Everyone has a story that starts with “me and a taxi driver.” But today I’ve got one not everyone can boast about. TODAY I GOT THROWN OUT OF A TAXI! Literally. A typical sinister white Zhiguli-6 (a Soviet-era Lada model) by Maryino metro station. We agreed on 500 rubles to Novokuznetskaya. We’re driving. At the intersection with Volgogradsky Prospekt, there’s a monster traffic jam. You don’t often see one like that even on a weekday. We sit there for about forty minutes. The guy starts whining: What an idiot I was to take this fare — I could’ve been drinking beer by the Moscow River by now. Then he turns to me: maybe take the metro? So of course I say: man, if I’d wanted to take the metro, I wouldn’t have gotten into your gleaming white limousine. Let’s go. We get to the cause of the jam — some stupid chick drove under a truck at the intersection — and he starts yelling at them from inside the car. We go another hundred meters or so, then he turns off. “That’s it,” he says, “I’m not taking you any farther, you’ve ruined my mood.” At that point I was so stunned that I just got out of the car in silence and slammed the door as hard as I could. Of course, from there I got a ride to the office for 100 rubles. So the cheeky owner of that Zhiguli only cheated himself. But I’m still in shock. It feels like some fundamental laws of the universe are collapsing. People get thrown out of taxis now. It’s a SIGN. The Earth’s axis is getting closer and closer.
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