Before going into retirement Mr. P. took a job as a Parisian taxi driver. He knew when he decided to pursue this profession that when retirement would come, his life would not be a joy ride. But life as a taxi driver is no joy ride either.
He told himself that as a taxi driver he would at least meet a whole variety of people, people with interesting lives.
Drunk actors, gay couples, glamorous models and even royals made use of his taxi over the years. Politicians who forgot that there were special limousines for them, took it too.
Mr. P. more or less got to see everyone and everything there was to see, well within the city of Paris. Everything life he witnessed was from the inside.
He probably offers shelter to criminals, and other crooks.
Some of his clients told stories about their lives. Others did not.
The complaints of the overworked people gave him the impression that he was turning into a psychologist.
On the last two Sundays I posted about notebooks, one why it is great to use them and one on why it isn’t always such a great idea. On Wednesday I will be doing a guest post on the question of why I write over at Gulara Vincent’s blog, something that made me search through my writing past. These things combined incited me to share a story that I found inside one of my old notebooks (the editing that I have done here is very minor). The truth be told, I opened the notebook on a random page, and voilà a story to share! It must have been written in September or October 2008, but I do not recall writing it at all. Seen the story and the moment that I wrote it, it was probably influenced a by my summer job as a waitress in a fancy restaurant, because many of the characters mentioned here, did cross my path.
© Solveig Werner 2015. All rights reserved.
Solveig Werner 