It began like this,if that tells you anything.

My cab pulled up to the house a little past the appointed time, at 4:30 in the morning on Thursday to take me to the airport. Patrick and I kissed goodbye in the darkness while the driver, an unusually tall white man with a hunched back and long, grey hair and beard put my my carry-on in the trunk. I got in. The driver got in. Instead of turning the key in the ignition he rested his hands on his thighs and spoke to me.

"I've got no gas," he said. "I've been two days in a homeless shelter, and they gave me a car with no gas, and a lady just ran a red light and hit it, and now the computer is all messed up. I'm broke, I smell bad, I'm hungry, and I need this job. I'm embarrassed to ask this, but can you pay for some gas? "

Crap. I don't have time for this, I thought, defaulting to the place most of us go when confronted with variation #19,775 of "down and out, need cash." I tensed. In the first place, I was annoyed. It would take another 30 minutes to get a new cab. But below that, there was fear. Maybe this guy wasn't the cab driver. Maybe this wasn't his car. Maybe he was drunk. I looked out the car window at my house. I had gotten away without the children waking up. I took a long breath, checked in with my gut.

Ten dollars isn't going to break you, it said to me. You can afford the benefit of doubt this time. Let's see where it goes.

"There's a gas station just up the street," I said. "And an ATM across from that." In for a penny, in for a pound. "Let's go."

As we pulled into the gas station, he lamented the recent closing of a secondhand bookstore around the corner. "They had great chess books," he said.

"Do you play?" I asked. "My nine year old does too."

"Oh, encourage him," he said. "It's a great way for him to learn to think mathematically."

Apprehension melted to curiosity. "Where are you from?" I asked him. What's your story?

His name was Christopher. He was from Washington, and was a Harvard educated mathematician. He met his wife on a vacation to Jamaica, an island fling. "You'll be back," she teased him. "I don't think so," he said. He came back and they were married within a week.

He was department head at a New England alternative prep school, where his wife worked as a registered nurse. Then he took a job in Washington, D.C., to work on Tomahawk missiles. His wife didn't want him to, he said, but he was thinking of their future.

"I chose the money," he said. "It was the worst mistake of my life."

In 1982, he told me, his wife was murdered. She was eight and a half months pregnant.

"And then I kind of flipped out," he said, almost apologetically. "That's a long time to be still not over something, isn't it?"

"I don't know how you ever get over something like that," I said softly, thinking his child would be twenty six now.

"I saw you and your husband kissing goodbye. It made me think of her. How long have you been married?"

"Ten years."

"Do you still love him?"

"So much."

"Man, cherish that."

Christopher drove the rest of the way telling stories about his wife, most of them sweet and funny, some of them ribald. For sure, he was still not swimming in the mainstream. There was no telling how much of his story was factual. But I took it to be true. When I gave him the fare plus an extra ten at the airport, I noticed for the first time that his eyes were rimmed below with half-circles the color of purple eggplant skin.

"I'm the richest man in the world," he said, smiling at the tip. The ride had cut deeply into what I had for my San Francisco ground transportation. I'd figure that out later. Or it would figure itself out. I had the feeling that from the time I said "let's go," this whole trip had taken the nearest exit off the straight and narrow.

"Take care, Christopher," I said, unknowingly leaving my favorite, coziest sweater on the back seat.

"Good morning, Ms. Pittman," the counter clerk said. "Anything to check today?"

Yes, I need to check my judgement. Also, fear and defensiveness—the reflex to close myself off to others because they're different or wounded somehow. While we're at it, let's jettison the urge to clamp down on curiosity because I might feel something, might lose something. Can I leave all that here? Because I'm going to a conference to be with 1,000 people who each have their own story, and I don't need any of it there.

"I think I'm good to go."

---

(I had a YouTube clip of Aimee Mann's video for "Save Me" here, but I guess it must have been bootleg because YouTube pulled it. Sorry, I do try to respect artist's copyright and abide by fair use. I thought the song made a nice coda to the post.-k.)