This week is a lot, because one of the platforms is offering a bonus for too many rides. I have Wednesday off for the federal holiday, and Friday off becuase I'm starting to get into use or lose mode with "vacation" (i.e., full-time rideshare) days.
So I set the course for local and short and densely populated, which means Trenton.
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
About two hours into my shift, I get a ping for a guy in a not great part of town, going to a high rise that I've dropped people off at before. The high rise is also in a not great part of town.
He gets in after a couple of minutes with two young boys, and it's obvious from their conversation that (a) they both want to stay with him, and (b) only one of them is going to, because there's a shared custody situation. He's attentive to the kids and the kids aren't unruly, so it's all fine. We roll the required ten minutes without incident.
I get to the high rise, and my adult fare asks me to do the thing I was going to do anyway, which is go to the back entrance where the drop is safer, and historically where most people want to get out. It's the first of two stops. He's dropping one boy off and taking the other back to his original pick up point.
As I get close, I have to pull around a parked police car with lights flashing. Both my passenger and me check out the cops with dull surprise. He starts shepherding the kids to the entrance and elevator, then stops to talk to me.
"Normally I just get him to the elevator and he knows where to go, but with the cops here..."
I wave him on. "Go ahead, I'll be right here."
And he walks on, guiding the kids... which is when another three cop cars with full lights join the first one, and now we've got the evening's entertainment. A forceful arrest in the lobby my guy needs to go in, with resistance and swings from a guy in a white tank top, swinging without a whole lot of effect or conviction as the cops overwhelm him with tonnage.
We get a second act of entertainment as a woman who seems connected to Offender #1 decides that similar physical activities are a good idea, only with more protestions and screaming.
I could, at this moment, end the ride. There's no personal effects in the car from the passenger, rideshare does not pay nearly enough to risk much of anything for, and I might be making the cops nervous with my presence. It rarely goes well for anyone when cops are nervous.
First rule of rideshare; get home safe.
This could break that, no?
Only the whole thing seems, well, like everyone's just playing the part. No one has pulled out a serious weapon, the wild swings aren't landing, and the cops aren't going for full beatdown.
I don't feel in any way unsafe.
I feel unseen.
And, well, I'm not supposed to end a multi-stop ride unless the passenger requests it, or disappears for over five minutes.
So I look at the clock, and with two minutes left to go he texts me to say he's in the elevator again, just in time for the summer squall of cops and Jerry Springer Show guests to lose their cardio and start talking to each other like there's nothing all that special going on,
Because, well, there wasn't. It's Trenton.
My man comes back with a minute to spare. We chat a bit about his adventure, and how fortunate he was to get his charges into the elevator before the perforrmance.
For the next ten minutes on the ride back, he and I both play the role of ordinary guy with nothing to see here, both of us doing that for, I really think, the child more than each other. This boy has got enough to deal with in the world without us putting jet fuel into his reality of Childhood Trauma, so we both pretend there was nothing extraordinary going on here, or that this kind of life imitating art is, well, neither.
My passenger is grateful that I stayed, knows that I didn't have to, and... does not tip.
And I'm somehow OK with it, because not everyone can or will tip, and I suspect he's got no history of ever tipping a rideshare driver.
I drop them off and work another four hours, and speculate about long-term memories of this for the kid.
Then I come home and write this, so I don't forget.
And kind of wish I could.
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