All details have been maintained to be accurate as faithfully as possible.
Ride I
“Sometimes the fire chiefs just sign off on the fire-codes like yeah, is this fire door up to code? Sure.”,
“San Antonio, man. It’s a crazy place,” says Passenger B as Passenger A smiles and nods in silent agreement.
I was driving them from Buda back to the city.
With no dog in the fight, it suddenly hit me: this was a man whom some would charge with the grave inhumanity of gentrification.
Painting the population with glaring generalizations as if they were just troubling numbers on the sheet: an assignment,
“San Antonio is where you go see kids like, up at 10 pm.”
Ride II
“You know it’s interesting that you mention the piano,”
Sole passenger says while gazing into the metroplex, flickering to solemn from jovial.
“My dad no longer lives with my step mom,” she later unloads.
“My mom died when we were really little,” she states in a way detached from any emotional expectation in response, and for a second, I glimpsed the surface of some deeply dark and thickened scar tissue.
She recounted touring and wine tasting with her pop in Napa, and how they both decided to become intoxicated rather than spitting the drink out after each taste.
She suddenly encountered a force so alien to their relationship that it encumbered the entire experience which had started very charming and innocuous.
When it came time for them to leave, even despite her sincere protestations her father was relentless in insisting that he drive the two of them home in their rental car, rather than making an arrangement.
“I had never felt before then as if I don’t even know that person, and then her gaze grew tremendously in its weight before shifting down to herself as if by reflex.
She admitted that her dad would likely be sorted somewhere into the autism spectrum, and that she could always tell when he was happy because, imitating him in darling reenvisioning of Ray Charles, he would play. He was smiling as he played.