Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver: Angels and Demons
Episode 43 in a series of true rideshare stories
They're heading to a show in their Halloween costumes, though I have my suspicions as to whether they're drinking age or whether they have fake IDs. They're college girls, I think, considering one of them lives in my building and my apartment is across the street from the campus.
“Can you guess what our costumes are?” one of them asks, for some reason. One of them is an angel and one of them is a demon and it's obvious. A four-year-old could guess it.
“Are you my conscience?” I ask, and they give me a weird look. I clarify, “I recognize you from my shoulders every time I have to make a difficult decision.”
They laugh.
Years ago, I wrote a novel called One-Night Stan's, which took place on “afterlife night” at the titular strip club, with all of the performers dressed as angels and demons and dancing to appropriate songs. Thinking of this, I put on Heaven and Hell by Black Sabbath and tell the girls it's their song. I think they're too young to know it, but Demon Girl in particular rocks out to it anyway.
“You should clock out and come hang out at the club with us,” says Demon Girl.
I tell her no thanks. For one thing I've been running people to this venue all night and it's clearly a shoulder-to-shoulder kind of event with various DJs playing so loud you have to scream into the ears of the people next to you to be heard—not my scene. I also need to make money and the weekend is the best time to do it. But the excuse I use is that I'm almost finished with a sober October and it's too late to mess it up now.
In a beautiful piece of irony that I seem to be the only one to notice, Angel Girl starts going, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Get those last couple days in,” while Demon Girl says, “Pff, who cares? It's two days. You basically succeeded already. Come get a drink. It's Halloweekend.” They become the angel and demon on my shoulders like I labeled them when they first got in the car. It makes me smile. One of those real-life moments that, if you wrote it into a movie, people would go, “This is pretty on-the-nose. Can’t we find a more subtle way to do it?”
I don't go to the show with them, but a part of me wonders whether it was the right call—whether I’m too in the habit of making practical choices over fun ones.
However, the next fare I pick up is a couple about my age, who are leaving the show. They say, “Oh God, it sucked! It's so crowded you can't move, and the music is way too loud. You can't get to the bar, and if you do, everything costs a fortune. I don't know what the hell we were thinking!”
I nod a silent thanks to the angel on one shoulder. There but for the grace of God go I.
Memoirs of a Rideshare Driver is a series that tells true stories of my 10,000+ trips as a rideshare driver. I will post them every Monday.