from... White Light

It was after midnight on Union Square, and from behind the wheel of his taxicab Sal Russo tried staying awake. Ever since Tessa left him, his sleep had been haphazard at best, and on slow nights like these he could barely keep his eyes open. The light turned green and he stepped on the gas, the engine groaning, oily fumes billowing onto his face. He yawned and heard something pop in his jaw. The edges of his body felt numb and shapeless, as if he were cocooned in a dream. Then, as he approached the corner of Post and Powell, a starburst of white light exploded all around him. Blinded, he slammed on the brakes, gripping the wheel for dear life, tires screeching as the cab jolted to a halt. He blinked his eyes and the light was gone. He could see the street again. He lifted his foot off the brake and the cab began to roll forward.

He saw two hookers standing on the corner: tight shorts, glossy lips, small purses on long gold chains. The one nearest the curb had long black hair, a tanned face, and eyes that glowed like turquoise neon. Sal's heart swelled like a balloon inflated with icy air. For a moment, his chest caved in and he gulped for breath. He angled himself down to see her better, but a horn tooted behind him, another cabbie impatient to get to the taxi line at the St. Francis, so he stepped on the gas and completed his turn. He raced around the block at reckless speed, hoping to catch a glimpse of her again.

His heart hammered wildly as he drove. It couldn't be possible. Things like this didn't happen. Had he seen things accurately? Now that was a ridiculous question. How could he have seen things accurately when what he thought he'd seen didn't even exist? He rounded the corner back onto Post Street and looked down to the end of the block. The two prostitutes were still there. He gunned the gas, the cab's old engine growling. Nearing them, he slowed to a cautious crawl. The brunette hooker reached inside her sequined bag and took out a cigarette, her face hidden behind long hair that shimmered like black mercury. She sucked on a flame, a wisp of smoke in the breeze, the tip of her right pump grinding into the sidewalk. A ball of fear hardened inside Sal's chest. It was the same fear he felt whenever he looked too deeply into Tessa's wondrous eyes - the fear of facing himself, the danger of what he desired, in the mirror of his beloved's gaze.

Smoke drifted above the hooker's shiny hair, but when she lifted her face it was all wrong, Chinese and dark-eyed, not even close to the woman he thought he'd seen. Sal was relieved. After all, had he really expected to see the woman with turquoise eyes while he was awake?

The second woman, a bouffant blonde in fake green leather, began to approach him and he stepped on the gas and pulled away, his rearview mirror framing the blonde's receding scowl. A feathery unease ascended his spine, and he was suddenly lightheaded. He pulled into a bus stop, cut the headlights, and just sat there. He noticed that his ears were ringing: a distant chiming sound, faint and subversive. He felt points of shifting pressure behind his brow. It was like something was living inside his head, trying to kick its way out. He noticed a tightness in his chest, and he began to slow his breathing, following each inhale from the bottom of the belly to the top of the chest, and each exhale down to the belly again. It was something Lou had taught him. Focus on the breath. Focus on the present moment. The only moment that ever is. Gradually, Sal's ears stopped ringing.

He sat in his cab and tried figuring out what had just happened to him. First, the blinding flash of white light. A scary enough event on its own that conjured up notions of brain damage. Then, the woman on the corner with eyes he'd never seen anywhere but in his dreams. White light. Hallucination. Had he been asleep at the wheel, dreaming, perhaps? That thought was just as scary. A few months back old Smitty, a veteran driver who was always good for a laugh in Cabbie Hell, fell asleep at the wheel on Fisherman's Wharf one night and plowed his LTD across a sidewalk, killing a German tourist and losing his job. Sal had enough problems without pulling a stunt like that.

He breathed deeply, trying to calm himself. But his heart still raced. He noticed the smells in his cab - a stale medley of burnt oil, sweat, and old farts. The odor was reassuring, a reminder of routine and sanity. He shifted his weight, the vinyl seat squeaking, and the radio spewed some static. Then Cozmo's voice barked from the dispatcher's office: 259, go get Mr. Marino at 101 Cal and take him to Oakland.

Sal stared out at the street. The impossible event, disturbing though it was, had been fleeting and chimerical, and as the moments ticked on and no bizarre encores took place he began doubting the truth of the entire episode. It had happened too quickly. The flash of white light, the dream woman on the street. Just a moment of madness and then the world was restored.

Ever since he was a boy, Sal had fantasized that he might meet the woman with turquoise eyes while he was awake. He had dreamed of her for years. She had haunted his adolescence, inspired his teenage fantasies, and preyed on him as an adult whenever he got too intimate with a lover, draining him in nightly seductions that left him listless and emotionally cool. The women came and went. Claudia, Gwen, Marcie, and Zandra. Sweethearts all of them. He was one of those men pop psychologists talked about - the men who couldn't commit. He admitted it, of course. But in Sal's case emotional ineptitude was never something he started with in a relationship - it was always something that came later on, triggered by the dreams. With Tessa, he fooled himself into believing that his love for her was so strong that the dreams could never gain a foothold. But when they began discussing marriage, the dreams returned with a vengeance. And when they came, it didn't take Tessa long to figure out that Sal had no control over them. Now she was gone, leaving Sal to second-guess all his mistakes.

He thought back to the incident on Post Street. Had it really happened? Had she really been there? Even as he sat in his cab and breathed deeply, the event just moments before seemed to exist in the shadow realm of perception, on the unstable border between physical fact and fantasy.

He yawned, his eyes squeezing shut. His face felt hot and sweaty. He lifted his chin to give himself the once-over in the rear-view mirror: a red pimple poked through the black three-day stubble on his cheek. His brown eyes, soft and wary, stared back at him. He was thirty-six years old, and curly black hair framed a pale squarish face that people always told him looked Irish, though he was Italian, German and Polish by descent.

Satisfied that his face hadn't melted, Sal slumped behind the wheel. Still feeling lightheaded, he rolled down the window and leaned out, sucking in the cool night breeze. The street was still. A thick mist hovered above the rooftops of downtown San Francisco, drifting with eerie grace above the cornices and lampposts and fire escapes. The radio spat static again and Cozmo's voice tore into the cab on a surge of volume. Any drivers out in the inner Richmond? Sal could see the dispatcher in his office, wearing his big floppy beret and chain-smoking Camels, fingers stroking his drooping walrus mustache.

He rested his brow on the steering wheel and closed his eyes, thinking about Tessa and the ugly shape of the hole her loss had punched inside him.

I need a Speedy Cab for Chestnut and Steiner, California and Front, Broadway and Columbus, the Opera five times, and still the Richmond.

He could see Cozmo's ashtray filled with mashed butts and masticated clots of Juicy Fruit. Smoke hanging above him, immobile, in the dead silver light of the dispatcher's office.

In the street, someone whistled, and Sal lifted his head. A Yellow Cab pulled up in front of a restaurant. Two men in overcoats got in, quick slam of doors, and the cab sped down the block and disappeared around the next corner. Would Tessa have found the men attractive? he wondered.

He gripped the wheel hard, trying to force back the bitter nostalgia that crept upon him whenever he thought about Tessa. How foolish he had been to let those dreams ruin things! He hadn't even asked Tessa for another chance. At the time, she seemed too angry at him to make another chance seem possible. Now he wished he had asked. Sal promised himself that one day he would climb to the top of a lonely hill and scream and pound the earth until all the dark dreams were burned out of him for good.

Again the radio coughed up static and Cozmo's voice said: Is Sal Russo driving tonight? Sal keyed the Mic. "This is Russo. Over." A pause, then Cozmo, Hey Mr. Russo, go pick up your friend Lou, will you. "Sure," keying the Mic, "where is he?" At his place. On Bush Street. Over. "Thanks. Over."

He started the engine and pulled out into the street. He felt the warm fumes on his face and knees. Cab no. 2427 was an old boxy Dodge with over 300,000 miles on it. The car squeaked and bounced and rattled as it moved, and like many of the cabs assigned to him, hot gas fumes leaked into the passenger compartment. It was a punishment imposed by Lemke, the night-shift window man. Only last week he had given Sal another clunky spare which began to smell bad the moment he left the garage. Sure enough the transmission blew while he was driving in the fast lane on 101 South, heading for the airport with two young lawyers. Black smoke billowed poisonously above the hood as Sal threw out flares behind the cab and the lawyers sat on the concrete median and talked on their cell phones, silk ties flapping in the cold Bay wind. It was Lemke's way of making a point: Be generous and you'll get a decent cab. But Sal hated playing the payola game, at least to the extent that was required, so he usually drove shitty heaps.

On Bush Street now: glare of sodium lamps softened in mist, black plastic garbage bags piled in front of a Thai noodle house. The light turned green, and as Sal stepped on the gas his ears began to ring again, a strange metallic drone.

What the hell is wrong with me? he wondered.

He pulled over just past a green awning with white stripes. A tall thin figure descended steps and approached the cab. The front passenger door opened with a snapping groan and Lou dropped onto the seat, the cold coppery night air rushing in with him. Like Sal, Lou Rothberg was in his mid-30s and was an ex-pat from New York City. He wore black jeans and leather jacket, had long thin legs and a shiny bald head like polished stone. He had dark incisive eyes, and his face was bony and sharp. A bronze vajra — a Buddhist thunderbolt of wisdom — jiggled in his right ear.

"Hey, bro, how ya doing?" Lou said in a strong New York accent. Sal shook his hand.
"Same old same old. Where to?"
"SOMA Arts, off Townsend Street. I'll navigate."

Sal pulled away and glanced down at a stack of books in Lou's lap. The book on top, Buddhist Art Treasures, showed a cover of a meditating Buddha with a beautiful golden face.
"Having a good night?" Lou asked.
"A strange night."
"Oh, how so?"
"You ever get flashes of white light?"
"Nope."
"It happened to me tonight. This flash of white light blinded me all of a sudden while I was driving."
"That's scary. Better get that checked out."

Sal stepped on the gas to make a yellow light and the cab shuddered across an intersection. "Then I saw a dream." "A dream, what?"
"Standing on the corner of Post and Powell. Remember the woman in my dreams?"
"You mean the dreams that screwed things up with you and Tessa?"
"Yeah, those dreams. I saw her, the woman in those dreams, standing on the street tonight."
"You saw someone who looked like her?"
"No, I saw the actual woman. With fiery turquoise eyes and everything. It was her."
Lou chortled. "What the hell have you been smoking, Sal?" Sal turned from the wheel. "Hey, fuck you. I thought I saw her. That's all I'm saying. Now I'm not so sure."

Lou thought about it for a moment, then: "You must have had a - what do they call it? - a hypnogogic episode," Lou suggested. "Maybe you fell asleep for a moment."

Sal nodded. "That's what I thought. Maybe I was asleep. Now it's like the whole thing never happened. I'm talking to you, I'm driving this cab, things seem normal. It's like it never happened."

"You are having a strange night, aren't you?"

They stopped at a red light at Market and Hyde. Sal glanced down at the stack of books in Lou's lap. "What's with the books?"
"Research for my show."
"What's your show about? I keep meaning to ask."
"We become what we think," Lou said. "That's the theme in a nutshell. It's very Buddhisty."
"Tell me more."
"I call it The Bardo Project after the Tibetan idea of the bardo, the transitional state between one life and the next. According to Tibetan teachings, in the bardo you come face to face with the thoughts and urges that guided you in your life. Most of our thoughts are based on craving or aversion of one kind or another, so the thought-forms we encounter in the bardo appear to us as terrifying entities coming to attack us. And this idea that when you die you're attacked by your own thoughts fascinates me."

"Sounds interesting," Sal said, gunning the gas as the light turned green. "But what are the specifics?"

As the cab sped across Market Street, Lou sat back and rubbed a palm over his shiny scalp. "I'm using the idea of the bardo to interrogate modern cultural values."

Sal laughed. "Uh-oh, hear comes the artspeak."
"You asked for it, pal."
"Sorry."
"Okay, basically, I project images of America's obsessions onto floating scrim in a dark room. When you enter the installation, it's as if you've died, and now you're witnessing the thoughts of the American mind. I show images of sex and shopping, cars and freeways, celebrity and youth, war and technology. I contrast these images with pictures of buddhas and bodhisattvas representing wisdom and compassion. On the one hand you have the mundane world of greed, hatred and ignorance. On the other hand you have contentment, love, and knowledge of reality. I'm trying to make people think about the way people think."

"Sounds like a day at the beach," Sal said, shifting lanes to avoid a bus, "but do you really think when we die our thoughts attack us?"

Lou shrugged. "I guess we won't know that until we're dead, will we?"

They drove for a few moments in silence, the cab's frame shimmying and squeaking. Sal felt Tessa's presence between them, like a silent ghost watching and judging him. Tessa and Lou had come out to San Francisco together from art school back in the early '90s along with Lou's late lover Don, and ever since the breakup Sal usually asked Lou how Tessa was doing. But tonight he resisted.

As Sal turned onto Townsend Street, Lou slapped his knee. "So how come you don't return my phone calls, bro?"
"Sorry," Sal said, glancing over, "I've been scattered lately."
"How's your novel?"
"I'm still deleting passages."

Lou scowled and shook his head. "Ever since you and Tessa broke up, all you do is delete passages. God, Sal, you almost had a complete first draft. I hope I get a chance to read it before it disappears during revision."

They entered a cobbled street lined with loading docks and industrial buildings, forgotten railroad tracks laced through the old stones. Sal pulled over in front of a small white building, glass block windows on either side of a dark metal door. A small sign read: SOMA Arts. He leaned forward and looked out the windshield. Light shone through high factory windows on the second floor.

"So that's where you're doing your installation, huh? Cool." He sat back.

And Lou, "It used to be a printing company," cradling the books under his left arm, "now it's the workspace of misfits like me." He gripped the door handle and looked at Sal. "So don't be such a stranger, Sal. Just because you and Tessa broke up doesn't mean we can't still hang out."

"Oh I know that."
"Will you at least return my calls?"
"I will. I promise."
"I don't remind you of her, do I?"
"Who, Tessa? Are you kidding? Your ass is way too skinny."
"You know what I mean, schmuck," opening the door, snap of hinges. "And hey: go see a doctor. Flashes of white light don't sound good."

Lou shut the door and walked off. As Sal watched his friend enter the building, he listened to the metallic sound in his ears. It was like a knife being sharpened from far away. It was time to go home. He drove down the cobbled street. About halfway to the next corner, he turned left into an alley to shortcut it back to the garage. But something high and dark blocked the alley entrance, and he stepped on the brakes, confused at the sight. A large moving shape passed in front of his cab in a series of odd, slow-motion flickers. Folds of dark cloth shifted in the wind, and something grayish and blurred flashed into sight for a second - something that might have been a face. But then the figure was gone, swallowed by the shadows behind a dumpster, and the way was clear.

As Sal drove down the alley, the ringing in his ears suddenly got louder, a steady high-pitched buzz that lasted for several minutes before finally fading as he pulled into the garage.

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