It had been raining heavily, but Caleb Walters easily saw the bright lights through the dark night air. The moisture had made his front window blurry, but he could make out the classic taxi symbol on the small blue sedan.

The taxi pulled directly in front of the house. Caleb, who had been waiting impatiently by the window, jumped out of his chair and hurried down his front steps.

As he moved down his driveway, Caleb strained to see into the driver’s seat. As he reached the passenger door, he was momentarily blinded by the reflection of the fluorescent taxi sign on the steel door handle. Caleb noticed that the handle was meticulously polished, and the windows newly washed.


The inside of the cab was also clean. The leather seats looked like they had been recently scrubbed, and there was no dirt or food on the floor of the car. As Caleb awkwardly slid into his seat, he hurriedly repeated his intended address in the general vicinity of the front seat. The driver did not answer. The separating-glass and back of the front seat blocked Caleb’s view, and for a few minutes, he sat there in complete silence.
Then suddenly, the car lurched forward and proceeded up his street. Caleb debated whether or not to tell the driver the address again, but decided against it. Instead, he contented himself with peering out the window at the passing neighborhoods.
“You going to a party tonight?”
The voice shook Caleb from his daydream, and he looked up towards the driver’s seat and then down at his clothes.
He was wearing a cleanly pressed collared shirt, and a nice pair of jeans. That was a pretty observant deduction, Caleb thought, considering it had come from someone that he had yet to get a look at, and it made him slightly uncomfortable.
“Yeah, actually, it’s my friend’s birthday party tonight.”
As he made the statement, Caleb caught a glimpse of piercing blue eyes and heavily tanned skin looking back at him through the mirror.
“Good for you, my man, you think it will be fun?”
Caleb paused for a moment as he tried to place the accent. The voice was calm and smooth, almost like the voice giving turn-by-turn directions on a GPS.
“I sure hope so,” he replied trying to be polite, “my friend’s leaving for a junior year abroad program so it will also be a going away party.”
“Oh you’re going to be a junior, huh? Are you going to be doing any drinking at this party?” The driver said this with a large smile that Caleb could see clearly through the mirror.
Caleb was taken aback by the question: “Uh no… I don’t drink.”
He was lying. Caleb drank like a fish at parties, but he would definitely not be telling a stranger this fact in the back of his cab. What if he was a cop or something? Caleb had watched way too many police procedurals to fall for this obvious ploy.

He had quickly realized that he liked the silence a lot better than the current line of questioning, so he didn’t reply further to the driver and tried to focus entirely on the houses whizzing by.
A few minutes passed in utter silence, but out of the corner of his eye, Caleb could see the driver sitting there almost motionless, a small smile on his lips. He looked deep in thought.
“What are you thinking about?” The driver was peering inquisitively at Caleb.
“Nothing much, just looking around.” That was always his response when asked that question. He really just didn’t know how to answer it.
“Come on,” the driver said, his voice sounding almost pleading, “Give me something to work with here?”
“Umm…”
“Just give me two minutes of your time here, man. Let me jump into your mind for a quick second and then I’ll let you get back to what you’re doing. You see I drive a cab for nine hours a day and no one ever says a word to me. It’s worse since it’s a taxi so there’s always the chance, but then it just never happens…”
The driver trailed off cryptically after that, leaving the cab in a state of another awkward silence.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Caleb was staring intensely at his new white shoelaces, so as to be sure not to make eye contact with the driver. He looked about to speak, but instead Caleb violently shook his head and didn’t say anything.
“What?” The driver had clearly caught the gesture.
“Oh, nothing. I didn’t say anything.”
“Yeah, but that head thing, why did you do it?”
Caleb had still not looked up from the study of his laces. “It was a stupid thought, never mind”
“It’s honestly not a big deal. You have some serious self-disclosure issues that you need to work through.”
“Ok, there is this one thing that I have been thinking about recently. I actually just thought of a dumb movie premise.”
“Let’s hear it,” the quickness of the driver’s response betrayed a level of eagerness that was a little startling.
“Actually, all I’ve really come up with is the tagline. It’s centered on a country club and it’s supposed to be either a horror film or a murder-mystery. The tagline is: They’re members, but they don’t belong.”
A low guttural sound began emanating from the driver’s chest, a sound that grew louder and louder until he was openly guffawing while speeding down the I-270 expressway.
After his laughing ceased, the driver, still holding his lower stomach with his free hand, spoke softly, almost to himself:
“I have no idea why I found that so funny. I guess because there is something so refreshing about it.”
“I’m glad you found that funny,” Caleb said with a smile, “but when it gets optioned by Paramount, I’m retaining all the rights.”
That elicited another hearty laugh from the driver, one that lasted all the way to the curb in front of Caleb’s intended destination. The party was obviously already fully underway. The voices, music, and lights assaulted Caleb’s senses as he stepped out of the cab near his friend’s long and sloping driveway.
We’re going to get a noise complaint for sure, he thought as he circled to the front passenger side window. The driver lowered the window to accept the money in Caleb’s outstretched hands, while simultaneously scanning the house with his piercing blue eyes.
Just as the driver was about to roll up the window, Caleb bent down to make eye contact with the driver.
“One last question. If you find your job so solitary, why don’t you try to do something else?”
With a gleam in his eyes, the driver looked once more out towards the house. “Sometimes people just don’t belong.”
As Caleb stood on the curb, the window rolled up and interior cab lights gradually dimmed until all he could see in the cab was darkness.