That summer past, unfolding.
After the afternoon’s shopping adventure, which ended in few purchases, Harry chauffeured them back to Cassie’s apartment. Shem had become reticent, acknowledging Rose’s attempts to elicit a little humor and politeness with grunts and general unpleasantness. Rose boldly insisted Harry eat something before leaving them. He declined, saying he had an engagement that he was already late for. Shem wanted to know what kind of engagement. Harry hesitated. But then he took perverse delight in answering Shem Bihar forthrightly. He belonged to a wine-tasting club, and the club’s monthly tasting was scheduled that night. “Wine tasting!” Shem chuckled. He asked if guests were permitted. Rose laughed and said, “You inviting yourself to a private club? And besides, you want to go and drink tonight? You will get high, and the mood you are in, I can’t take any back chat tonight, you know.” Shem got serious again and shook his head at her. Harry decided to defy her, only in order to calm him. “It’s men only,” he offered. “We haven’t had a guest before, but these men are my good friends. You’d be welcome, I’m sure.”
All in all, Rose seemed pleased that Shem and Harry were going off to do something together. Harry stopped at a liquor store. Shem picked out a costly bottle of Puerto Rican rum. That would be his contribution, he said proudly. Harry reiterated that it was a wine club, they drank only wine at these meetings. Shem asked who these people were. His first friends in Canada, Harry told him, fellows who had come from India, Sri Lanka, Fiji, and two were Indians from East Africa. Shem insisted that Harry stop to get a carton of grapefruit juice, some lemons, and several bottles of soda water. He would make an old-fashioned rum punch that would be better than any wine. “Just you wait and see,” he said.
The Once a Taxi Driver members obliged good-humoredly. On Shem’s insistence, the bottles of wine remained uncorked. After his second punch, and questions about how they met, what work they did, and more, Shem asked why it was that so many Indians drove cabs in the city. One of them blurted out, as if the question had been much asked of him before and the answer well considered, “Connections.”
Shem turned to Harry. “From cabdriver to gardener. You should have stayed in Guanagaspar, boy! At least there you had those two little gas stations. You know, they have been shut down now.”
Harry’s friend Anil spoke up. “But this man is no ordinary gardener, you know. He has his own business and employs eight men. He has some of the biggest accounts up the coast. Harry, you should take him to see the golf course and your gardens at some of those big houses.”
Harry did not correct Anil. He currently employed only five full-time workers, and had long ago given up the golf course. In any case, he was rather pleased that Shem was finding out there was more to him than he knew.
Shem fired a question. “But you are a gardener, aren’t you? What does he mean you have employees? In any case, it is gardening that you do, not so?”
Harry said, “I design and execute gardens from scratch. Then, in some cases, I do the maintenance. Well, not me personally, but I have a crew who does that part of the work.”
“Design? Well, come now. You would have had to go to school for that, not so? So, you have certification? You see, for my profession, one needs a degree. Papers, articling, credentials. You can’t just put up a sign and call yourself attorney general, you know.”
Partap raised his eyes and said, “Attorney general? You mean to say we have an attorney general in our midst? From which country did you say you are?”
“I am the attorney general of Guanagaspar,” Shem said proudly.
There was silence and then hard, heckling laughter when Partap, assuming a pose of true quizzicality, said, “Where is that?”
Good friends, indeed. But this all seemed foolish and painful to Harry, and it had nothing to do with his quiet, unassuming friends. It had everything to do with Rose, with Shem, and with Harry, with Shem’s embarrassments earlier that day. Harry said, “Yes. I am a gardener, it is true. And we are all ex–taxi drivers here. Each one of us owns a business now. But nothing was handed down to us. We had to work from the ground up, for everything we have nowadays. But you know, you are right, we will, no matter what else we achieve, always, in the eyes of many, remain taxi drivers. Once a taxi driver, always a taxi driver. Not so, fellows?”
Harry’s good friends, recognizing the guest’s prickly disposition, aware that a rivalry was taking place and that there was potential for unpleasantness, said almost in unison, “Hear, hear, once a taxi driver, always a taxi driver. Let’s drink to that, and to our good guest, the attorney general of Guanagaspar.” They raised their glasses in the air, and before Shem could begin again, they dispersed into smaller groups, talking among themselves and ignoring their venerable visitor.
Shem fell asleep in the car on the way back to Cassie’s apartment. As he was quite drunk, Harry did not want to simply leave him on the street level and drive away, so he accompanied him to the buzzer. He told Cassie to come and get her father. She and Rose came down. Rose was annoyed and embarrassed. She left it to Cassie to thank Harry. Alone at the curbside, Cassie asked Harry if he was available the following day. He had no interest in wasting more of his time with that man, and not knowing Rose’s mind, Harry also did not care to spend more time with her. He would spend the day up at the water garden. He told Cassie he had to work. She said her mother would be disappointed, as she had hoped he would have time to take them to the area where he lived; she wanted to see his house. Cassie said she, too, was free and had been expecting that he would take them up that way. She said her mother would love the greenery, the mountains, the coast. She asked Harry if there were eagles up there at this time of the year. Harry ran his hand through his hair pensively. He smiled at her and said he was his own boss and could put off work for a day. He would return to fetch them before eleven the next morning.