“Would you like another martini, sir?” The tall, raven-haired stewardess asked him. Rueben eyed his glass and shook his head slowly.
“No, thank-you, I’m fine.”
The stewardess nodded obediently and moved on mechanically to the gentleman beside him.
Rueben cleared his throat, sighed, and settled down. The Captain had previously announced their nearing descent into Boston, Mass, so it would only be now a matter of minutes before the plane landed into the city and Rueben could be safely into a nice, cool cab.
As soon as Rueben gripped his thin briefcase and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, he bounded off the plane into the exit hallway and grimaced to the smiling staff members, as he made his way into the terminal.
“Excuse me, pardon me, thank you,” he announced, with a tone almost as methodical as the staff’s. He breathed a gentle sigh of relief as he raised his arm to catch a cabby’s attention. Part of his damp, wet, denim work shirt rose, un-tucking itself in the process.
Lucky for Rueben, Boston’s Logan airport was quite popular, not to mention busy that June. Almost immediately, the familiar yellow car stopped at the curb and the driver signaled to get in. Rueben shuffled his leather shoes, stepped quickly inside and slammed the door.
“Double Tree Boston,” Rueben announced.
“Buck and a quarter per mile,” the cab driver shot back. The cabby knew how to dress but the accent could not keep him from seeming lower-middle class to an American.
Rueben could not help as he glanced towards the nameplate. He grinned slightly as he saw that it was ‘Ishmael’ and he was reminded of the literary figure. “Yes, yes. I’m in a bit of a hurry to make a conference at three this afternoon, so as long as you get me there, we have a deal.”
“Yes, sir.” The cabby nodded and rushed them out of the parking zone.
There was a dead silence between driver and passenger. In usual circumstances, the cabby would either hear nothing but the sounds of his heartbeat for the entire ride, or the passenger would begin to start light conversation.
Ishmael’s deep brown eyes casually made their way to look at Reuben’s face. Rueben was appeared to be about thirty three, had slight lines in his face, he had dark brown hair, and his bluish eyes could see that Rueben looked pensive, as if he wanted to pour out his whole life story but felt like Ishmael was too much of a stranger to listen. This bothered Ishmael: Mr. American thinks he’s too slick to talk to me. We’ll see about that.
“What conference is that, sir?” He asked, giving way to a half-smile. Rueben looked like uneasy. Good.
“Oh, it’s nothing, really. I’m training to be a human resources consultant and this is a conference to learn about how to deal with cultural diversity. You’re…um… ‘Hat’ there might be considered offensive to other co-workers if they didn’t know any better.”
Now it was the driver’s turn to feel uncomfortable. “I see,” Ishmael grumbled.
The car was silent for a few minutes, save for Reuben’s loud cough. Ordinarily, Ishmael would have thought nothing of this simple gesture, but when the cough was followed by what seemed like Rueben going into some kind of shock or seizure, the atmosphere became quite a different circus.
“Are you all right, sir? Are you all right?” The cabby asked. He darted his head back and forth from the road in front of him and his ailing passenger.
Something inhuman was taking place behind poor Ishmael. The seemingly normal face of the anxious, insensitive passenger had turned to something totally different. When Rueben didn’t look as if he were breathing, Ishmael, pulled the car over, and without thinking, put a light palm on Reuben’s shoulder. Rueben jerked away and slumped back into his seat. Rueben’s eyes rolled back into his head, and they closed.
Suddenly, he opened his gray eyes and situated himself back in his seat. His breathing returned to normal, and he eyed his driver with strange contempt.
“Get away from me, you goddamn Turk! I want to get off! Right now!”
“ What the! I’m sorry sir I can’t do that! We’re right in the middle of traffic. It’s very dangerous. Please control yourself for both our sakes.”
“Let me out! Please, for God’s sake, let me out! Do what you have to, whatever you must do! If you use that sword on me, I swear, I’ll have you executed forthwith!”
“What sword? I don’t understand what you mean. Please, sir, I can’t watch the road and tend to you at the same time. Would you like me to take you to the nearest physician? No fare?”
“God save the Queen!”
Rueben was acting stranger and stranger. What was Ishmael to do? His brother had instructed him that the customer was always right, but he knew better than to send his passenger to his death by letting him waltz out into the middle of traffic.
Then, something odd entered Ishmael’s mind. Could it be? He’d heard of this thing before, but the cases were so few and far between, that it couldn’t have been. Could it? He wondered. “What year is it … me sahib?”
“Don’t be daft! It’s 1930!”
“1930?” It didn’t make sense. His fare had seemed all right when he’d entered the cab. Ishmael figured that he’d better do the right thing and made the turn to go to the hospital.
“Yes, you fool, it’s 1930!” Rueben shouted and pounded on the Plexiglas.
Ishmael stepped on the gas, and was almost to the hospital when the light suddenly turned yellow, than red at a corner. For an instant, he considered running it, and getting Rueben there much faster, but he’d already been in trouble with the police for speeding, and figured that everything would be fine for the five or so minutes at the light.
Unfortunately, he had not thought that Rueben would leap out of the stopped vehicle and charge into the busy street.
CHAPTER 2
It was approximately nine when Ishmael put the car into park, and set the emergency lights. He raced out of the cab, and started towards Rueben. However, the light turned green and several cars started to honk. Ishmael begrudgingly got back into his cab and started for the police station. “Let them figure out how to deal with the crazy, passenger.” He thought to himself.
Meanwhile, Rueben had cleared the street and was now racing down the sidewalk. There was a blank look in his eyes and he was mumbling in a British, well to do accent. He bumped into several couples on the sidewalk, splitting them up, and occasionally knocking some back.
Loud yells followed Rueben as he walked, but nothing deterred him from his path. At the corner of Twenty-fifth and Main, he paused for a minute, thinking to himself. “Could it be? No, that’s impossible.” The resemblance was so uncanny, that surely it could be no other. Rueben started towards the man.
“Ahem, Captain Northcliff, how nice to see you again. Do you know of a good spot for high tea? I could use a spot of it.”
The man looked at him oddly. “I’m afraid I don’t know you, sir.”
Rueben chuckled, and reached out to pat the man on the back. “Don’t be silly, old boy, how can you have forgotten the Gandhi years so quickly?”
The other man backed away rather quickly. “Get away from me!”
Rueben was surprised by the man's attitude, but continued on. His journey had led him to a little known area.
He knew where he was going -- a small café where he usually went to think. Hopefully this would help him clear his mind, and possibly explain why people were acting so peculiar. The only tea that he knew of had ice in it and on special occasions a little bourbon.
The road diverged, and instead of taking the right towards the café he inexplicably felt drawn to the left.
Here the pathway became more treacherous. Several pine trees were all overgrown, intertwined and nearly choked out what used to be a road. Many of the small tombstones in the nearby cemetery had been overgrown with masses of weeds.
Rueben plodded his way through, stopping at a marker. Rueben pulled away most of the foliage and read the following lines: “Here lies Lieutenant James McIntyre, Member of the Royal British Army from 1915-1936. Retired, became citizen of United States, and died in 1959.”
Rueben clutched at his stomach, a sensation of nausea overwhelmed him and he fell into a fetal position. “Heal all, must heal all.”
“Hey, Mister, what are ya doing? You don’t need to be here! Sleep it off somewhere else.”
Rueben sat up, dusted himself off, and shook his head at the night watchman. “Yeah, fine, I’ll go now.”
“Yeah, you’d better! Otherwise I’ll call the cops.”
He nodded and started on his way home. He needed to make sense of what happened to him, and figured that the act of writing it out might put the jumbled pieces together. He walked out of the cemetery trying to figure out how he’d get this disturbing image out of his head, and onto paper. He felt himself the happiest when he was sitting at his computer, and typing the images that flowed from his mind.
He arrived home, still trying to guess what the hell he was doing in the cemetery to begin with. He took the house key out of his pocket and unlocked the door.
Once inside, he raced into the den and turned on the computer. He started to write down what had happened to him; the morning’s packing to go home, the plane flight – maybe the recycled air filters weren’t working right, or something; the very odd cab ride, the encounter with a pedestrian, whom he thought was Captain Northcliff – and the night watchman.
He re-read it all on the screen, just to be sure that it made sense, and started to print it. There were about three pages in all, and he seemed excited to get it printed, and it took a few moments for the printer to actually spit out the pages. As the printer was working, he suddenly had this craving for good English for tea, went into the kitchen to prepare a cup. He set a pot on to boil, and placed a bag in the cup. Soon, he had his tea and he was ready to go.
After he read the printed version, he turned on an overhead light and sat down in the computer chair. With a few clicks of the keys he was telling his story, although it was nothing like he’d ever heard of before.
“Lieutenant James McIntyre here. Goodness, it feels good to scratch the ol’ quill. I hope not to run out of ink, as it is a precious tale that I need to tell. It was hard to deal with the savages today as they were everywhere, and one could not help but step on them as one walked by. They were so oddly dressed that it was hard to describe, bare chests and a towel covering their heads!”
