Living for Disco

I’ve had a heavy week, what with one thing and another, and so the usual Friday night excursion to El Cubano isn’t doing it for me. The DJ is playing a collection of shite so loudly that the four of us are having to communicate with each other in sign language. I pick up my bottle of fizzy water, and announce my departure.

Stepping outside, I try and flag down a taxi, but I have to wait for a while. I end up sharing a cab with two girls, and despite the fact that we’re all going to different sides of town, the driver doesn’t object.

“Sista! Come with us. We’ll be safer if we’re all together”, shouts the drunker of the two girls. “We should not travel alone”, she yells. “These men, they cannot be trusted to behave.”

The taxi driver makes a noise of protest and says he is a nice person. She snorts and tells him not to talk rubbish. When she leaves the car, she tells him to be sure to look after us both, and gives me a massive hug. I think it’s a shame she’s going home – I’d have liked to have gone down the pub with her and shouted about things all night.

The driver continues on to my house, making a horrendous right turn almost into the side of a small white car. The almost-accident is clearly his fault, but the other car doesn’t help by swerving into us and trying to ram us off the road.

Our driver hunches down over the wheel like Dick Dastardly. He’s very obviously seen red, and proceeds to try and shunt the car all the way to the lights, a hundred yards or so ahead. When we protest he screams “What? What is your problem? Fuck you.” Unfortunately we’re going too fast to get out of the car safely, so there is nothing for it but to stay where we are, and hope he stops at the lights.

We pull up next to the white car at the lights, and our taxi driver starts to get out. The terrified looking guy in the passenger seat of the other car preempts him, and leans through the open window.

“This is it,” I thought. “He’s going to fucking kill him.” I think he has a knife, or a gun. Everything is in slow motion, and as I grab the door handle to run, an acrid mist reaches me, and I start to choke. He’s sprayed mace, or something like it, through the window. The other car is haring off through the red light. I can’t breathe, and as the two of us fall out of the car, the driver, screaming, starts the car and gives lunatic chase.

We stand on a street corner, in the dark, bewildered and breathless, the spray still catching in our throats. Everything is quiet.

“What’s your name?” she asks me. I tell her.

“Yours?”

“Esther”.

We shake hands, and flag down the first cab to come by.

The journey home is uneventful.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 4th, 2007 at 11:02 am and is filed under Under African Skies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.