Midnight Taxi Tango by Daniel José Older

in the concerned way but not in the throw-off way either; she really wants to know.
    Anyway, I don’t think she’s into women, especially not middle-aged skinny butch ones with salt-and-pepper hair and angry lines in their faces and memories of vanished lovers tattooed across their sleepless nights.
    And anyway, I’m not sixteen anymore. In fact, I’m not even forty anymore, and I’m not here for the quick thrill of teaching straight girls that what they really want is this, and this, and this. Been there, done that. Far too many times.
    And anyway: Angie.
    So I nod. Yes, there’s a glint in my eye. I can’t help that; it’s who I am. But I keep it to the trivial bullshit, and then we roll out into the midnight streets of Bushwick to whatever fancy scum made the call tonight.
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    It’s one of those suburban blocks. Trees and pretty old houses that Germans and Russians abandoned in terror when we Puerto Ricans started moving in a few decades back. This one is all dark with a well-manicured lawn and draped windows, just like all the other ones. In other words, it gives me nothing. If it were a face, it’d be a blank stare. I don’t like it.
    â€œYou want me to come in with you?” My voice is raspy, disarming at first, but it turns out to be sexy when I’m whispering late at night. I put a cigarette to my lips and then take it out again because I quit smoking last week and I really mean it this time.
    Shelly rolls her eyes in the rearview. “You’re such a worrywart.” She finishes putting her lipstick on, atrocious pink against her light brown skin, and flutters her lashes. She’s Trini, I think, mostly Indian; she’s getting a master’s in social work and has a set of tits that can call you from across a room, but her swagger’s a little pressed, if you ask me. She’s better when she just stays genuine.
    I’d tell her that, but she might either slap me or fall in love with me. Probably both. Instead I just mutter, “Okay,” and look out the window.
    When the ritual of mirror coquetry is done, Shelly clomp-clomps out my cab and up the porch steps. She rings the bell twice and then tries the door; it’s open, and she walks on in.
    I shake my head. This isn’t how any of it’s supposed to go, but what can you do? Johns will always be unpredictable and finicky with their creepy little preferences and peculiarities. And I’m just the muscle. My gnawing discomforts mean nothing, especially since they’ve been there since Angie went missing six months ago, so who cares if that plunging knell of despair is a little louder than usual? I blip the base that I’m here, and the scratchy reply is in Charo’svoice. That’s one thing I’ve always respected about Charo: he runs the whole operation, both the legit end and this side of things. He keeps his eyes on the bank; he checks in with his employees; he must handle an absurd amount of cash every day, and still he sits in on the radio board when someone can’t come in. I’ve known him since he was little, know his parents and his sick fuck of an abuelo. I know them all, and believe me—Charo’s the only one worth a damn. We’ve had our disputes, but he gets it done.
    Charo wants to know if I’m okay. Stupid question and he knows it, but I guess it’s in his gentlemanly code to ask.
    â€œI’m fine,” I say. “But I don’t like this place.”
    â€œMaybe,” Charo says, “because it’s only a block or two away.”
    I’m about to ask away from what, but then rub my eyes and sigh. How could I not realize? The house that Charo and I turned inside out and upside down looking for Angie stands around the corner from here. It was the last place she was seen alive, and we took it apart a hundred different ways and didn’t bother putting it back together and found not a