The meter blinked zero and it felt like it was looking right at me like it knew I was broke like it could smell the cheap coffee in the cup holder and the quiet inside my head. The street outside was breathing slow, that kind of night when the air hangs thick with leftover heat and people don’t know if they should keep drinking or go home. I watched the red light spill across the hood of the cab and thought maybe this is what starting over looks like. Not fireworks, not redemption. Just a man sitting in a yellow car at two in the morning.

The dispatcher’s voice crackled in the speaker, something about a pickup on Western Avenue. I didn’t answer right away. I looked at my hands instead. They didn’t look like the hands of a musician anymore. I used to play guitar for tips in subway stations back in New York. Now I drive for tips. Funny how life keeps the same rhythm but changes the instruments.

I took the call and started the engine. The car groaned a little, like an old dog waking up. The radio hissed static and some preacher’s voice came through talking about mercy and sin and second chances. I turned it off. The only sermon I could stand was the sound of the city outside the window.

The first passenger was standing near a liquor store. Middle-aged guy, shirt half untucked, tie hanging like it lost its will to live. He waved me down like he was drowning. When he opened the door the smell of whiskey climbed in with him.

“Downtown,” he said, his voice soft but heavy, like he’d been talking too much all his life.

I nodded, pulled away from the curb. The tires hissed over the wet asphalt. For a while we didn’t talk. I could see his face in the mirror, the lights cutting lines across it. He kept touching his ring finger like something was missing there.

“You married?” he asked suddenly.

“Used to be,” I said.

He laughed once, short and sharp. “Used to be. That’s the story of everyone in this town.”

I didn’t answer. Sometimes silence does the talking. He looked out the window for a long time. The city went by in flashes—billboards, empty diners, people walking nowhere fast.

“She left me,” he said finally. “Twelve years and she said she doesn’t know who I am anymore. Hell, I don’t either.”

I could feel the weight of his words hanging in the cab. I’ve driven for less than an hour and already it felt like confession hour. People climb in thinking it’s a ride, but what they really want is someone who won’t argue back.

“You ever think people don’t change,” he asked, “they just run out of pretending?”

I looked at the mirror again. “Maybe. Or maybe they change when pretending gets too heavy.”

He smiled a little, then wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand. The streets opened up into the downtown grid, lights everywhere like stars fell down and couldn’t get back up. I pulled up in front of a hotel that looked too clean for him.

“How much,” he asked, already reaching for his wallet.

“Twenty-two seventy,” I said, but he handed me a fifty.

“Keep it,” he muttered. “Buy yourself a song.”

Before I could say anything, he was gone, disappearing through the glass doors like a ghost who’d paid for his ride to the afterlife.

I sat there with the engine idling. The meter still glowing red. The night still wide open. I thought about what he said, about pretending, about change. Maybe this city runs on both. People pretending they’re okay until morning comes. Drivers pretending we’re invisible until someone needs a ride out of their own story.

The radio buzzed again. Another call, this time on Sunset. I turned the wheel and went. The smell of his cologne still floating behind me, mixed with the city’s tired breath. I cracked the window. Warm wind brushed against my face. Somewhere a siren cried and faded.

The cab moved through the night like a slow heartbeat. Streetlights passing one by one, counting the miles I hadn’t yet lived. I didn’t know where the next passenger would take me, or what kind of story would climb into the back seat next. I just knew that the city never sleeps, and neither do the people running from something.

Maybe that’s what I was doing too.

I looked at the rearview mirror one last time. My eyes stared back like they belonged to someone older. Maybe that’s what happens when you start driving other people’s lives around—you begin to see your own a little too clearly.

The meter clicked again, a quiet mechanical sigh.
Another ride. Another story.
The night rolled on.