American literary giant: 1974

the next day.

Lynn went to the secondhand typewriter shop in Chinatown again, and after haggling with the old Jewish man for half an hour, he finally bought an Olivetti for thirty-two dollars. It was a size smaller than his Remington at home, just enough to fit into the second floor of Porter's Auto Shop.

He set a schedule for himself: after having dinner at 5 pm, he would come to the second floor of the car dealership to write the script for "Taxi Driver" until 9 pm, then go downstairs to get the keys and leave the car. He would finish work around 4 or 5 am, write for another hour, and then go home to sleep.

"Get out!"

Suddenly, Old Potter let out a furious roar from the first floor of the car dealership.

"Who the hell are you? Standing at the door sneaking around wearing sunglasses! Go register across the street for car repairs! If you're not getting your car repaired, get the hell out of here!"

Lynn stood up from the chair, walked to the top of the stairs, and peered down.

A person was standing in front of the iron gate of the car dealership.

He was wearing an old, worn-out military green field jacket, faded jeans, and muddy work boots. He wore aviator sunglasses, and his hair was a mess.

Old Porter stood at the entrance of the tin shed, a wrench clutched in his hand.

"I'm not here to fix my car," the man said in a deep, resonant voice.

"Then what are you doing here? This is a car dealership, not a bar."

"I'm looking for Lynn."

"Lynn? Who are you to him? That Maine guy was troublesome enough, and now another one has appeared."

"I am an actor."

Porter looked him up and down. Sunglasses, field jacket, work boots—he didn't look like an actor at all; he looked more like someone who had just come out of an underground boxing gym in Brooklyn.

"actor?"

"Film actor".

Old Porter slowly lowered the wrench, staring at the man in front of him with a puzzled yet careful gaze for a while.

"How come I've never seen any of your movies?"

"That means you haven't read enough."

"Damn it," Potter cursed, then turned and yelled upstairs, "Lynn! Damn it, your actor friend is here!"

Then he muttered, "An actor driving a taxi is called experiencing life, while a taxi driver writing novels is called neglecting his proper job. This world is completely upside down."

Only Lynn recognized him—Robert De Niro.

Robert De Niro before he became famous. Less than a year before he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for *The Godfather Part II*. Two years before he uttered that iconic line in *Taxi Driver*. An entire era before he became one of the greatest actors in American film history.

---

When Lynn came down from the second floor, De Niro had already gone into the garage by himself.

He didn't stand there waiting for Lynn to come and greet him. He was watching the car.

He inspected each car one by one. He slowly walked around the six taxis parked in the garage, occasionally squatting down to check the tires or opening the doors to examine the interior. He took off his sunglasses, and his eyes shone brightly in the dim garage light.

When Lynn walked over, De Niro was squatting next to the number 35 Chevrolet, touching the long scratch on the front bumper with one hand.

"This one?" De Niro looked up and glanced at Lynn.

This is De Niro's style of interaction. No greetings, no small talk, just straight into character.

"This one."

De Niro stood up, opened the driver's side door, and bent down to get in. He sat down in the driver's seat, placing both hands on the steering wheel. 10:10.

Then he adjusted the rearview mirror.

Then he pushed the seat back one notch.

Then he put his left foot on the support under the steering wheel.

"Which seat do you usually adjust to when you drive?" De Niro didn't look at Lynn; his gaze remained fixed on the car's interior.

"The third to last square."

De Niro pushed the seat forward another notch.

"Where should I put my left hand?"

"The twelve o'clock position."

De Niro moved his left hand from the ten o'clock position to the twelve o'clock position.

"Right hand?"

"Next to the gear shift lever, don't hold it, just rest it there."

De Niro's right hand was removed from the steering wheel and hung down beside the gearshift.

Lynn stood outside the car door watching him, goosebumps rising on her back.

This person had been in the driver's seat for less than two minutes when he started to transform into a completely different person.

The actor who was standing at the garage entrance is gone. Sitting in seat 35 is a tired, somewhat dangerous man who looks like he's been driving a taxi for many years.

"Do you have a taxi license?" Lynn asked.

"I took the test last week, a written test and a road test. I memorized all 300+ routes."

De Niro pulled a card from his pocket—a New York City taxi driver's license. He looked even fiercer in the photo than in person.

"Starting today, I'll work the night shift with you for a week."

------

Nine o'clock in the evening. Car number 35 drove out of the dealership.

Lynn drove, and De Niro sat in the passenger seat.

He thought De Niro would ask a lot of questions about the film, such as the characters' motivations, the plot development, and how the lines should be delivered. After all, he was there to experience life.

But De Niro didn't ask anything.

He sat there quietly in the passenger seat, his hands on his knees, staring straight ahead.

He didn't say a word for the first hour.

Lynn pulled a businessman to Midtown, a nurse to the Lower East Side, and an elderly couple to Brooklyn.

On each trip, De Niro would simply sit beside him, occasionally pulling out a small notebook the size of his palm from his pocket, quickly scribbling a few words with a pencil, and then stuffing it back into his pocket.

After the previous passenger got off the bus, Lynn couldn't help but ask De Niro.

"What are you writing down?"

"Your hand."

"What?"

"When you're waiting at a red light, your index finger taps on the gear shift lever." De Niro opened his notebook—it contained a simple drawing of a hand with the caption, "Index finger, waiting at a red light, tapping the gear shift lever arrhythmically."

"You're very observant," Lynn said.

The car continued towards Manhattan. After crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the streets gradually thinned out. The city at dawn was like a glass of soda slowly losing its bubbles, its sounds sinking deeper and deeper.

They picked up a Black security guard who had just finished get off work at the hospital, two college students who had just come from a bar, and a woman wearing an ankle-length fur coat, whose origins were unknown. The woman in the fur coat reeked of cheap perfume when she got in, and the smell lingered in the back seat for twenty minutes after she got out.

Lynn rolled down the car window to let some fresh air in.

But De Niro did not.

Lynn noticed something: every time a passenger got into the car, De Niro would take a light breath.

"What are you smelling?" After the fur-clad woman left, only the lingering scent of cheap perfume remained in the carriage. Lynn finally couldn't help but ask him.

"Everyone's taste is different," De Niro said.

"certainly."

"Whiskey, cheap perfume, sweat, rainwater. This car can accumulate more than a dozen smells in one night."

"In the end, it all mixed together to create an even stranger flavor," Lynn added.

De Niro suddenly fell silent, staring at Lynn.

The car was parked at the entrance of a dark alley in the Lower East Side, waiting for customers. The engine was still running, and the heater was humming, blowing hot air with a rusty smell. Across the street, a 24-hour convenience store was lit by a stark white fluorescent light, and an elderly Korean woman was dozing off at the counter.

"Are you afraid of this smell?" De Niro suddenly asked.

"Fear?"

"Yes. I'm scared."

Why are you afraid?

De Niro turned his head and looked at the dark street ahead: "I also read the proofreading of your 'The Silence of the Lambs'."

Lynn rested his left hand on the steering wheel, watching the Manhattan night gradually descend and envelop the entire taxi.

This was the first time he had ever felt how terrifying Robert De Niro was.

De Niro read *The Silence of the Lambs*. He read the part where Hannibal could smell the lotion on the female agent. Then he sat in the taxi all night, smelling the scent of everyone who got in.

He wasn't experiencing the role.

He was experiencing Lynn.

He wondered if the person who wrote that scene also lived in a world made of smells, like Hannibal Lecter.

A taxi driver sits in the driver's seat for more than ten hours a day, hundreds of strangers come and go from the back seat, leaving behind not names, not faces, but smells. Bourbon whiskey is the scent of middle-aged men drowning their sorrows late at night, hospital disinfectant is the scent of nurses just off their night shift, and cheap perfume is the scent of women leaving strip clubs. Lynn could smell the type of person from his number one customer tonight, even with his eyes closed.

This ability is not fundamentally different from Hannibal's.

Hannibal used it to hunt, while Lynn used it to write.

De Niro...De Niro saw through it all in just one night.

Lynn slowly began, "I was scared. I have a personal experience. Do you want to hear it?"

De Niro didn't speak; he just sniffed lightly.

Lynn pulled out a stack of receipts and slips of paper from a hidden compartment in the driver's seat. These were the things he had accumulated over the past two months driving a taxi—each one covered in dense writing on the back. Conversations he had overheard, scenes he had witnessed, scraps left by passengers in the back seat. A whole stack, bound together with a rubber band, the edges already curled.

He flipped through the pages one by one. When he got to one of them, he paused for a moment.

The handwriting on that receipt was much messier than the others. It was crooked and shaky, as if it had been written while the writer was trembling.

De Niro sniffed again.

"Two weeks ago, it was very cold in New York. It was past 2 a.m..."