Monday Night in the Maxi Taxi

Hola, amigos, been awhile since I rapped at ya (visit Jim Anchower's page). A phone call shook me out of bed at 12 or so. Damn car insurance company. I already paid them online, and it was one of those annoying recorded messages.

Anyhoo, I'm still adjusting to the inverted sleep schedule. So is my colon. I was pretty hungry at 4 am and loaded up on breakfast at McDonald's. The new guy working there undercharged me and gave me extra food. I shouldn't have ate it all but I did. Then it caught up with me while running my laundry downstairs. I hadn't used that crapper in a while (it's the roommate's shitter of choice), but these were trying times. No TP. I had to do the bow-legged shit walk upstairs with my pants half down while trying to remember my roommate's work schedule and if I had locked the front door.

But, this brings me to my snoop bloggy-blog. Last night was Monday, the first one I have worked. Saturday was my last night, and it sucked. I didn't think I would pull in any coin last night and was wondering how I would combat the boredom. I showed up at the dispatch shack and had to wait about an hour for a car, hoping it wouldn't be that turd on wheels #5 from Saturday. Instead I got #16, which was an altogether decent '88 or '89 Towncar. Some perks: working heat, working radio, surprising amount of foam left in the seat, minimal exhaust leaks, and a working roof light. But, the windows were shitsville.

The driver's window was inop (id did at least have a wing window. Passenger's front window went down about an inch (with wing), passenger's rear went down about 3/4", and driver's rear would fall off the track and stay down most of the way. This is important to know when seating drunks who may puke.

So, I hit the beat about 4:45 and was surprised to have a call as soon as I got out the door. I took a couple of Asian freshman ladies to the Famous Barr for some winter shopping. No tip, but a decent fare and it was still daylight. I told them about some of the tourist perks in Kansas City. I'm not sure if they were familiar with the historical importance of 18th and Vine and Charlie Parker, but the shopping at the Plaza seemed agreeable with them.

Amazingly, I ran steady from 5 until 11, meaning I had a call waiting on my every time I cleared (dropped off a passenger). The dispatcher did a good job of putting me on calls which originated near where I was clearing, and the weather was primo. A nice 60 or so degrees.

I picked up a regular customer, a bartender from one of the downtown college bars, a decent one. He tips well and is a pretty cool guy, though this is only the second run I had dome with him. He seemed impressed that I remembered his street and was in a shitty mood. He said he was 1/2 in the bag, but I'm not sure how big the bag was. He ranted for a bit about his girlfriend, being late because of his morning cab ride, and a 65 year old drunk who told him that his life was just like his. Then we stopped off at the liquor store where the Arabian gentleman overcharged him, which was some minor fuel to the fire. He did tell me that he was the most comfortable he had been since since Saturday while riding in the cab, and, due to the calming effect of of our conversation, he said he may not even drink any more when he got home. I assured him that his vodka would still be there for him if he needed it. I felt like a good cab diver.

I picked up one woman at the university hospital. She was in her 20s with a lisp (a Stan's sister's headgear Sirocco's sweet type lisp, nothing debilitating), a big girl, not particularly beating down the cosmetics counter or retail clothing outlets. She had just got off of her first day of work there, presumably doing IT work. She seemed totally disinterested in the job and she spent the entire ride eagerly discussing her Final Fantasy online gaming addiction. Unfortunately for her, she had just moved here (back from Iowa) and didn't have an Internet connection yet. She assured me that at least she had some friends who she could call to keep track of the game's developments that night. She's taking the cab because she smoked the tranny in her Mazda MPV by flat towing it with the drive shaft installed from Iowa. I meant to do dome research to see how much I could get a tranny for, since I could probably buy it for about $50. When I first asked her how her night was going she said 'peachy.'

And I got my first animal call. I had to pick up a woman at Paquin Towers near campus. She came out with a cat on a leash and collapsible cardboard pet carrier. If there's one thing funnier than a woman with a cat on a leash its probably watching here download it into a cardboard box and fold up the top while a cab is waiting. The cat was plenty mellow, though, not only, as she assured me, because she did a good job picking a cat that liked car rides, but because it was barely breathing.

I say barely, but I'm no cat doctor. It didn't seem like a major emergency, but I was all about being stat. I told her I was a cat lover and she told me about her fixed income and the $100 expense for an animal ER visit at the University vet school hospital. It was taking up all of her savings; she lives on $7000 a year. At least I know where the small animal ER entrance is now, so future pet fares should benefit from that. I didn't get to find out how the cat came through. I guess she was able to get ahold of her neighbor lady with a car to pick her up. I assured her that it was probably a minor bump in the road and a reaction to an inoculation the cat had earlier in the day, but, again, I am no cat doctor.

I picked up one guy at the Veteran's Hospital at 11 or so. He was in a shit mood. He had a jacked up foot, I'm guessing he's been battling it for a while because he had his own wheelchair, which I folded up and loaded in the trunk. He got around okay, with a cane. I asked him how his night was going and he said 'not worth a shit.' He mellowed just a bit when we stopped at the liquor store and he picked up a bottle of vino. The girl there seemed like a grad student or something, presentable, pleasant but not glam, and helped him get the bottle down or something (he was outside of my view through the door). He asked me if I was the same driver who would be picking him up at 4:45 that morning. I told him no and asked if there were any specific instructions. He just wanted to make sure they were on time. I reminded dispatch when I was clear. He tipped me a couple of bucks. He did a decent job of not being rude though everything in his life seemed to be pissing him off.

By far the most interesting fare of the night caught me off guard. It was an 8:30 call to TP's on Rangeline. I pulled up and waited. After a second or two the bartender came out, a young guy, 21 or 22, practically carrying a pretty tanked 40something woman. He managed to get her in the front seat of the car. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, with her husband getting in and out of the cab about 10 times and drunk barking at her and me. It's that not angry loud drunk talk, where they're almost yelling but think they have a reasonable level and tone.

I finally figured out that I was taking both of them, but he needed to get something from his car. It took another chaotic minute or two to get him back to the car. I was trying to write down my info on my paperwork, answer dispatch on the radio, push her away, understand what the fuck she was saying, politely laugh and smile, figure out where the fuck her husband was, and deal with the bartender who had came out again to see what the fuck was going on. Now I've got turbo wasted guy parked cross-ways right on my bumper behind me with a running car, a bartender in my non-working window, and a surprisingly strong drunk woman pawing at my face to kiss me murmuring indecipherable drunk babble. And the bartender is asking me what the hold up is.

So the bartender asks drunk dude what he's doing and tells him to park his car. He tells the bartender 'you park it,' gives him he keys and finally climbs in. He finally tells me to go, as if I'm causing a big hold up. All the while I wonder if its worth what I am sure would be an incredible effort to relocate the drunk woman to the one working window. But I have to cut bait.

I pull out and barely clear the parking lot before she starts saying 'I need to go pee' and holding herself like a 4 year old girl. I try to guage the seriousness of the request and imagine a tragic crying woman with urine soaked high-wasted denim jeans leaving a wet imprint on my burgundy pleather seat. I try to get the dude's opinion on the severity which is a dodgy proposition. He tells me to turn back around, I remind him I charge wait time, and we wheel back around to the bar.

Enter, or I should say exit, bartender x3. He's got a serious what-the-fuck look now and I realize the duality of the situation. It's his job to deal with them to a point, then their money and his patience runs out along with the law of diminishing returns. Which is where I step in. He's losing on this proposition now, while my meter is running. He asks me what's going on, muted through my dirty inoperable window. I say she needs to use the bathroom and he immediately and emphatically shakes his head no. More of a wide eyed-you-can't-be-serious-head-pivoting-on-neck-from-lock-to-lock fuck no.

But she's climbing out of the cab. Or is she? She doesn't know. Dude's still in the backseat, yelling at her, somewhere between exasperation from dealing with a drunk spouse and yelling at your dog for pissing on the rug. Apparently she no longer needs to go pee. We pull out again, finally. The fare is already in the neighborhood of $10 and we're not even a block away from the bar. Dude gives me $20 earnest money. He vacillates between telling me thanks for putting up with us to joking that they're going to stiff me on the fare. He tries to tell me that I'm too smart to be a cab driver, ask me why I'm a cab driver, thank me for being nice and honest, tell me how he can spot the characteristics in people and scream at his wife to "quit touching him and get your damn hands out of his face because he's being nice and driving us and you're gonna causes us to wreck."

And she has to pee again.

He wants to stop at a gas station. We do. I have to practically carry her into the gas station. I get her to the unisex single-seater door. I try to get her to go in, she tries to kiss me, she tries to pull me in. Dude finally comes back with a carton of Marlboro lights and starts yelling at her to go pee. I'm holding her up, at arms length while she's trying to kiss me, he's behind me yelling. Then a ridiculously long arm comes over my shoulder and a carton of Marlboros bops this bitch on the head, like smacking the dog's nose with a newspaper. "You go pee! You go pee!" Bop, bop, bop. I remember my cab's running outside in the hood.

I go outside and get my keys. Meter's around $15. I come back in and dude has disappeared. Into the can. I pick up his carton of cigarettes and apologize to the two lady clerks. They are having the times of their lives. I'm afraid to go back to the bathroom. The clerks are watching a potential drive-off. I hesitantly walk back to the door to hear him yelling "pull your pants up and lets go," over and over. They emerge unscathed. I hand dude his cigarettes, which he warily accepts while trying to ponder this miraculous beneficent appearance of free Marlboros.

We get back in the car and make it across most of Columbia with minor incident. At some point dude is like "you know what we're gonna do, this guy's driving us home and I am gonna tip the shit out of him." This is where she starts broadly proclaiming "I'm gonna fuck him," which is of course garbled. S So I have this competing chorus of "I'm gonna tip the shit out of him" and "I'm gonna fuck him" for a few minutes. This is after she has told me that I am pretty, asked my why I was so pretty, told me I was pretty because of these things, pointing to my dimples which was a word that escaped her mind at that moment.

One more stop. For a 6 pack. More earnest money. More thwarted attempts and hands on my face. She alternated between telling me that I looked like her son, that I was her son, to 'I'm gonna fuck you." Dude was adamant in reminding her that I was not like her son because I worked for a living and he was lazy and worthless.

When we got to their house it was pretty pimp and in a nice neighborhood. Split level, 4 door garage. He was out of cash and sent her in search of her "hidden money" for a $100 bill. Considering it took her 10 minutes to find a a garage door opener in a purse the size of her head it's not hard to imaging that his attempts to get her to focus and find money was fruitless. Dude had enough to cover the fare, which was about $40. He told me to come by his place of business to get my tip today. His eyes brimmed with tears at the honesty and sincerity of the moment we shared when I told him that I believed him and that I would be in tomorrow.

Then the well dried up. I only had two calls and one flag from 11pm until 3:45. I picked up a couple of dicks from Club Vogue and took them to the Best Western. One had a pony tail and a way too well groomed beard, no doubt modeled after the foreign gigolo in the original Deuce Bigelow. They sucked each other's proverbial dicks with drunken aggrandizing you-da-man's all the way to the hotel. The were pissed I didn't have a 'ho list' or some numbers to give them. They didn't believe me until I told ht em I was new. One of them told the other one this story:

"Man, one time I called this prostitute, and, man, she showed up--and the bitch was pregnant. And the bitch didn't say anything about it on the phone. She was like, "we can't do it doggy style" and I was like, "fuck, bitch, I ain't stabbin' your baby." You gotta tell someone something like that. Shit. I mean, I'll fuck a pregnant lady. But it better be free, though. "$Free.99," added his buddy. I got $.95 in tip.