“Just drive,” she said. “South. Anywhere south.”
Ivan’s throat tightened. He reached up and tapped the laminated card on the visor. “This,” he said quietly, “is everything. The last thing. You hold onto the last thing.” taxi vocational licence
The taxi vocational licence was the last rung on a ladder that led out of a pit. He’d studied for it in the back of a 24-hour laundromat, the smell of bleach stinging his eyes as he memorised the byzantine codes of the Public Carriage Office. He passed the knowledge test—the “Knowledge,” they called it—not of the city’s streets, but of its arteries. Which alley bypasses the theatre crush at 11 PM. Which rank outside the station has the angry, tipping miser. Which hotel concierge slips you a tenner for a quiet, unmetered run. “Just drive,” she said
Ivan glanced in the rearview. She was maybe forty, wearing a coat that cost more than his car, but her eyes had that hollow look he knew too well. The look of a person whose architecture had also collapsed. He reached up and tapped the laminated card on the visor