A knock on my passenger-door window. I snapped out of my reverie. I hit a button. The glass lowered down. I was now facing a woman in her late sixties or thereabouts, with silver hair, a thin, angular face, very pale complexion. Someone who dressed simply (a plain cream-colored dress), who didn’t do the LA bling thing. She carried a large dark blue canvas holdall with that morning’s editions of the New York Times and the LA Times.

‘Brendan?’

I glanced at the screen.

‘Elise?’

She nodded and got in.

‘And how are you today?’ she asked.

‘I’m good. And you?’

‘As good as one can be – given the way of the world right now.’

‘I hear you, ma’am. We’re heading to Van Nuys, right?’

‘That is right, sir.’

She settled back into the seat. I pulled out into the road. She asked me to tune in to the local NPR station – ‘so we can get all the bad news of the day’.

I did as asked. I got us out onto the highway. As indicated on my GPS the traffic was classic mid-afternoon-on-the-405-going-north crap. I asked my fare:

‘You in a hurry?’

She glanced at her watch.

‘The appointment is at six-thirty. Which means I have to be there for six. A little earlier if you could do that …’

I glanced at the GPS. Our ETA was: 6.01 p.m.

‘It’ll be touch and go,’ I said. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘I’m sure you will.’

A small smile on her lips as she said that, then she turned to her newspapers. On the radio there was a news report about an anti-immigrant rally near the Mexican border and a senator from Texas saying we were in danger of being overrun by ‘people we don’t want. People who don’t speak our language, who don’t understand our values, who want to take away our jobs, who endanger our communities.’

The woman put down her newspaper, her face scrunched up.

‘What an idiot,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should be listening to nothing,’ she said.

‘Nothing is something we can do,’ I said, hitting the off button.

I saw her acknowledge this with a nod. I felt uneasy glancing at her in the rearview mirror. I kept trying to look ahead, not wanting a repeat of that girl earlier.

Elise turned back to her newspapers. When she looked up to ask how we were doing, she saw me glance at her in the mirror. She smiled. A tight smile. But a smile. I was relieved. I looked at the GPS.

‘A half-mile and we are free of this,’ I told her.

The GPS never lies. Three minutes later we stopped crawling. I pushed the pedal down. We reached 70 mph. I told her:

‘I am determined to get you to your appointment by 6 p.m.’

‘That is most kind of you, Brendan.’