a thousand furnished rooms

As soon as we pulled from the curb, my driver started talking over his radio. At first I thought it was simply a call into his dispatcher, but then I realized he was speaking into one of those cell phones that also act as radios. He held the phone open and a few feet from his face and spoke at great length, in Hindi. I could barely hear the response from his listener, but she was clearly female, and she said perhaps 5 words to his 500.

More interesting was the rhythm of his voice. He was speaking rapidly, not quite as quickly as an auction caller but faster than a Catholic priest moving through the most rote portions of the Mass. He was also clearly repeating himself at times, not, it seemed to me, out of nervousness but in the way mobile phone users do when they suspect they have hit and returned from a dead cell. Of course, I had no idea what he was talking about. He didn't seem particularly upset, but nor was he amused or bored. I wondered, with how quiet his listener was and how musical his speech was, if he were perhaps reciting something or offering some kind of blessing.

Often when I am in a car I like to imagine the passing scenery as the opening scene from a movie that I will one day produce; this works especially well when I have the right music playing—the right soundtrack. New York City has perhaps been the setting for more movies than any other locale, and it's easy to see why. I never tire of looking at the streetscape in Manhattan. The tumble of high-brow and low-brow—Smith Barney meets The Metropolitan Opera meets Chip's Bagel and Brew—and the 24-hour flow of people and cars. Listening to my driver, I begin to think that perhaps New York City, now East 51st Street now Lexington Avenue, is the opening scene in some movie he is envisioning. The neon signs alone seem as if they could light the world, and his voice is urging me to understand this.