Chapter 42
We make a quick detour to pick my taxi up from the police impound.
The car looks the same as it always did from the outside, though perhaps a little dustier and dirtier.
Usually, I take her for a wash weekly. I find that people don’t want to get into a dirty cab, and I don’t want to drive one.
I’m mostly worried about the inside. Surely the police would have taken out all the blood for evidence purposes?
Even so, will I ever feel comfortable driving it again?
Will the tinny smell of blood linger so that at unsuspecting moments I’ll be brought back to one of the worst days of my life, second only to my brother dying?
I look over at Amaya, who is eyeing me sympathetically.
I open the car door tentatively. The keys feel odd in my hands.
I take a deep breath. It smells of cleaner.
There is powder everywhere, which I assume is from taking fingerprints.
I brace myself as I open the back door of the car.
They’ve cut out a small chunk of the seat.
The taxi has undergone surgery and not been stitched back together.
I assume it’s been cut out because of a few droplets of blood that fell there.
“We can get the state to pay for that,” Amaya says matter-of-factly as she regards the situation over my shoulder.
“Thank you. I’m glad it’s all out. Not just scrubbed out but out out,” I respond, looking at the partially maimed seat. “Cleaning blood out of the seat doesn’t make it all go away.” I think about how blood shines under infrared light despite being scrubbed out with bleach. Thanks, Forensic Files.
“Unfortunately, I don’t think anything can make this all go away. You’re still stuck with memories. And I’m sorry for that.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say.
I’ve missed my taxi more than I thought I would.
Society at large always asks us to aspire to something better, bigger, and bolder.
It looks down on the people who are essential to making our daily lives function, who are relegated to the background.
I’ve missed seeing the city; discovering yet another bacon, egg, and cheese in a hidden bodega; and hearing about the drama of the Upper West Side dog park from a passenger.
I am important to New York City, maybe even an iconic part of it.
Alex climbs in the back, on the half of the seat that can still be sat on, and Amaya sits in the front.
Passengers aren’t usually allowed in the front of a taxi, but this is a social ride.
Unlike the last time I picked Amaya up in my cab, she isn’t a stranger heading home from work. That day feels like a year ago.
—
The trash, luckily, hasn’t been taken out, and I’m surprised it can prove so interesting.
We’d have turned it over to the DA’s office if we thought it was genuinely something other than just trash.
Now we know Harvey has a cat with a specialized diet, Harvey goes through a lot of Xanax, and somebody in that house is having sex, hence the empty bottle of lube.
We all gag a little upon touching that last item, even with a gloved hand.
However, the most interesting thing is the cheap phone sitting at the bottom of the trash covered in food scraps.
It is not a smartphone, and clearly cannot even access the internet.
It is for the sole purpose of making phone calls, like the phones marketed to old people with a large font or my first cell phone, hard-won after finally convincing my parents I would be safer with one on me.
I can easily convince my parents of almost anything if it improves my personal safety or academic prospects.
“It’s a burner phone,” Amaya says confidently.
People, from drug dealers to garden-variety cheaters, buy temporary phones and trash them so nothing can be traced back to them. Of course, my ex was stupid enough to use his own cell phone to cheat.
“Let’s see if we can turn it on,” Alex says after he wipes off the phone multiple times with a Clorox wipe to hopefully rid it of any trash particles it has been buried with. Alex still holds it at arm’s length as if it is radioactive.
I wait for the telltale glow of the phone screen.
“Nope. It’s dead,” Alex says anticlimactically.
“You wouldn’t be a tech guy if you didn’t have a charger for every device, right?” I say, already rummaging around Alex’s drawer of different chargers without permission.
“Reminds me of my parents’ clutter boxes,” Amaya says as she appraises the drawer.
“Oh, do your parents keep a bunch of odds and ends in old cookie tins?” I ask.
“Yes!” Amaya says with a laugh.
The butter cookie tin that hasn’t actually held any cookies in years seems to be a staple of many Sri Lankan households. It is usually filled with buttons or cords and other bits and bobs.
“And, if you look into my parents’ fridge, you’d also see—”
“A billion yogurt containers?” Amaya says, finishing my sentence.
Food containers that could be reused, from plastic yogurt tubs to glass condiment jars, filled with random leftovers, dot my fridge, often leading Alex to open a container expecting one thing only to be greeted with a completely different food.
Alex is looking at the phone intensely, waiting for it to turn on.
I get up and go to Alex’s kitchen.
“You wanna order takeout?” Alex asks. I’m not surprised that even at a time like this Alex is thinking of food. There’s a reason we’re friends.
“Just grabbing some rice to see if the phone is waterlogged and needs to be dried out,” I respond, rooting through his kitchen cabinets.
I place the phone in a bowl of rice, and a minute later, the phone turns on with a ping.
Rice usually takes hours to work, so the phone must have just needed some juice.
We stare at it like it is some sacred relic.
Amaya rubs her hands together as I grab the phone, the glow lighting my face.
“Let’s see what’s on here,” I say like I am about to crack a safe in a heist movie.
I can’t help but be nervous, even though my charges have been dropped. Even Alex is leaning forward in anticipation, despite his previous protests that I need to move on. The phone is not password protected. I doubt a phone like this even has that feature.
“We have a list of past phone calls. Multiple. To the same number.” I write the number down on a piece of paper. “Look up the number on the internet.”
“Nothing is coming up. Probably a private or protected number,” Alex offers.
“Well, I guess there’s only one more thing to do,” I say, picking up the phone and dialing the number.
We collectively hold our breath as the phone rings and then goes to voicemail.
“It’s Shirley Lee. Leave a message.”