Taxi Driver

by Richard Elman

  It was just then as we’re going through all these corridors in the hotel, and I’m feeling pretty cranky from lack of sleep, or maybe reds, a little groggy, a speed hangover, you know, that I began to become aware again of this dream I was in. Call it the dream-of-almost-certain-death.

  Hadn’t happened to me since that time in Hong Kong. The strange thing is it wasn’t strange. Didn’t feel that strange. It was something like sharing rooms with others in an apartment where you’ve placed yourself a few years. A common phone, and fridge, and people taking messages for each other on a pad supplied every year at Christmas by the local lumber mill.

  The locations always changing, and I had certain notes written down on a clipboard, as if somebody were scouting them for me way in advance, a patrol of sorts. It’s this walking dream of people in corridors, accordian rolls of barbed wire, myself, for instance, leading the patrol. Almost certain set-apartness.

  A strange salty taste in the mouth, like blood, or come. It begins somewhere between my shoulder blades, or the hair on the back of my neck, like after a summer nap, perhaps, or before brushing my teeth first thing in the morning back home when I’ve already brewed coffee, walked the dog.

  Now in this dream-of-almost-certain-death I am a stick figure preparing to leave home again at age thirty on the shoulders of a beautiful young woman such as Betsy.

  Or I am making my first million on a talent I’ve so far suppressed, such as horse shoe pitching.

  A feeling like a headache. A sign like a billboard. Big block letters: “YOU ARE A GUARANTEED POTENTIAL DREAMER OF ALMOST-CERTAIN-DEATH.”

  As if I finally understood I was going to die. All along. Perish somewhere. Maybe even in this hallway. That beauty mark of freckle on my cheek was just a spot of air . . . a spot in the air, gaudy and thin, like one of Mick Jagger’s costumes. My pulse fluttering was only temporary, too. I was disposable. This very little piece of film. Like living inside a dream, afraid of enjoying myself there. Or, like watching a serious movie in a deep velvet chair, with only this one half of myself.

  I seemed to be going crazy for ignorance of the plot. The lucky ones walked through the open doors of the dream, they would sit down on its furniture and have a few drinks and eventually maybe meet other strangers and die there, but where was I? Who was I with?

  In Andy’s hotel room everything is barren, clean. A bed, a bureau, little picture of the Blue Boy on the wall no signs anyone real lives here. No hot plates.

  You could look out through the window at the fire escape, and the remains of a Davy’s ladder dangling down. The big prick dome of the Williamsburg Savings Bank in the distance.

  When Andy locked the front door behind him, he walked over and unlocked the one closet in the room, pulled out these two light blue Samsonite cases—the kind you can drive a truck over.

  Said, “Dough Boy probably tole you I don’t carry any Saturday night Specials. It’s all out-of-state stuff, clean, brand new, top quality.”

  He placed the cases on this freshly made white bedspread and they looked heavy, man, bounced a little, made the springs sigh. They were equipped with special locks which he quickly flipped open and then he lifted the lids and all I saw stacked in gray packing foam were row on row of brand new hand guns.

  Well, I knew what I wanted. A .44 Magnum, but Andy said, “That’s an expensive gun.”

  “I got money.”

  Andy looked me over and sort of nodded and he slid out this cowhide leather pouch all soft like something you put jewels inside and he zipped it open and there was this .44 Magnum. He removed it from the pouch. Holding it like it was some precious treasure. Just took the edge of his fingertips and ran them along all that heavy blue shiny metal. A small cannon . . . unreal.

  “The .44 Magnum.” He whistled. “It’s a monster. Could stop a car—pull a bullet right into the block. A premium, high resale gun. Three hundred seventy-four bucks—that’s only a hundred twenty-five over list.”

  He was like some salesman showing off the fall line, fast talking, a hustler, the type who sold lottery tickets in high school or scored dope. He really seemed proud of his goods, and I had to admit, that was a monster, a mother.

  I reached out to hold the gun like out of my dreams, but Andy drew back from me. Said, “I could sell this gun in Harlem for five hundred today—but I just deal high quality goods to high quality people.”

  He was looking me over very carefully again. Said, “Now this may be a little big for practical use, in which case I’d recommend the .38 Smith and Wesson Special. Fine solid gun. Snubbed nosed. Otherwise the same as the service revolver. Now that will stop anything that moves and it’s handy, flexible. The Magnum, you know, that’s only if you want to splatter it against the wall. Two-fifty, and worth every dime of it.”

  He hefted out this shiny silvery pistol like in the detective stories. Said, “I’ll throw in a holster for another thirty bucks.”

  Andy let me hold the gun and I hefted it this way and that, pointing it out the window toward the bank and then citing along the eyes of Blue Boy on the wall. Andy was smiling as he watched me. He said, “Some of these guns are like toys, but with a Smith and Weston man you could hit somebody over the head with it and it will still come back dead on. Nothing beats quality.”

  I was clicking back the safety as I drew it from my belt and Andy watched me and then he said, “You interested in an automatic?”

  I told him no. I would take just these, the Magnum and the .38, and I wanted a little palm gun too. “Like that .22 over there,” I said, pointing to the second open case.

  Andy seemed very pleased with me now. “That’s the .25 Colt, fine little gun. Won’t do a whole lot of damage, but it’s as fast as the devil. Handy little gun, you can carry it most anywhere.”

  He took the little Colt and handed it to me and it was as light as a toy gun, like a dream gun. Andy said, “I’ll throw that in for another hundred fifty.”

  Well I wanted to know how much everything would cost.

  Andy was doing figures in his head: “. . . Comes to seven-o-five for the three and holster, but make it an even seven hundred, and you got a deal—and a good one.”

  Then I wanted to know how much for a permit. Andy really looked startled, like I had asked the jackpot question. “Well, you’re talking big money now. I’d say at least five grand, maybe more, and it would take a while to check it out. The way things are going now, five is probably low. You see, I try not to fool with the small time crap, too risky, too little bread. Say six Gs, but if I get you that permit it will be as solid as the Empire State Building.”

  Well I didn’t have that kind of money. Said so. Said, “Nah, this will be fine.” Words to that effect.

  Andy seemed pleased with my savvy. Said, “You can’t carry in a cab even with a permit—so why bother?”

  Well I knew what he meant but I wanted to go through that open door, wanted to touch the trigger. I asked if he knew of a good firing range in the neighborhood.

  “Oh, sure, here, take this card,” Andy said, handing me a small embossed white business card. “You go to this place and give them the card. They’ll charge you, but there won’t be any hassle.”

  Well, so then I was pulling out my roll and counting off seven brand new hundred-dollar bills, just like that, seven of them, seven big ones, and Andy watched me and seemed pleased with himself and with me and the light in the ceiling fixture flickered a little and turned waxy orange overhead and I heard him ask, “Say, you must have been in Vietnam. Couldn’t help but notice your jacket.”

  Well I was startled, managed to say, “Huh?”

  “Vietnam,” Andy said. “I saw it on your jacket, Travis. Say, where were you? Bet you got to handle a lot of weapons out there.”

  I just handed Andy that stack of bills and he counted them and crinked them and then counted them again. And then looked at me waiting for me to say more.

  “Yeah,” I finally said, “I was all around. One hospital and then the next.
”

  “It’s hell out there, all right,” Andy said in his friendly way. “A real shitty war. I’ll say this, though: It’s bringing back a lot of fantastic guns. The market’s flooded. Colt automatics are all over.”

  He wet the tip of his finger and counted again. Then he pocketed my money and for a second, I felt the loss, heard myself saying in a loud voice, “They’d never get me to go back. Never. They’d have to shoot me first. I’d never go back alive.”

  Well then I realized I was just talking. Talking too much. I mean what was the point? I asked Andy if he had anything to carry the stuff in and he found me a little blue nylon gym bag from under the bed and dumped the stuff out and wrapped the guns into an old sheet and put them in the bag and zipped it up and handed it to me. All the while he was doing this, he seemed a little scared of me, I thought, like I said a little too much for him just then. The light seemed very bright in my eyes, and when I took the gun bag in my hand, there was a spark where my fingers touched the material.

  Andy looked away to close up his suitcases and lock them again and stick them back in the closet. I started out the door. “Wait a second, Travis,” he said, “I’ll walk you out.”

  Travis Gets Organized

  From that day on, it was practically all dreams for me. Day after day of getting organized. Fixing up the apartment: charts, pictures, newspaper clippings, maps. There was this thing that I had to do and I had to do it right. It was my whole life, you might say.

  To compensate for my weakness from being wounded and the scars I did twenty, thirty, forty push-ups a day. Too much sitting around had ruined my body. I had to get in shape. I practiced Yoga too and resistance to pain and suffering. I would try to pass my arm through the flame of the gas burner without flinching a muscle, for instance, on the theory that total organization was necessary, and every muscle must be tight to be effective.

  At that range Andy told me about I always got down to business in a hurry, learned how to stand rock solid with that Magnum at an arm’s length squeezing off the rounds and holding the sight on target after each blasting discharge. My body would shudder and shake, my arm rippling back and I’d be sprung bolt upright from the recoil but I held my position, firing as quickly as I could round after round on the big Magnum.

  I also became proficient on the .38 Special which I could throw toward the target like a baseball and begin firing as soon as my arm was outstretched. The same with the little .25. I musta fired thousands of rounds. And got very good at hitting a human figure at various ranges. Whenever I came into that musty smelly place, the counter man would shiver and shake. He knew I meant business.

  Well it seemed, you know, that there was this . . . there was this thing that I had to do, the moment I had been heading for all my life like going through that door, as I say, the door to someplace, but my body fought me always. It just wouldn’t work hard enough. Wouldn’t sleep. Wouldn’t shit. Wouldn’t eat. I worked so hard for it. Swallowed pill after pill, wrote all night long in this journal, making calculations, and learned to make myself comfortable to the feel of these guns. Some nights I would just stay up watching TV with the Magnum resting on my lap. It was like the guns were new arms for me, they had to be that if it was all going to work.

  One show I watched a lot in those days was “Rock Time,” the late afternoon local teeny-bopper dance show. Those kids would be bopping and dancing and the camera would zoom in on their firm young breasts and fannies and crotches and I’d just sit there watching. There was this good-looking plastic sort of guy, about thirty-five, they all seemed to love a lot. A real asshole. Talked bullshit. Stuff like Jive talk, blah, blah, blah: “Freshingly, fantastic freaked-out dance time. Can you dig it? Dig on it. You got it, flaunt it, babe.”

  Watching that show I couldn’t feel my face anymore. It had become granite. I was like stone. What was the world doing out there to me in here? Why did assholes like that get all the beautiful young chicks?

  Pretty soon I started taking the .38 pistol with me whenever I went driving. It was like having an insurance policy. I’d cruise about with the off-duty light on through midtown feeling that bulge in the left side of my jacket, every once in a while running a hand across it, like having props in my dreams.

  I started parking near Palantine headquarters at night. I was looking for Betsy, I guess. Not to harm her, but to show her I was still around. Still there. Even more so.

  There were always a few people working late at nights, but no Betsy. She was probably out with someone else. That sign in the window read: “Only four more days until Charles Palantine arrives in New York, and every day they changed it.

  It comes to a man at such times when he is like that with such equipment on him that his real safety, if he wishes to preserve himself as he is, is in the dangerous places. That he must do what he is most afraid of doing sometimes. That’s why I started working all the black areas uptown, around 128th Street and Amsterdam. I guess I really wanted to know what would happen if I ever had to use one of my pieces. To make that dream somehow visible for me. But all the people they treated me polite. Tipped, minded their own business. No hassles.

  I worked Harlem and back down Seventh Avenue, meandered among the young street punks, swerving out of the way of wine bottles, along the crowded islands on Lenox Avenue, and down along the Lower East Side to Tompkins Square, B Street, Avenue B, among the teenage streetwalkers, the other loners, cruising, prowling, inviting the night to open that door and admit me to its darkness. Make me real with my gun.

  You see I had this plan to make myself somebody at last, a celebrity. To go down in history. Had this plan I was working on, though, in the meantime, I needed to stay as real with myself as I could. Because when you think of all those other guys, Oswald and Booth and Arty Bremer, the lot, if it’s one thing about them marks them out as real losers is they get a little unreal sometimes.

  I thought I couldn’t fail otherwise. I had just as good brains education-wise, had the guts, was getting to be a sharpshooter, a very good shot. It was all a matter of how real I could stay for how long. I thought some guys let their problems get the better of them. Like Oswald he had this Russian wife she wasn’t talking to him, and Booth, I guess, he had a drinking problem. I don’t know about Arty Bremer. With Sirhan it was feelings of inferiority, stuff of that sort.

  They all ended up stepping on their own dongs. Sure they got their man all right, but it got the better of them. They went bananas. Stepped on their own dongs.

  I thought a guy was better off keeping his problems to himself, under the circumstances, because everybody has problems, don’t they? No use projecting them onto the whole human race. You just do what you have to. Go bam

  What with me it was a little bit this unreality thing. The feeling of it I mean. To go down in history I needed to be real every minute of the day I could inside the dream of night. Well it was in driving, cruising like that, I guess, that I was able to keep in touch with myself that way. Like I was there inside the cab while life went on and on outside and I knew I had only to take that piece in my hand and punch a really big hole in the glass separating all of us. To be somebody in this world. Really go down into history.

  On the streets people looked so out of it. Raw faces like steamed pork. The whores, queers, shinglemen, and scam artists.

  World without end amen.

  The $20 Ride

  One night I started work late and found myself near Tompkin Square on the prowl. I’d just let out a fare and I was trying to reset the back door when I looked around and there was this really young girl sitting in the back seat.

  She was maybe fourteen or fifteen though she had been made up to look a lot older, wore one of those floppy, gauzy tops with a string back, hip-hugger jeans. She was thin, and very pale, red eyes, and though she was sort of stacked for such a kid there was this little rubber tire around her waist like she hadn’t quite gotten over being a baby yet. Still had the baby fat on her. Though, as I say, she was really sort
of raggy and thin. In the main.

  “Come on, Mister, let’s get out of here quick,” she said to me. I slammed on the meter and tried not to look at her in the mirror, but I wasn’t feeling completely trustful toward her. She seemed so young for a hooker, worse off than I was. Where could she be going this time of night a young person like her?

  Well I’m about to put the cab in gear when the next thing I know the front and rear side doors have opened and there is a struggle going on and the girl is being held by somebody and I can hear this voice kind of soft and silky saying, “Come on Baby let’s go. This is all a real drag.”

  She didn’t struggle, she just left. Just let herself be dragged from the cab and then the rear door slammed.

  Presently this guy, this person, comes over to my front window and leans partially through it and throws something down onto the front seat, a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. Says, “Just forget all about this, cabbie. It’s nothing, you understand.”

  Well I couldn’t see his face completely but I noticed he was wearing a fringed suede jacket and he had a young man’s voice, kind of gluey, pockmarks.

  There was another man with him too and they both walked off with the girl, the one young, as I say, and the other older and shabbier. All gray.

  Well I hadn’t made a move to do anything. It was as if reality had punctured the glass from the other side on me but I hadn’t even done a fucking thing. I could feel that gun like a cold slug against my thigh. I shrugged and turned away and drove off like some people’s business isn’t really any of my business.

  Foreplay To Gunplay

  All that night as I drove back to the garage I thought to myself that girl with her flimsy outfit and her pale face and that bare stringed back and her tulip bulb ass and the rubber tire and all those adolescent pimples was out on the streets already peddling her pussy, and there was nothing any decent person could do about it. That was just part of the condition of life. I thought it was an outrage that she should be such a victim of men like that, and I let that twenty-dollar bill just lie there on the seat next to me until I checked in, and then, you know, I took the money and stuffed it into my jacket pocket and signed in and later I almost used it to pay for my ticket at the Adam but decided I could not allow myself to take pleasure out of her blood money. I paid from my wallet for my ticket.