It was a little after one in the morning when the car horn went off. I had just settled into bed in the thick of the warm summer night when the howl of the honk tore through my apartment like a crowbar slowly forcing open the lid from a wooden crate. My apartment windows, like most of my neighbors,’ were wide open and eager for a cool breeze. But nobody on Huston Street got their chilly gust of wind to fall asleep to that night. Instead, every resident in a three-block radius got the endless hoooooooooooooooooooooooonk of some asshole’s car to cool us down.
As I lay there in bed and waited for the car’s owner to arrive and fumble out his keys to finally mute this heavy, hollow screech, I deliberated whether hearing the more melodic sound of a traditional car alarm, with its varying themes and doo-doo-wha-wha diddies, would be more or less unenjoyable than this unwavering blast of a monotone horn. Both were terrible; but would one be less terrible than the other? And since we’re on the subject, why would any car alarm maker even offer the option of a straight, endless, unbroken beam of a honk over the more traditional short, rapid bursts of honks? What car was so damn valuable that it required a steady palm-on-the-button horn for an alarm?
Six minutes was well past the maximum amount of time that an owner of a car was allowed to not recognize his own alarm—especially when one was as distinctively annoying as this one. I jumped out of bed and walked across the hardwood floor of my studio apartment to the wall of windows and pulled back the drapes. I searched the street below for the telltale blinking headlights or flashing brake lights, but the street was dark and showed no signs of unrest. It was actually serene down there, almost picture-perfect. The blaring horn was the only evidence of something not right—as if the wrong audio track had been mistakenly used with the scene. I tried turning my head from side to side in an attempt to pinpoint the direction of the noise, but both sides sounded equally loud from the window. That would mean that either I was directionally deaf or the loud car sat directly below my window, with only a thin layer of blooming magnolia trees as a buffer between us. That’s just perfect, I mouthed to the drapes. Just perfect. Right under my window.
By minute fifteen, neighbors had started coming out to the street in their bathrobes and sleeping shorts. Angry tenants from my apartment complex as well as from the fancier complex across the street stood united in their hatred for this car making all that noise. They clung in little packs before merging into one big mob at the center of the street. Shaking heads and waving fists quickly became pointed fingers at the car hidden under the trees right below me—I knew it! Then two people from the crowd of a dozen noticed me watching from my window and pointed up at me, and I showed my solidarity to their cause by glancing at my naked wrist, shaking my head, and, finally, crossing my arms. It wasn’t quite windtalker code but it did convey that I was equally as pissed as them, and it wasn’t me they should want to kill.
It was now a quarter to two in the morning—Tuesday morning—and the steady honk still flowed. It had grown maddening. There was a point around minute 26 where my brain somehow muted out the noise for several seconds by awakening some type of auditory self-defense mechanism, but it was quickly overcome and incapacitated by minute 27. The mob on the street had grown to 20, and just about every apartment window in sight was now lit up. People had gathered around the blameworthy car underneath my window, and they were beginning to pound their fists against its hood and kick at the doors. Good for them! Whoever this ignorant asshole was, he had to pay for what his car had done to us. I imagined all of us out there with pitchforks and burning torches, ready to castrate the bastard as soon as he ran out with his keys jingling in his hand and an apology on his lips. The crowd below had grown furious, so much so that you could hear them cussing over the horn. One gentleman even picked up a good-size rock and hurled it at the car, but it did nothing to make it quiet again.
But the flung rock did get me to remember that my car was parked somewhere down there, probably not too far from the loud car being attacked by the neighbors. What if they grew so angry that they began destroying any car near the car with the alarm? What if my car—my car that I had just bought the day before—was being sat on or molested in some way by these irrational, pissed-off neighbors going berserk below? Sure, she was just a shitty 13-year-old Celica with more rust than white paint, but she was my shitty Celica—my new shitty Celica. Then the possibility suddenly crossed my mind that perhaps it was my own Celica’s car alarm going off; but then that notion left just as quickly as it came once I remembered that its alarm, stereo, and battery had been stolen prior to buying it—making the Celica’s $600 price tag ideal. But then that realization prompted even more speculation.
Although the lack of a car alarm eliminated the possibility of that 30-minute honk being my car alarm, it did pose the question of it still being my horn. You see, I could afford to replace the car battery, which I did earlier that afternoon, but I couldn’t afford to replace the stereo or the alarm. So, in place of the stereo I used a portable CD player and headphones. And in place of an alarm, I secured the steering wheel firmly in place using The Club steering wheel lock, which I had found lodged between the backseat and hatchback. I remembered the event very clearly; I remembered fiddling with the key to make sure the steel mechanism still locked and unlocked properly, then I remembered forcing the rubber-gripped talons of The Club across both sides of the oddly shaped steering wheel until it firmly and unquestionably locked the entire steering column in place. I remembered the event so vividly because I tried to unlock it a few seconds after locking it just to see if I had attached it correctly in the first place. And it wouldn’t budge—it was locked so firmly in place that it was stuck. And every additional time I tried to yank The Club loose from the steering wheel it somehow pushed against the horn button, startling me as well as several dog-walkers each time. So I left it, figuring if I couldn’t remove it then a car thief couldn’t remove it either.
Upon this recollection-turned-self-indictment, my face went numb seconds before turning as red as the color of guilt. I flung the drape closed, dropped to my knees, and backed up against the wall. The honk seemed much louder now knowing it was most likely mine. Every time I peeked out from behind my drapes, more neighbors seemed to be pointing up at my window. I had to somehow put a stop to this—there was a brand-new battery under that hood, which meant the horn could go on for several more hours. But I couldn’t go down there, especially after letting this go on for the last 40 minutes. The mob had already seen me standing in my window directly above the guilty car, and I had crossed my arms, checked my invisible watch, and shook my head at them out of solidarity. But if I walked down there now, all the crossed arms and head-shaking theatrics would look like I had done all of this out of spite. Pure malice. Why did I have to cross my arms so fervently? Why did I pretend to check a wristwatch that wasn’t there? My showboating was going to be my downfall.
As I slouched there under the window, I deduced all of my options and came to only one conclusion: wait it out until dawn. The sounds of the waking city might drown out the horn or, at the very least, most of these neighbors would eventually have to leave for work. So I was prepared to crouch there under that window for the next four hours like a marine under duress, but luck soon intervened. And it did so by way of a shitty new car battery that was on sale. I will never question my own frugality again.
The 45-minute brick of uninterrupted horn finally started to show signs of weakening. It began with a warbling echo of toots right before a series of deep sighs, then deafening silence for a few seconds, then full-on horn again. But it was dissipating. Gargling ripples of horn-like sounds then replaced the toots and sighs and, a minute later, it petered out completely. It grew so quiet so fast that the silence seemed louder than the horn ever was.
I waited until about noon the following day before checking on the Celica. As I had witnessed from above, they had beaten the shit out of it pretty good. But the neighbors were at least civil enough not to break any windows or spray-paint cocksucker on it; just some fresh kick marks in the door, a semiremoved windshield wiper, and a couple of rocks and a beer can on the hood. I pushed the debris to the ground and opened it up for a look.
“So it was you!” A male voice accused me from behind.
I leaned out from under the hood expecting to see the mob from last night with pitchforks and torches, but instead a husky middle-aged man in a black suit and mirrored sunglasses stood staring at me. My first thought was that he was FBI, and my eyes immediately flashed down to his belt to look for a handgun or a badge. But I assumed that a lot with new people, though. “What was me?”
“Your car,” he answered sternly. “Your car horn, to be more precise. Hell of a way to meet a new neighbor.”
“But I’ve lived here over a year,” I replied.
“No, me,” he answered. “I just moved in. I’ve seen you in the hall. I moved in right next door to you.”
“Well, welcome home. Sorry about the horn last night. I … wasn’t here when it went off.”
“Yeah, I assumed that. I’m Tony, two-oh-two.”
“Brandon. Two-oh-three.”
We shook hands and both lit Camels. I was still a little wary of my “new neighbor,” but it’s hard not to admire a man in a black suit. Tony leaned back against a black Lincoln Town Car parked in front of my Celica—total government car; tinted windows and everything. I wondered if this was all an elaborate plan—the horn, the Celica purchase, the neighborly small talk—to enlist me for some covert operation. Or to make me disappear. Perhaps there was some shady CIA station chief in the backseat of his Lincoln watching me right now, studying my facial tics to see if I was nervous, see if I was hiding something, see if I was ready. I had to play this one real cool—just act like we’re civil neighbors, nothing to suspect, nothing to conceal. Just be cool, bro.
“So, you off to work?” I asked casually.
“No, not till later,” he replied gruffly, cigarette dangling from his lip as he turned around and opened the trunk. “I need to wash my car first.”
He pulled out a bucket, a bottle of dishwashing soap, and a towel and, after filling the bucket with water, proceeded to wash the entire Lincoln Town Car—rims, whitewalls, and bumpers included—without getting a single drop of water or soap bubble onto his suit. The whole bathing process couldn’t have taken longer than 70 seconds. I unlocked my door and sat down behind the wheel, keeping an eye on Tony as I slid the key in and turned the ignition over. I wasn’t sure how, but the Celica started right up. But when I glanced back up, Tony was standing right beside me with his elbow resting on my opened door. He nodded his head to every rev I gave the engine.
“You take good care of your car,” he said. “That’s a good trait.”
“Thanks. You too. Impressive wash job.”
We glanced at each other a few times and nodded to the variation of each new rev but, for the most part, there was just an odd silence between us. He had definitely exceeded the nonconversation time limit for creepiness. But he stood there between me and the car door, preventing me from closing it, and staring at me with those mirrored sunglasses. It was as if he was waiting for me to say something, to confess to some crime I had committed, to disclose some secret New World Order theory that I had devised. The cops on Law & Order approached suspects this way when they knew the perp was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; they wanted them to sweat a bit first. That’s what this Tony was trying on me, but I saw through his little plan. I had been training for this moment since I was 14 years old. I was going to call his bluff. If he wanted to arrest me, or even assassinate me, then I wanted this son of a bitch to know that I had seen it coming. His undercover skills were juvenile at best; real grade-school job. Apparently my reputation at CIA or FBI headquarters didn’t precede me. It would take more than a simple business suit to fool me. Get ready, fucker, cover blown!
“So, are you … Secret Service? Or Homeland Security?” I asked, my right hand gripping the stick shift readying for a fast getaway.
“Neither,” he replied with a scowl. “Limo driver.”
A limo driver? A limo driver. That made sense. Made more sense than the rogue government agent theory. And it would explain the Lincoln Town Car … and the tinted windows … and the quick carwash … and the mirrored sunglasses, too. A friggin’ limo driver—I did not see that coming.
“What do you do?” Tony asked.
“Kind of seeing what’s out there. I’m in need of a new career direction.”
“Want to be a limo driver?” he asked.
“Isn’t it difficult?”
“Sure, OK.”
And that’s more or less how I became a chauffeur. That was the new direction my career compass took. Tony drove me up to his boss’s house in the Hollywood Hills that evening, and the interview process consisted of Marv, the boss, blurting out various landmark locations around Los Angeles and me explaining how I’d drive there. After he was satisfied with my completely fictitious shortcut to the Los Angeles airport, Marv handed me a boxy cellular phone and a set of car keys.
“Remember, that Lincoln is for work use only; no personal use. I keep track of every mile on that motherfucker, so I’ll know. And save all your gas receipts or I won’t reimburse you.”
“Completely understood.”
“And wash that fucking Lincoln every day. Tony’ll show you some tricks. And no smoking in it.”
“Okay.”
“And … do you have a black suit you can wear? Green’s not really going to work.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Good. Do it today,” he replied. “You’re on-call from here forward. You’re like a paramedic. That Lincoln is your ambulance. So park it close to your apartment, and be ready at a moment’s notice.”
“Will do, Marv.”
I shook his hand and rushed out to his driveway where two new Lincoln Town Cars sat glistening side by side in the setting sun. I felt like I had just won a free car on The Price Is Right, and I giddily pushed the “unlock” button on the key fob to find out which one would be coming home with me. It would be the Town Car closest to me—license plate MARV12—and I tenderly reclined into the black leather seat and eased the door shut. Reality outside ceased to exist once that tinted window separated our worlds. When I started the gentle purr of the motor, it was as if I had sat down inside a luxurious spacecraft. The entire instrument panel was digital and quite colorful and illustrated every mile-per-gallon and rotation-per-minute in crisp, electric numerals; the gas gauge actually displayed onscreen exactly how many miles I would be able to drive before I had to fill up again; the heater and air conditioner were not the typical on/off and defrost buttons but digital thermostats equipped to set different temperatures for different seats. This car was my KITT and I was its Michael Knight. Everything had a button or an illuminated red gauge or a fitted leather sheath. It was only 1998 outside this tinted window, but to me it looked like the twenty-first century had already paid a visit to Lincoln Motors. I adjusted the side mirrors before running my hand over the polished black leather dashboard and then the black leather passenger seat. She was like a shiny, sophisticated shadow car, with a seat more comfortable and comforting than any sofa I had ever sat in. This car was all class.
I drove to the Salvation Army and pieced together a black suit for $14, then took a shortcut to my side of Hollywood so I could drive by a few of my friends’ apartments, call them on the cell phone, and have them look out their windows at their classy friend in a classy Lincoln driving by. When I got home, I parked the Lincoln right behind my Celica then stood in the middle of the street and compared them both like a father standing over a firstborn and a bastard. I checked to make sure The Club was still securely on the Celica’s steering wheel—albeit much looser this time—before shaking my head disapprovingly at it and walking up to my apartment for the night.
Marv called me a couple of days later and gave me my instructions for picking up Ed Warding from the airport. After getting into my mostly black suit and hustling out the door, I realized that my fabricated route to the airport would never have worked in the line of duty. It provided a decent, traffic-free tour of the coastline but did very little else in getting me to my intended destination. Luckily, Mr. Warding’s flight was delayed, so I arrived right on time to retrieve him. I used a white piece of paper from my clipboard to write MR. WARDING in big bold letters, and I waited between the arrival gate and baggage claim with my sign at my chest. A well-dressed man in his late 50s walked over and handed me his two suitcases. What an asshole, I thought to myself. No “Hello” or “Good to meet you,” just two armfuls of his clothes.
I had already forgotten his name by the time I ran back to the Lincoln and brought it around to the curb to pick him up. I searched my clipboard and pockets after lifting his suitcases into the trunk, but found no clue as to whom I was driving as well as to where I was supposed to be driving him. Then I remembered that the piece of paper that I had used to write his name on in big bold letters was the same piece of paper that contained all of that relevant information. Then I remembered crumpling that information-laden piece of paper into a ball and hastily tossing it under the car parked next to mine in the parking garage. And I remember feeling kind of bad about littering but not bad enough to bend down and pick it back up. I suppose justice was served on that one.
I closed the trunk and deliberated what to do before beginning this voyage of mystery. I couldn’t ask the client what his name was and where he wanted to go; I would look as unprofessional as they come. And I couldn’t call Marvin or he’d probably yell at me and take away my new Lincoln. KITT would know how to handle this—I was half-tempted to speak into my wristwatch communicator to remotely access KITT’s hard drive and have him activate his brain-wave-perception device to read the mind of the anonymous client in the backseat, but I was a grown man and I was in public, so I decided against it.
No, I’d have to sort this one out on my own. This is adult time. Alright, let’s start with the client’s name first: Warren … Warren Harding … Warren Harren … Ward … Harrington Ward … Harrington Ward might be it. Or Warren Harris. Warren Harris might be it. Damn, I had drifted too far from shore—too many possibilities had tainted the whole pot. Alright, let’s just nod a lot. Or, even better, I could just go with “Sir.” Sir was perfect! I was sure he would appreciate being called “Sir.” Now I just had to remember where I was driving him to … a hotel … the studios … some fancy home? Where was Sir going to …?
At that point, the backseat window rolled down and the client stretched his head out until he found me leaning against the back of the car and staring up. His eyes were red and tired, and he loosened his necktie with a quick, angry tug. “Hey, buddy, come on! We gonna do this thing? Jesus Christ …”
“Yes, yes … just … checking this out,” I quickly replied. What an asshole. I’d be damned if I called this guy Sir now. Calling someone Sir was a sign of respect, and this chump hadn’t earned my respect by rushing my thought process. Sure, I’ll drive you around in my new Lincoln, but I won’t be calling you anything remotely near Sir. As a matter of fact, if “buddy” is good enough to call me, it’s good enough to call you too. Issue resolved, buddy.
The Lincoln started up with a soft, elegant shudder, and we eased into the herd of cars exiting the airport toward Beverly Hills. The odds were in my favor that he was headed somewhere in that city. Now I just had to finesse an exact address out of him.
“There’s a USA Today on the seat back there,” I offered with a glance of my sunglasses in the rearview mirror. Catch more flies with honey, I surmised.
He ruffled the already-opened Business Section and snapped, “Yeah.”
What a dick. I needed to try a new angle. “Is there anywhere new on the agenda? Or just …” I let it trail off at the end hoping he would fill in the blank.
“Just take me to whatever address my office gave you, alright!” He replied with a tone and flair that more than implied that he wasn’t going to say another word without it coming out as a shout.
“Sure thing … buddy.” I had paused too long between “thing” and “buddy,” and I heard the newspaper descend loudly to his lap. I chose to ignore it and didn’t look in the rearview mirror, but at least now I had established that I was the type of chauffeur that called his fares “buddy” instead of mister or sir. I could probably call him buddy again and again now, and instead of being rude I was just being weirdly courteous, like a bereaved grandparent living in the spare bedroom.
I was going to make another attempt at getting the address again but the boxy black cellular phone rang from the passenger seat beside me. I flipped it open and answered it.
“Yes, this is Brandon.”
“It’s Marv. How’d it go? You got him?”
“Oh yes, fine, Marv. Everything’s fine.”
“You got him there with you? He’s there?”
“Yes, the client and I are heading to the destination as we speak.”
“Good, good,” Marv replied after a lengthy pause. “So everything’s fine then, and you’re taking him to his … destination then?”
“Affirmative. And … just to verify, what address do you have there, Marv?” I asked with just the perfect blend of concern and apprehension in my voice. “Just to verify.” Oh yeah, problem solved. Chalk one up for the new chauffeur.
“The … the … to verify … yeah, that’s smart, let’s see here,” Marv said, and I heard papers shuffling across his desk. “Who do you have again? What’s his name?”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Backfire. I couldn’t tell Marv that I had the man I now refer to as “buddy” in my car. I somehow had to fool Marv into thinking that I knew who this guy in my backseat was while continuing to fool the guy in the backseat that I knew where I was taking him. There was only one way to fix getting caught in a lie, and that was to lie just a little more to get out of it. I pretended to flip through papers on my clipboard while mumbling isolated facts and sounds of hesitation into the phone, hoping Marv would chime in with the answers.
“Let’s see here … American … Airlines … 11:30 … in the … morning—traffic coming up here, Marv, don’t want to take my eyes off the road here—Okay … looking back at … clipboard … American … Airlines …”
“Ed Warding, right?” Marv exclaimed.
“Yes! Yes, that would be the one!” I replied a little too ecstatically. “Mr. Warding is who is here with me.”
“And he’s going to … to … he’s going to NBC,” Marv said after some more papers were shuffled around on his end. “He’s doing some news interview. Is that what you have? You have NBC, right?”
“Yes, NBC would be the same destination as I have written here. And this is the NBC on … on … on … traffic coming up here, Marv, can’t look at my notes … keeping eyes on the road … the one on … on …”
“On 3rd street, in Santa Monica.” Marv sounded concerned now, “That’s what you have, right? Am I wrong here? Did he tell you something different? Is he telling you some place different? They have to pay for that! You tell him! You tell him!”
“No, no, we’re all on the same page here, Marv. Everything’s fine. I’ll have Mr. Warren there in about 10 minutes.”
“Warding,” I heard from the backseat. “It’s Warding.”
I cupped the phone and gave Mr. Warding a glance of my sunglasses in the rearview, “Yes, Mr. Warding, that’s affirmative. We’re on our way.”
“And it’s definitely not buddy,” he added before going back to his newspaper.
“What?! What is he saying?!” Marv screamed into the phone. “He doesn’t want to pay? Is that what he’s saying?”
“No, nothing like that. Oh, here comes the tunnel—” I said just before hanging up.
From that moment on, the remainder of my first gig as a chauffeur was a breeze. I dropped Mr. Warding off at the studio, read the USA Today while he did the interview, then took him to his hotel in Beverly Hills. Even scored a $5 tip at the end of it. And I made it home in time to watch Jeopardy, the virginity of my first fare finally taken.
My next assignment would prove to be a little more involved than my previous one. It began not with the question of whether I was ready to handle driving a long limousine, and not even whether I was ready to drive that long limousine to another state—but my third assignment began with the odd question of: “Do you listen to the rap music?”
“No, not really,” I replied to Marv.
“That’s fine,” he said. “I ask because the next pickup is a rap band. The Wing-Wang Boys or something. Hold on, I got the name here …” Papers shuffled across his desk again. “The Woo-Ting Clan, that’s their name.”
“Okay, I’ve heard of them.”
“Are they any good?”
“They’re popular. I don’t know if they’re any good, though.”
“Well, you’ll be taking them to Las Vegas for some fashion award show for that music TV,” he said. “I guess they’re pretty big shit. Staying at Caesar’s Palace afterward. It’s a two-day job. Drive up there today, do the award show tonight, you all have rooms at Caesar’s, then you drive them back tomorrow afternoon. This is a big job, kid. The pay is tasty. You good?”
Vegas? Oh yeah, I was good. Real good.
I picked up that extremely long limo from a parking garage in Beverly Hills and cautiously drove it up and down every concrete floor a number of times before feeling confident enough to take it on the open road. Once at the hotel, it wasn’t difficult to spot The Woo-Ting Clan—I grew concerned about that on the drive over; the only things I had really known about them were A) they were black, B) they wore lots of camouflage clothing, and C) they would be in a posse. And that’s kind of what emerged from the hotel lobby, in a surrealist sort of way. Four gangsta-looking guys in fluorescent orange and pink camouflage outfits pulled their suitcases to the valet entrance, each wearing a neck full of jewelry and a big yellow pair of goggles over their eyes. They looked like cartoon hunters off for a big-game weekend in Oz. Or an underwater welding team in the Ocean of Day-Glo.
They rolled their suitcases to the limo and let me toss them in the trunk while they watched, then they stood by the closed back door until I opened it for them. Then they all shared a good long laugh at the concept of a white man having to open the door for black men.
“It’s like Driving Miss Daisy and shit!” one of them remarked.
Another, already sitting inside, shouted out, “More like Driving Miss Cracka!”
I really wanted to lean into the back of that limousine and explain that it was Miss Daisy who was being driven—that they were the Miss Daisy, or the Miss Cracka, in this equation—but I did not. I let them have their fun; their people had waited a few hundred years for it, so I gave it to them. But the fourth and last Woo-Ting Clan member, the one they called Ol’ Dirty Prick, paused before getting into the limo, and he turned back and looked at me holding open the door for him. He cocked his head to the side and examined my face with his bulbous yellow eyes.
“You look like … who is that?” he tapped his lip and asked me. “That motherfuckin’ actor … you look like … like …”
With my hair slicked back, like it was then, I sometimes resembled a malnourished Nicolas Cage, according to a few ladyfriends. We shared the same widow’s peak and nose, I think it was. I wasn’t sure but I had heard it more than a few times in the past. So that’s what I presumed Ol’ Dirty Prick was getting at, that I looked like Nic Cage.
I was just about to end his guessing charade when he beat me to the punch, but his answer was quite different from the one I was expecting. “Oh man, this motherfucker look like Judge Reinhold! That motherfucker from Beverly Hills Cop and shit. The dork from um … Fast Times at Ridgemont High, man! Just like him!”
He finally took his seat in the back and I closed the door. Judge Reinhold? Was he serious? Not to discredit Judge Reinhold as an actor in any way, but he was not the coolest nor the most attractive man working in Hollywood. And he really was, like Ol’ Dirty Prick pointed out, a dork. Goofy even comes to mind. Was he right, or did all us Germanic white guys look alike to a man of color? Or was he just trying to insult me, like me telling him that he resembled a Gary Coleman of regular height? I wasn’t sure which way to take the Judge Reinhold comment but, regardless, that Ol’ Dirty Prick really knew his ‘80s movies.
They were a rowdy bunch as we pulled onto the freeway for our five-hour drive ahead, and they proceeded to blast songs from their new album in the back after raising the bass as high as it would go. They all lit cigarettes at the same time, so I surreptitiously lit my own and kept it down by my thigh and out of sight. The limo soon filled with a putrid, chemical-smelling smoke, which was exacerbated by the fact that none of them lowered any windows. The acrid smelling cloud wasn’t pot—I was very familiar with the way pot smelled and could even distinguish California strains from Canada’s through scent alone. It wasn’t anything in the cocaine family—that smell you never forgot. It definitely wasn’t an opiate. Were they smoking methamphetamines, maybe? Foreign cigarettes? Were the leather seats burning? Whatever it was, it was making me as high as a kite and quite nauseous. Before I could poke my head through the partition to inquire what the smell was, somebody else back there beat me to it.
“It’s fucking formaldehyde, man!” the one they called Ghost Boy shouted. “You dip a cigarette into that shit, let it dry, and it’ll fuck you up, dog. Fucking formaldehyde …”
“That shit is what they put in corpses, man!” angrily replied the member whose name I think was R.I.P. “What the fuck? You’re gonna kill us!”
“I know, bro …” Ghost Boy slurred with a long toothy smile. “But you’re high, though. Shit’s heavy, man. I got a whole jug of this shit at my place.”
Fuck that noise. I pushed a little button on the dashboard and the black partition rose between the driver’s compartment and the cabin, and I quickly lowered the windows up front so I could breathe. There were no complaints from the Clan about the divider now up between us, so I found a station that played BBC news and sipped from my thermos of coffee and smoked cigarettes all the way to Sin City in my own isolated cockpit.
Once at the Las Vegas Convention Center, I followed the line of limos through the semifilled parking lot to the front doors, where a handful of photographers and cameramen stood beside a dozen big security guards in headsets. Again, I jumped out, ran around to the other side of the limo and opened the back door—like a good Miss Cracka—and received a faceful of blinding camera flashes once the Clan stepped onto the curb. Before they could disappear into the throng of photographers, fans, and journalists, I grabbed the last one—Ol’ Dirty Prick, I think it was—by the arm and asked, “So, what time should I pick you up?”
“I don’t know, man!” he yanked his arm away and shouted. “Wait your Judge Reinhold ass over there with all the other limos!” He pointed to a long stretch of desert road just beyond the enormous parking lot, where forty or so other limos sat parked in a perfect line.
“Do you want to just call me when you’re finished?” I asked. “I have a phone with me.”
“I’m performing on stage, motherfucker!” he shouted back. “I don’t do shit like call the limo man! Just look for us!”
“What about someone from your posse? Could they call me when you guys are done?” I attempted, but he had already started answering questions from some TV entertainment show host.
Another limo pulled up behind me and honked, and I looked over to find three more limos waiting behind that one. So I jumped back inside and drove across the parking lot to the barren lane of limos and took my spot at the very end, exactly forty-three limousine lengths from the middle of nowhere. I stepped outside and tried to assess how far I was from where I had just dropped them off, but it was too far to make out anything but the occasional camera flash. There was no way I would be able to see them coming out. Ol’ Dirty Prick had it wrong. I debated the dilemma and came to the conclusion that I should just follow the herd. Once the show ended, all the celebrities would probably pour out together, and then all of the limos would leave in one long mass exodus to pick each one up. Just a nice game of follow-the-leader. It sounded logical enough for the time being.
One topic they never went over in the Limo Driver’s Field Manual was what to do if you had to go to the bathroom. It was at least a mile walk back to the convention center, which was out of the question wearing a black suit in that desert heat. There were no fast-food restaurants in sight; no hotels, no casinos anywhere. I even lowered my urination standards, but trying to take an outdoor leak in Las Vegas proved nearly impossible: There were no trees in a desert, no secluded alleyways, and no trash bins anywhere—just sand and limousines as far as the eye could see. I considered the old “open the trunk and pretend to look for something but really be pissing near the bumper” trick, but three limos had parked behind me and three pairs of mirrored sunglasses were now watching me from behind three windshields. I felt like Morpheus about to get thumped by a handful of rogue Agent Smiths.
I couldn’t wait any longer. My stomach and groin were aching from an enlarged bladder, and I could feel the early trickles of pee dampening the front of my underwear. I only had one option left: pee in the limo. Not knowing proper limo driver protocol, I lowered the partition and crawled through to the cabin and looked around for any large cups or beer bottles lying around, but the Clan apparently weren’t big drinkers. The only thing remotely close were the three lowball glasses anchored into a minibar by a bottle of scotch. That would not suffice; I would have to improvise. I got onto my knees and cracked open the back door about three inches, then, after making certain that every window surrounding me was tinted, I unzipped, aimed, and tinkled through the narrow opening. Aside from a desert breeze shutting the door midstream, the operation was a success. I used Ghost Boy’s pink camouflage sweater to dry off the door then tossed it onto the floor by some candy wrappers. Judge Reinhold that, fucker!
I had never before been in the back of a limousine and, whether it was the sudden peaceful feeling of a deflated bladder or the residue in the air of the formaldehyde cigarettes, I melted into the soft leather sofa-like seat and felt a sense of tranquility that I hadn’t felt in years. I glanced through the tinted windows at all of the shuffling chauffeurs in black suits making small talk with one another outside, or cleaning their windows free from bugs and sand, or sipping coffee and talking on cell phones from their bumpers. Then I looked around inside the cabin of my limo. I had seclusion, I had privacy, I had a minibar, I had a leather sofa-like seat, and I had a television imbedded into the wall. This was living, I concluded. To hell with your small talk, limo drivers. Sing your chin music to one another and share your stories of celebrities and freeway traffic, because this particular chauffeur was going to relax, watch some TV, and have a well-earned drink.
I caught the last half of Jaws only to find Jaws II next on the roster of whatever station this little antennae TV picked up, so I poured another scotch in honor of Chief Brody returning to the waters of Amity. At just about the same time the first teenager was pulled underwater, a handful of limos left our herd to return to the convention center. So I poured the rest of my scotch out the back door, crawled back into the driver’s seat, and followed them in. The crowd of bystanders and cameramen had doubled in size at the front doors of the convention center, and I slowly and very carefully drove through the horde trying to catch a glimpse of orange and pink camouflage. But they were nowhere to be found, so I drove back through the enormous parking lot and returned to my original spot among the line of parked limos on the lonely street of servitude. I crawled back into the cabin, poured another small scotch, and resumed my spot on the sofa-like seat with Jaws II. Chief Brody eventually killed the big shark for the second time, signaling that it had been about three hours and change since the fashion show had started. Another succession of limos then pulled out of the line and returned to the convention center. I checked my watch to find that 40 minutes had passed since my first attempt, so I crawled back into the front and followed the last limo back to the crowd at the entrance. But, just like the first attempt, no Woo-Ting Clan waiting for me. So I sped off back to Limo Boulevard and took a vacated spot about twenty feet from the front. I stayed behind the steering wheel this time because limousines were beginning to break from formation every minute or two, and I knew the show would soon be ending.
By the time I finished another cigarette, two-thirds of my black-suited people had fled our road—a mere twelve or thirteen limos were all that was left of us. Cars were also beginning to exit the parking lot in boulevard-long lines, and pedestrians soon filled the streets around us—the fashion show had surely ended by that point. Three more limos turned on their headlights and drove to the convention center, so I started up my stretch and followed them back to the entrance. Most of the photographers and camera crews had already left because the majority of celebrities had gone, so I had a perfect view of the entryway as I pulled up. And yet again, no Woo-Ting Clan anywhere in sight. I idled there for a few minutes hoping they would emerge, but two drunks walked by and threw some type of food at my limo, so I sped off back to Limo Road to find it completely empty of all limousines. But I parked there anyway.
It was 1:00 in the morning when I smoked my last cigarette of the pack. I drove around until finding a liquor store, bought two packs of Camels, beef jerky, and some candy bars for dinner, and returned to the parking lot minutes later. Most of the cars had left. Almost all of the overhead lights had been turned off, and the only signs of life were a few straggling audience members and a lone security guard waving a flashlight toward the last available exit.
I was convinced that I had missed the Clan; that they had somehow not seen me when they left and took a taxi to the hotel. If that was the case, though, I figured Marv would have called to chew my ass off by now. So I waited again, but this time parked right at the front doors of the convention center. If they were still in there, they would have to run right into me. There was no way I could miss them now. I checked my watch to find it nearly 2:00 a.m., almost 10 hours since I’d had anything but 35 cigarettes and a candy bar in my stomach. Just as my eyes fluttered closed for a little malnourished nap, the back door sprang open and the cabin suddenly filled with a dozen loud, laughing people. I was startled awake and couldn’t make out who was back there—some drunks, the wrong band, a gang—but then I heard someone shout, “Hotel, motherfucker!” and I knew my boys were back safely inside.
I dropped them off at the lobby of Caesar’s Palace, parked the limo, and checked in to my room. I love hotel rooms. I love the freshness of them; I love the crisp, laundered sheets; I love the free HBO and Showtime; I love the pens and polite tablets with hotel logos, and I love taking them. I love the little individual bottles of shampoo and conditioner and the strong jets in the shower. I love the deep silence of a hotel room; I love putting the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the front door and resting assured that I would not be disturbed. I love everything a hotel room has to offer, and the only way I could love it any more was if someone else was paying for it, like this one.
It wasn’t more than 10 minutes after brushing my teeth and settling into bed with my HBO when I heard a knock at the door. I sat upright in bed but didn’t move beyond that. Who would dare knock on the door of a hotel resident with a DO NOT DISTURB sign clearly posted? It was well after 3:00 in the morning and, even for Las Vegas, that was pretty damn late. Perhaps it was a mistake? Maybe some drunk mistook my door for where the party was? Well, give it a second … quiet again … might be safe now to recline back into bed and fall—knock, knock, knock, knock. BAM, BAM, BAM.
I jumped out of bed and opened the door to find two of the Woo-Ting members swaying alongside two promiscuous-looking women wearing silver dresses that hugged every ripple and curve of their unflattering bodies like sausage lining.
“What’s the deal?” I said after partially closing the door to conceal the briefs that I thought were boxers.
“Hey, Reinhold, can we …?” Ol’ Dirty Prick raised a thick brown joint at me.
“There’s forty motherfuckers in our room right now,” R.I.P. added. “And we just wanted to smoke a little with these fine ladies somewhere chill for five minutes.”
“You mean here? It’s not that shit from the limo, is it?” I asked.
“No, no, this shit’s chronic, man.” Ol’ Dirty Prick ran the joint under his nose and smiled. “We’ll just chill here for a sec, man. It’ll be cool.”
He had already angled himself past the door by the time he finished what he was saying, so I opened it all the way and went into the bathroom to put on pants and a shirt. When I came back out, all four were lying on my bed and watching the Bruce Willis movie that I had put on, so I sat down in the chair by the window. I watched the joint pass between them several times before Ol’ Dirty Prick finally noticed me sitting just a few feet across from them. I hoped he was finally going to pass it my way, but the scowl should have been a good indicator that he wouldn’t be.
“What the fuck?” he shouted. “Why are you still here? You said we could have your room!”
“I said you could smoke that joint in my room,” I corrected him.
“Naw, naw, naw, naw! We’re paying for this shit!” he shouted again. “This here is my room now!”
“No, it’s actually not.” I corrected him again. “Music TV is paying for this room—for my room—as well as for my limo service. You really didn’t pay for a damn thing here.”
“You even act like Reinhold … all whiny and shit!” Ol’ Dirty Prick said before leaning back against the headrest of my bed, showing no signs of leaving any time soon.
“Hey, let’s all just be cool, alright?” R.I.P. said after running his hand up the back of the bare leg of the lady lying beside him. “We’re just having some fun here.”
They proceeded to spend the next 20 minutes smoking that joint without once passing it to me. I puffed away at a cigarette and pretended to be engrossed by this latest Die Hard sequel on the TV while they lounged on my comfortable bed and did the same. Then Ol’ Dirty Prick finally snubbed out the end of the joint on the wooden bedside drawer, and Bruce Willis finally got the bad guy. But the two lovely couples wrapping themselves in my blankets made no attempt at leaving either my room or my bed. Fuckers even had their heads on my pillows.
It was officially 4:00 in the morning, and I refused to take any more of this. I was off the clock, and these momentary celebrities were now just robbing an honest hardworking man of a good night of sleep. The women were beginning to doze off and the guys looked as if that was their plan, so I stood up and clapped my hands twice, which was something that always worked on me when I was a kid.
“Alright, time for you guys to go now,” I exclaimed.
All four ignored me so I shook Ol’ Dirty Prick’s shoulder and said it again. He violently pushed my hand away and shouted, “Don’t you ever fucking touch me again!”
I was exhausted and angry and hungry and I wanted nothing more than to punch him square in the face, but I knew that that would probably be the only punch I landed, and the remaining punches would all be showered upon me. So I leaned down closer to the bed, just a few inches from his face, and calmly said, “Get out of my bed. And then get out of my room. I want to go to sleep.”
We did that thing that animals do, where you stare at each other until either a fight erupts or someone acquiesces. But in this case, one of the ladies threw up into her hand and ran it to the bathroom. So R.I.P. grabbed the other lady’s hand and walked her to the door while Ol’ Dirty Prick shook his head at me, retrieved his sick gal from around the shitter, and finally left.
I tried to settle back into bed but my veins were pumping with adrenaline and my pillows smelled like perm chemicals and grape smoke. But they had left, and the room was again mine; to the victor go the spoils. Although they had kept me up past 4:00 in the morning, I could still get a solid eight hours of sleep in and some time at the craps tables before we had to return back to Los Angeles. The Vegas trip wasn’t completely lost. I flipped through the channels until finding a decent horror film on TNT, and when I went to return the remote control to the bedside table I found the stubbed-out roach from their joint. It was like my severance pay. Thanks, Ol’ Dirty Prick. I lit it up and, for a nubby little roach, it offered me many, many good hits. I puffed away at it until it warmed my thumb and index finger then I stubbed it out in the same spot my predecessor did. When I tuned back to the movie, I was as stoned as a caveman fight in a gulley of hand-sized rocks. The gentle tug of honest fatigue finally began to overtake me, and I felt my eyes softly fight to stay open before succumbing to the warm, welcoming pool of intoxicated hotel slumber.
BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM rattled the door. My eyes flew open and my heart pounded in my chest—the kind of palpitation that only happens when being startled awake in the middle of a short nap. The sun was just barely beginning to rise through the window—it was still dark in the room aside from the TV’s glow. BAM, BAM, BAM, BAM at the door again. No, no, no, not this time, Ol’ Dirty Prick. You can go fuck your drunk lady in your own room. I wouldn’t be falling for that shit again. I smothered my head under the pillow and drifted back to sleep. I vaguely recall hearing some more muted knocks at the door, but it wasn’t until someone wiggled my bare foot that I awoke. I tore the pillow from my face and shot upright to find the hotel manager and all four of the Woo-Ting Clan standing at the foot of my bed. The reality of the situation didn’t register right away, and I glanced at each and every face surrounding me trying to find an answer to a question that I couldn’t put into words. “Is it?” was all that I could ask.
“Sir, Mr. Reinhold, I apologize for entering your room like this,” the suited manager said apologetically, “but they said you were their chauffeur, and they couldn’t get a hold of you.”
“We’re leaving!” R.I.P shouted at me from behind the manager. “Grab your shit and let’s go!”
“Music TV might have paid for this shit, Reinhold,” Ol’ Dirty Prick then said, “but I say when we leave! So go bring the limo around and meet us downstairs in 10 minutes. You’re driving us home now, Miss Daisy.”
“Yeah, it’s too hard to sleep in this hotel!” one of them added with a sneer.
They left in a herd of laughter accented by an apologetic smile from the hotel manager. Touché, Ol’ Dirty Prick, touché—didn’t see that one coming. I brewed a minipot of coffee, splashed my face, and packed up my belongings in 7 minutes, then retrieved the limo and pulled it around to the front of the hotel in just under 12 minutes. The Clan came out 20 minutes later and, after I loaded their luggage into the trunk and held the back door open for them, I leaned into the cabin and informed them, “You all might want to wear your seatbelts for this ride.”
I got in front and raised the partition between us and didn’t lower it again until it was time to say, “We’re home.” As all four slowly wriggled awake on the long leather seats in the cabin, I pulled their luggage from the trunk and sat it onto the curb by the back bumper. I then opened their backdoor and returned to my driver’s seat and smoked a cigarette until the last member vacated the limo. All four stood beside their luggage on the curb, and I think they were waiting for me to carry their suitcases into the hotel lobby for them. But that wasn’t going to work for me. I tapped on the gas pedal just enough to jolt the car forward, which slammed the back door shut. Then I drove off and left them standing there with raised arms and colorful insults.
Marv called minutes later, just after I had parked the limo back inside its garage, and asked if I had the energy to do another job that afternoon. I explained an abridged version of my night with the Woo-Ting Clan to him, and he explained to me that this next gig would pay $145 and it didn’t involve leaving Hollywood. So I agreed. I switched into my Lincoln Town Car and drove back to my apartment, tried to take a nap but couldn’t, and instead took two showers, ate a TV dinner, and brewed a half-pot of Starbuck’s French Roast. When I returned to the parking garage later that afternoon to retrieve the limo, the Vegas weekend finally began to take its toll on me. I could feel my motor skills hampered by fatigue; I began yawning uncontrollably and my eyes wouldn’t stop tearing up. Not normally two points that I would mention as vital to a story, but it does lend itself to the reason I didn’t see the large concrete pillar at the passenger side of the limo. It was a horrifying sound as large ribbons of navy blue steel tore off from the back door and coiled in jagged wave-like peels near the wheel well. And even more horrifying than the sound of that steel shredding was the sound of Marv taking the news. He began yelling into the cell phone as soon as I said it and didn’t stop for 10 minutes.
Marv said he had rented out all of his other limos for the night, and this next fare—the up-and-coming Caucasian hip-hop star Johnnie G—was supposed to have been a big favor for a big client at Capitol Records. So I lied a little and told Marv the damage on the limo wasn’t all that bad and wouldn’t be very noticeable at night. And he believed me enough to let me finish the job. I was able to conceal the damaged back door from Johnnie G and his publicist and manager when I picked them up from a home in Encino, but arriving at the Grammys was an entirely different affair.
There was only one way up to that giant red carpet, and that was straight through the flashing, cheering madness of a very well-lit welcoming committee of television crews, international press agents, reporters, cameramen, fans, and security personnel. Before I could yell into the back to tell Johnnie G that the back door facing all those flashing bulbs and adoring fans wasn’t going to open no matter how hard he tried, he continued trying nonetheless. So I opened my own door and hustled the few feet to the driver’s side backdoor—the door facing away from the crowd—and opened it for them. Johnnie G crawled out with a confused expression followed by his equally confused manager and publicist. The cameras began flashing madly as they circled behind the limo to get to the red carpet, where a barrage of laughter and finger pointing greeted them. It was at that point that Johnnie G noticed the obliterated back door with its trestles of ripped blue steel forming what looked to be a giant three-fingered fist. Then Marv noticed the same thing as he watched it all on live TV coverage from his home, and he called me minutes later to fire me.
That next day, I drove my Lincoln Town Car back up to Marv’s house in the hills, and I parked it back in the driveway just where I had found it. I ran my palm over that glossy black steering wheel one last time before walking down to Sunset Blvd. and hopping on the bus in my black suit and mirrored sunglasses.
When I got home a little later, my dusty Celica was still parked in the same spot as when the horn had bellowed out so violently two weeks before. I guess I hadn’t even touched it since becoming a chauffeur. I suppose it’s like returning to an old, fat wife after carrying on a lurid affair with a beautiful woman half her age—it just wasn’t the same, and could never ever be the same again. But she was still my wife, so I sat down behind her wheel and started her up. It wasn’t that I hated my Celica now, but I blamed her for all that had happened, and all I could now see were her faults: both bumpers were missing, the vinyl seats were ripped to hell, the windshield was cracked, the dashboard was blue and plastic and tattered from the sun, that stupid The Club was still on its steering wheel, and it reeked of gasoline at every rev.
After the Celica had a few minutes to warm up, she must have noticed the sad expression I now carried. In a soft, forgiving tone she said, “You are one of us, lover. We’re not the flashy type. We are the same, you and me.”
“Never,” I whispered back.
“Did you have a good time? How was she? Did you like how she handled?” she began to ridicule me.
“You haven’t earned the right to call her ‘she,’” I roared at the Celica.
“Well, I’m glad you’re back, regardless,” she added very sweetly. “We’ll always have the horn night.”
I turned off the ignition and whispered, “Yeah, we’ll always have that, honey.” Then I removed The Club from her steering wheel, unlocked all the doors, and went up to my apartment. My days as a swinging chauffeur had officially ended.