Moondogs by Alexander Yates

need to rush so much.”
    The driver sniffs. He rubs his face with his wrist. They come to a red light and stop beside a little white cathedral in stucco Gothic style—
Iglesia Ni Kristo
written in grand yellow letters above the door. The light turns green, but the taxi does not move. The driver looks down each street, as though making up his mind, and then turns. Makati is ahead of them now, the skyline blurred by smog. He must have decided to stop jerking Howard around.
    The road widens and it begins to drizzle. A cloth billboard advertising skin whitener whips and drips like a sail. The taxi driver tailgates a brightly decorated jeepney—the only other vehicle on the road. Even through the rain Howard can clearly read
Ethel, Gemini
and
Bless Our
Trip
hand-painted on the rear mudflaps. Then, just as they emerge from under a series of overpasses, just as Howard recognizes the pink obelisk of his hotel not two miles away, the driver turns onto a quiet residential side street.
    “Enough,” Howard says, his patience at its end. “Makati Ave is back that way. You want your hundred, or not?”
    The driver ignores him. The rain thickens and the taxi slows. It shudders to a sudden halt beneath a broken streetlight. The driver stares at the wheel. He stomps on the clutch and shifts jerkily through each gear.
    “You hear me?”
    “Something’s wrong,” the driver says.
    “Yeah? What?”
    The driver gives a kind of shrug. “Broken,” he says. He scratches his cheeks and upper lip. He looks out the windows. The rain sounds like stones on the dented taxi roof. The street is quiet and dark, little town-houses on each side sealed up like ship hulls against the ocean.
    “It’s not broken,” Howard says, unable to believe he has to go through this bullshit again. He’s been robbed twice this year already—three times if you count pickpockets. “Let’s get this over with,” he says. “How much do you want?”
    The driver smiles sheepishly and says: “Wait. I fix it.” Without another word he jumps out and hurries across the street. He pounds hard on a closed door, yelling something in Tagalog, getting soaked by the rain.
    Howard looks out the back for signs of life, but everything is empty. He calls the police and tells them he’s getting robbed. No, he hasn’t been hurt. He doesn’t think he will be. Where is he? In a taxi. Somewhere north of Makati—he can see the Shangri-La from here. The license plate? Hold on, he’ll check.
    Howard puts a foot out of the taxi, keeping an eye on the driver as he does so. The banged-upon door suddenly opens and light pours out from inside, illuminating a corridor of raindrops. A large, rectangular face juts out into the rain. The two men speak and look back atthe taxi. The large man disappears and emerges seconds later with a length of PVC pipe in his hand. Nausea hits Howard hard. This is not a petty-theft situation. The depth to which he’s misjudged it opens below him like a hole in the asphalt. He has just enough time to slip his foot back inside and lock all four doors before the driver and his enormous friend reach the cab. They try each of the handles, tugging hard and cursing. Howard realizes that the driver, in his haste, has left the keys in the ignition. He reaches and stretches, but it’s no use. He’s too big to slide up to the wheel; he’ll never fit between the seats.
    “They’re going to kill me,” Howard says to the dispatcher. “They’re going to kill me.”
    “You’ll have to stop shouting,” the dispatcher says. “I can’t understand you.”
    But it’s not Howard that’s shouting. It’s the men outside the taxi. Saying: “Open the door or we open you!”
    “I’m sorry sir,” the dispatcher says, “will you please stay on the line, please?”
    Howard does not stay on the line. He hangs up and begins scrolling through numbers again. Why are there so fucking many of them? Why save the numbers for
three
florists? Why not just pick his