I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK?
Tales of Driving and Being Driven
Chapter One
Fabric Thrown over the City
He says, "You could call it a shawl or a scarf—I call it a fabric—but it's thrown over the city and only a few pinholes of light get through."
"Excuse me?" This is before a cup of coffee or anything. Six-thirty A.M. on a Saturday morning in New York City and the driver, staring up out his window, is pausing at a stoplight in a yellow taxi en route to Columbia University.
His voice is butter smooth and soft. "I think about the light, how it's always been there, when the Indians were here and the old-time people and everything. And they thought their time was the real time and we think our time is the real time and no one's time is, really."
"Have you been up all night?" I say.
"No, why?"
"Just wondered."
He turns his head to the side and smiles. "I prefer morning to night. Do you?"
"Sure do. More energy."
I feel as if a certain mesmerizing fabric has been thr ... read full excerpt from I'll Ask You Three Times, Are You OK? ebook