The cab driver played Debussy as I tried my best not to cry in the back seat. I was an hour late to a meeting at a fancy private club with a dress code on Fifth Avenue in midtown — a far cry from the strip malls and trailers that I grew up near in Texas. I had left my apartment in Williamsburg an hour early. By my estimation, I should have arrived fifteen minutes before the meeting, had time to browse the squash courts on the top floor, and sweep my way down to the grand dining room on the seventh floor with time to spare. Instead, the M train stopped running. Then the F train stopped. Stuck in the Lower East Side with no other options, I pinched my wallet and hailed a taxi. Five minutes into the ride, my driver told me that there was an accident on FDR Drive, and we would be stuck in traffic until 42nd street.
Every time I planned ahead, New York seemed to say: “Nope, not happening. We’re going to derail you.”
I was going to a meeting with self-made women about a potential publication. After struggling for years to try to become a writer or anything, I was finally being given a chance to pitch an idea. Here I was already ruining it by not being there on time.
I was crying in the backseat when my cab driver said, “I love my job. The only time I don’t love it is when I have a customer who needs to go somewhere, and I can’t do anything…
