She cried then. Soft, wrecked sounds that filled the cab like exhaust fumes. He didn’t offer a tissue or a platitude. He just drove, taking the long route past the river, where the streetlights fractured on the water like scattered gold. He didn’t run the meter.
Tonight, a fare climbed into the back. She smelled of rain and expensive desperation. Her voice was a frayed rope. taxi vocational licence
Ivan glanced in the rearview. She was maybe forty, wearing a coat that cost more than his car, but her eyes had that hollow look he knew too well. The look of a person whose architecture had also collapsed. She cried then