I found #123 parked near the doors of the garage where the mechanics were busy fixing the cabs that the newbies had wrecked in one way or another. Sometimes body damage, sometimes broken transmissions. I guess I don’t need to tell you the many things that can happen to an automobile. I’m going to stick my neck out here and assume that you ownone. Or at least you’ve wrecked one.
I checked the body for dents and dings. No problem. Then I popped the hood for Monday morning first-echelon maintenance. I checked the oil and water and transmission fluid. The water was low, so I went into the garage and got a bucket of radiator mix and carried it out to the cab and poured a quart in. You have to stay on top of radiators. Newbies drive my cab a lot and they don’t always pull proper maintenance. After fastening the radiator cap, I borrowed a tire gauge from a mechanic and checked the air.
A-OK.
I was an hour late for work but I wasn’t rushing around now. I was “going with the flow.” No use trying to make up for lost time. Time is one thing that’s never on your side when you have a job. I had learned from experience that I could rush around and bust my ass to get out on the road, yet come April 15th I would still pay the same old cut to Uncle. You never win and you never lose in the taxi game.
That’s what one part of my brain was telling me—the intelligent part, I guess you could say. The other part was screaming at me to get moving! I don’t know what that part of my brain is called. Gym coach. Nun. Sergeant. But I ignored it, just as I ignored their real-life counterparts when I was little, or young, depending on the time frame. I knew there was no reason to worry because I could easily make up an hour’s worth of money. That’s part of the beauty of cab driving. You can make money if you actually work.
I was ambivalent about this of course. I didn’t sign up to be a taxi driver in order to work, and I didn’t care that much about money. In truth, I didn’t really know why I was at the cab company. I had to stop and think about it. I did so after I closed the hood and climbed in and got ready to call the dispatcher to let him know I was on the asphalt. I finally decided I was there because I had to be. That’s my all-purpose excuse for everything.
I picked up the microphone and waited a moment for the dispatcher to stop yelling at a newbie, then I pressed the button and said, “One twenty-three.”
“One twenty-three,” the dispatcher said.
“I’m headed out,” I said. That wasn’t proper radio protocol. There’s a phrase you’re supposed to use when signing on with the dispatcher but I couldn’t remember what it was. And anyway, I was doing what all people do who have been doing things for a long time. I was pretending that the rules didn’t apply to me. I was pretending I was “special.”
“You’re late, Murph,” the dispatcher said.
He’s a card. He likes to rib me. I’ve never seen his face. He’s just a voice, a shadowy figure speaking to me from the radio room on the second floor of RMTC.
“Up yours,” I said.
“If you want an el-two, I can arrange it,” he replied.
I didn’t respond. I hung up the mike. My relationship with the dispatcher is different from my relationship with Rollo. It’s more dangerous. It’s a miracle that the dispatcher lets me get away with that crap. An L-2 means you have to go back inside and get reamed out.
I headed for a 7-11 to gas up and buy a cup of coffee and a Twinkie. I didn’t rush. I put myself into a state of mind that I call “cabbie consciousness.” It’s sort of like Transcendental Meditation but doesn’t involve a mantra. In fact it’s more like watching television. I just pretend that whatever I’m doing at the current moment in time is real, as opposed to what I ought to be doing, which is rushing to buy gas, picking up fares, making up for lost time, and generally acting mature and responsible.
Give me a break.
I arrived at 7-11 but had to wait five minutes for a line of cars at the gas pump. This shattered my calm. The 7-11 where I gas up is normally not very busy. It’s located at what you might call “the edge of the city,” which is in north Denver near the viaducts. Most people are afraid to get out of their cars in that part of town. There’s something about viaducts that give people the willies. But elevated roadways don’t bother me. I just keep my back to them and concentrate on squeezing out the unleaded. I do keep my eyes closed, but that’s because the fumes make my whites red, and I have found that red-eyed cab drivers give fares the willies.
After I hung up the pump I strolled into the 7-11.
And froze.
There were fifteen customers standing in line. I looked outside. Maybe three cars were parked in the lot. Where the hell did all these time-destroyers come from? I rushed to the coffee machine and filled a paper cup, then snatched a Twinkie and raced to the end of the line before anybody else magically appeared out of nowhere. There’s nothing that infuriates me more than a long line at 7-11. Losing my TV remote runs a close second, so you can imagine how I felt that morning.
I then did something I almost never do. I glanced at my wristwatch. I hate Time in general and clocks in particular, but I had learned that a cab driver has to own a watch. This relates to picking up fares on time. Need I say more? But I sure as hell never looked at a wristwatch while buying a Twinkie. The whole scene left a sour taste in my mouth. I almost put the Twinkie back.
I didn’t recognize the clerk. He looked like a newbie. Young. Nervous. Trying to figure out the process of selling a money order to an old lady. The old lady was counting out pennies from a change purse.
I nearly collapsed mentally. My gas tank was full, so I couldn’t put the unleaded back on the shelf and flee. I was trapped. Everybody else in line was holding Fritos and candy bars and bottled water. They could have said to hell with it and put their items back on the shelves and walked out. So why didn’t they?
I did my best to encourage them. I began sighing with impatience. It didn’t work. Each customer had staked out his private square of tile and was standing firm, waiting for the old lady to get the exact change right down to the last corroded Lincoln head. Old ladies do this in order to “help” clerks. Thank God taxi meters round off to twenty cents. It reduces my mental collapses by a factor of five.
I won’t describe the time destruction engaged in by the customers ahead of me. I won’t do to you what they did to me. Let’s just say it was a quarter to nine before I got back into my cab, took a sip of cold coffee, and vowed that as long as I lived I would never again fill my gas tank without scouting the terrain for signs of enemy presence. Fortunately I knew how to do this. I saw a training film in the army.
I placed the dead joe in my cup holder, then started the engine and pulled away from the 7-11. It made me feel bad to have ill feelings toward my favorite store. I’m old enough to remember when 7-11 stores actually opened at 7 and closed at 11, and believe me, brother, that was a quantum leap in the evolution of Denver. It made me feel like I possessed an embarrassment of riches every time I strolled into a 7-11 at 10:55 to buy a pack of smokes. I was taken down a peg, though, when I visited my brother Gavin in California and discovered that liquor stores—not bars but liquor stores—stayed open past two a.m. That’s when I realized Albert Einstein was wrong. “Relativity” wasn’t the right word. “Pathos” nailed it. But I came back to Denver anyway. Apartment prices here are peanuts relative to the West Coast.
As I drove away from the 7-11, I saw a man waving frantically to me. He was standing on a corner where a small park was located. No shops or stores or even houses nearby. He was a “pedestrian.” Normally I never pick up pedestrians who try to flag me down. It’s a safety thing. Cabbies sometimes get robbed by people who don’t phone the RMTC dispatcher for a ride. If you pick someone up off the street, the company has no idea that you’ve got a fare in your backseat, which is the way robbers like it.
But I was almost two hours behind schedule and I hadn’t made a dime, so I literally heaved a sigh of resignation and pulled over to the curb. I figured I was safe. He looked okay. Well-dressed. Mid-thirties. Nicely groomed. Ted Bundy looked that way when he escaped from the Aspen jail.
The pedestrian leaned into my window. “I’m only going a few blocks but I missed my bus and I’m late for work, can you take me there?”
“Climb in,” I said. A three-dollar ride at best. It didn’t matter. I was going in that direction anyway. Three bucks is three bucks said John Jacob Astor, probably.
A couple minutes later I pulled over to the curb. The guy handed me a twenty.
I looked at it.
Then I looked at the meter. Three bucks.
Suddenly three bucks wasn’t three bucks. It was Mount St. Helena. “Do you have anything smaller than this?” I said. I had only twenty dollars worth of change on me. I do carry at least two twenties in my billfold at all times—what I call my “amateur” stash—but that’s for emergencies, and they wouldn’t have done me any good now anyway.
“No I don’t,” he said, with panic in his eyes.
My instinct was to give him the ride for free. Well. To be honest, my instinct was to throw him out, but I was now two hours behind schedule etc., so I dug out all my starting change and handed him seventeen dollar bills.
Did he tip me?
I won’t bore you with the answer.
After he scurried away, I drove down the block holding the twenty in my right hand, which was resting against the steering wheel at the one o’clock position. I glanced at Andrew Jackson’s face. Ol’ Andy Jackson, seventh president of the United States. A nun made us memorize the presidents back in sixth grade, so I knew our forefathers numerically. That was the only instance during my grade school years when I was good at math. But I had a secret. I didn’t memorize the numbers, I memorized the words, i.e., “seven” rather than “7.” Keep that under your hat. I wouldn’t want my diploma repossessed.
Allow me to mention here that Andrew Jackson is not to be confused with Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson who commanded the rebs at Bull Run. I used to do that all the time. Not command rebs, but get confused.
Well, here I was once again unable to proceed with my life until I did something with money. I had a full tank of gas and a twenty-dollar bill in my hand, yet I couldn’t pick up any fares until I had made small change out of the bill. O. Henry could have done wonders with that premise.
I drove past a car wash and slowed down because car washes have change machines. But then I stepped on the gas and kept driving. Just the thought of stuffing the twenty down the gullet of a machine that promised to give me change made me laugh out loud. I’m onto you, O. Henry.
Instead I drove to a Starbucks and bought a fresh cup of mocha. I’m not even going to apologize for that. I sure didn’t apologize to the clerk for handing him a twenty at nine in the morning. I figured that a store that sells nothing but coffee would have plenty of change at nine in the morning. I’ll admit it. I occasionally like to have a slug of yuppie mud with all its fancy frills. I’ll take my alkaloid diuretics wherever I can get them. But I do prefer 7-11 joe. If there isn’t a 7-11 in the vicinity, a Winchell’s donut shop is Plan B. The joe at both places is almost indistinguishable, like the difference between Johnny Walker and Cutty Sark, but only cab drivers and hobos draw such fine distinctions.
It was nine-fifteen when I finally turned on my RMTC radio and started listening to the dispatcher yelling at the newbies. I did not head for a hotel. I normally park at the cabstand at the Brown Palace in downtown Denver at dawn and read paperbacks until a fare climbs into the backseat and says, “DIA.” But that plan was down the crapper. I had to actually work that day.
This was what I meant when I said I knew I could easily make up a lost hour’s worth of money. Jumping bells is how you do it. Taking calls off the radio is how a real cab driver makes money. He doesn’t sit in front of hotels and he doesn’t sit out at the airport. He takes radio calls one right after another. The fact that I’m a real cab driver does not invalidate the hypothesis. I know I’m a real cab driver because I have a license. I do sit in front of hotels but I never sit out at the airport. On the surface this might indicate that I am only half a real cab driver, or else half a phony. Take your pick. All I do know is that every April 15th I write “Taxi Driver” on my 1040 and not “Phony.”
As I pulled away from the Starbucks I thought about opening up a mobile coffee shop. The idea was extremely appealing. I envisioned drivers stopped at red lights handing me money and taking pre-packaged cups of coffee out of my hand on their way to work. What coffee drinker wouldn’t like to be able to reach through his window for a steaming cup of joe without having to stop at a 7-11 near the viaducts? The plan seemed so flawless that I knew I had better drive as fast as possible away from the unholy spot on the face of the earth where it had been conceived. I already had enough flawless plans to last a lifetime. Have I mentioned that I’m an unpublished novelist?
I listened to the calls being offered on the radio as I cruised. I was east of midtown, over by City Park. I wanted to stay away from the near occasion of hotels. I knew myself well enough to know that the sight of a vacant cabstand would instantly drain my vast reservoir of willpower. It’s always good to know things about yourself even if most of it is gossip.
Then it came. The Call.