Red Button

September 30, 2019

Greetings from the Twilight Zone,

The plane landed at a small airport in the middle of the night.  Looking at the terminal as we nosed toward the gate, I guessed the people in the tower were probably already sleeping.  We clanked down the steps from the tiny commuter plane, me and a few weary stragglers, and into the dark building. 

The airport was closed, the only lights that were on led me past the caged café and the darkened ticket counter.  I stopped at the men’s room and by the time I made it to the exit doors, pulling my carryon bag, there were no people anywhere.

I pushed through the doors and the night air engulfed me.  It was humid, a hot summer night somewhere in rural Tennessee.  Or Kentucky. Or Mississippi.  I had been traveling for a couple days, working during the day and flying at night, and I was punchy.  I stood on the sidewalk wondering how I would get to the hotel.  There was this momentary First World frustration; there was no line of cars waiting to take me somewhere.  There was nothing but sidewalk and then acres of empty parking lot.

Suddenly I felt tired, defeated.  I could taste the bad coffee, feel the anxious miles of travel, dozing in uncomfortable chairs, jostling with strangers to rush to anyplace else.  I walked down the sidewalk thinking that I would look down the drive and see a line of cabs, or maybe a porter, or someone who would leap to my service. There was nothing but dark.  And then I saw something strange.

 There was a red button mounted on the wall, and next to it a sign that said, “Press here for Taxi.”

The sheer ludicrousness caught me by surprise and, already so tired I was close to hysteria, I laughed until tears filled my eyes.  It might as well have said “Press here for happiness.”  Come on.  I looked around at the empty lot.  What could this be for?  Did it flash a light into the sky like the Bat Signal alerting some dozing Cab-Man of a traveler in need?  But what was it there for?  I wasn’t going to push this button like some four-year-old hoping for the taxi fairy. 

I stood there for what seemed like a long time.  What was there to lose? I glanced around, somehow crazily wondering if I was being watched.  I pressed the button, and there was no satisfying click, no light went on, nothing happened. I looked around the empty lot.  Nothing.  Suddenly I was self-conscious.  But I pressed it again.  And again, like those compulsive people you see trying to hurry an elevator.  I stopped when I realized I had drifted into insanity.

Nothing.  I realized I was panting.  I leaned against the wall and waited.  Pressed it again and then started laughing again. 

Just then, behind me, a police cruiser slid up to the curb and the cop in the passenger seat rolled his window down.  “What are you doing here?”  I said I was trying to find a ride to my hotel.  I waited, thinking that one of them would now say “Did you try pressing the red button?”  Because then I would have to risk ridicule, no matter what I said.

Instead, one of the cops pulled out his phone and dialed, said something I couldn’t hear and then: “I called a cab for you.”  It was so odd to me, as strange as the Taxi Button, but somehow I thanked them and they pulled away.

I leaned against the wall and waited, slightly dizzy, wondering at first if I dreamt what had happened. After maybe thirty minutes a car pulled down the drive and parked at the curb, twenty feet away.  It was a run-down sedan, a big car, but easily thirty years old.  In the front seat I could see a man and a woman.  There was nothing on the car that said it was a taxi, maybe the man was dropping off his wife at work. 

Nothing happened.  I could hear the lifters ticking under the hood, the rumble of a small exhaust leak.  I waited for a long time, until I envisioned someone watching us, explaining the moment.  You are the only person in the airport, this is the only car in the airport, it’s likely they are here for you.  I pushed off the wall. 

“Are you my taxi?” I asked the woman through the window. She was the color of mahogany, her face framed in grey tinged hair.  She had a wrapped sandwich in her lap.  The man leaned over, his face as lined as hers, his beard flecked with white. “Yes suh, we are, you kin go ‘head and get in thay.” he said, hooking a thumb at the back. 

I threw my bags in and got in the back seat, which was large enough to lie down in, and I was tempted.  I held my traveler’s demeanor, long enough to tell the man the name of the hotel, which I think he would have guessed given the few choices nearby.  The whole thing felt so strange, and something told me I should be paying attention, be aware of danger.  And I couldn’t muster the energy.

We eased onto the road and I leaned back and tried focus.  The man turned to me once and said some words of welcome, his dark face barely visible in the light from the dash.  And then he turned to drive.  The two of them picked up a conversation evidently I had interrupted, as if I were a phone call that came while they were sitting in their kitchen

It was a gentle musical background, their soft exchange, the lilting patois, the pauses and surges of words, each sifting in their own bit of the song.  He would start each sentence with “Errum, ah, …” and punctuate along the way with the same sound.  ‘Errum, ah.. the fella you know, that bought the, errum, ah, wood stove offn us…” And she would counter with her part, the two of them dancing through the conversation, obviously practiced over decades. 

I wanted to hear what they were saying, and some small section of my lizard brain told me to make certain we were going to the hotel, and that I should be careful in a strange town in this odd not-taxi, and then there was this gauze that fell over the whole tableau and I was in this other place for a moment, where I was only vaguely aware of the air freshener swinging from the rear view mirror, and then the Taxi Button and then just the dimness and sleep.

We pulled up to the hotel, now closer to time to start the next day than finishing the previous one.  The man driving turned to me and said something to wake me up.  I came back into the dark not knowing where I was.  I saw the two of them in the front seat and tried to place how we came to be there.  And then all I could remember was pressing the Taxi Button and these people had appeared. 

Somehow the bills in my wallet were enough and the two of them were saying kind things and I was watching the enormous car lumber away from me.  I have no memory of how I got in my hotel room or into my bed except that is where I was when daylight arrived.

Every once in a while, including a few hours ago when I woke up today, I see these two images.  Pressing the red button, frantic, but still aware of how funny it was, and at the same time hoping no one would see me doing it.  And then this kind old couple who magically appeared and took me to where I could sleep. 

In the sepia band of awareness between sleep and waking, I see these images and wonder if they were real.  But then, how would I have made it to here?  Unless, perhaps, that was my real life and this part is a dream. 

Hope this finds you wondering,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith