To Read Ronald Suddenly

Flying across the country.  I am rather lucky to be on this flight. It looked like the drive down to Logan from my Bedford hotel at 6:00AM was going to be thirty minutes and I’d left a forty-five minute window, before what I reckoned they’d cease to check people in.    The Uber driver arrived.  He was an older gentleman with a big smile, short sleeves and a cap.  The app had already told me his name was Ronald.  We met at the back of his enormous SUV and considering his age, I suggested that my bag was a beast, which it is, and I heaved it up into the back of the car.

Ronald’s GPS was predicting we’d be there in about fifty-five minutes. That certainly wasn’t good.  I asked him if he knew the cut off on check in for domestic flights.  He suggested ninety minutes, which is the sort of sensible thing someone who doesn’t fly all the time would say.  My GPS suggested we’d be arriving at Logan around 7:27 for my 8:00AM flight.  I knew that wouldn’t do. “We’ll be able to get in the carpool lane down around exit 29.  We’ll make time there.”

Ronald drove competently but conservatively.  I had a nagging tension between my respect for this older gentleman, whom I’d only just met, driving along in his vehicle and my anxiety over all the cars speeding ahead of this to the left and to the right.  “You live over in China?  That must be quite something . . .  I had a Chinese girlfriend, you know.  She was great. Such a hard worker.  Came from a big family.”  I sensed that he was driving a bit more modestly so that he could concentrate on our conversation.  Finally I caved.  “Do you think we could cut over into that lane?”

I had, of course, assumed I’d be churning through work during my trip to the airport.  I resisted the rude gesture, in a way I wouldn’t have with a chatty Beijing cabby.  The GPS now suggested we’d get there at 7:23. A bit better.  But there were long stretches of red gridlock forecasted up ahead.  “I used to work at Wang Computers.  That was a visionary company in its day.  No one knows them now . . . Hey what do they think of Trump over there.”  I began on a diplomatic explanation of what I perceived to be the general characterization of him as a strong man, a decisive man, and that this was so far, how the state media was portraying him.  I wasn’t sure how to read Ronald suddenly.  He could certainly be a Trump supporter, and he might consider our President to be a jackass.  I couldn’t tell.  In the background was “Fox Radio” discussing the news.  A clue!  Or were the radio news and the television news two totally different entities, the way they back in New York?  Fortunately we moved on safer topics like China’s perception of Russia.

The slow progression from Exit 31 to Exit 30 was excruciating but Ronald was right, by the time we hit Medford the left lane cleared before us and we sped along now like a fish in newly aerated water.  The projected arrival time began to creep downward, as the app, smart though it was, had assumed we weren’t going to be able to make use of this lane.  7:17!  I the cut off really was 7:15, I might just be able to sweet talk my way on.  I was already checked in online.  I just needed to check in my damn bag.  “However, I don’t think my kids have any idea what Bunker Hill was.” I said as we passed the commemorative obelisk on our left.

Finally he could ask me the question I suspect he’d been wanting to ask for a while: “So Is you’re wife Chinese?” “She is.”  “I think the Asian women are so beautiful.” He offered.  I considered a number of ways to field this but involuntarily found myself audibly agreeing with his simple truth.  “I had a Mexican girlfriend for a while.  Now I find I cook Mexican food all the time.”  “Sure. It’s great food”, I suggested as we emerged from the Calahan Tunnel, stuck behind a cabbie going slow enough for Ronald to comment on.  I found myself wondering why it was Ronald had never settled down.  Was it something impermanent in Ronald's nature?  True to the GPS we pulled up to the arrivals at 7:17.  I gave Ronald a genuinely warm farewell and dashed in to find that they would have been able to serve me till as late as a half an hour before departure.  I was fine.  My first impulse was to phone Ronald and let him know that I’d made it.

Thursday, 5/18/17