Pericles the Driver

Ten till

I'm standing in my blue interview shirt again, this time by the main entrance of campus and the math building. There is a black car idling silently by the admissions building.

Five till

The morning is so damp it feels like it might rain, or like it is actually constantly misting from the sky. The clouds overhead make the sky dark and prolong the illusion of night.

Time

A man steps out of the car in a suit and stands by the driver's side looking around. At this point I decide to come over and ask him if he's lost. He looks too important to be driving somebody like me, and in the off chance that he is here for some official school business I wouldn't want to offend him. He says he is waiting for a passenger. I tell him my name and that I'm waiting for a ride. Turns out he was the one.

I size up the car. This was my first time any sort of driver had come to pick me up. I'd ridden in cabs before, but the general rule to that is to just pile yourself in the back seat, or in Hong Kong anywhere you would fit. I notice that the front passenger seat is pushed up nearly into the dashboard and folded down, so I assumed I'm suppose to sit directly behind it to take advantage of the leg room offered. I walk up to that side of the car and reach for the door.

The driver stands there looking at me briefly for a moment and then extends his hand. The meaning is clear, Stop. I stand there, quietly wondering if I have offended him, as he walks around the car to stand next to me by the door. He opens it with a slight nod of the head and I get in.

"Thank you Ms. Chu," he says without the slightest hint of sarcasm and shuts the door.

Toto, we are not in Kansas anymore.

The driver got in his door and turned the ignition. I had no idea what to do.

"Thanks to you too!" I manage to piece together as cheerfully as possible. The driver's eyes flickered up to the mirror looking a little puzzled. So, I guess that wasn't right.

"Its my pleasure, Ms. Chu."

Ms. Chu? The words seem foreign.

"You...can call me Pika if you like."

"Well it is my pleasure, Pika."

"What's your name?"

"Pericles."

"That's an awesome name, like the ancient Greek right?"

Pericles gives me his first genuine smile, "You have heard of him?"

"Athenian statesman? Founder of democracy?"

Pericles is grinning pretty widely by now, "You know, not a lot of people get that."

I laughed a little, "Well I'm a nerd. That a family name?"

"Nope, my mom just thought it sounded cool."

There was a brief comfortable silence. This time he broke it.

"So what are you going to General Dynamics for?"

"An interview."

"Really? I don't drive many interviewees, especially not this distance. You special?"

I hate that question. There's no easy way to answer it without sounding like an egotistical prick or seeming like you are fishing for compliments. "I guess they think so."

The phone rang. It was the next interview I was going to have, asking me if I could confirm a time later that week. I explained that I was away from my desk for the day asked them to email me.

Pericles grinned again, "That your next interview after this one?"

I didn't know what to say so I looked up at him blankly. Pericles smiled, "Don't worry, its the smart thing to do."

"You won't tell them?"

Pericles laughed, "No, I'm not an employee. Even if I tried they wouldn't listen to me." He adjusted the collar of his suit for a quick moment with one hand and then delicately placed it back on the wheel. It seemed a practiced motion which he meant to use to express professionalism. "Most people," he said, continuing this strange series of motions which clearly had some sort of significance which was beyond my grasp, "don't think of me as a professional because I do not have the same sort of job that they do. Some of them barely regard me as a person. They talk in front of me like a dog, like I can not understand them. You would be amazed at some of the things that have been discussed in my car."

I was quiet because there did not seem to be anything to say to that.

"So who do you drive normally?"

"Rich people," he responds, "guests for most of the major tech companies around here, and airport pickups / drop-offs for the more important employees of the same companies."

"Huh." I wasn't really confused but it seemed like the right time to make some sort of noise to indicate I was still listening.

"I have one couple who I drive a lot, the wife mostly. They have no need to work anymore so they just travel the world."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"What do they do?"

"Well they ran out of normal places they go so now they go on expeditions...they go live in the desert for a few months with the peasants...you know...get the experience."

"Sounds neat, or like a tourist trap."

"Really? I think it sounds lame. Even if you are getting the real deal you're paying a ton of money, enough to live any way in the world you want, to live like a third world peasant. Its the ultimate proof, the grass is always greener on the other side."

Jake the Cab Driver

Its another blue interview shirt day. There is a light drizzle outside as I pick my way carefully to the cab between the puddles. The HR woman who was coordinating my visit walks out with me and leans in the window of the mini-van. She's one of those people who you meet and instantly genuinely like, although something about her simultaneously unnerves me. She is well meaning, but distinctly alien.

"Hey," she says, "This is Pika, and I just found out she hasn't seen the city yet. She's got some time before her flight, do you think you could give her a little tour? It would be nice for her to be able to see the city before having to choose if she wants to live in it."

The cab driver seemed to be in his mid fifties. He wore a red plaid shirt and a big smile. "Yeah," he said, "Absolutely." He turned to me, "Hold on a second then," and cleared out the front seat so I could ride shotgun instead of the normal ceremonial position of the same side but sitting in the back.

"Jake," he said, extended a big red hand for me to shake as he drove toward the security gate. He looked almost sunburned even though up at college it was barely spring.

"Pika," I grinned taking his hand.

The gates clattered open and Jake pulled the vehicle out. "Well, they seem to like you," he smiled. I decided I liked Jake.

"Yeah, but I think they might be trying to put me on a defense contractor job instead of one of their commercial ones."

"You don't want that?"

"No,"

"I can respect that."

Its a sad thing that I'm left with the ability to speak candidly to a cab driver but not to my interviewer. I know my interviewer will never ask the cab driver what I said. The truth is that these people have been totally forgotten, like most persons in the service industry have. Nobody looks at them like people anymore. I personally think they are the best sort of people and normally always try to make an effort to talk to them. Partly it is always entertaining to hear what they have to say. On another level I think it really makes their day to just have a few minutes when some asshole isn't condescending to them for no good reason.

Jake's from a family of three. He has been in the industry of transporting things and people all his life. When he was young he and his brothers ran a bicycle delivery service.

I looked at him thinking he had to be nuts. He was definitely not old enough to remember a time when cars were not prevalent enough for bicycles to be a competitive way to do things.

"No seriously," he said. "This city suffers from gridlock. A bicycle can pick its way along the streets between the isles of cars at a good 10 miles an hour, and can take all sorts of shortcuts a car can't. Besides that, bicycles are cheaper to repair and you don't have to pay to fuel them. They don't require insurance, and they represent a lot less overhead."

"Oh," I said, feeling thoroughly schooled.

Jake smiled. I guess he was use to people initially laughing the idea off. "My older brother ran the business," he said. "He started out with just the three of us. He was a brilliant business man you know. He bought all one-speed bikes."

"One speed..." I was confused again.

Jake had a million little stories about this, how the one-speed bikes saved on repair costs and time, how they gave kids the option to use their own bicycles, repair them themselves, and earn a little more on each delivery for doing so, how he and his brothers had purchased all the christmas presents in the family one year, how as the organization grew he found himself more and more overseeing overhead, how at that time his hands perpetually smelled like chain grease from repairing huge fleets of bicycles.

As we drove along Jake gave a narrated tour of the city. I was actually floored. I have never heard such a well-given tour. The man's knowledge of the French and Indian War blew mine out of the water. If nothing else he knew how to pronounce all the Indian tribes.

"I'm really lucky," he grinned, "I love this stuff and study it for fun, but its not every day I get an audience." We were both grinning and happy.

"I'll take you to the strip district," he said, "I bet that is exactly your kind of place."

I sort of wondered what initial impression I had given him to make him think anything called 'the strip district' was my sort of place. In reality the strip district was the name for a large international district full of foods that I couldn't pronounce but dearly wanted to try and people selling massive amounts of junk on the streets. He had completely hit the nail on the head.

We drove passing steep inclines which were navigated by cable cars. Jake explained how they use to balance the wagons on one side, horses and all with the cable car coming down full of other stuff. This reduced the effort and meant that 1800's technology could easily move the cars up and down a mountain. We drove among tall reflective main buildings and quiet market squares. I was fascinated. No wonder HR was so eager to give me a tour. I'd happily live in this city.

"So," I gestured to the car, "What happened to it? The bicycle delivery system?"

"Oh, I decided to retire into easier work," he pointed at the interior of the van. "My older brother is still doing it though, even deliveries. He's absolutely ripped, looks a good 10 years younger than me. He comes over and gives us all crap about being so much older than us and yet looking so much younger. You know how brothers are."

I grinned, "What about your younger brother?"

"He's doing a lot better. He was going down a hill pretty fast once when some asshole decided to open a big van door on him. The front wheel got jammed under the door and he went up over the handle bars, whole body upside down against the open door. Broke his lower back in two places. If he hadn't been wearing a helmet the doctors say he'd be dead. He's really lucky though, he still walks and everything. He can't do manual labor anymore though."

I was aghast. "What happened to the driver of the van?"

"He tried to leave the scene with my brother just laying there, claiming he didn't notice. Somebody got his plate and traced him back, but its claimed that he did it by accident so there is not a lot we can do. They settled it out of court recently but, not for a whole lot, but my brother appreciates the closure of having it finally be done. We all realized it really isn't worth getting upset over. No amount of punishment on that driver will make my brother's back better again."

I was amazed by his maturity in this situation. There didn't seem to be a whole lot to say so I was very quiet.

Jake looked at me and smiled, "That's the way these things go sometimes kid."