Esteban had been driving at night for eleven years.
He liked it, or he had convinced himself he liked it, which amounts to the same thing when you've been doing something for eleven years. The city at the small hours was a different city, cleaner, quieter, without the ugly hurry of the day. And the car was his, his cabin, his low music, his thermos of coffee.
The only thing that had been wearing down over the years was the passengers.
Before, they talked. They'd get in and tell him about their lives, the night they were coming from, the woman who had left them, the business that was going to make them rich. Esteban listened. He was good at listening. For many people, he had been the last person they spoke to before arriving at an empty house.
Now they got in with their earphones already in. They said the address while looking at their phone and didn't look up again. They paid through the app, without touching him, without looking at him. They got out. Like packages that deliver themselves.
Esteban had a daughter in another city who called less and less.
He had an apartment where the only voice, upon arriving, was the refrigerator.
He was fifty-nine years old, and he had started to notice that entire nights went by without anyone saying his name.
That night he picked him up at a corner with nothing on it, around three in the morning, a man in a long coat who raised his hand the old way.
—Good evening —the man said as he got in.
And something inside Esteban came loose in his chest, because it had been weeks since anyone said good evening to him.
They talked.
He couldn't reconstruct what about. About the city, about how it had changed. About how nobody converses anymore. About growing old. The man had a calm voice, unhurried, and a way of asking questions that made you want to answer honestly. He asked about Esteban's daughter. Esteban told him things he didn't tell anyone, right there, watching the road, the two of them reflected in the mirror and the other one in the darkness behind.
It was the best hour Esteban had spent in a long time.
He dropped him off where he'd been asked, another empty street, not a single lit doorway.
The man stood for a moment beside the open window, before leaving.
—Thank you for the ride —he said. —It had been a long time since anyone talked to me.
And he walked off into the dark, slowly, until Esteban could no longer see him.
Fleet regulations: interior camera, audio and video, running for the entire shift.
Esteban almost never looked at it. That night he did, at home, before sleep, because he wanted to see the man in the coat again, to put a face to him calmly, to revisit the conversation.
He skipped forward to around three in the morning.
The car stops at the corner with nothing on it. The rear door opens. It closes.
And the back seat is empty.
Empty for the whole hour. The seatbelt unbuckled, the leather smooth, no one. The car pulls away on its own, drives, stops at traffic lights, turns, while Esteban, in the driver's seat, talks.
Talks to the empty seat.
He smiles. He nods. He listens. He laughs at something. A whole hour of a man alone conversing with no one in a moving car.
But the audio.
The audio had both voices.
Esteban's, and the other one, the calm one, perfectly clear, answering, asking about his daughter, saying good evening. He turned the volume all the way up. It wasn't an echo, it wasn't his own voice altered. It was another man, speaking, clearly, in a seat where the camera swore there was no one.
And at the end, distinct, the last sentence, directed at an Esteban who on screen was completely alone:
—Thank you for the ride. It had been a long time since anyone talked to me.
Esteban didn't delete the file.
He kept it.
And that night, before sleep, he listened to it again. Just the audio. With his eyes closed. The way you put on a song a second time.
He came back.
Not that night, nor the next, but he came back. The same corner, the same hour, the same calm voice getting into the seat that no camera could fill.
And Esteban, who should have been frightened, who at first had been, stopped being frightened.
Because it was good company. Because the conversation was real even if the man wasn't. Because in eleven years of late nights, that voice was the only thing that asked how he was doing and waited for the answer.
He learned the corner. He learned the hour. He started being there, around three in the morning, with no fare, waiting. He turned off the app during that window so no other rides would come in, the real ones, the earphone-and-silence ones. Why bother. He had someone to talk to.
The world, all around, went on thinning, and he grew happier with each night.
His daughter left a couple of messages he didn't answer, and then stopped leaving them. The dispatcher asked him once, carefully, if he was okay, that they'd seen him making a lot of empty loops, that he seemed to be talking to himself on camera. Esteban said yes, he was fine. And it was true. He wasn't alone. He stopped dropping by the bar where the other drivers gathered. Why bother.
The man in the coat, little by little, stopped asking about his daughter.
He asked instead that they take another loop. That the night was lovely. That he should stay a while.
And the rides grew longer, heading nowhere.
One night, any night, Esteban understood what the man in the coat was.
Not a dead man. Not a demon. None of that.
The loneliest thing on the whole road. Something that had once driven at night, or waited at night, or lived through nights, until the world stopped looking at it. And that now wandered from corner to corner, looking for the next one, the loneliest of all those still awake, to keep it company.
Because company was the only thing it knew how to give.
And by giving it, whether it meant to or not, it was making him the same as itself.
The phrase, the one that the first night had seemed like the passenger's sadness, Esteban finally understood whose it was.
"It had been a long time since anyone talked to me."
It was not the man in the coat's past.
It was Esteban's future.
The last time he looked at the camera it was out of habit, no longer expecting anything.
He skipped forward to around three in the morning.
The car moved through the empty city, slowly, looping toward nowhere, stopping at red lights even though there wasn't a soul to hit.
The back seat, empty. As always.
But this time the front seat too.
The driver's seat, empty. The steering wheel turning by itself on the curves. The entire car driving itself through the small hours without a body inside, not in the back, not in the front, not a single one.
And the audio, full.
Both voices. The man in the coat's, calm. And Esteban's, happy, alive, talking, laughing, asking to take another loop because the night was lovely.
Two men talking through the night, at ease, in each other's company.
And no one, absolutely no one, in the car.
Esteban watched the screen for a long time.
He didn't feel horror. That was the worst of it, that he no longer felt horror. He felt something close to arriving home.
Because there was no longer anyone in the world who could see him. And he didn't mind. He had someone to talk to. He would always have that now, the two voices alone in a car going nowhere through a sleeping city.
He turned off the screen.
He went down to the garage.
He sat behind the wheel, in the darkness, and waited for three in the morning, the way you wait for a friend.
And when the calm voice said good evening from the back seat, Esteban, for the first time, answered with the whole sentence.
—Thank you for the company. It had been a long time since anyone talked to me.
And he started the engine.