“Whatever you want. I got money. I mean, this ain’t all I do. I do more than drive a cab. I got a house. I got money. I could take you out, anytime, wherever you want to go … I got money.”

“Well give it to me.” I shut my eyes tight, and the rising vomit sunk down once more. I opened my eyes long enough to see his hips jerked forward as he lifted himself off the seat to reach into his left pants pocket. I had been right—a slick black pistol slid out right along with countless bills. He bent down to collect them before I could ask, and when I opened my eyes again his hands were outstretched and in them he held a pile of cash that looked like a fat, giant spider in the moonlight.

I grabbed a fistful of bills and stuffed them down my shirt, then grabbed more before those were secure in place. The more I stuffed the money, the more it seemed to fall, until I simply gave up and started to cry. Caught off guard by my reaction and change, the old man wouldn’t touch me or let down his hands. I guessed he wanted me to keep on grabbing the money, but my hands were fisted over my eyes by now. He suddenly threw the money on the seat in between us and started to neatly fold the bills. He was quick about it, but still very, very neat—like he was wrapping a present two minutes before the party. He only stopped when a police car squealed off in the distance, and he grabbed the back of the passenger’s headrest as he looked around wildly. Except for the police car, there hadn’t been any signs that we weren’t alone for a while. But when I opened my eyes, I saw a group of rowdy boys freestyling rhymes over a garbage can. There were people collecting at a bus shelter a block down. A light suddenly went on in the Laundromat, and the windows glowed a dirty gold. We both looked around, then at each other, and then all of a sudden I was in his arms. The bills smashed and crackled between us as he held on to me tight, and I cried. Not just a stream of snot or little pearls of silent tears, but that hard, long, stomach-hurting and eye-scorching kind of cry, for I don’t know how long. But at some point in the middle of the outburst he had eased back into the front seat, leaving a pile of bills stacked on the backseat as neatly as a new deck of cards.