Vincent. The name was Vincent. Like the song. Vincent was a savior. Not in a worldwide sense, just in my eyes. But in my opinion, that's what truly makes a savior. No need for crowds to rejoice, no need for fame, just a simple saving of ones lonely life.
You'll have to excuse me for that. I have these little moments of enlightenment, if you could call it enlightenment. I call it enlightenment.
In this job, names don’t matter. Because you only know each other for those few, brief minutes. Half the time it doesn’t make a difference. It’s just some asshole on the phone in his left hand, talking to his wife, saying he’s gonna be working late again, while grabbing the ass of his secretary with his right.
Sometimes I wanna stop the car, drag the guy out and give him a good kicking. Tell him he’s got a good wife and a nice life, and ask him why he’d want to throw it away on some cheap slut who goes through ten men, just like him, a day. But I always just keep driving, letting that phone swinging, ass grabbing, business man eat me up inside, more and more with every filthy word he tells the little lady back home. I sometimes get the feeling that she knows. And when I do, the guy ends up on the news, shot, or stabbed, or gutted like a black cod.
In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m a cabby. Yes, a good old stereotypical cabby, who won’t pick up black guys and has a Buddha Hummel figurine slapped on the dashboard. I’m kidding. I’m as white as you can get, blacks happen to be my favorite fare. They talk more; to me, not to the wife on the phone or the slut secretary in the back seat. Something about me makes people want to talk. They can be in the worse situation and still want to talk.
Don’t believe me? About two years ago a man got in the cab. Tall guy, white, young (well, young to someone like me). His eyes were red. His breaths were sounding more and more like rattling tin foil every second. I was afraid the bastard was going to have a heart attack. He told me to drive to 51 Red Ridge. Yes, I still remember the address, you don’t forget it after some shit like that happens.
So we stop. And he tells me to look in the third window, second floor. There’s a darkened silhouette. A woman. 'Great curves' is what I thought.
“You see that woman? That’s my wife, but that ain’t my house,” he told me.
The poor guy collapsed into a puddle of mush, crying at the back of my seat. Then he drew the gun and left the cab. Normally, I would’ve gotten the hell out of there as fast as I could, but I didn’t move. I heard two loud pops, a scream that was cut off, and then he was back in the car.
I looked at him through the rearview mirror. He was covered in their blood. In his wife's blood. In her lover’s blood. His eyes were red and raw. He looked at the mirror and pushed his hair back a bit, then he asked me the question.
“Though I may be a beast, don’t I have the right to live?”
I met his eyes, and in that brief moment before he pulled the trigger, he smiled.
Then he blew his brains out.
The back seats are still stained from it. The cops couldn’t care much to investigate. It was a ‘crime of passion’ as they say. Case closed. But I still wonder over the man, the beast, and I wonder...what did he do to deserve it? Most people think I’m crazy, but I keep a photo, a little Kodak Moment camera snap, of his body at the crime scene. I look at it twice a day. It’s become a bit of a ritualistic phase. But it’s not a phase, I have a feeling that I’ll be looking at it until I die, however long or short a time that may be.
Anyway, back to Vincent, I rambled a bit. I started this story on a short note and now it’s become a journal entry. It’s like my dad trying to tell a joke where he forgets a detail that ruins the whole damn joke. ‘Oh I forgot his cape was blue.’ I mean-fuck! I’m doing it again! Back to Vincent.
Vincent, Vincent, Vincent, where do I start? Well firstly, I said names don’t matter, but when it comes to Vincent, the name is everything. Firstly, Vincent is a girl, a woman you could say, but to me she’s a girl.
Daughters are always children in a parent’s eyes.
Now firstly, you could say I found Vincent, but the truth was she found me. She’s twenty, old enough to be on her own, but not old enough to lose the flame of hope all abandoned children have that they’ll actually find their 'lost' father or mother and that father or mother will still give a damn about them.
I didn’t abandon Vincent, not in a practical sense, but as far as emotional abandonment goes I ripped her heart out. Vincent was a hard name for a girl. It was kind of a Don McLean, favorite song, spur of the moment type shit. Later we found out that the song was about a man. Sort of like the ultimate irony.
Anyways, I left the Czech Republic-did I mention I was Czech? No? I am not good at this. It may be too late to say, but I am. So I left the Czech Republic for America, fifteen years ago. The plan was I should earn enough money so I could bring my wife and Vincent with me. The problem was I was arrested, I came to the country illegally, and the van I came in was ‘confiscated’. When I say confiscated I mean that we were dragged out, beaten, and raped (Both ways. Not me, but I heard the stories).
It was during this time that I fought to help the few children that went with us. I killed a guard and they escaped. But I didn’t. It was never reported. I was simply locked away for seven years. They say seven is a lucky number? Well piss on the fucker who thought that up. I lost everything. My home. My life. My family. No record. My wife, oh my wife took her life. Not suicide. She was too God fearing to contemplate the ultimate sin. When the cancer took her, she gave no fight. She wasted into dust. I know not if she blamed me, but in the end I was destined to carry the burden of guilt. Her death was my doing. Her blood upon my hands.
Maybe that’s why Vincent tried to kill me. It was half a year ago. I picked up the poor lass and the next thing I knew I had a gun to my head. She told me everything. She told me how I had scared her for life, and she wanted revenge. My abandonment had ruined her. The shame, the pain, the suffering, all my doing. She wanted her life back. I could see it in her leaking eyes. And as she finished telling me this, I looked at her face in the rearview mirror and I remembered the man. I remembered his eyes, just before he killed himself. Her eyes were his twin. Her eyes were a mirror of his soul.
“I’m going to kill you now, Dad,” she whispered, switching the safety off.
Even then, with so much hate and so much pain welled up in her heart, she still called me dad. I was still her father. She asked me if I had anything to say, any last words. I had no begs, no pleas, no prayers or tears. I simply looked her in the eyes and said:
“I may be a beast, but don’t I have the right to live?”
Why did I say it? I don’t know. I may never know, but I swept her into my arms and she was mine once again. After fifteen years, my little Vincent was back.
I still drive a cab, but only part time. I work for my daughter. Ironic, I know, but when the alternative is six days a week of lying, ass grabbing businessmen, it’s like heaven. I found out his name, by the way, the man’s. James Sanderson. A strong name. I visit his grave, every so often, and pay my respect to him and his wife (they lay side by side). But I still keep the picture, tucked in my pocket.
You know, sometimes people lose sight of what matters most in life. Sometimes people just give up. But you know what I think? I think sometimes, a beast may die, so a man can be reborn.
