Welcome to New York (or Newark, as the case may be)

Well. Last night, just about 24 hours ago, we were preparing to watch Caroline, or Change. This morning we were up at five British time (midnight EST) and caught British Airways across to New Jersey. Everything was uneventful. We were warned to expect bumps on the flight but there was very little turbulence to speak of. I slept a bit on the plane but didn’t finish sleeping; Philip slept a lot. We hit the turbulence as we descended in New Jersey, but landed safe and sound.

So Philip and I made it through immigration, and went on downstairs to collect our bags. We have bought some things. The bags are full now, and we will need to buy another, I think, before we go home. We squabbled over the getting of a cart — Philip made some reference to “drama” on my part — and ended up not getting one for the luggage. Good thing, in retrospect. Philip carried the suit bag, now bulging like it did when we drove across the States from Victoria, and I carried the camera and my two bags. We stood in line for a cab, and when we finally got one – driven by a tall bright-skin man with an North African aspect and some kind of Pentecostal-style Arabic lecture on the radio. Philip turned to me and said, “Next time we get a limo,” and I agreed; it’s less hassle and costs just about the same.

So off we go. The taxi driver says something about rush hour in the city and the cost of the cab ride and then we’re on the highway. I tune out. Philip and I exchange some kind of make-up words, and then I hear a tune from the front seat. It stops. The driver’s saying something, then all is quiet. I’m thinking about what I’m going to do when I get into town: Philip’s going up to the Apple Store, and I’m going to go pick up the presents I saw for Tasha and look for an overnight bag in Times Square. I’m going to try and get a bath and a nap too. There’s a tune from the front seat again, and then.

BLAM.

The next thing I know, there’s the smell of burning rubber and the taxi is swerving across the highway. We’re heading for an exit ramp, we’re doing a 360 turn, we’re turning round to face the oncoming traffic. I’m thinking I should’ve done up my seatbelt when the door on Philip’s side of the car swings open and I see my husband fall out of the car onto the highway. I’m hearing myself say “Oh, God, oh, God,” which is an extension of the prayer I said as we pulled off from the terminal and I thought the taxi was going a little fast, a prayer that I said as we sped under an underpass: Dear Lord, please don’t bring us safe all the way from London to die on the road. I know more people die in traffic accidents than in plane crashes. Don’t let it be us, and I’m seeing my husband fall out of the car holding onto the door handle and be dragged on the highway. “Let go, Philip, let go!” I yell, and he’s letting go and the car’s stopping. I can’t see him. I can’t see anything. All I know is that I’m smelling burned rubber and the car is stopping and the door is open and my husband is not in the car. I get out and there he is lying on the highway. But he’s moving. There is a bank of cars coming towards us in every lane of the highway but they’re far away and we haven’t hit anything but the two verges of the road and maybe a median, and he can stand up. I pull him over to the side of the road and ask him if he’s okay, and he says he thinks so. He looks at his left hand and sees red on it and thinks he’s bleeding. “Did you hit your head?” I ask, and he says he’s bleeding, but he’s not. Nothing seems to be hurt except the bruises on his fingers where he broke his fall out of the door. I’ve got out of the car with my bag and the camera and now we’re standing on the side of the road, because I know for sure that if the cars that are coming slam into the taxi I am not going to be in it and Philip is not going to be in it and my computer is not going to be in it. But the cars don’t slam into anything, they just blow their horns and swerve around the taxi, which the driver has driven onto the side lane. Philip starts to cross the road to the taxi. The driver is shocked out of his skull and he says he’s going to put us in another cab. He flags another one down, a cab with two women in it and being driven by a black guy with an accent, and we get into it.

As we drive into town, I’m still wondering whether Philip is all right. He doesn’t know yet; when you’re in shock you don’t feel pain. But he is not bleeding, he’s not cut, his clothes are not torn, he appears to be fine. I’m thinking we should maybe go to a hospital but I know that he is not going to agree to that, and then there’s the question of insurance and Les Miserables tonight and getting back to Nassau on Sunday. So I decide we’ll just wait and see how he is when we get out of the cab finally in Manhattan at the Casablanca.

The new taxi driver, who drives far more safely, and who, it turns out, is from Haiti and knows people in Nassau (natch), asks us what happened and Philip tells him that the other driver was going far too fast and kept answering his cell phone. The last tune I heard was another call coming in, and he picked it up and looked at it and that was when he hit the verge. And then he slammed on the brakes and did the 360. We were lucky or blessed or miraculously protected, because it’s rush hour and the cab was alone on the road — otherwise we would have been in a multi-car pile-up and I would probably be a widow today. But instead Philip has walked away.

So anyway. I wrote this at his request. He told me to get it down while it’s still fresh in my mind. Fresh? I’m still smelling burning rubber. I’m still seeing him falling out of the car and lying in the road and I’m still not believing what I’m seeing.

And I’m still thanking God as I did: oh, God, thank God.

Amen.