Rectangles

In the ash-grey light of morning, in an outer borough of the city, Santiago refills the air freshener and wipes down the vinyl interior of his cab. And that’s when he sees it. There, on the larger, black rectangle of the back seat, as if it had just been calved, lies a smaller, black rectangle.

The cover of the palm-sized notebook (for that is what it is) is smooth and has a slight give to it. Santiago slips off the elastic and lets the pages flap back and forth. Except for a few blanks at the back, they are filled with dates and names, some of which he recognises as among his favourite authors. The loopy handwriting and the rainbow of inks makes Santiago think of the strange, silvery old lady who he dropped off around midnight near the park, and who had asked him all those questions.

He rarely speaks to passengers, but it was as if she had put a spell on him. He had told her how, while ferrying people, he notices things. The way a woman leaving a downtown hotel at two a.m., with smudged mascara, might rest her temple against the window, her breath misting it into a canvas upon which, with a finger, she idly doodles her name, adding a heart above the “i,” just like she did as a child. Or the way a man, coming from the airport, as he watches a ripe harvest moon rise above the buildings, swing through the cables of the bridge, to hang right over him like a guiding lantern, finally loosens his grip on his briefcase.

On the inside front page of the notebook is a printed inscription: “In case of loss,” followed by a handwritten phone number. The last number is smudged; it could be an 8, 9, or 3. On the third try, the voice that answers fits. The lady seems to have been expecting his call and tells him to meet her at a café in the middle of the city. Santiago thinks sadly about the breakfast and the sleep he will miss out on. But there is something about her. He dreams for a moment: his grandma draws him to her and even in his dream he can smell chorizo and onions and beneath, in the weave of her apron, the molecules of lavender water. She’s peeling apples and singing along with the radio, and he grabs another peeler from the drawer and gets to work and when he holds up his apple to show he didn’t break the peel, the sun comes in the window…

He arrives at the café, but does not enter. It has a velvet rope outside, patrolled by a haughty hostess with an iPad. There’s a newsagent next door; from here he can keep an eye on the café door, and browse the bestsellers. He sighs as he takes in the array of bright, shiny covers. What must it feel like to have written one of these? Something that other people want to read so much that they print thousands of copies of it?

When the tiny lady appears it is all of a sudden and not from the direction he is expecting. One moment he is alone with the books, and the next she is right beside him, hovering (for that is how it seems) in a breeze of perfume and a soft rustle of silk scarf.

“Ha! Might have known I’d find you here,” the small woman says triumphantly. “With the books,” she adds. He quickly replaces the novel he has been leafing through.

“Sorry if I startled you, but you see, there’s no time to lose,” she says, flinging back the hood of her lilac cloak, scattering what Santiago would have said were tiny sparkling snowflakes. If he did not know for sure it wasn’t snowing outside.

“Let’s get a table shall we,” she says taking his arm and steering him back to the café. “I’m parched. You’re famished. And we have much to discuss.”

In the café, she selects a booth table for them, brushing aside the hostess with a regal wave. Once they are seated and cups of coffee have been delivered, the lady places her sharp little elbows on the table, steeples her immaculately manicured fingers under her chin and gazes at him so intently he feels he is being read.

Behind her mauve spectacles, her eyes are green and speckled with gold. Her silvery hair rises up at the back of her head like a tower, barely secured with a gilding of hairspray, which he gets a whiff of every time the café door opens. The birds’ feet at the edges of her eyes tell him she is old, but there is also something confusingly timeless about her.

Suddenly remembering why he is there, Santiago reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out the small black notebook.

“My baby!” she cries. “I knew you’d bring him to me.”

A plate of huevos rancheros arrives that he does not recall ordering. She says, encouragingly: “Go ahead. My treat.”

As he digs in, she flips through the book, sighing contentedly. When she reaches the first empty page, she smooths it flat, and from her purse, as round and orange as a pumpkin, she whips out a long silver pen. He sees her write something at the top of the page in her old-fashioned script and then underline it. It is his name.

She pauses and looks up at him. “How are the eggs?” she inquires, as concerned as if she’s made them herself.

“Good,” he says through a mouthful. (And they really are.)

“Eggcelent!” she cries and slaps the table with satisfaction. He looks around to see what fellow diners are making of this unusual pair—the diminutive, eccentric lady and the disheveled taxi driver. They might think he’s trying to con her. But everyone is busy with their own plotlines.

Beneath his name she writes the numbers 1, 2, 3, each with an emphatic dot next to it, and sets down the pen.

“Santiago, I’m worried about you,” she says.

This idea is so strange, it must be a joke. But she appears to be serious.

“Why are you still driving a taxi?” she continues.

Santiago thinks: How can he end this bizarre conversation, and get out of here? He’s already told this woman too much.

He says: “I like it I guess…”

She makes a little paddling motion the air with her hand as if he should hurry up and get to the point.

“It’s not hard,” he ventures. “I can earn quite a bit. Be my own boss…”

“Yada yada yada,” she says and takes a sip of her latte.

“It’s because some other things didn’t pan out.”

She raises her eyebrows.

“My stepbrothers needed help.”

“Yes. That was kind of you,” she says.

He shrugs. “I guess.”

“It was,” she says firmly. “You quit school to help them. Trouble is, they haven’t paid you back. Don’t even intend to.”

Santiago puts down his fork on the plate with a clatter and stares.

“How the hell… I’m sorry m’aam, but how do you know that?”

“I pay attention,” she says crisply.

He begins to shake his head. This is not an explanation.

“And I think you do, too, Santiago.”

He considers this. Perhaps she was right. Sometimes it does seem as though his rear-view mirror gives him rectangle-shaped lenses of insight straight into his passengers’ hearts.

“And so,” the little lady is continuing, “the years have passed quicker than you’d like. And yet, somehow, not quickly enough.”

Santiago looks down at his hands. He sees that the fingernails are dirty and curls them out of sight.

The lady pushes her coffee cup away and rubs her palms together. “But things are about to change,” she says brightly. “Tell me, Santiago, What do you wish for?”

He smiles and shrugs half-heartedly.

“I’m serious. Think for a moment.”

He thinks: What does this crazy woman want from me? She’s got her book back…

“No, no, no, not like that,” she says. “Really think.”

And then, he finds that he is breathing more slowly, like in the moments right before sleep. He knows that all around him are voices and spoons and saucers and tasteful background music. But as soon as he identifies the individual sounds they start to dissolve. And out of this soft swirl, thoughts and memories that he has steadfastly pushed away, start to emerge. First as wisps of thread, just out of reach, but then, as if emboldened, they resolve into a golden carpet he can almost see unrolling before him.

“Ok,” he begins. “I’d like to…”

She holds up her palm to stop him. “It’s best if you start with ‘I wish...’”

“Alright.” He is getting accustomed to her craziness now.

“I wish… I wish I could find my way back to the trail, the one I was on before... I took a side path, and now I seem to be lost...” She is nodding gravely and scribbling notes in the book.

“Yes, I see. It may not be exactly the same trail, though. That side path has changed you. But, nevertheless, we can work with this. Now then, what is at the end of that trail?”

“A book.” The word falls out of his mouth.

The lady doesn’t seem at all surprised, however.

“What kind of book? Who has written this book?”

“My book. I have,” he says simply.

She nods, makes a note, then looks up. “Remember, it’s best if you say, ‘I wish.’”

“Right, right. I wish there could be a book on the other side of the woods… My book. The one I wrote.” He raises his eyes to meet hers.

“Splendid,” she says. “Coming along nicely. Last question: what would it take to get you back to your path do you think?”

The numbers are already in his head: 15,000 to pay off the medallion license, 3,000 for rent, utilities, and groceries until spring, 2,000 for the girl with the chipped blue nail polish, who is saving for a Gibson Thunderbird.

Instead, he says: “Something to write it on, I guess.”

“I wish I had…” she mouths silently, prompting him.

“I wish I had a notebook.”

“Bingo!”

She grabs her purse and trots briskly out of the café towards the newsagent. Santiago sighs, thinking that he’ll have to pay the bill after all. But then she is suddenly back. She reaches into a brown paper bag and pulls out a small black notebook, just like her own. She rips off the cellophane wrapping, cracks the book open to the front page, and shielding it from his view she writes something. Then she closes the cover and places it on his side of the table. “Do you have a pen?”

“Umm, sure, at home, somewhere.”

“Oh you won’t be able to wait that long,” she says. “Take this,” and she hands him her own. “Write it all down, Santiago. The way you see things.”

Just then, the sound of birdsong issues from her bag. She retrieves a phone and says into it, “Yes, yes I see. Well, thank you, young lady. We’ll meet at noon. The Palace Cafe.” Then to Santiago she says: “Must dash. Duty calls.”

She rises from the table gathering her cloak around her. “Good luck, my boy,” she says. “See you in 140 pages time!” And before he has a chance to ask how, or where, or even why, she has disappeared.

He sits for some minutes in the silence she leaves behind, wondering if it was all a peculiar dream. But a notebook, his notebook, feels real enough. He turns to the frontispiece. The “In case of loss” inscription has been struck through. Next to it is written: “When full, please return to Marianne Fey, Phoenix Publishing, 534 Fifth Avenue. As a reward: $20,000.”

Santiago picks up the silver pen and starts to write.