Leaving in the Early Morning

We did not bother with the trains this time. An Arab man in a shining black Escalade picked us up. After several minutes, while stopped at a light, I noticed a strange crinkling sound. It was coming from his phone, mounted on the dashboard, carrying a call on its speaker. It is not altogether unusual for a foreign driver to carry on a phone conversation in their own language while driving, but it is unusual for this to be done on speaker phone, and to involve no words. By the sounds of it, the person on the other end was also driving amid a third-world amount of honking. Our driver did not speak, and neither did his conversant, and neither did we, having only made it back to our apartment several hours prior, and still being quite drunk. There was just the popping and crackling of elsewhere’s noise coming through the phone, and the more immediate thrummings and whirrings and rumblings of here. It took us thirty minutes to get out of the city and across the state line. As we approached the airport, the driver asked us which airline. Something about hearing his voice must have encouraged the man on the other end of the line, because after we answered he began to sing. His voice rang out on the speaker phone. It was a beautiful voice. At first I was sure it was a foreign language, perhaps a religious hymn. Then I realized it was actually a Duke Ellington song. Our driver did nothing about this new noise for many moments, then turned it down slightly. Eventually the man stopped signing, but he did not go silent. He mumbled and chuckled. Several times he broke into a single clean note which ended in a yawn. Our own driver kissed his teeth in pique when, as we pulled into departures, another dark gleaming Escalade pulled out abruptly in front of us.

_____
Noah Jordan lives in Portland, Oregon.