Taxi Driver (10 page)

Well, I read that letter over and over until I was sure it was fool proof, just what I wanted to say, and then I copied it over on this twenty-five-cent anniversary card with a four color embossed cover. It was just the kind of card I knew they would like: Mr. and Mrs. All America standing before an outdoor barbeque grill clicking salt and pepper shakers and a toast:

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO A COUPLE WHO HAVE FOUND THE PERFECT COMBINATION FOR MARRIAGE . . .

and when the card was opened up there was one big word:

LOVE
!

I guess everybody wants a little of that. That’s really what it’s all about, I guess. The best hookers peddle nothing else in their ways, and their loneliness is unbearable. When I mailed the card, I bought myself a pint of peach brandy and drove down to the Lower East Side again to look for that girl.

Sweet Iris

Well I was pretty high on brandy by the time I got there and she wasn’t too hard to find: strutting some of her barbeque down the sidewalk with her girlfriend.

I parked my cab, checked the seat, checked to see if I still had the .38 in place, turned up the collar of my army jacket, and slouched over towards her. Well, she kept on walking and I walked beside her. I was feeling a little shy. Said, “Hello.”

She didn’t stop moving. Asked, “You looking for some action?”

“Well,” I said, “I guess so.”

She looked me over as if she recognized me at last, said, “All right, if you want a party . . .”

She sighed a little wearily.

“You see that guy over there?”

I nodded at her even though I wasn’t looking.

“Over there,” she said pointing to the same young dude with pockmarks in the fringed suede jacket standing in that doorway. She said, “Names Sport. You go talk to him. I’ll wait here.”

I walked over to the dude. Asked, “Your name Sport?”

“What of it?”

Little greasy pimp looked like a scarecrow. Hair every which way. A rash on one hand. Definitely a case.

The same guy definitely who threw that twenty-dollar bill at me a while back. Same mean greaser mother-fuck.

Said, “I want some action.”

“I saw,” heartless. Sport being very cool about it.

Said, “Twenty dollars for fifteen minutes. Thirty for a half hour.”

“Shit.”

“Take it or leave it,” Sport said.

“I’ll take it.”

Start dipping in my pockets for the money.

“Not me. Not here.” Sport says. “There’ll be an elderly gent to take the bread.”

Said, “You give it to the old man. He’ll take. Don’t worry. Nothing’s for nothing.”

The farthest things from my mind. Well I didn’t like his ways. The way he seemed to be sneering at me, as if he had my number or something. It’s something people do a lot in New York.

I start on my way. Sport says, “Hey copper.”

I froze.

Well I just didn’t respond. Didn’t say anything. I knew he was being provocative.

I had my piece, of course, but what good would that do? Kill a pimp and what have you got? A dead pimp.

Or so I thought then. To that effect . . .

Well when I turned around, I said, “I’m no fucking cop.”

“Well even if you are,” Sport said, “it’s entrapment already . . .”

Already. I just hadda laugh. Said, “I’m hip. Are you hip?”

“Me, I could wade through shit I’m so hip,” Sport said. He laughed real mean at me. “Funny, though, you don’t look it.”

Well she was watching us all the time the little kid and when I started back toward her again she sort of motioned to me like a dog with the fingers down along her side to follow her snapping fingers, and I did. We turned the corner and walked about a block: Snake eyes. We’re not saying anything to each other. Not one word. Then she turns into this darkened doorway and I followed her again.

Well I suppose I should have approached her or fondled her broke the ice somehow or something. She seemed so little to be turning tricks, she couldn’t do me any harm. I repeat: she was like young. Hardly pissed through hair, I thought, and I thought like she wouldn’t do me any harm. At all. Cool it.

We entered this dimly lit hallway. On either side was metal doors with apartment numbers, a payphone with its receiver dangling.

She turned toward the first door, #2. Said, “This is my room.”

“This is my room,” is what they always say in movies. Stuff like
From Here To Eternity
with Frank Sinatra. “This is my room.”

What did I expect, fireworks? I waited for her to open the door but she was looking down the far end of the corridor toward a huge old hulk, big face all shadows. “Hey cowboy!” the old man said. He was coming my way. He’d gotten up out of his chair and was coming my way, pointing at my coat.

“Give me the rod, cowboy,” the old man says.

When he was right up next to me he didn’t hesitate, I could feel his warm breath on my face as he reaches inside my jacket and pulls out that .38 special. Then he says, “This ain’t Dodge City, cowboy. You don’t need no rod.” He glanced at this Timex watch he’s wearing with a gold band and sticks the rod into his pocket, my gun inside his pocket. Says, “I’m keeping time.”

“Did you hear that, cowboy,” he says, “I’m keeping time.”

The girl takes me by the hand and leads me into #2 room.

Dimly lit, a bright orange shag rug on the floor, deep brown walls the color of chocolate that’s melted. And an old red velvet sofa. Posters of Jagger, Bob Dylan, Peter Fonda, peeling off all the walls. She goes to the small phonograph and puts an album on, I think it was Neil Young.

There was a double bed in the far corner of the room covered with a dark red Italian print bedspread. Sort of Indian looking.

I thought there was something kind of delicate and almost pretty about the place, a young girl’s room I thought. She is after all, just you know a young girl. Well I was moved to pity her. Said, “Why you hang around with them greasers?” She looked at me amused almost. Said, “Young girls do get beat up.”

“Yeah,” I said. “By the likes of them.”

She just shrugged and the flesh on her thin frame seemed to jiggle a little. Said, “It’s your time, Mister. Fifteen minutes ain’t long.”

She sat down on the edge of the bed and took off that floppy hat. She really looked very puny and little now. Just a lad.

I asked, “What’s your name?”

“Easy,” she said.

“That ain’t much of a name.”

“It’s easier to remember,” she said. “Easy lay.”

“What’s your real name?”

“I don’t like my real name,” she said.

“What’s your real name?” I demanded.

She stared at me as if to ask why was I being so insistent, then shrugged again. Said, “Iris.”

I thought that was a nice name. Said, “That’s a nice name. Iris.”

“That’s what you think,” she said.

When she unbuttoned her shirt, her breasts were real small like pathetic. These two little birds maybe hiding from a wind. I didn’t like looking at her without her clothes on like that. It got me kind of jittery. She was being too forward. I said, “Don’t you remember me?”

“Button your shirt,” I said, “don’t you remember me?”

Iris buttoned the bottom button of the shirt again. She seemed to have some dim recollection of me because she was staring at me again, examining me like I was a spot or something on the walls of the room. She asked after a while, “Who are you? Why? Why should I remember you?”

“I drive a taxi,” I told her. “You tried to get away one night. Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“You tried to run away in my taxi but your friend over there—Sport there—he wouldn’t let you.”

“Well, I don’t remember,” Iris said.

Well then I let the cat out of the bag. “It don’t matter anyway,” I said. “Because I’m going to get you out of here.” I was staring at that door.

Iris warned, “We better make it, Mister, because Sport will get mad. How do you want to make it?”

“I don’t want to make it. I came here to get you out.”

She reached for my fly and started unzipping it. “You want to make it like this?” she asked with that little smile, like Sport’s, all nasty in the face, as if to give me Slurp-Slurp head.

I pushed her hand away. She gave a little sob and then I let go of her hand gently and sat down next to her on the bed. I put my arms on her shoulders. “Iris, can’t you listen to me? Don’t you want to get out of here?”

“Why should I want to get out of here?” As if real scared of me. “This is where I live.”

I wanted to shake her. There was this sudden rag fluttering up in the sky, big black rag ball of a man. Said I wanted to shake it. Shake that rag. Said, “You’re the one who wanted to get away. You’re the one who came into my cab.”

That rag started to float down real slow toward the ground as Iris said, “I must have been stoned.”

What was she saying to my rag? To me? I asked, “Do they drug you?”

“Oh, come off it, man.”

Her hand lunged for my fly again and I felt tight all over. Backed away, said, “Get off that, you hear, listen, stop it.”

Said, “Iris, listen . . .”

I felt being in that girl’s room I didn’t know where I really was. Felt all tight. Felt like I might hurt somebody if that man didn’t come off his ledge of air. Iris was looking at me as if I was some screwball. After a while, she breathed deeply, asked, with that little shrug again, “Don’t you want to make it?”

“Can’t you make it?”
She asked.

She had put her hand on my crotch again, but I battered it away, maybe harder than I should of because she took it up to her mouth as if to suck on the fingers, and I got real distraught then, said, “Iris, I want to help you.”

I was inside her room again. No longer in the air out on the street, just feeling very panicky. Iris she wouldn’t stop trying. Kept coming on. “You can’t make it, can you? I can help you. Let me help you.”

Then she brought her head over me as if to go down on me and it was like this rag had fallen right across my lap. I jumped away from her.

We’re standing several feet apart. My fly is still open. You can see the white of my underwear showing through, kind of dirty gray. I don’t like certain people to get that close. Didn’t like her pulling all those tricks on me. Said,
“Fuck it! Fuck it!
Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it! Fuck it!”

Said, “Fuck it!”

Because, you see, I was very angry at her for pulling those tricks on me when I was trying to help her.

Said, “Don’t you understand anything?”

She looked down at the rug. Looked real shamed-faced. She was just a naughty kid, I guess.

After a moment, I sat down beside her again. She seemed real pained now. She wasn’t going to cause me any more trouble. I felt like crying.

There was this long silence, and then she put her arm around my shoulder and it felt nice and warm and cozy. She said, “You don’t have to make it, Mister.”

I felt so warm and cozy, collecting myself, felt like I’d been understood, finally, in part, not the whole thing, the whole message. Still, words to that effect. Iris still didn’t understand how I was trying to help her.

Slowly I said, “Iris, do you know why I came here today?”

She spoke very thoughtfully, slowly, and looked back at me. “I think so. I tried to get in your cab one night and now you want to come and take me away.”

“Don’t you want to go?”

“I can leave anytime I want.”

I didn’t believe her. I mentioned that night again.

“I
was
stoned,” Iris protested. “That’s why they stopped me. When I’m not stoned, I got no place else to go. They just protect me from myself.”

Well I tried acting as if I understood. To seem compassionate. Tried to smile at her but I could see that I wasn’t getting anywhere and that made me very, very sad. My smile came out as a little tiny wrinkle in my lip, a shrug. I said, “Well, I tried.”

“I understand, Mister,” Iris said back to me. “It means something, really. I value that, Mister.” I was on my feet. Asked, “Iris, what do you value?”

“That,”
she shrugged at me.
“I really do value that, Mister.”

You reach out to people and you really can’t expect much more I guess.

I asked, “Can I see you again?”

Iris seemed pleased. She was smiling again, faintly, and there were these little red spots in her cheeks. “That’s not hard to do.”

“Really,” I said. “I mean really. This is nothing for a person to do . . .”

She seemed like she wanted to keep the peace, said, “All right. We’ll have breakfast. I get up about one o’clock. Tomorrow.” I was thinking there was something I had to do tomorrow, something that couldn’t wait, but Iris she got impatient and interrupted me then: “Well, you want to or not?”

“O.K.,” I said. Because I could always do that thing, I knew. “It’s a date, Iris. I’ll see you here, then.”

As I turned away from her, she was smiling, real pleased with herself. I said, “Iris?”

“Yes?”

“My name’s Travis.”

“Thank you, Travis. I value that too, really . . .”

As if she was trying to tell me something that she was still human somewhere underneath all that only she couldn’t be gotten to that easily right now with me. She shook her head. Said, sadly, “I really do value that, Travis. Thank you”

“So long, Iris.

Sweet Iris.”

Well, she was just such a kid really. I figured she couldn’t really be spoiled that much. She would have to have a heart somewhere. Such a kid.

I closed the door to room #2. Stood in that corridor. There were tears crowding my eyes. I felt a little more like myself. Good old self again.

Then that time keeper came walking down that hallway with my .38 in his hand and he glanced at his watch and handed me the .38. Said, “I think this is yours, cowboy.”

I was so furious at him seeing me like this. I reached in my jacket pocket and found that same old rumpled twenty-dollar bill. He had his hands cupped as if he was drinking from a pond of water and I just dropped the bill into his hand and said, “Here’s this twenty bucks old man. You better damn well spend it right.”