each decorated with combinations of pennants and reflectors, chrome ponies and gamecocks, and klaxon horns. They had names—

CHICKS BUSTER
VIRGIN BIRTH
BLUE THUNDER
TOTO BOGART FIVE SISTERS TWO BROTHERS

     —on signboards above the front seat.

     I didn't see one that wasn't completely crowded. Seven, eight heads, sometimes more, rose above any single seat. On the sidewalk, shoulders butted shoulders, arms brushed arms. That was the biggest difference, the physical closeness of the people. In the States we'll veer aside on the street, shrink in an elevator, anything for a buffer. But here individual space was reduced to the body's displacement, or less, and nobody seemed to mind.

     We stuttered through the congestion for a few minutes and then swung out onto a wide boulevard, jumping to freeway speed. On our left, across a concrete divider, I could see wide water. Manila Bay, Dalzell said; I thought of my sixth-grade history book, a tintype of Admiral Dewey. Ahead of us a taxi bounced as a wheel slammed into a crater in the asphalt. Dalzell whipped over to the next lane, but there was a minor canyon in that one, too. We hit hard, and the Dodge slewed for a moment before it straightened itself out.

     Ahead a light turned yellow. An unmuffled bellowing gathered up behind us and a Chevy Impala, a '62 or '63 with crumpled fenders, came rapping past on the right. The driver leaned forward, peering over the front panel, clenching the wheel and sawing it back and forth in wide arcs that didn't seem to affect the car. It boomed ahead us, wallowing, pitched across lanes and flew through the changing yellow, and was gone.