The Mummy woke up with a stiff back. He had fallen asleep on the sofa again. He slowly got to his feet, groaning, and stretched. His back and neck popped, giving him an early-morning reminder that he is no spring chicken. (As his doctor had said to him at his last checkup.) 

He looked around at the sad remains of the previous night’s dinner and entertainment. An empty pizza box was propped against the couch, beer cans scattered across the floor. 

The Mummy shuffled his way to the computer. His hip hurt from sleeping on the couch, and he cursed himself. Now he was going to shuffle and limp all day, and he knew that it fed into the stereotypes that people held. He plopped into his computer chair and began to contemplate his life before turning on the screen.

Things had been going great. He had a great girlfriend, a dog, a downtown apartment, and a job with a future. The Mummy also had a mean streak and a drinking habit that he couldn’t seem to kick. One day, he lost his job for coming in late to work one too many times. The girlfriend finally got fed up and took the dog and left. Now he spent his days drawing unemployment and sitting in a lonely apartment. He thought about the dog and felt the tell-tell sting in his eyes of tears forming. He really missed that dog.

Finally, the Mummy flicked on the computer. He knew he had to pull himself out of this funk. He needed a job. But who was going to hire an ex-accountant Mummy down on his luck?

He logged into a local job-posting site and saw an ad for Uber. They were in need of drivers for the graveyard shift. How perfectly ironic, he thought to himself.

He had always been a night owl, and he really enjoyed driving. And he thought to himself, Mums, this would be a great opportunity to meet new people. 

The Mummy immediately logged in and submitted all the required paperwork. By the next evening, everything had been processed, and he installed the app. He was ready to roll. 

The first call came in less than half an hour after he turned on the app, and the Mummy headed off into his new adventure.

The night was what he expected. Drunk folks, out-of-towners, and college kids. He listened to other people laugh, tell silly jokes, argue and even sleep-talk. Instead of feeling more connected to people, he was feeling lonelier than ever.

After a fare that ended with someone vomiting out the window, the Mummy was ready to call it a night. He had driven to a car wash near his house and pulled out his phone to order a pizza when the app buzzed again. 

He sighed and weighed his options. It was almost three in the morning. He was bone-tired, but not sleepy at all. He knew if he went home now, he would eat pizza, drink beer, and play video games until he finally drifted off to sleep on the couch. Then he would wake up stiff and sore (even more stiff and sore than his normal mummy stiffness and soreness) from sleeping alone on a couch. Again.

The thought depressed him more than anything had ever depressed him in all his years. He finished rinsing the vomit off the side of his car and hit the button to alert the passenger that he was on his way.

The Mummy’s 3:00 a.m. passenger was standing on a dark corner, near a public library. Relief swept over him to see that she was not drunk. She looked to had been out late studying. The woman stepped into the beam of the streetlight, and his breath caught in his throat.

“Can you take me to Alsford Apartment, please?” she asked as she ducked into the back seat of the car. The Mummy wanted to invite her to sit in the front, but he didn’t want to seem creepy. 

“Yes, ma’am,” is all he said and set his GPS.

The cloudy night was giving way to rain. Large drops splashed on the windshield and the Mummy turned on the wipers. The rhythmic clickity-clack of the windshield wipers and the sound of the drops on the roof broke the otherwise still silence in the car. 

The Mummy stole looks at his passenger through the rearview mirror. She stared out the window, into the rainy night. Passing headlights and streetlamps illuminated her in fleeting moments. In each moment, he found a new detail: the curve of her lips, the cut of her dark hair, the color of her eyes (a deep golden brown that was a polar opposite to his icy blue). 

“Do you mind to play some music?” she asked. The Mummy startled and snapped his eyes forward, afraid that she had felt his stolen glimpses on her skin.

“Not at all. Do you have a preference?” he asked her, reaching for the radio dial.

“Actually, if you have a CD player and don’t mind…” She handed him a CD from the back seat. She seemed to be blushing.

“You know, I think it still works. Let's give it a try,” he said. He reached his left hand over to take the disk while gripping the wheel with his right. Their fingers brushed in the transfer, and he felt sparks.

The Mummy placed the CD in the player. Dean Martin’s “You Belong to Me” started filling the silence in the car. The Mummy noticed his passenger’s blush deepen, and he was certain he was falling in love.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “It’s been a long day, and this relaxes me.”

  “I happen to be a big Dean Martin fan,” the Mummy said, smiling into the review mirror. He savored the moment of getting to look directly at her.

“My name is Amelia,” his passenger said. She smiled for the first time, and it burned into his heart like a white-hot star. He noticed it did not reach her eyes, and that made him sad.

“My name is…people call me Tom,” the Mummy said. 

“Well, Tom, it is nice to meet you,” Amelia said and slumped back into her seat. She fell silent again. But this time, the Mummy thought it wasn’t the silence of strangers, but the silence of comfortable friends sharing a favorite song.

Amelia closed her eyes, and the Mummy thought she might have dozed off when she said, “This time, between midnight and dawn, these are the small hours.”

The Mummy wasn’t sure how to reply. He took the opportunity to once again look at her fully through the rearview mirror. Her eyes were now open, and her head leaned against the window.

“I mean that is what they are called sometimes; the small hours. Isn’t that beautiful? I used to think of it as twilight, but that is really about the light. The small hours is about the moment. How this time feels, you know?”

As she spoke, her eyes focused somewhere outside the car, although with the rain, he wasn’t sure what she could see. Even in the dark, he could see the sadness in her face. The slump in her shoulders was that of someone carrying too much. Still, she seemed somehow defiant. 

“It is beautiful,” he said.

The rain was now falling in sheets, and the Mummy slowed the car. He was pleased it would delay the inevitable drop off. Amelia fell silent again, and the CD flipped to “Everybody Loves Somebody”. An oncoming car lit up her face, and tear-tracks shone in the light. The Mummy’s heart sank in his chest.

He wondered what her heartbreak was. Had someone left her? Surely not. He imagined if it were a beloved, they must have died. No one would willingly leave this woman. Maybe it was a sick parent or a lost job. As the Mummy considered the options, he began to feel even more despair over his own wasted life.

The sign for Alsford Apartments appeared before them. The Mummy maneuvered his car into the parking lot. As the car crawled to a stop, his mind raced. He wanted to ask her if she was okay. He thought about offering to buy her a drink. He could, at the very least, tell her that she was simply the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

The car stopped and Amelia pulled her eyes from the window to her bag and pulled out a credit card. She leaned over the seat and handed the Mummy the card.

“Add a fifteen percent tip to the total,” she said.

“Thank you, but that isn’t necessary. It has been my pleasure,” the Mummy said. He reached for the CD player to return her disk.

“If you liked it, keep it,” she said. “You won’t let me tip you, so consider it a gift. From a stranger passing in the night.” She smiled, and this time, the Mummy thought, it made it all the way to her dark eyes. He wanted to ask her for her number, but fear paralyzed him. He looked into her eyes and smiled back. “To strangers passing in the small hours.”

Amelia patted his hand and got out of the car. The sound of the door closing felt like a shotgun blast to the Mummy’s heart.

He pulled out of the parking lot and headed home.