Nine Fingers Read Online Free PDF Page B

could tell it was a dream—there was
     a languor in my limbs and a rattle to my breathing—but I just stayed quiet, watching it flow through me. There was no joy,
     no sadness, no feeling at all, just a smooth alpha state, bathing me in warmth, as I slowly sidestroked through the emptiness
     of deepest darkest space, my head back, my neck loose, letting it all flow in. But in my dream, space was reversed: the black
     vastness was a dull white, the stars, random dots of burnished black. My breath came deep and slow. The cold silence embraced
     me.
    Then there was a honk. A honk? In the middle of the vastness of space? I jerked awake.
    I tried to focus my eyes—the white space and black stars came clear to me: I was sitting in cab number 691, staring at the
     ceiling—little black holes in white leatherette.
    The honking seemed to be coming from behind me. I looked around; the windows were an opaque white. I leaned forward and tapped
     the wipers. The cab was covered with snow, but as the windshield cleared, I saw I was in the cab lot at Midway Airport, and
     the cabdriver behind me was trying to get me to move up. I had fallen half asleep, zoned out.
    And I was cold. Freezing fucking cold.
    I cranked up the engine and set the heat to Dante’s Seventh Circle of Hell. I reached down below the right-hand seat on the
     front, pushed aside the detritus that had collected there and found the scraper—gotcha! I popped open the door and got hit
     with a gust in my face.
    I hauled out and started scraping the windows. There were about six empty spaces ahead of me, and the line in front of that
     was only four or five rows from the front.
    The way the cabstands work in Chicago—both Midway and O’Hare—is that you drop off your incoming passenger at departures, circle
     around, and enter the cab lot. Each lot is eight to ten columns wide, ten to thirty rows deep (O—Hare’s is bigger by far,
     for obvious reasons). You pick a column (I’ve always been a Bernoulli’s theorem kind of guy; I head for the edges), pull up,
     and wait. A row at a time gets called up to the terminal, in single file, and as you pull out you get a ticket from the cabstand
     master, which he or she time-stamps. This is so cabbies don’t “poach,” drive in off the street and cut in line, which—I’m
     shocked, shocked! —has been known to happen. At the airports, in a rare exhibition of egalitarianism, you have to wait your turn. Once you get
     to whatever terminal has called you up, you pull up at the curb and wait in line again. Eventually, the starter whistles up
     a handful of cabs at a time, until it’s your turn. You get no choice in passengers, they get no choice in drivers. Finally,
     the fare gets in, tells you the address, the starter takes your ticket, and you’re on your way.
    The cab business in this town lives on trips to the airport. Ninety percent of the time it’s O’Hare, and that can run thirty-five to sixty-five bucks, not counting
     the ever-important tip, depending on the traffic and the weather and the time of day. Any gratuity less than a ten is egregious
     penury. It can also take from thirty minutes to an hour and a half to get out there, depending again on traffic and weather
     and the time of day, so when you do get out there, it usually makes sense to get a fare back. Double your money, double your fun. One of my optimal flow patterns
     for the day starts with a fare to O’Hare, and then a quick fare back downtown, starting the day by tucking a C-note’s worth
     of confidence into my pocket before breakfast.
    The catch is that there are times when you can wait for an hour or three to get a fare back to town. This is true of O’Hare,
     which is huge, and also of Midway, which is slow. In the summer you’ll bake, in the winter you’ll freeze. So it’s a gamble—you
     get there, appraise the situation, and make your bet. Should I stay? Should I deadhead back to town? The weather, the flight
     schedules, the