He sits up, slowly, and inclines slightly in her direction. “I know,” she says quietly and withdraws. “You were already trying to make it up to me,” he says, slowly and miserably, each syllable seeming to require tumultuous effort. I feel the need to verbally verify and then pull us gently away from the curb. I raise my eyebrows into the rearview mirror and she nods almost imperceptibly. I’m not wild about their disparate enthusiasm for departing and pause while she checks with him once more. She turns to the man in the car, who is slumped over, inattentive, refusing his seatbelt. She asks if we can make two stops and I readily agree, grateful for the extra distance on a slow night.
I confirm the name (it’s the woman’s) and then swipe to start the ride, confirming the address. I wonder if this is the time that I’ve long anticipated when a Good Samaritan calls an Uber for a homeless individual and I ferry them to their last remaining relative who hasn’t given up on them. The woman is young and put together and almost pretty the man is disheveled and haggard and could pass for homeless. I pull up alongside to see a mismatched couple looking distraught on the street corner in front of the welcoming glow of the 24-hour greasy spoon. Plus, folks leaving the Clover are usually sobering up a little. This is a great pickup spot because Dumaine, which has been blocked for construction on and off the last few months, is one of the only northbound one-ways in the Quarter that is accessible from both directions of Decatur, itself the best east-west thoroughfare through the area.
A ping calls me just around the corner, to the Clover Grill, a kind of old-school one-off Waffle House at Bourbon and Dumaine, in the heart of the eastern Quarter. It’s always in this mood, at this time of night, when people see witches or spirits or alien craft or shadowy government agents. I’m thinking about how many more riders will need Ubers tonight and when I should get home and whether that particular shape of fog looks like it could hide an apparition and what I would do if something incontrovertibly anachronistic happened right in front of me. I’m in the eastern part of the Quarter that’s foggy and deserted and makes you think a pirate might stumble out of one of the beautiful shutter-doored two-story shotgun homes lining the street. I’m trawling around the French Quarter at an almost pre-dawn hour.