From What Storm, What Thunder, which will be published in October by Tin House.

I’m usually talkative, you see. Not in an annoying, over-the-top kind of way, but I have people skills. In the first days of driving the cab, after a few lifts, I realized that I was supposed to be as quiet and as invisible as a fly. If I talked too much, the women clutched their purses a little closer to their bodies. The men glared at me through the rearview mirror, thinking I was insane.

The worst fares I get are from the ones who…