froze from his quest, smiled at the driver, his own eyes, ignited, and replied, "Yes, indeed, my young knight errant," clued that the driver might be a fellow cosmonaut, as he continued his hunt for the seat belt, which caused a red and blue cat's eye glass marble to fall out of his pocket, bounce off the middle console, and roll beneath the driver's seat, never to be seen again for about thirty years.

"There goes another one," Mom whispered, watching the marble roll beneath the seat.

"Please receive my amendes honorables," the driver announced to the backseat of the car, and then, turning to Sofia's dad adding, "The belt strap fell over down the side of the seat, Mr. Patriarch. I got the part of Stanley in the play. Who'd a thunk it, know what I'm saying? On The Waterfront. It's this dream catcher that caught my dream," he said, gesticulating as he knocked the dream catcher off again and it landed on dad's crotch.

"Stanley is a character in a Streetcar named Desire," Mom corrected.

"Especially, because, oh, yes, there's the buckle, it leans to the side. Here, let me lean over your lap getting the buckle," the driver continued as reached over dad's waist, his hair falling over the dream catcher, as he turned his head sideways to Mom, saying, "In our theater, we combined the stories into one—experimental theater, know what I'm sayin'?; the Street Car on the Godfather's Waterfront," before lifting his head to Dad saying, "Brando, you know, sometimes it leans to the side—there it is—that one went both ways, or so they say—the seat belt, Brando too, I hear. Can you pull it?" while pointing with one hand, as his hair hooked on the dream catcher, lifting it, and at dad's lap with the other, adding, "here, let me yank that for you," then turning to the back seat to Mom, "we find our wisdoms in our overlapping stories, know what I'm sayin' your highness?"

"Might be too late," thought Sofia's mother; then adding out loud, "Yes, I know what you're saying."

"Got it," said her dad. "Snap."

Locked.

Sofia's father smiled and turned back to study his wife's face which bore a "please do not engage with this driver," expression that he knew quite well, and never remembered not to forget to ignore.

Sofia's mom smiled at her husband, who then inserted the hearing aids as the taxi pulled away.

"When he wants to hear," Sofia's mom confirmed to herself in a whisper.

"What did you say, honey?" Dad asked his wife.

"You heard me," answered Mom.

Most of the houses along the street, innocuous and vacuous, each home resembling every other, posing as a Botox beauty.

"These houses," Dad began, with a sly smile, as he turned around to face his wife, "They are all the same. You know, honey. I don't see why you won't let me..."

"... no, we will not paint the house purple with pink polka dots," Mom said to her husband.

The driver screeched to a stop, and everyone leaned forward. Mouth agape, he smiled, flaring his fingers, fingernails painted red, like an Ocotillo in Borrego, and nodded to dad, saying, "May the pink and purple force be with you, General; a most outrageous master plan."

Then the car continued forward, and everyone leaned back while her father studied the driver.

"Do you think you can divert a minute down that street, young man?" Sofia's father asked the driver. "I'd like to see what happened—in the lit light of day."

"He's going to start the launch countdown," Sofia thought while her mother lip-synced, "Two of them."

"This here young knight errant," the driver began, pointing to himself, then turning to back Sofia, adding, "That be me, attuned to the ways of the force—by orders of the General of the Pink Polka Dots—will now take a path less traveled," as he turned the car, while everyone leaned left, "We will find what you are looking for, General."

The catastrophe rolled into view with the sublime majesty of the Grim Reaper taking stage for a TED talk on the importance of Birthdays.

"Whoa," the driver interjected as he studied the charred ruins. "Holy Mother of God, run me over with a truck, leave the gun and take the cannoli," he added as he plunged into the depths, again. This scene is like, whoa, amirite?"

"You are most righteously right!" confirmed dad.

Sofia lipped, "Ignition-pending?" and smiled at her mother.

During the night, the wind's fury had ripped two trees from the ground and thrashed them together, and then against the house as the electrical wires shorted, igniting the rafters despite the rain.

"A most flaming embrace," exclaimed the driver.

"Quite the passionate flaming embrace," added dad, as the two men exchanged smiling glances at each other; but then froze amidst fear of friendly fire and immediately turned back to the trees.

"Over there—that embrace," rushed Dad, as he returned focus to the horror, pointed, and cleared his throat.

"Yes, over there, yes indeed," the driver confirmed as he also cleared his throat, "That embrace."

The house had burned to a charred husk; scorched beams still smoldered under the oppressive drizzle. The acrid stench of incinerated wood permeated the taxi, searing the nostrils. A sinister grey vapor coiled around the house's ash-laden remains. Jagged shards of shattered glass clawed at the sky—a dragon's maw frozen in a silent snarl. Melted siding had congealed mid-drip, resembling coagulated blood oozing from a fractured jawbone. The collapsed walls unveiled a grotesque tableau, where the outside violated the inside like a twisted Klein bottle. Splintered timber beams jutted upward, defying the heavens. The house groaned as another beam surrendered its tenuous hold, crashing down with a cacophony of splintering wood and shattering glass—glistening tears of a once-living entity now reduced to ruin.

"A dragon?" Sofia thought as she studied the exterior.

"This could be the resting place of the Holy Grail," announced the driver as pulled back his hair, revealing the question mark tatoo, "Guarded now by a dragon, most vicious. King Amfortas is in pain here, General, waiting for Parzival to ask the timeless question about the arrow ahead in the scrotum," the driver added as he adjusted his testicles, "You know; that question?"

"Is that a dragon, Mommy?" Sofia uttered as stories raced toward her from all directions, and from past and future.

"That was the crash last night," Sofia's mother answered.

"Indeed, Empress Mother," interjected the driver. "This catastrophe is supremely illuminated."

"Yes, most superbly, lit," as only a gesticulating Dad, freeing himself from shackles of proper behavior could, say; like he did just the other day, after the pink inflatable tube man outside the used car sales lot unhooked itself from the anchor cables and he led the other boys men chasing the flaming flailing tube man down the street, as he whispered, "How did the arrow get stuck in his nut sack, anyway, and who took my flamingo?"

The burned trees resembled a two-headed, multi-armed troll, stripped bare, clawing, grasping, much like an octopus looking back at you, from inside a glass blender, as you put your finger over the blend-button, and, well, you know...

"Press the button," Sofia's mom whispered, "He's going to press the launch button."

Sofia's breathing stalled. She looked past the trees, into the remains of the house, past the liquidated computer monitors and cables.

"Some nasty darkness coming this way," Sofia whispered, loud enough for her mother to hear. "I don't like this."

"Don't worry, baby-love. Everyone got out safely," her mother said. "No one is going to act up," she added, looking at her husband's eyes in the rear-view mirror and emphasizing, "Everyone will calm down, right, Papa? There will be no launch sequence—no 5, 4, 3, 2, 1."

Sofia's dad smiled, eyes ignited in resistance, "How about 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?"—always, Sofia remembered, before any eccentricity that surged against the towering bluffs of normality—and he continued with joy, "I could gobble a cannolo into smithereens, right now, too, I could; maybe a calzone," before closing in a sudden despondent whisper, as wave of despair surged ashore from nowhere, "maybe I failed to launch."

"What was that general?" said the driver, "Cheer up."

"Honey, what's wrong?" Sofia's mother asked her husband, noting his sudden sadness.

"Never mind," Dad resisted as he lowered his head. "Just a memory."

"I'll get a few at the airport," Mom whispered, while thinking, "He needs to get over it or he will be living in fantasies."

A purple cat ran across the road.

Loaded.

"Did you see that?" the driver shouted to Sofia's dad. "I am, like, most righteously gob smacked by this astounding tour of da force."

"Yes, I certainly did. A most righteous smack in the gobs," her father agreed as his smile returned, and he came back alive. He waved his hand, dismissing the memory, as the towering bluffs commenced their collapse at the sight of the purple cat.

"General, that cat had a pack of cigarettes in its mouth!" exclaimed the driver.

The driver and Sofia's dad turned toward each other, like old friends, as they both pointed toward the purple streak.

"And it was purple," Sofia's dad exclaimed, as he turned to his wife, adding, "Never mind, honey, I had a bad memory just now—it passed."

Mom raised a peace sign to her husband—knowing when to soothe his turbulence.

"We let those float away," confirmed the driver, hoping to redirect the feelings in the car, back to joy, "A purple cat, indeed it was—that was crazy."

"I saw that cat yesterday," Sofia added.

"You too, now?" her mother whispered and looked toward the sky, lip-syncing, "I am powerless."

A boulder dislodged from the self-restraint in the driver's mind, and he capitulated to the performance of masculinity, mock-slammed the steering wheel and shouted, letting loose his aged-mock-rage, "You don't understand! I could'a had class. I could'a been a contender, I could've been somebody, instead of a bum on the waterfront, which is what I am, before the purple cat."

"Marlon Brando, the man," her father affirmed, meekly.

"Oops," said the driver.

"Locked and loaded," Sofia's mother said aloud, "Please, someone stop this launch."

"The Purple Cat will," Sofia replied.

"A lamentable verbal ebullition—mea culpa," the driver interjected, adding, with almost as many embolalias as words, "May I, um, proffer an excuse? I was, um, practicing a scene, for my, uh, acting class, and I just, well, um, received the annunciation that I, uh, got the lead, and um, failed to restrain my perimeter—know what I'm sayin'?—in the presence of this family's Patriarch?" finishing with renewed confidence, "Please forgive me for my euphoric exuberance. My deepest regrets to you, simpatico," and a nod to dad.

"Did they forget we're sitting back here?" Mom whispered.

The car began moving again, leaving confusion in its wake.

"Get off me," Sofia shouted to the suitcase that fell on top of her, as the car turned, and everyone leaned right. She pushed the backpack back atop the pile, which then rolled over onto her mother.

"Don't throw it, Sofia," her dad said. "Clear your route," he added, winking at the driver, who smiled back.

"Out the window with negativity," the driver chimed, "Yes, sir," as he glanced at himself in the passenger rear view mirror.

"Clear your path, young lady, the patriarch of our space vehicle announces to all voyagers," continued the driver to Sofia.

"But not on me," her mom interrupted as the luggage Sofia had tossed up fell over onto her.

"Duck!" shouted the driver.

"What good is that going to do?" mom said. "It's falling on top of me, not past my head."

However, Dad immediately leaned forward and lowered his head to the dashboard, as the driver blasted Ahoogha! Ahooga! with the car horn.

"No, no," shouted the driver, "I meant, look, there's a duck staggering across the street, mon ami. There, scrutinize it, General! And in his beak! What is a duck doing with a flash drive? In his beak? A maximal perplexation, here we have we here."

A duck had raced out of the shell of a house with a flash drive in his beak.

"And a router," her father interjected, joyfully. "The duck has a router under his wing."

The duck had a router under its wing.

"Makes you want to say, Bong," said the driver, who paused on sensing the silence he induced in the car.

Silence.

"Oops, again," The driver continued, "I mean, not that kind of bong, but the other kind of bong, what's the word? I forget the word. Lethologica—that tongue on the tip feeling; I forget the word I'm thinking—like where the New York CEO in one of those old movies finally makes it to Japan—can I get to the 5/163 spit this way to the airport this way?—and the director cuts to a Samurai warrior banging a bong to let everyone know you're in a new world—yes, I think we should go this way; we'll take the road less travelled, we have no choice; likely some varmints or coyotes high tailed out of town with one of those flamingos —and that duck with a router, what was up with that? I think this is exit ramp to the airport—takes time to start a journey. That kind of bong, not the other kind, know what I'm saying? Everything is happening at once."

"I believe you meant to say, Gong," Sofia's mom offered, not realizing that the word "Gong" was, itself, the code that would now launch her husband and the driver.

Silence gobbled up the seconds in the car and spit them out as a moment. You see, we have one part of our brain that has thoughts. We have another that gives words to thoughts. Connecting these two spots, the brain and mouth, is one long nerve—a kind of information superhighway, if you will. Now on this road sits a director, a toll keeper, and his job is to inspect the thoughts that come racing down the freeway from the brain to the mouth. The toll keeper inspects a thought and says, "You're a mighty fine thought, you head right on out." To other thoughts, he says, "I think you need some work. You go back up there, and get yourself a velvet glove, at least." Then there are those other thoughts that, when they come down the pipeline, the toll keeper says, "Hell no, no one needs to know you're thinking this. You head right out the other end and don't come back." Well, the toll keeper on Sofia's dad's superhighway quit the job years ago, and there had been no one to keep his mouth shut, so he rolled down the window, took a deep breath of air, and shouted—as one would do when the abyss looks into you—and having decided to row, row, and row his boat with the driver for no other reason than 'why not?' at the top of his lungs, screamed, "Stella!"

Startled by the scream, the duck dropped the flash drive and the router and took to the air, while the purple cat dropped the cigarettes.

Sofia's mom exhaled, thinking, "I suppose I've heard worse."

"I am impressed by your performance, General," affirmed the young driver, "May I contribute to this Stanislavsky method?" he asked, before belting out his own "Stella!"

"Look at that duck soar," Sofia's mother whispered wistfully while watching the duck fade into the distant sky.

"I wish I could fly away, too," Sofia whispered.

"Your horn slays," Sofia's dad said, then asking, "Vintage?"

"I have found certain situations in life justify the ahoogah," the driver pontificated.

"That ahoogah always gets me here," dad said, pointing to his heart with his right hand, while adjusting his testicles with his left.

"Hash tag, Me Too," confirmed the driver who did the same, and the same, with a smile, while steering the car with raised knees pressing up against the wheel.

Sofia's mom turned down her head to inspect her fingernails as the two men commenced a conversation about cars, colors, light, stars, whether one should go to law school in case an acting career did not pan out, NAFTA, Norway, bubbles, elves, trolls, goblins, rectal fumigation, fragrances that are an introductory foray into the world of men's cologne, and a new painting of a green baboon with a broken leg playing poker with a grasshopper that Sofia's dad had commissioned to hang in his man cave.

Onto the freeway, avoiding collisions, off the freeway, into the parking lot, out of the car, extract the luggage, pay the fare; wish the driver luck in his role, and begin parting like friends who had met up with each other for the first time after a journey of a lifetime.

The driver and Sofia's dad turned to each other, recollecting their time together in the car, during which Sofia and her mother thought, "It was just a fifteen-minute conversation."

Nearby a group of pilots, co-pilots and flight attendants waited for the last member of the flight crew, a strapping hunk of a flight attendant carrying an opened red umbrella, across the street.

As the two life-time friends separated amidst the congestion of departures, arrivals, and a jungle of cars, the driver approached Dad slowly, asking, "May I ask you something, General? I got to thinking—what you said, before, about the green baboon. Can I query you something?" the driver repeated.

"Lay it on me, Jedi," her dad answered, as her mom set down the luggage and exhaled while Sofia smiled.

"A terrific honorific! Well, we had such a nice time; a kind of inexplicable je ne sais quoi, and I thought I'd ask you—unlike how Parzifal forgot to ask Amfortas about that arrowhead that got shot you know where and got stuck, in that story, where it got stuck; you seem like a soul mate. I have a question that plagues my soul," the young man said.

Sofia and her mom looked at each other, and then at the question mark.

"Fire away, my good knight," encouraged her dad, arm around driver's shoulder, with his hand near the question mark.

"It is a bit personal, I mean, we connected, during our sally at the windmills of memory just now, like kindred-spirits, paisans, as the Godfather would say. I hope this does not perturb your wife's majesty—or should I say, your majesty's wife—we no longer nourish these moments between men, poignant they may be, so may I be candid, compadre? The world is fluid, right, for all questions?"

"My dad is an ally of all genders," Sofia volunteered as she pulled her hair through the pony-tail hold of her baseball cap, "But I don't know what that means."

Both men immediately froze. They turned to study Sofia, stunned, as when one is stoned on weed and thinks the carved Pumpkin is reciting Hamlet's "To be or not to be; that is the question."

"Sofia, let him ask the question," said her dad.

The two men, startled by the dislocation of Sofia's assumption (and whether Sofia knew something), studied each other, like two soldiers now rather enjoying friendly fire and recalibrated, as they overheard the passing flight attendant with the red umbrella calmly announcing, "Supplemental income," to the co-pilot.

Sofia, her mom, and dad leaned in toward the driver and prepared themselves for the intimate question that would beckon the wisdom of the family's patriarch.

The driver looked down, paused, then looked up, compressed his lips, trembled before his own words, and then asked, "Do they got baboons in Norway?"

"Huh?" Sofia's mom interjected, shocked into near immobility. "What? What was that? What did you ask?"

"I'm sorry," Sofia's dad interrupted, without missing a beat. "I'm afraid," he added, pausing with compassion, and then continuing, "I'm afraid not. I'm afraid to say that there are no baboons in Norway."

"Oh no," exclaimed the driver, "Egregiously gloomy news," he added, like a boy who watched the ice cream tumble off the top of his cone.

"What's happening?" asked Sofia's mom.

"Isn't it?" her dad answered, his smile evaporating as he remembered when he lost his grip on his balloon in the Bronx Zoo, forty years previously.

Both men shared a moment of sadness as they contemplated a world without baboons and balloons.

Sofia and her mom waited until the light bulb of awareness magically appeared over Sofia's dad's head—actually, it was the arrival of the TSA agent, demanding the driver move his cab, but let's go with the light bulb—and he readied his advice.

"But they gotta lotta mice," her dad added, "and that is not egregious."

"Mice; nice," said the driver, flaring his fingers like fireworks, "I like mice."

"So do I," answered her dad joyfully, with the smile of a boy who had given his balloon to his best friend.

"What are you two talking about?" Sofia's mom interrupted, then turning to her daughter, adding, "Are they going to get a room?"

"Good news to catch my dreams," the driver answered.

"My fine young man," Dad continued, "You have to find something you like, something you love to do, then go with flow; and row, row, row your boat."

"Find, flow and row," the driver repeated, "Wisdom, and cannoli one cannot refuse."

"You need to take your own advice," Mom whispered to her husband.

"I will," Sofia whispered.

"You need to move this car," interrupted the TSA agent. "This is a phase 1, real world, order. Haul that asset now!" she continued, pausing, and then adding with a Serengeti growl, "And that scent is savage on you, my fine specimen of a man, capisce?"

"Dior's Sauvage," the driver shouted as he dived back into the car, while Dad scribbled the name of the fragrance, and growled.

"Gratitude to you, father of us all, and go with the pink; may you find your flamingo. Young Miss Sofia, you know what you will do—tell your story. And best to you, your Majesty's wife: you will need it," the driver shouted though the window which he had rolled down to clear the air of his fart, "I take seriously your sagely advice, sir, and free myself of the shackles of a misguided life. I shall not become that traveler who slipped off the beaten path on an ominous day of wrath!" he said [F minor, half-step down, half-step up to the first, one-and-a-half-steps back down; you know the four note ditty], as he drove away, cutting off cars, swerving, having resolved at that very moment that he would go with the flow, accept the offer of enrollment from Harvard Law School and go on to become the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; but that's another story; or so they say.