TAXISTO
A short story by Nicholas Coursel on digital nomadism and modern travel culture.
Note: This story was originally published in issue 81 of “Penicillin” magazine on October 20, 2023, London. Check them out here for more cutting-edge, highly original fiction.
You step off the crowded bus connecting the airport to El Centro and wipe your stinging eyes with the back of your hand. Everybody’s doing it. It’s one of the few things connecting the Norteños to the ever-growing class of Norteños-Norteños, the remote-working gringo bourgeoise with their MacBook Pros and Spanglish Instagram captions. That’s the good part about stuffing more than a million people into a valley with mountains all around with old-school cars and trucks pumping pollution into the air 24/7, it’s unifying. We’re all equally miserable; our eyes burn together. At least for today.
I’m barely able to get the initial sting out of my eyes before the person behind me starts digging their elbow into my back and ushering me forward. Annoyed, I turn around and think about saying something but say nothing actually. It’s just another suited-man doing what the equally suited-man behind him is doing. Such is life in Mexico’s richest city. If you don’t know this before coming you learn it soon enough. They didn’t get here by chance. They worked, and worked and worked and worked. Through the heat, through the smog, through the cartels in the early 2000s and everything else, they put their dress shirts on and they kept on working.
This output is perhaps the single most defining quality of the city. You see it all around all the time. The people; they’re always working. The cars, the trucks, the bikes — they’re always moving, always pumping the air with smog and taking people here and there. To this job, to another, back home tot rest and do it all again, suffocating the life breath out of their beloved Sierra Madres. You can’t even see them today. That’s how bad it’s gotten.
An autobus pulls away before the last passenger is able to get both feet on the ground. He nearly falls, but thankfully he’s a younger man and catches himself by jumping to safety before the closing door lashes his ankles. I can’t but wonder how many aren’t as fortunate —
— I’m shoved forward again. The herd, finally sensing freedom, pushes toward the open plaza. We’re a sweaty, stinking mass, but dispersing. I don’t have time to think or stop, I just move in unison with the crowd. We all do. Her left is my right. Another shove from behind. A hand in my back, mine in somebody else’s. We keep moving. Almost there. Left, right. Spanish shouting, a bit of English, something else.
My eyes snap into focus. Who is that talking? What are they saying?
It doesn’t take long before they start again. This time I’m ready for it. “Taxis! Taxis! Taxis from El Centro!”
The herd splits again. I manage to break free. I’m the only one who’s heading toward the shouting cabbie. The rest disappear into the gaping urban expanse; the pushing slows.
I approach the driver. He looks friendly. It’s no coincidence that he’s the closest to the drop-off point and the bus was filled with people heading into Mexico from Chicago. He knows. I don’t know how he does, but he must.
“Taxi! Cheap taxi!” the man yells inches from my face, sweat dripping. ”Take you anywhere! Cheap taxi!”
“How much to get to San Nicolas?” I ask.
The man’s leathered face crunches into itself. “San Nicolas?” he repeats slowly.
“Si, San Nicolas.”
“San Pedro?”
I shake my head.
“San Pedro?” he questions again. “Garza Garcia.”
“No. San Nicolas.”
“San Nicolas?”
“Si, si — San Nicolas.”
He still looks confused.
“How much?”
The confusion continues, but it doesn’t last long this time. Within a few sweltering seconds — most of the people who’d gotten off the bus with me are long gone now — he quotes me 300 pesos. I have no idea if its’s a good or a bad deal, or even how much that is in US dollars, but I don’t have many options so I shake my head and agree and thrust a fistful of bills into his outstretched hand before getting inside.
Keep the change, I say, not realizing that I’ve just paid double the usual Gringo Tax. He smiles and says gracias and slams my door and gets in the front seat. And we’re off…
His cab is old and battered. It looks like it’s recently been beaten to a pulp, at least twenty years old. There’s dust everywhere. I can feel it sticky to the sweaty backs of my legs and arms as I fidget and try to get comfortable. A small sign with the driver’s face and a bunch of Spanish I can’t read hangs for the plastic divider separating his half from mine. Small holes and rips are punctured throughout. I’m not sure what it’s for, but it has to mean something.
After several minutes and several turns, I’m finally able to relax into the dust-covered, ripped-up leather. I smile. Riding in a taxi takes me back to my childhood, how Chicago used to be before the Uber and Lyft epidemic killed them off and made $75 rides to the airport the norm for a couple-mile trip.
“San Nicholas,” the driver mumbles, nothing more.
I look up. Our eyes lock in the rearview.
“Porq — “ he begins, then self-corrects, “Why?”
Suddenly I miss Uber and their please shut up don’t talk to me option. “Why not?” I reply, scrolling through my phone.
“No gringos.”
I shrug.
“Hablas español?”
“Poco.” I tuck my phone away. If the man controlling the car and where I’m going wants to talk, I figure the least I can do is listen. “Not enough to have a full conversation, though.”
He shifts up a gear and cuts across several lanes of heavy Mexican traffic. Nobody honks or shouts or acts like this any real deviation from the norm. They just speed up and cut off the next guy in perfect routine.
We coast left off the main highway and cut through one of the smaller barrios in the city. The houses and businesses look almost war-torn, yet all the people walking around or sitting at the sidewalk cafes sipping lattes are wearing dress shirts and look considerably wealthier and more well-put-together than I am. They probably were.
“No inglés en San Nicolas,” he says. “Want me turn around?” He looks back into the rearview mirror and smiles. “Only 100 pesos.”
“All I need is good food and a cheap place to sleep.”
The driver laughs. “Good food, good food.”
“Talking is optional.”
He cuts another turn down an alley. “Why here?”
“What do you mean?”
“México.”
“Why am I here?”
“Si, si.”
“Good weather, cheap rent.”
“Weather? Too hot.”
“No snow.”
He waves his hand.
“Trabajas aquí?”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Ahhh,” he accelerated as he thought, “ — work.”
“Not really.”
“How you live?”
I smiled, laughing to myself, and pat the tattered book bag between my legs. “My whole life right here. Everything I need.”
All I can see in the dangling mirror — it’s barely holding up, just by a thread — are the creased lines telling the story of his life through his forehead. He understood the words but has no idea what I’m talking about, but how could he? Our lives are so far apart we might as well live on different planets.
“Que?” Is all he has at first. Then, “How?”
“I’m a writer. Only halfway homeless. By choice, for now.”
He still looks confused, so I mime writing on the notebook of my palm. “Escritor!” he exclaimed. “Okay, entiendo.”
Another bump, another turn. The city grows smaller and smaller behind us, bleeding into the Great Hazy Mountains. I lean back and close my eyes as the driver thinks over what I’ve just said. I’m grateful for the momentary silence. I’ve only been in the country a few hours, but I can already tell silence is rare in Mexico. My mind begins to cloud. Real and fake mud together. This reprieve is exactly what I need, even if it only lasts a minute or two.
It’s been three months and twenty-three days since I’ve landed a feature, even longer since I’ve turned a profit in a month. Feast or famine puts it comically light. Another bump in the road — he’s still here — another turn.
How much longer can I keep this going? I’ve told myself one more month for the last two years. I’m twenty-five years old. Hunter S. Thompson is dead. The world has made it very clear that there’s no place for another. Still…
One more pitch, one more story.
What if I’m almost there?
What if I never make it?
“How long aquí?” the driver asks —
My eyes snap open. “Wh — Que?”
“How long?”
What am I doing with my life? Why am I here? I was supposed to be in Paris by now, or NYC. At least CDMX or Buenos Aires like all the other writers I got my MFA with. Fancy tapas, cocktails, and a couple thousand followers. I know the code but can’t bring myself to type it in. They’re all sell-outs, it’s all fake. But look at my life, look at theirs.
“A few days, a month. A year. I have no idea.”
“San Nicolas,” he muttered again, pulling off to the side of the road.
“Aquí es perfecto.”
One last smile and he kicks open the door, pulls mine. “Good luck, Señor.”
I can’t help but laugh.
