TWO

 

Lester popped the cylinder and checked the bullets in his .38. Something he’d seen in movies a dozen times. Never understood the purpose. He had yet to fire the gun. He kept a Louisville slugger under the passenger seat for those who tried to ditch. Usually worked. The only people who ran on their tabs were rich yuppie scumbags and broke folks. He let the poor people get away with it. Yuppies, they squealed in horror the moment he threatened to bash in their skulls with the bat. Usually gave him a tip for not killing them.

He stuffed twenty dollars in loose bills in a Dutch Masters cigar box before heading to his cab. He carried the gun in the front of his pants, zipping his Pacers windbreaker closed so his neighbors wouldn’t see it. He put the cigar box under his arm and carried the Louisville slugger over his shoulder.

The air outside wobbled from the heat. He hustled to his cab and cranked the engine to get the a/c working. As the car cooled, he jammed the .38 between the driver’s and passenger seats. Aimed the barrel at the back. Brooks, a long-time hack he shot the shit with at the garage, taught him that. “Motherfucker tries to rob you,” he’d said, “you just reach right down and pull the trigger. Tear a hole in his belly.” Then he placed the money on top of it. He folded his windbreaker in half, used it to hide the cigar box. He kept a few loose bills in his pocket to make change for passengers. If he ran out, he’d replenish his supply between rides. The routine always depressed him. Most folks didn’t have to worry about getting beaten, robbed, or murdered for a pittance. 

But he didn’t think about that very much. Not that Sunday. Despite Chelsea Farmer’s shitty attitude when she woke up, nothing could rob Lester of the memory of the pleasure he derived from giving it to her three times in numerous positions and not having to pay her a cent. After the last round, she collapsed on his bed, exhausted. Fell asleep on her stomach. He asked her if she wanted to put her clothes back on. She shrugged him off and passed out. While she dozed, he brushed her wild hair from her eyes. His mother would have described his condition as smitten. At some point while they were having sex, he said to himself, I love this woman.  

Seemed absurd in daylight. He barely knew her. And she was a sloppy lay. Bounced every which way, constantly throwing him to the floor. Not a problem, though. The medicine of her youth and enthusiasm trumped her lack of technique.

He didn’t care about the nasty scene she’d made in the morning. He should have known she’d choose the “who me?” routine. Twenty-two-year-old drunks never took responsibility for the things they did while soused. When she opened her eyes, caught him smiling at her, she leapt back, like she’d seen a rodent running across the floor. Her lips twisted. Her nose wrinkled. “What the fuck?” she said. 

“Morning, sunshine,” he said.

“The fuck am I doing here?” She dropped one hand between her legs and covered her breasts with the other. “Jesus, did you…?”

“We,” said Lester. 

“Gross.” She let the s trail off like air wheezing from a tire. 

“Don’t act like you didn’t know what you were doing.” He imagined cops tossing his apartment, digging through his life over a rape allegation. Just what I need. Even one day in prison would throw him off his rent schedule with the cab company and cost him his job. 

The girl calmed down. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I black out. Shit.” She found her clothes, shimmied into them. “Got an aspirin or something?”

“How about Advil?”

“That’ll work.” She grabbed her high heels. Taking a seat in the recliner, she muttered to herself as she put them on. “The hell is wrong with me?”

Lester filled an old Burger Chef King Kong glass with murky, brown water from his kitchen sink. How many times had he asked himself the same question? He didn’t even have booze to blame. His parents had guzzled wine every night. Insisted they weren’t alcoholics. Didn’t stop them from telling him how stupid he was, how he’d end up broke. He set the water on the table by the chair next to a bottle of generic ibuprofen. 

“Thanks.” She knocked out four and swallowed them.

“Careful with those.”

She grinned. “That’s cute.” Then she downed the water. She looked at the half-empty glass and said, “Gross,” this time emphasizing the “gr” sound. “So that’s what toilet water tastes like.” 

“It’s from the tap,” said Lester. “I know, I know, we’re not supposed to drink it, but who says the stuff you buy in bottles is really any safer?”

“That’s stupid,” she said. “And paranoid.”

“My mom used to give me a glass of water from the bathroom sink before I went to sleep,” he said. “When I was a kid, of course.”

“I bet she’s pretty old,” she said. “Considering you’re like, what, fifty?”

“I have no idea where she is,” he said. “She left me and my dad when I was fourteen.”

He sat back on the bed. The girl joined him for a moment. She rested her head on his shoulders. Finally, she said, “I got to get.” She stood. “In the future, don’t let me in your apartment when I’m drunk.”

“I can’t make that promise.”

She put her hands on her hips, gave him a look that reminded him of every teacher who had ever insisted he could do better in school. “Why not?”

“I like you.”

“Gross.” 

 

 

Lester fiddled with the radio until he found the UIndy station. Jazz during the day. Classical at night. No commercials. No bullshit. He cruised 38th Street, from Lafayette Square to Brightwood and back. Not a single call. He’d have to risk an airport run. That involved waiting in line for a fare. Could consume an hour just for one ride. On a Sunday, who knew? Might eat his whole afternoon. He’d have to hustle Medicaid runs from the Projects just to break even.

He hit the highway and headed southwest. When he got to the airport, twenty-four cabs idled in front of him. He tried to bribe other hacks for their spots. Most ignored him. The tougher guys told him to go to hell.

Normally, while waiting for a fare, he’d take the .38 from between the seats and jam the barrel under his chin. It didn’t matter whether he got out of the shitty station he’d been dealt, somehow stumbled over fortune and moved from the ghetto to what polite society called -a nice neighborhood. Hell, he could find a cure for cancer, win a goddamn Nobel Prize, make millions, slide into a castle on Meridian Street, hook the finest trophy wife in Indianapolis. Maybe he could afford a house in Hamilton County, with the filthy rich. Maybe he’d get out of Indy altogether, find a place in Chicago, land a sophisticated Chi-Town girl. None of it, ultimately, mattered. One day they’d toss him into a coffin and dump dirt on him. If anybody cared enough, they’d plant a stone above him, and that would be that. The world would turn without him. Nobody would care that Lester Banks ever existed. His favorite call girl, Honey, had recommended Prozac. Several times. Nonsense, he’d told her, again and again. Pills were just a band aid. Just another system of beliefs, no different than religion, astrology, or psychology, all designed to make an individual as numb and clueless as everyone else.

Add to that his lack of discipline that led to problems he could have avoided—a big, fat gut he didn’t have the time to eighty-six, and his shitty health, remedied if he ever decided to stop buying whores and purchase some medical insurance. No, all his misery would vanish if he pulled the trigger. He imagined the mess—brain and blood and anything else in his skull, splattered across the windows. The jackass who pumped gas for Yellow Cab would have to scrub the gore off the cheap, pea-green upholstery. The guy would probably resurrect him to demand a tip.

But suicide was just another fantasy. No different than the dream of someday living without stress, living without the panic at the end of the month, worrying over whether or not he’d make rent on his apartment. For reasons he couldn’t understand, his ego prevented him from snuffing himself. He imagined a psychobabbler might blame his mother for his depression. Things had seemed status quo when his parents were together. His dad taught philosophy at Butler University. His mother counseled dope fiends at St. Vincent’s. Together, they’d made enough money to live in an actual house on Capitol Avenue. One story, two bedrooms, two bathrooms. When he thought about it now, he realized he’d grown up in luxury. But he’d hated school. Hated reading. Hated thinking too much. And his peers were all upper middle class and phonier than novelty dog shit. As soon as he graduated from high school with a 2.1 GPA, he went straight to work. Shortly after, his dad sold their little mansion on Capital and moved to Bloomington.

Lester hadn’t heard from either of his parents in over a decade.

Shucking his daily suicide debate, he thought of Chelsea Farmer’s skin, how she smelled like candy, the pouty look in her eyes after each round of sex, waiting for him to spring to life and give her some more. After the second time, she’d said, “Wow, it’s a shame…”

“What’s that?”

“For an old man,” she said, “you seem to know what you’re doing.”

Well, that was something. He couldn’t tell her he’d spent the last decade training with professionals. Women who didn’t charge were terrified of sleeping with a man who’d been with a prostitute. How shocked they’d be to learn that just about every man who ever walked the Earth had, at one time or another, paid a pro.

He caught a fare at four o’clock. A businessman from New Jersey. He was dressed in an ugly brown suit that was too big for him. The sleeves of his jacket draped over his hands, like a child trying on his father’s clothes. The guy sounded phony-east-coast tough. Lester figured he’d seen Mean Streets a few times too many. 

“Going to the Canterbury, downtown,” he said. “Know what I’m saying?”

“Sure.” Lester put the meter on. The take would be about thirty plus tip. Not as good as a run from the airport to the north side of town.

The guy started yapping like everybody else who got in the cab—“What about this weather?” How long had he been in town? Two minutes? How the hell did he even know what the weather was like? “You believe these retards talking about global warming?”

Lester shook his head.

“Didn’t we have winter this year?” said the man. “Didn’t we freeze our balls off this year? Where’s all this warming shit? I thought I was supposed to be seeing glaciers in my backyard.”

Lester said, “You got a point there, buddy.” Seemed to him the weather had changed over the decades. He didn’t know for sure. He didn’t give a shit about politics. Liberals? Childish hypocrites. Conservatives? Heartless hypocrites. Far as he was concerned, two sides of the same, doomed coin. But he didn’t dare say so. Just another reason for people to chastise him—You don’t take a stand, they’d say, you’re not a man. 

The passenger griped the entire ride about things he’d heard on the radio or seen on television. Insisted the president was an undercover Muslim. Said the government was building fema camps to shuffle patriots into. “Just like the Nazis,” he said. “They’re going to do us good, peaceful Christian folk like Hitler did those Jews.” Lester imagined strangling him. Some company was paying this guy to take planes across the country to do business, paying him to stay in the nicest hotel in Indianapolis, and all he could do was complain about crazy stuff. And supposing, just supposing, it was all true. So what? Nothing anybody could do, so why the hell bitch about it? Try living in poverty, bubba, real poverty. 

The Canterbury was a luxury number stuffed into a tiny building near the downtown mall. Lester had helped a woman carry her bags in once. The décor seemed fancy enough. The ceiling was low. He’d commented on it to a bellhop, who told him, “It’s European.” Lester had suggested Europeans must be short, to which he was asked to collect his fare from the woman and leave.

He pulled into the roundabout in front of the hotel and helped the bellhops get the man’s luggage from the trunk. The Jersey guy stepped around the cab. Lester said, “Thirty-three twenty-five.”

The man cleared his hands from his long sleeves so he could reach into his pocket and pull out his wallet. He forked over two twenties. “Throw me a Lincoln and call it square.” He slapped him on the shoulder and winked.

Lester held his teeth together while he peeled off a five-dollar bill from the thin fold of cash in his pocket. “Enjoy your stay in Indy.” Strangling wasn’t good enough for the son of a bitch. He deserved to have his kidneys pierced with an ice pick.

He waited in the roundabout for a fare to come across his computer. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. A porter finally marched out in his Captain Crunch uniform and tapped on the window. “Can we help you?”

“Just waiting on some work,” said Lester.

“You’ll have to move on, sir.” The porter slapped the roof of the car and motioned for him to get going.

 

 

His next gig was a stripper. He picked her up at a bar outside of Broad Ripple. Massive plastic breasts, like flotation bubbles. Sparkly shit all over her skin. Too much makeup. Not so different from Chelsea Farmer, the night before. She got in the passenger seat. “Well, hello, handsome,” she said. Lester knew right away she would flirt to bring down the fare. Dancers and hookers always ran that routine. Whether or not it worked depended on how they looked and how far they took things. If a girl blew him, she rode for free. If she showed him her tits, he might knock a buck or two off the ride.

The stripper called herself Mercedes. Real original. She said, “I got to be on stage at Sugar Cookie’s in twenty minutes.”

Lester said, “That’s on the other side of town.”

She snaked her fingers up and down his thigh. “Drop the pedal, sweetheart, make that engine roar.” She kept her hand on his crotch the entire trip. Her breath hovered near his neck. Never closed the deal, though.

He brought the cab to a stop in front of the club. A plain, white building with a broken neon sign hanging off the side, Sug Coo ies. Rusted pickups and sedans held together with duct tape filled the parking lot. 

Mercedes, or whatever her name was, should have made a move by then. Lester nodded to his lap and said, “Well?”

“You got a girl?” She clutched his thigh, hinting at a tuggy. After his night with Chelsea Farmer, that wouldn’t do the trick.

Pushing her hand off his leg, he said, “Fifteen-fifty.” He killed the meter, picked up his ride log, and recorded the fare.

The woman made pouty lips—a duckface, like college girls taking pictures of themselves with their cellphones, embarrassed by their own good looks. “That’s so much.” She scooted closer, breathed into his ear. “I get off at three. Come back here around then, I’ll drain your cock.” 

He’d heard that many times as well. Fell for it once. Showed up at closing at the Silk, just up the road from Sugar Cookie’s. Waited, like an idiot, for an hour. He said to Mercedes, “Fifteen-fifty.”

She smacked him on the shoulder, reached into her purse, found a twenty, and threw it at him. “Give me exact change,” she said. “Fucking faggot.” 

 

 

Things didn’t go much better the rest of the night. A series of ten and twelve-dollar rides. Mostly in neighborhoods where tipping was a myth. He earned enough for rent on his cab and headed east to pay and gas up. At the last minute, he took a call for some teenagers from Lafayette Square. Three girls. Maybe thirteen or fourteen years old. Each carried a bag of individually-wrapped candies. Snacked on them the whole ride. He asked them where to. The middle one said, “Saunders. Building Three.”

The Projects. Great. Minimal take. He listened to the girls talk about various people that bugged them—“Ray-Ray going to get his ass kicked he don’t stop blowing up my phone while I’m watching my shows.” “That bitch Janessa don’t know what going happen she copies my texts on to Twitter like she did last week.” “Best believe my mom’s going to blast O’Shay she catch that fool looking in my window again,” and so on.

They drove into the Saunders Housing Projects. Rolled through a gate neglected by two snoring security guards. Young men and women sat on the hoods of their cars. They passed joints, drank beer, and, for the most part, didn’t seem to give a shit about the taxi rolling through. The apartment buildings towered overhead. The girl in the middle said, “You can let us off right here.” She pointed with her chin. “Listen,” she said, “I got to go in and get some money from my mom. Wait right here, all right?” Her eyes were wide, desperate.

“What kind of cash you got on you?” said Lester.

“Nada.”

“All right, hurry up.”

The girls got out and ran into the darkness, laughing the whole way. He tried to trick himself, pretend they’d return with his money. He waited for about five minutes. A young man sitting on a Buick across the street hopped down and approached the cab. He knocked on the window with knuckles the size of walnuts.

“Yeah?” Lester walked his fingers toward the .38 between the seats.

“You got business up here?” said the young man.

“Not anymore.”

“Maybe you best be going.”