Sean Tarjoto
Creative Writing II
Stephen Policoff
30 January 2000
I’d Rather Take the Subway
	The reason that Maxie had tried to drive the cab into the left side of the street, the side where, in the western world, oncoming traffic tended to travel, and head-on collisions were usually unavoidable, was to get away from the truck weaving violently between sedans and SUVs behind her. 
	"Jesus Christ!" Inside the rearview mirror Maxie saw the semi crushing the side of a yellow Ford, the back new Beetle, and the entirety of a parked motorcycle.  This had been going on for an impossible twenty minutes.  She knew the city well, and she knew shortcuts, as well as crowded streets.  She got plenty of fares.  She was a good cabbie. And now, she was trying to be killed. 
	She looked at the gas gauge. She was driving on fumes. Once, she'd taken a newlywed couple across the Tri-State area on less than a quarter tank.  Once they'd arrived at a small motel somewhere just short of New Haven she'd realized they'd had to been driving for at least an hour on empty.  One of those miracles.  The groom gave her a $100 tip.
	Sirens.  The cops.  For once, she was glad.  The truck was now gaining dangerously on her rear bumper and only her sheering unadulterated honking and 70's music on the radio was keeping her from making any unnecessary collisions. She supposed that maybe it was the fact the sound of a truck pummeling into everything not moving enough was enough to clear the street in front of her.
	She squinted, something was ahead.  It was, shit, a barricade.  The cops had made a fucking barricade to stop the truck.  They didn't understand that it was not a getaway the driver desired, it was the complete fucking annihilation of a certain cabbie called Maxie who once opened the door to a man named Al Giriardini, Mafia boss not at large. Not until she'd crashed into a cop car on 42nd street.  
	It looked almost as if that was Al himself careening through the streets behind her, hell-bent on suicide-homocide.  Word was that as soon as he'd gotten out his 22 year old nephew Bennie had taken on the family business, and that Al was no longer a bargaining chip, nor even a potential dinner date, having been implicated as a canary,  a squealer, a dirty rat.  In exchange for some information was his immunity (which Maxie wondered if he would use if he survived the upcoming traffic problem). However, it was not implicit that once the fuzz started systematically cooking the spaghetti at some the Giriardini's places of frequentation the amount of immunity Al would be given by Bennie was about the same as if Bennie started investing in startup Internet technologies as a support stock investment for the pizza delivery business which was really a cover for a "waste management" organization whose employees tended to pack a .45 caliber instead of the 2 pound pie the schmoe they were about to kill had just ordered in their recycled delivery boxes (recycled, because they never threw the box away with the body, just to be safe). 
	It was ironic, really. Maxie was going to die because of a car crash. She'd been cabbing for twenty years and in one serenpiditious accident her entire life was flashing before her eyes.  Much of it seemed to be avenues and concrete. For a moment, she wished the Viagara ad on the roof of the cab wasn't there.
	The cops were pulling out there shotguns and lining up behind their car doors. It was inevitable that they would need to shoot; if not to stop the truck driver from opening new spots in the police force but only because this was suddenly a very unusual game of chicken.  
	Maxie gripped the wheel. She braced. She thought about how violent this was going to be. About how there weren't any streets to turn into. About how a good old fashioned miracle would do wonders right now.  How she didn't shower today.  
	A shot rung out hitting the windshield and blowing her driver rearview off.  Shit! They're shooting at me! I'm gonna get shot! For a brief moment she wondered why she was suprised before another shot killed the front wheel.  The web of shattered glass made it impossible to see, and Maxie had no idea which way to swerve.  She took a guess and made a left.  She was, after all, left-handed. For Maxie, there was a moment of slowness, and then black.

	The garbage heap had stopped the car, and her seatbelt stopped Maxie.  When she regained cosciousness, she groaned, feeling the bruise on her forehead and the kink in her shoulder.  
	"Ma'am, can you hear me?"
	"Mmm. What?"
	"Can you tell me your name?"

	Lights. Flashlights. Those little tiny annoying ones you could beat small mice with and still not gain a suitable reaction.  
	"Let's saw this shit out... Joe, get the stretch."
	It was impossible to separate the cars from the the truck, much less the street from Al Giriardini.  He had collided with the barricade, passing Maxie's cab completely when the front left wheel was obliterated.  Her left-handedness had only made the car swerve faster out the way.  Giriardini had flung a 100 feet from the point of impact, smearing his vital organs across 82nd, 83rd, and 84th streets. 
	As Maxie saw herself being lifted into an ambulance, one of the paramedics said to her, "You're very lucky ma'am." 
	"What?"
	And another paramedic said, while squeezing a plasma bag, "You're lucky that that Viagra sign was there, lady.  Great moving target."