Deepak Chopra, Limo Driver???

"Do you feel tired?”

I asked him, after I noticed the rectangular piece of face reflected on the rearview mirror. His eyes were squinting, closing shut for long periods of time, which meant one of two things: either the April sunshine was too bright, or he was over-worked, too tired to be driving.

Although my life wasn't exactly stellar at the moment, or for the past oh, few years or so, the thought of hitting the guard rail, plunging into the East River, choking on water, dying a slow, painful, agonizing death didn't appeal to me at the moment. Even if it made it to New York 1 and The Post. Even if they put up a hot picture of me and did a good write-up.

What I should have said was:

“Are you falling asleep?"

I felt momentarily pathetic, to think that even with a total stranger I felt the need to measure my words, so as to not hurt, not offend, not something. But I digress.

I had been watching him, the way he felt no qualms about taking his shoe off, bending his leg, sitting on his foot, so that from the back seat, I could see his left sole staring at me, squished in between his right thigh and the car seat. He had no qualms about spitting out the window, and breaking and accelerating at such a rate that I felt my stomach churn and literally beg me to just get off that car, out of my body, and meet me back at JFK.

My nausea subsided for a moment, when he responded to my question by saying that that's how he reflected about his life, by closing his eyes every few seconds or so, almost as if to visualize his problems, his whole existence, his heartache.

Not exactly the answer I expected. What I did expect was more along the lines of:

"No, Miss, don't worry, I'm awake", followed by silence. End of story. But not yet.

Within 30 seconds, he volunteered that this was his preferred manner to reflect about his family, about coming to this country, about keeping up with the Sri Lankan Joneses and becoming rich like them, about owning a house in Queens within eight years of living in New York.

This is also how he thinks of how his wife cheated on him and he has proof. And by proof, he means telephone-recording proof, the kind of proof that parrots the voices of the involved saying sweet nothings to one another, planning their next rendezvous, probably her voice complaining about her marriage, possibly recounting the details of the last meeting.

With my stomach temporarily at peace with me, and with my torso leaning me forward, I wanted to know more:

"Are you divorcing her?" "Do you ever confront her about it?"
He mumbles something about divorce being "bad for the kids", and "an embarrassment in my culture", and besides, the guy the wife cheated with moved back to Sri Lanka and married someone else anyway.

How easy it was for him to just accept all of this was beyond me.
I was already analyzing the entire situation, and imagining me in it. No amount of culture or societal embarrassment would keep me from going into a spiral of obsessive ruminations so deep and constant that my only option would be to sever any and all ties to this person.

Instead of discussing it with her, he prefers the relief of talking to his friends about it and, much to my surprise, to total strangers like me.
Supposedly that morning, just by my asking him about it, he already felt better.

He finished by presenting me with a little gem that may as well have come from the mouth of Deepak Chopra, Dr. Phil , some Kabbalah teaching, or whatever new-age religion/ philosophy du jour we have today may give:

"Moments of happiness are very short -lived, and to get to them, we must accept and be able to live through the hard, unhappy moments in life".

Uh, can I have that delivered with a cup of coffee every morning, please? Nothing like a little dose of reality right before I board a 3 hour flight to Florida.

This whole exchange lasted from the entrance to JFK until we pulled up curbside at the Jetblue area, a whole of no more than three minutes.

By that point he was done, relieved of his life burden for the morning, and well enough to switch topics and start giving me advice about how he was able to buy his pride-and-joy abode in Queens.

"It's easier with an all -cash business. With a job like yours, miss, it's harder to make that kind of money."

Not wanting to hear any details of how he probably defrauded his company, I signed the credit card voucher, gave him a $7 dollar tip and started to walk towards the sliding doors of the terminal.

As I stop and turn around to take one last look, I see his car pulling away from the curb, driver still squinting, left leg still bent under his right thigh, but this time chatting away on his cell phone, as if nothing had ever happened.