My dad talked that way. ‘I don’t got the time for this, sonny boy.’ Never the name he gave me: Brendan. Never the ‘Brennie’ that my mom called me. Sonny boy. That was Dad. Always keeping me at an emotional distance. Always letting me know: I ain’t there.

Dad. No formal education … but he prided himself on reading the LA Times cover to cover every day. ‘Don’t got the smarts to do Electrical Engineering like sonny boy here.’ But Dad still had smarts – even if his grammar was a little left field from time to time. The woman in my back seat also had smarts and a far higher degree of education than my father. But the ‘don’t got’ was a hint of origins as no-frills and basic as my own. We’ve all got our way of making it through the day. Hers was ‘no mercy’ repartee.

‘You expect compassion? Really? That’s the word you want to use here: compassion? You? Asking for lenience, commiseration? You? Maybe you’d like me to throw in “grace” and “benevolence” as part of the package … which, I got to tell you, is going to land on your doorstep on the 12th of Never.’

Did I see in the rearview a flash of a killer smile behind the killer patter? Did that ‘I crush ants like you’ instinct keep down all the loneliness going on inside her?

We were now hitting the intersection of Beverly and Wilshire. Pulling up in front of a big-deal building with about eight high-end law firms occupying all its square footage. I stopped outside its chrome-and-glass frontage. Ms Machine Gun Talk kept doing just that: talking. Rat-tat-tat. I braked. I shifted into park. She slid across the seat, her menace monologue still carrying on. She opened the door. She put her legs onto the pavement. She volted herself up, forward motion propelling her toward the corporate doors facing her.

‘Have a nice …’ I said just as her left hand remembered to slam the door behind her.

But Ms Machine Gun Talk was gone from the car, gone from my story.

Pickup number three was coming out of the same building. A bookish guy, late thirties. Black jeans. A black T-shirt. Black Adidas sneakers. Too cool for school black glasses. A black leather backpack over one shoulder, an Apple Book under his arm.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

A guy doing nice. A climate change from my last two fares.

‘Going okay,’ I said. ‘Just ending my first hour.’

‘With how many more to go?’

But his phone rang. He actually said ‘Excuse me’ and was into a conversation straightaway.