The instruction for Day 17 of the 30-Day writing challenge reads:
“… Your character gets on a taxi and tells the driver to take him/her to the airport. But the driver has his/her own ideas about where they are headed…”
As with much of the fiction written, this anecdote is based on personal experience, enriched with a bit of embellishment, here and there. I have taken the liberty of changing then instruction regarding “...to the airport...” to “…from the airport…”
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It is 8:30pm at Cape Town International on a hot March evening in the year 2011. Correction, a hot February evening. February 28, to be precise, because I have just time-travelled back from New Zealand against the clock. So, despite having lived through 24 hours of one 28th February, I am back in time, back to 8:30pm once more in another.
Prior to leaving Cape Town on holiday four weeks earlier, I arranged with a neighbour that she would collect me from the airport, knowing the quality, safety aspects and pricing policies of South African taxis. Needless to say that I arrive at Cape Town from Johannesburg only to find that there is no-one to meet me, as arranged.
No South African small change (silver coins) for the public telephone, only New Zealand coins. South Africanism encountered in the airport shops – No, buy something from our shop to get change, do we look like a bank to you – friendly lot.
Eventually armed with enough coins, the correct telephone numbers and a public phone booth which hasn’t been vandalised and actually works… the neighbour friend is not answering the phone, now its nine o’clock and dusk is threatening to change to darkness.
There’s no alternative at this stage – find a taxi. The first wants six hundred Rand local currency. While it may be a fair fare in other countries – say fifty Dollars – the price is a rip-off, and aimed at foreigners. The next fellow is asks me how much cash do I have. I lie three fifty. He shrugs his shoulders. He’s parked just around the corner he confides grabbing my carry-on luggage, and trotting off… I follow reluctantly, but not keen on losing my valuables in my bags. The memory of tourists being taken off and even murdered for their paltry possessions, is still uppermost in my minds. Oh ye of little faith… oh ye, realists…
The taxi is… a Volkswagen Citi Golf, from a previous century… or before. It has the dings and dents of Cape Town traffic and poor driving and parking habits. It has no signs to indicate that it is, in fact, a taxi at all. The registration number plate hangs at an angle, threatening to fall off at the next bump in the road. Mind you, it is difficult to make out the registration number, in any case. Nevertheless, the luggage has been loaded, but there are mechanical defects which make it difficult to open the back doors, and the driver indicates the passenger seat up front. This door is no better, but I’m in and we are on our way to the airport exit.
His name is “Freddie” and he specialises in personalised service. If ever I need to go to or from the airport, just call day or night. Freddie hands me a strip of paper with the words “Freddie – Airport Taxi -- phone 434 8955”. Freddie is fiddling with the car radio trying to tune into the “Urban Turban” music station, but it appears that the radio has been infected by the same bug as afflicts the back doors. The radio crackles with some terrible beat number, noise without rhythm, I call it.
We arrive at the ‘Exit’ booms, where Freddie makes what he calls a “move” – it involves creeping up to the tail-bumper of the vehicle in front, and then to tail-gate him.
“That’s the nature of finance and economics,” he explains, “I would have to charge you an extra thirty six Rand to go through the normal channels. The airport has enough money already, and so I save you thirty six! It’s really a ten percent discount!”
As we stop for a red traffic light, Freddie pulls out his mobile phone, and moments later is in conversation, “Is that you?” he asks, as if he was expecting it to be someone else, “No, not to worry, I’ve been held up, but I should be there in, what…what… say, ten minutes. Ok?”
I know Cape Town streets and highways. We are still twenty minutes away from my apartment, so where does Freddie’s ten minutes fit in. My heart skips a beat and I find it hard to swallow. We are still in a not-so-good neighbourhood. I gently feel the door mechanism, it simply slips around in a circle. It’s one of those no-exit doors, where it can only open from the outside, which is no consolation either, as the window winder arm has been broken off… The air inside the car is getting hotter… I feel as if I’m choking…
We’re almost through the slummy area, when Freddie’s phone rings again, “Yes. I told you man. I’ve got the goods. I won’t be long. Say ten minutes. No, I’m sure there will be no questions. Safe, man, safe.”
He rang off, and glances in my direction, almost colliding with the bus in front of us, “My friend is so impatient, you know, actually it’s my father, you know. He wants the pigeon feed I bought for him, but he can’t wait, you know.”
We reach a major intersection, a five-lane one with Modderdam Road with us in lane three. Freddie turns left and we’re heading in a direction opposite to the way we should be going to get me home.
“Hey, man. This is not the way to Table View! You’re going the wrong bloody man! What’s your game, what’re you up to?”
Freddie looks at me cool and calm, as if nothing is wrong. I guess that is the standard Freddie expression. “I must just go down here to Mandalay Motors to get some gas, you see…” banging the fuel gauge on the dashboard, “this bloody gauge is faulty. We need gas. Can you give an advance of say two hundred for gas? I’m clean out of cash at the moment…”
After another twenty minutes, the trip which should have taken forty-five minutes at the most tops the hour mark, but at least we’re almost within sight of my apartment. As Freddie dumps my bags on the pavement outside my place and collects the one fifty balance of his fare, he smiles at me, “Hope you liked the ride. Please tell all your friends about Freddie’s Airport Shuttle. I can do with the work, you know.”
“Sure will, Freddie,” I smile and shake his hand, relieved that I have arrived home in one piece, that I have arrived home alive…
The Volkswagen Citi Golf disappears in a puff of blue smoke down the street.
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[ The brief for Day 18: They say you can't judge a book by its cover. But some book covers attract and fascinate. Browse Amazon, or look on your bookshelves and choose a book you haven't read that has a cover you really like. Now, you're going to steal that cover for your own story. Okay, not really "steal" -- just borrow. Write a story of your own that would go with that cover... ]
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