None of My Business
by
George Blum
Copyright 2012 George Blum
All Rights Reserved
I've been a hack for seven, maybe eight years now, though I've only worked at Orange Cab for the past few months. I figured I'd leave the big city driving for the tough guys and move on to the suburbs. What a mistake. Sure, you don't feel like you're gonna get your damn head blown off every minute here in "sophisticated" Grenville, but working the night shift I've met the same spectrum of clientele: the snobs, the drunks, the bums, the losers, the dreamers.
I guess no matter where I decide to flip my meter--and I've worked everywhere up and down the coast--Danny Zito's advice applies. Danny broke me in when I first started driving up in Santa Barbara. A wheezy old-timer with a surprisingly good sense of humor and an even better sense of survival, he told me before my first solo, "You're gonna meet all kinds Tommy, but whatever happens, remember one thing. It ain't none of your business. It just don't matter to you, got it?"
I figured , what the hell, that's downtown advice, not pearls of wisdom meant for Grenville by the sea. What can I say? I was wrong.
*****
It started like most other nights. I work the two-to-midnight shift, and since it wasn't a Navy payday weekend, things were pretty slow after the dinner rush from the nearby hotels. At about eight-thirty I ran into one of those fast-food places and picked up a Diet Coke. I sipped it slowly as I sat inside the cab, not exactly looking forward to the boring three-and-a-half hours that still stretched ahead of me.
When you're the only hack sitting at a stand, the interior of your cab can be a terribly lonely place. An eerie silence smothers you as you sit in the inevitably worn-out seat, a silence disturbed only by the constant hum of the two-way radio. I put the aluminum can down in my change tray, and watched its dented surface glitter in the dull light of the meter as I moved on the seat. Perhaps from boredom, I became hypnotized by the flickering image.
"Forty-two!"
Even if I drive a cab for a hundred years, the blast of a dispatcher's voice after fifteen minutes on a frightfully quiet night will always startle me. "Four two," I answered.
"Pick up at Snug-as-a-Bug's. He'll be waiting inside."
Snug-as-a-Bug's is a crowded, not-too-elegant bar down near the bay; I'm not real crazy about going in there on a Saturday night, but that's my job. I started the engine of the bright orange 2002 Caprice, flicked on the lights, and eased the cab onto the "main drag" of the village--Stanton Avenue. The sprinklers had been left on about an hour too long, so the streets were shiny this evening.
I pulled number 42 as close to the front door of the bar as I could, put on the emergency blinkers, and stepped out into the muggy summer night. As expected, a group of rowdies were having a wow of a time out in front of the place--mainly off-duty sailors looking (praying) for a little female companionship. I recognized a couple of them as regular customers, nodded my non-committal greeting, and slipped inside the front door.
If the muggy August night outside the bar was purgatory, the inside of the joint could best be described as hell. The wall of bodies crowding the bar swayed and bellowed toward the bartender, another poor jerk just trying to earn a living.
I yelled out "Cab!" half-heartedly and naturally got no response; I'd have to try a hell of a lot harder than that. I began the struggle to the bar, helping a few people spill their drinks along the way, mentally counting down the three hours and some-odd minutes left to my shift. Continuing my trek to the ever-elusive bartender, my only hope at bagging this fare, I felt a hand grab at me as I fought through the crowd--a female hand, I think, though I won't swear to it. Another guy politely (Swear to God! Politely!) offered to "rearrange" my face; a portly woman slurred a few obscenities, then began to take off her blouse. People do funny things when they drink.
I finally reached Dave the bartender and asked him to announce my noble presence to the royal audience. "Sure, Tommy," he laughed, the gap in his teeth seeming even wider due to the dim, misty glow reflecting from the booze-soaked bar top. He pulled out the bar's ancient megaphone from beneath the counter and wailed, as only Dave can: "Listen up, creeps! Who called for an Orange Cab?"
I saw my customer's hand ease its way up near the back of the room, motioned to him that I'd be waiting outside, thanked Dave, and blustered my way back toward freedom. After about three minutes, my fare stumbled out into the street, and with almost no trouble at all, I got him into the back seat of the cab.
I offered him the routine "How ya doin'?" as I flicked on the interior dome light. "Where to?"
"Let me see now, let me see . . ." He probably thought his act of incoherence was amusing to me; I hate it when the clientele get cute. "Let's see . . . how about 1417 Boston Place. Know where that is?"
I nodded yes, jotted the address down on my trip sheet, and radioed in to the dispatcher. It was a simple run (and wouldn't even top three bucks on the meter), so I figured I'd have a harmless conversation with the guy--you know, "Just visiting?" "How about this gorgeous weather, huh?" and other carefully selected trivialities. He didn't want to talk at first, but then began to babble on, almost as if he'd been dared.
"Yeah, I just pulled into town," he said with a smug grin, "so I thought I'd drop in on my sister, Emma Grady. You know her?"
I turned down the radio in order to hear him more clearly. "No, I've just worked in Grenville for a couple of months now. But it's a small town, so maybe I'll get her for a customer one of these days." I turned down Tenth and flipped on my high beams.
"Yeah, sure thing," he giggled back, that stupid grin on his face beginning to bug me now. "Well, like I was saying, her husband--you know, my brother-in-law, nicest brother-in-law a guy could ever want--is out on the road a lot, so I thought I'd keep her company while I was in town."
"Awful nice of you," I answered in my best monotone.
"Yep," he giggled again, his face gleaming alternately from demonic to inane, demonic to inane, as we passed beneath crackling, iridescent streetlamps. Why the hell did I want to know anything about this jerk's life? Like Danny had told me, "It ain't none of my business."
I dropped him off at 1417 Boston Place--a nice two-story brick number with meticulously-trimmed hedges--and then sped off into the night, cursing aloud my rotten thirty-cent tip.
At about 9:20, I went to the liquor store and bought my second Diet Coke of the evening, then pulled up to the Central Street stand and did what every cab driver has to do on a painfully slow night. Wait.
Downing the soda in a hurry, I shoved the now-crumpled can into the red plastic garbage pouch hanging from the meter flag (across the front of the bag is a tacky drawing of some old woman holding a broom; the caption reads, "LET'S KEEP IT CLEAN, IT'S THE MAID'S DAY OFF!") and prepared for my indefinite period of "people-watching."
I keep telling myself that I should keep a journal of the things I see: the people, places, events. I never have, though God knows I should, 'cause I've seen it all. I've seen couples go way past a "public display of affection" in the quite open public view. I've seen kids that were probably Middle School age buy assorted goodies from a red-haired guy who drives around in what looks like a reconverted Good Humor truck. I saw a young woman get pushed to the ground one night by what appeared to be a two-hundred pound "gentleman" over the contents of her faded blue purse; the big heist undoubtedly netted him twenty bucks or so.
Don't worry, I phoned this stuff in so that the dispatcher could give the cops a buzz. But as far as direct involvement goes, let me paraphrase the Urban Prophet: it ain't none of my business what goes on, especially if it means the possibility of getting my own butt nailed.
I went on three or four miscellan
eous runs between 9:30 and 11:00. I took two middle-aged gentlemen from the Hotel Grenville back down to their convention-based hotel, the Astor; I drove four sailors from the Naval Base over to the raunchier section of downtown so that they could "dig up some chicks"; I brought a retired couple over to the airport for their red-eye flight. At Orange Cab Company, Incorporated, unfortunately, these were standard runs.
At about 11:20, the dispatcher called my number and sent me off to the Mysterious Manhole, another shabby bar about a block and a half up from Snug-as-a-Bug's.
Innocent enough.
I found a parking space right in front, took the key out of the ignition, and ran inside. The place wasn't nearly as crowded as the other bars, or as festive either. The dozen or so people inside just kind of hunched over their drinks, maybe trying to absorb the potent liquid through some special brand of osmosis.
When I walked in--an outsider, an intruder into their sacred, formaldehyde-like coven--they