I was just pulling onto Colfax Avenue and thinking about driving past Gino’s Barbershop, where I go once a month for a free haircut. I always beep my horn when I drive past even if I’m not stopping. The beep is sort of like Carol Burnett tugging her earlobe. I get free haircuts at Gino’s because I once did a favor for the nephew of the owner, and he won’t let me pay to get my ponytail trimmed.
Gino is the barber who gave me my new “look,” meaning the ponytail. Prior to that my hair was just sort of an unkempt explosion. Gino is an elderly Italian who has taken a proprietary interest in my ponytail because he designed it. He has forbidden me from ever using a comb. He gave me a special brush to use in the way that dentists give patients a special decay-preventing dentifrice for their choppers.
I was getting psyched up to make my run past Gino’s when a call came over the radio, so I grabbed it. The house was in the opposite direction so I scotched the beep and headed toward the address.
It was a small, white clapboard house in a quiet neighborhood. I pulled up in front and waited, hoping the guy would be watching for me. I do not under normal circumstances beep my horn when I pull up in front of a residence. It’s not illegal for a cabbie to beep his horn, but it is considered bad form. As someone who sleeps a great deal in the daytime, I am especially sensitive to the concept of infuriating noise. I waited for about a minute, then psyched myself up for getting all the way out of my cab and walking all the way up to the front door, which must have been a good thirty feet. The weather was nice, there was no snow, no rain, or hail, or wind, and no tornado warnings, but still, I would have to walk thirty feet.
I was just in the process of heaving a sigh of exasperation when I saw the front door open. I quickly changed it to a sigh of relief, which can be physically damaging if you don’t know what you’re doing.
The fare seemed to be having trouble getting out the door, then I realized he was carrying something large. He was hugging it to his chest. I quickly got out of the cab and hurried around to the rear to open the trunk. The distance from the front seat to the trunk was only seven steps, so I had no problem with that, even though there was a slight breeze in the air. Then I realized he was carrying a television set, a twenty-seven incher. I recognized the dimensions from a distance of thirty feet. I know my televisions. I’ve owned a lot of TVs in my life. I’ve shopped in Salvation Army stores from Atlanta to San Francisco. It’s amazing the bargains you can get in those places, especially on color sets.
The sight of someone carrying a television like the Creature from the Black Lagoon carrying a gorgeous woman in a white bathing suit struck a deep chord in my chest. I immediately assumed there was something wrong with the TV. I forgot all about tornadoes and hurried up the sidewalk to see if I could give him a hand.
“Need any help with that?” I said.
“No, no, I think I’ve got it,” he said. He was young, mid-twenties, husky, looked like he could handle the weight. I escorted him down to the cab, walking at his side and looking at the TV, which appeared to be in good shape. It was an ancient Philco model. The aerial wasn’t bent, the screen was intact, and the wooden casing was clean and unscarred. I got a sinking feeling in my gut. I feared we were dealing with internal injuries here. When a picture tube goes out, you feel so goddamn helpless. I wanted to ask what had happened to it, even though it was none of my business, but it was a Philco fer the luvva Christ. I had a Philco in KC.
He gently laid the TV in the trunk. I lowered the lid but it wouldn’t close tight.
“I’ll have to tie the lid with a rope,” I said. I keep a ten-foot length of rope in the trunk for emergencies.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “We won’t be going very far.”
His voice was kind of forlorn. Where were we going—to the city landfill? But I shook it out. Most likely we were going to a TV repair shop. When TVs actually die, they end up in alleys. Large-item pickup does the rest.
I hurried around to the driver’s side, climbed in, and started the engine. I felt like a medic in a war zone. The kid didn’t look like he could afford to own two TVs, and for one moment I saw myself sitting in my crow’s nest with no television in the corner. I quickly put the image out of my mind.
“Where to?” I said, glancing back at him. I already had the shift in low.
“I just need to run down to Colfax,” he replied quietly.
“Can you give me an address?” I said.
“No,” he said. “I’m going to a pawnshop.”
I froze.
“There’s a lot of pawnshops on Colfax,” he said.
“Any one will do. This will be a round-trip.”
I faced front and pulled away from the house. I barely remember the trip to Colfax. I was in a daze. It was the worst news imaginable. He was pawning his TV.
I drove in silence. I didn’t know what the hell to say. Somehow I got us down to Colfax and turned right. There was a pawnshop in the middle of the block. The kid told me to pull up in front. I parked and got out and walked to the trunk. I held the lid open. The kid picked up the TV. There was nothing wrong with the TV at all. It was in perfect running condition. I closed the lid and followed him to the door and held it open for him but I didn’t go inside. I went back and got into the driver’s seat and just stared out the front window.
After awhile the kid came outside. He wasn’t carrying anything. He climbed into the backseat.
“You can take me back to my house,” he said.
I got a lump in my throat.
I started the engine and pulled away from the curb. Neither of us said a word all the way back. When I pulled up in front of the house, the fare came to seven dollars. The kid leaned forward and handed me a ten-dollar bill.
I didn’t want that ten-dollar bill.
I didn’t want anything from the kid.
Based on my personal knowledge of hocking, I figured the kid had gotten maybe forty or fifty bucks for the TV—sixty tops. And here he was, handing a big chunk of that dough to a cab driver. But I took the money. Yeah. That’s right. I took the money and stuffed it into my shirt pocket and pulled out three dollars and started to hand it to him, but he said, “Keep the change.”
I tried to say, “Thanks, pal,” but it caught in my throat. I nodded and forced a smile onto my face, then watched as the kid climbed out and trudged up the sidewalk.
To an empty shell.
A house without a soul.
I put the cab into gear and drove off.
I worked the radio the rest of the morning. I didn’t pay attention to how much money I made. I took calls and answered them. The radio bounced me all over town. I just wanted to get this shift over with. I wanted to get back home and lock my door and sit down in front of my TV and forget I had ever made the decision to drive during spring break. For a lousy twenty bucks. Ten of which … ten of which … I couldn’t bring myself to think about it.
And then, just before noon, I got an L-2.
An L-2 is a secret code that the dispatcher uses to tell a driver to return immediately to the cab company. You never argue with an L-2. It means the supervisor wants to talk to you face-to-face. Given the fact that nobody ever wants to talk to me face-to-face, I knew it meant trouble.
An L-2 in the middle of the day can be annoying if you are clear across town when the call comes in. But I was near Washington Park so I pulled onto University Boulevard and drove north. I didn’t know how much money I had earned and I didn’t care. I wished I had never driven that morning. But I wouldn’t be going back out on the road after I spoke with whomever wanted to talk to me. I assumed it was Hogan, the managing superviser at Rocky. He’s the only person who ever speaks to me when I get an L-2. He’s the only person at Rocky who cares when I screw up—not counting Rollo. But “care” isn’t the right word with Rollo. “Deviant interest” is apt.
It took fifteen minutes to get back to the motor. I parked as close as I could to the on-call room, then took a moment to fill out the blank spaces on my trip-sheet. It was then that I discovered I apparently had earned more than twenty dollars in profit, but I didn’t count it. I just smirked with derision. I often do that when I surprise myself. I could have quit work a lot earlier. The thing is though, I hadn’t been thinking about money for the past couple of hours. Times flies when I’m not thinking about money. Primarily I had been trying not to think about what it would be like to live without a television. But that’s like hearing the word “caboose” and then trying not to think about it. Lotsa luck.
I grabbed my briefcase and climbed out of 123 and said au revoir. I didn’t plan on working again until the Monday of the following week. I cursed myself as I crossed the dirt lot toward the door. As far as I was concerned I had wasted one whole day of spring break chasing the almighty dollar. What a fool I had been. I allocate three weeks per month to chasing almighty dollars, and now I had gotten obsessed with trying to pick up twenty almighty dollars just to round out the shortfall of the previous week, which time and experience had proven would have occurred anyway.
As I have stated, every April 15 I pay the same almighty taxes. I felt like one of those neurotic people who go around straightening pictures on walls or adjusting the flounces on their living room furniture so their guests won’t think they’re slobs. A “flounce” is the cloth fringe that runs around the bottom of a chair or a couch like a curtain. It prevents people from seeing the legs. Rich people often order flounces when they have their furniture reupholstered. I once delivered furniture for a living. I know my flounces.
There were a couple of cabbies hanging around the on-call room when I walked in. It was quiet. Midday. I could hear the clang of tools in the garage down the hall. A mechanic’s job is never done. I walked up to the window to let him know I had come in for an L-2. He was smiling one of those smiles that reveal nothing—and everything. It was the “pinched” smile that he had ripped-off from Victor Buono. He obviously knew that I had been L-2’d. The man in the cage knows everything. It’s part of his job description. That’s one of the many things I hate about Rollo. Why can’t I know everything?
“Hogan wants to see you,” he said in a pleased and all-knowing tone of voice.
I nodded and turned away from the cage. I stepped into the hallway and made my way up the stairs to Hogan’s office. The door was closed as usual.
I reached the top step and knocked. Hogan said “Yeah,” which was the standard signal to enter.
I shoved the door open—and froze.
Two men were standing at Hogan’s desk. Their backs were to me but I recognized their suits. They were the type of suits men buy off the rack in stores with names like J.C. Penny and Montgomery Ward. Suits that don’t cost a lot, purchased by men who don’t earn a lot, men who have more important things on their minds than fashion statements, men who don’t read Esquire or GQ or even Atlantic Monthly. They were talking to Hogan as I opened the door. They stopped talking and turned to look at me. They were cops. Their names were Duncan and Argyle.
And then I did something that to this day strikes me as an inexplicable—if not a bad—move.
I pulled the door shut and began walking back down the stairs. I forgot all about Philcos and almighty dollars and spring breaks. I would have to say that, in truth, my mind was rather empty as I made my way to the bottom of the steps. I felt as if I was viewing a form of déjà vu so intense that it had become reality, and that my real life was just an illusion glimpsed from a corner of my eye. By “real” life I mean my childhood in Wichita, my stints in the army and college, and the past fourteen years of cab driving. It was a one-second dream experienced by a man walking down the stairwell of eternity.
“Murph!”
I was three steps from the bottom of eternity when my name snapped me out of it.
I stopped and looked back up the stairwell. Hogan was standing at the top of the steps looking down at me. Behind him stood Duncan and Argyle. They were looking over his shoulders, which made him look like a three-headed man.
“Where are you going, Murph?” Hogan said.
“Uh …” I said, trying to collect my thoughts. “I don’t know.” Duncan and Argyle glanced at each other, even though they couldn’t see each other because Hogan’s head was in the way. I had never seen a three-headed man before, not even in a monster movie, so I started wondering if I could write a horror novel about a three-headed man, which shows you how rattled I was. I often think irrelevant thoughts when I’m rattled, confused, or confronted by anybody.
“Did you get my el-two?” Hogan said.
I hesitated, then nodded.
“Great,” he said. “Come on up. I need to talk to you.”
I turned and began trudging up the stairwell of eternity. It didn’t take long to get to the top. Maybe I had eternity figured wrong. I was always lousy at math.