Taxi Driver (5 page)

Me: black coffee and apple pie with a slice of melted yellow cheese. I think that was a good selection. B: coffee and a fruit salad dish. She could have had anything she wanted.

She told me at first about her work with all the volunteers. Fifteen hundred of them. Said, “The organizational problems are just staggering.”

Me: “I know what you mean. I got the same problem. I just can’t get things organized. Little things, I mean. Like my room, and possessions. I should get one of those signs that say,
‘One of these days I’m going to get organized.’
”

Well I guess I ended up grinning at myself and her like that because she matched me with her own grin then, and laughed, threw back her head with all that blond soft hair and said, again: “Travis, you really are not just another pretty face. I never met anybody like you before.”

“I can believe that.” Though I was blushing.

Betsy asked, “Where
do
you live?”

Well I explained how it wasn’t much. Uptown. Some joint. Words to that effect. Didn’t want to go into any details with her inside of a coffee shop.

“So,” she asked, “why did you decide to drive a taxi at night?”

Again I explained how I had this regular job for a while days doing this, and that. Words to that effect. This and that sort up stuff. Didn’t go into any of the details about the stock room. Why should I? But I did tell her I never had much to do nights. That I got kinda lonely, and that’s when I decided to work nights.

“It ain’t good to be lonely,” I told her, “you know.”

Betsy says, “After this job I’m looking forward to being alone for a while.”

Me: “Yeah, well . . .”

Well I was feeling sort of out of my league just briefly. “In a cab, you get to meet people. You meet lots of people. It’s good for you.”

Betsy asks, “What kind of people?”

“Just people, people, you know, just people.”

I told her I even had a dead man once and Betsy says, “Really?”

So, I explained how he’d been shot, and I didn’t know that when he just sprawled in the back seat and konked out on me.

“What did you do then?” Betsy asked.

Me: “I started the motor up for one thing. I knew I wasn’t going to get paid, so I dropped him off at the cop shop and they took him.”

(Well, you know, again, I didn’t want to go into any of the amazing unreal details. Just stuck with the obvious. Bullshit like that. Didn’t mention that sick sweet smell, the blood, and that he had sorta soiled himself.)

“That’s really something,” Betsy says, then.

I felt she was pushing me a bit, so I said, “Oh, you see lotsa of freaky stuff in a cab.”

I wasn’t exactly trying to impress her, but it was getting me down being there like that with nothing more to say (a person would never understand, I thought, if I said what was really on my mind), so I said: “People do anything in front of a cabbie. Anything. It’s like you’re not even there.”

Betsy cut me short with another question: “What hours do you work?”

I explained how it all came to about seventy-two hours a week. Betsy (amazed): “You mean you work seventy-two hours a week?”

Me: “Sometimes seventy-six, eighty. Sometimes you can squeeze in a few more hours in the morning.”

Betsy said I must be rich but I just laughed a little and gave her my smile and said: “It keeps ya busy.”

Betsy: “You know what you remind me of?”

“What.”

She’s smiling again. “That song by Kris Kristofferson where it says, ‘He’s a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction . . .’ ”

Well, you know, as soon as I heard that word,
pusher,
I half shut off on her. Grew a little riled.

Said, “I’m no pusher, Betsy, honest. I never have pushed . . .”

“Oh,” she said, all wide-eyed. “Well, I didn’t mean that, Travis, honest. Just the other part . . . about the contradiction . . .”

Words to that effect. As I recall. Bullshit like that.

Well, so I said, “Who was that you said, again?”

“The singer?”

Told Betsy I didn’t follow music much.

“Kris,” she said, slowly. “Kris Kristofferson.” And as we’re leaving the shop, she says with a little smile, and her head down, eyes blinking fast, “Remember American Bandstand, Travis . . . er . . . it’s got a good beat, you can dance to it . . . er . . . I’d give it a sixty.”

I confided to my journal why I went to Goody’s afterwards to buy
her
that Kristopherson record:

“Now that I know
her, B,”
I wrote, “I can give it to her if we ever go out. A good first meeting. Didn’t like being pushed so much about
me.
What do I know about her except she’s lovely. Real pretty.

“Such a beauty. Stuff like that. Guess she must just be stringing Tom along. Who am I to her? I always get uncomfortable around a woman after the first few minutes. Don’t always know what’s suppose to happen. What’s coming out of me.

“Stuff like am I making a good impression etc.

“I think I talked too much. She was real easy to talk to. In some ways. In others not. I had to lie a little.

“Anyway she always got more out of me than I got from her. No fair. Don’t want her to betray me.
Ever.

“Decided finally I can’t walk around with a broken heart rest of my life over what’s not going to happen with me and some women so I bought her the record. Approx $6. Maybe I’ll take
her
to a movie. If only I could find out
her
last name. Must remember to ask her things like that and maybe racial and religious origins.

“Betsy what?”

Behind The Wheel

In case you don’t know it I’m the sort of person there’s always a crisis moving up I’m not doing too well at. It’s always a case of overwhelming odds, I think, except maybe with Betsy. Lately things were always happening to me in the cab I didn’t know what to do about.

That very same afternoon a guy got in, told me to drive him to Amsterdam Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, said, “Hello, Travis, how are you?”

“I’m fine . . .”

“Good,” he said. “My name is Donald. Can I suck your cock?”

“Well I don’t know about that.” I found myself asking him, “What did you say your name was?”

“Donald,” he said, “but you haven’t answered my question, Travis, have you?”

Well by now we’re at Seventy-eighth and Amsterdam. I pulled my flag on him, a dollar, even, so I say, “Sorry, I don’t think we ever met before.”

“Well, if we had,” he says, handing me a five, then he hands me two singles and takes back the five, “even if we had, would that matter?”

Tells me, “Keep the change.”

Other things would happen too: Like with the tourists. A woman comes in my cab from out of town and asks me to go to the Planetarium. Well, I was
so upset
I didn’t even know where it was. I carried this little blue book, but that doesn’t help. Couldn’t spell the word, meandered east, when I shoulda gone west.

In those days I was living for tips, nice smiles, the hustle. But in between fares, I somehow managed to drive past Palantine headquarters for another look at Betsy.

My journal reports that on April 27 I called her finally at the office, of course, and she said we could go to the movies together after she got out of work tomorrow, my day off.

On that very same day on the way uptown a party of three very nice well-dressed men stopped me and one of them was, guess who . . . The man Betsy is working so hard for. Mr. Charles Palantine himself. Her boss. Her hero.

Well he looked so much more real in person. Sort of a nice-looking fellow. Like a TV commentator. Well, I just had to check the rear view mirror to know just who I was seeing. But my eyes certainly did not deceive me.

The Senator was talking about how to line up delegates from California when I interrupted him.

Said, “Say, aren’t you the candidate, Charles Palantine? . . .”

Well, I guess that happens to him all the time with his face as big as life in color all over Broadway, but he said, only mildly irritated, “Yes, I am.”

He cleared his throat. “Well,” says I, “I’m one of your biggest supporters. I tell everybody that comes in this cab, they should vote for you.”

I can feel his eyes moving from my shoulders to the little plastic license on the dashboard. He’s smart.

Palantine says, “Travis, this is going to be a crucial race here in New York.”

Me: “I’m sure you’ll win, Sir. Everyone I know is going to vote for you.”

“In fact,” I tell him, “I was going to put one of your stickers on this particular taxi, but the company said it was against their policy.”

“Well,” Palantine says, “I’ve always respected the opinions of taxi drivers.”

So now he stopped relating to his other friends and seems interested in me. “Tell me, Travis, what single thing would you want the next President of the country to do most?”

I told him just like I told Betsy: “Clean up this city.” Words to that effect.

“It’s filled with filth and scum,” I told him. Words to that effect. “It’s like an open sewer. Sometimes I can hardly take it. Some days I go out and smell it and then I get headaches that just stay and never go away. We need a President that would clean up this whole mess. Just flush it out.”

I figured he was not some professional bullshitter, but a real person, a real man, if Betsy liked him so much. And he looked O.K. to me, too, as I say, but I guess he couldn’t help but be a little vague. Said something like “I know just what you mean, Travis.”

His friends were looking more upset than he.

Palantine said, “It’s not going to be easy.”

Said, “We’re going to have radical changes all throughout the city and municipal government.”

Me: “Damned straight.”

Well, I left him off at the Plaza: “Nice talking to you, Travis . . .”

“Thank you sir. You’re a good man, Sir.”

Afterwards, I felt lonely again.

Felt a little let down.

Well I mean I had this record for Betsy and all gift wrapped by my side in the cab and I was going to be with her in just a little while, and I knew I couldn’t breathe a word about that to the Senator, and there he went all slim, neat, and trim from the shoulders down, up these steps, through the glittery entrance to the Plaza, and there I was you know grinding away in my cab.

Well, I just had to go right home and clean up, because I didn’t like Betsy to see me that way, as I was going to meet her in a little while outside Pallantine headquarters.

Date Night

The rest is history. My journal records: She was smartly dressed when I went to see her tonight all blue.

I can’t describe the exact outfit, but it was neat. For sure. Betsy seemed very glad to see me too. We’re walking down Broadway toward Times Square a short while later with the warm spring grit on our faces. An orange sun blinds the black glass buildings. The moon is thin, faint, silvery.

The big moment: I give Betsy her record and she seems very, very pleased.

Says, “Terrific, that’s really terrific, Travis,” and, again, as if nervous, “I told you you weren’t just another pretty—”

“Face,” I interrupt as we walk, trying to bring her body close to mine along the greatest street in the world. Side by side on the Big White Way. Unreal. We’re passing through a faint stink of pot. Betsy says, “Really, you didn’t have to spend your money.”

“Hell, what can I do with it all.”

Well, she saw the seal on the record hadn’t even been broken and she said, “Travis, you haven’t even played this.”

Well I lied to her, my stereo player was broke but I assured her the record was just fine. “I’m sure,” I said.

“Your stereo broke? God,” Betsy says, “I could hardly stand that. I
live
on music.”

“Well, I don’t follow music too much, you know I’d like to though,” I told her, “but I don’t.”

Betsy was pointing to the record. “So you haven’t even heard this song yet?”

“No.” I took a chance on Betsy then, said, “I thought maybe you could play it for me on your player later.”

Well it was the wrongest thing to say. I know that now. Her face just turned off on me. She looked really worried, bit at her lower lip, made a little laugh.

Well I asked could I carry the album for her and then I turned her on the corner from Broadway to Forty-second Street. The Apollo was showing
Lost Weekend,
a revival, with Ray Milland. We went next door where they advertised in big letters “Swedish Marriage Manual,” because I wanted her to know that I was a serious person. Not just in this for kicks. I said, “You stay here and I’ll buy the tickets.”

Well they cost five bucks apiece.

Unreal again, the look on her face.

She actually started pulling on my hand, then my elbow: “What are you doing?”

“Buying a couple of tickets.”

“But,” she sputtered, “these are
dirty
movies.”

“No,” I tried to explain, “these are the kind that couples go to. They’re not like some others. All kinds of couples go all the time.”

I wanted her to follow me. I wanted her inside that movie theater with me. Wanted her to see with me.

Betsy wasn’t buying any of that. “Travis,” she said, “these aren’t the kind of movies
normal
people go to.”

“I don’t follow that many movies.”

“You mean,” she said, “these are the only kind of movies you go to?”

“Well, mostly . . .”

Again, that look. She slapped her brow with one hand, weakly. “My God!”

Well it was very crowded there with the usual freaks and degenerates staring at us when she started walking away back toward the corner of Forty-second Street and Broadway and I started running after her saying, “We can go to another movie if you’d like. I don’t care. There’s plenty of movies around here. I haven’t seen any of them, but I’m sure they’re all good.”

Betsy looked so clean surrounded by so much filth. She seemed determined to remain clean, stamping her foot looking at me very grimly, her lips very tight: “No, Travis, you’re a sweet guy and all that, but I think this is it. I’m going home.”

“You mean,” I asked, feeling embarrassed in front of all those people, “you don’t want to go to a movie?” Some asshole laughed. “There’s plenty of movies around here, Betsy.”