We don’t take cabs

The family visited their daughter in New York. They walked all over the city. Uptown. Downtown. Midtown. West Side. East Side. Central Park. It began to rain very heavily. The sky darkened and locked. There was thunder and lightning and pelting rain. The sidewalks were wiped of people like a Powerpoint transition. Everyone huddled under awnings and overhangs and store entrances. The streets ran like rivers and yellow cabs sluiced water up over the sidewalks almost to the walls. The family pressed themselves into a doorway taking the least amount of space without actually touching. Suddenly the daughter leapt out and hailed a cab. It stopped and she hustled the family in. Next minute everyone, scattered with diamonds of rain, was wedged shoulder-to-shoulder in the cab. There was an awkward silence. Then, We don’t take cabs, someone ventured. I know, said the daughter. But that rain. And I thought …. Everyone sat tight-lipped, hurtling through Manhattan under the slicing rain.