Excerpt of Joyride by Ellen Meister

If you’d met Joybird Martin even once, you’d have no trouble guessing which of the vehicles idling in front of the Merrill Lynch building was hers. It was the pale-blue Honda Accord—earnest and dependable—standing out like a cheerful plastic bead in a string of colossal black pearls. The car in front of her pulled out, and Joybird edged forward, unintimidated by the gleaming Navigators, Range Rovers, Escalades, and other behemoths jockeying for position on the Lower Manhattan roadway.

She didn’t think of herself as aggressive, just determined to be in a convenient spot for her Uber customer, because she knew these Wall Street types were easily agitated. And Joybird Martin did not want to be the source of anyone’s angst. She wanted—from the soft center of her tender heart—to be the one who delivered bliss.

She put in her earbuds and opened the Duolingo app on her phone to practice some Spanish while waiting for her rider. The cacophony of New York City’s horns, motors, and underground rumbles was immediately replaced by the app’s gentle intonations. “Mi padre es elegante,” said the disembodied female. Joybird did her sincere best to repeat it with the same accent. Still, she laughed, because no, he most certainly wasn’t.

She continued listening to the soothing voice. “Mi padre es inteligente,” it said. Fair enough, Joybird thought, and clicked through to the next part of the familia section.

There was a knock on the passenger-side window. She rolled it down and gave the man a smile, trying not to startle at his appearance. He wasn’t just handsome—he was heartthrob handsome.

Like a cross between a young Denzel Washington and that actor with a French name she suddenly couldn’t remember. Only this guy sported stylishly futuristic glasses, as if he had something to prove. Joybird tried to settle herself. So what if he was tall, dark, and smoldering? It meant nothing to her.

“I’m Devon Cato,” he said in a voice as assertive as a newscaster’s. He was wearing an impeccable Italian suit and the stoic expression of someone repressing pain. “Can you unlock the door?” His face remained tight.

“Of course!” Joybird chirped, anxious to turn his mood around. She reached for the unlock button so fast she accidentally double pressed, unlocking and relocking before he had a chance to open the door. It took her a few extra tries to let him in as he yanked on the handle.

“I’m so sorry!” she said, flustered and embarrassed as he finally slid into the back seat. Joybird’s rattled reaction unnerved her, as she wasn’t the type of person who became unglued by a pretty face. It just took you by surprise, she told herself, and managed a deep breath.

They had a brief exchange to verify her rider’s destination in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She knew the building—a pricey modern condo with its own gym, incongruous amid the historic brownstones. She glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror and noticed how sullen and closed off he looked.

“What interesting eyeglasses!” she gushed, hoping the compliment would soften his mood.

He adjusted them on his face, looking dubious about the flattery. “Thank you.”

“Are you a stockbroker or something?” She smiled, hoping he would understand she was really quite friendly and hadn’t meant to lock him out of the car.

“Why do you need to know?” he asked, and she realized he thought she wanted something from him.

“I just like to make conversation,” she said, and pointed toward her phone. “That’s why I’m studying Spanish.”

“You’re studying Spanish to converse with strangers?” He squinted as if trying to figure her out.

“Sí,” she said, giving a polite beep to the driver of a Lincoln Navigator that had just boxed her in. “You know, there’s so much negativity around—I thought it would be a positive gesture.”

Disarmed, he let out a small laugh, releasing some of his tension. “That’s very . . . sweet.”

The Lincoln SUV pulled up, and she edged out behind it, merging into traffic.

The man tapped at his phone as if searching for something. “Uber says your name is . . . Joybird?”

She nodded, feeling more grounded as she glanced at his face again before directing her focus back to the road. “That’s me,” she said.

“For real? Your parents named you Joybird?”

“My mom was a poet,” she explained. It was the answer she’d been giving nearly her whole life.

He nodded, processing the information. “And maybe a little prescient.”

“You mean because I’m so upbeat?”

“Yes,” he said, a catch of surprise in his voice. Probably because he didn’t expect her to know what prescient meant. She got that a lot—people underestimating her based on her cheerfulness. But it was her philosophy that you didn’t have to be stupid to be happy.

“Tell me about your day,” she said. It was her favorite way of engaging her riders. And since he had seemed so despondent, she thought he might want to talk about it.

He scoffed. “Trust me, you don’t want to know about my day.”

“But I do!” she insisted.

He went silent for a long moment as he looked out the window. Then he released an extended breath. “One of our accounts blew up because my idiot boss wouldn’t take my recommendation.”

“That sounds bad.”

“Catastrophic.”

Joybird turned right onto West Street. “So what now?” she asked, hoping to draw him out. “How do you fix it?”

“Can’t. We lost their business.”

She chewed on that for a minute and could tell he was retreating into the silence, going to a dark place. She needed to jolt him toward the light.

“Are you good at what you do?” she asked, her voice clear and loud against the Manhattan traffic.

“I’d better be.”

“I mean, you get results, right? It’s quantifiable?” She took another glance at him in the rearview, and he was staring right back, looking surprised. Something had distracted him.