A Dublin taxi ride

White haired gent, food stains blotching his rumpled shirt, shifts and straightens up quite suddenly, as if suddenly awakened from a nap, as Mr. O’Connor and I hurry into the back of his taxi. How are ya, boss? he says, stretching, patting the front of his shirt as if looking for a pack of lost smokes.

Guinness Storehouse, says Mr. O’Connor. Gives me a look and rolls his eyes.

Traffic thick, nothing moving, but never mind. It’s a lovely evening. So light out, even though it’s past seven. Driver gassing on about Patrick Kavanagh but I’m hearing little of it, watching the young Dubs marching home. Two colleens on bikes, skirts hiked up mid-thigh, thread their way through the stalled cars. One on a cell phone. Imagine that; dancing through traffic so close one man could reach out his side window and open another man’s back door, and the thin girl with long flowing red hair maneuvers with one hand on her bike while no doubt discussing weekend plans with her lad. Lovely.

Where the fish ‘n’ chips shop is used to be a bookstore, says our driver, rambling on to nobody. Owned by two spinster sisters. Kavanagh would roam the store and take any book he desired and the sisters never saw his light-handedness, for he was a poet don’t you know.

You saying he stole their books, Mr. O’Connor wonders.

That’s what I’m told, says the driver. And if there’s a lie in my story, sure it wasn’t myself that composed it.

That’s something, isn’t it? A taxi driver telling us rich stories about a long-dead poet. Get that in New York, do you?

Fifteen, twenty minutes later and we come around the corner and there’s our hotel in front of us. Bloody hell, says Mr. O’Connor. We’ve spent twenty minutes just going around the block. Thought you’d like to see a bit of the city, says the driver. Ah god, rants Mr. O’Connor. You’ve had a bit of the gargle, haven’t you?

No extra charge, says the driver. Now then, was it the Guinness Storehouse you wanted?

And once again we lurch down the street past St. Stephen’s Green, this time twenty minutes late for dinner.