Maurice

His real name was Mike but he started calling himself Maurice when he returned from studying art in Paris. Maybe he thought the name would help him sell his painting. If so, he was wrong but he never went back to Mike.

He held court with the other owners at a coffee house across the street from the cab lot. He was there every morning and every morning I'd come in for coffee before I started work. Every morning I'd say hello to Maurice and the gang and every morning they'd scowl and snub me.

But when I started political organizing, he took an interest. Maybe he thought I had guts. I was a so-called Independent Contractor. He could have eliminated me with the stroke of his pen. It wasn't courage. I was single and didn't give a flying fuck. Getting in the face of pricks like Maurice was my idea of fun. On the whole he seemed amused by my provocative yet ultimately impotent actions.

He started including me in his court. He apparently had done a background check and spoke to me as a fellow artist cast adrift by the storm. He regaled me with tales of his painting days. He'd grown up with the poet Harold Morse and they shared an apartment in Paris.

"I don't know about my own art, " he told me, "but I knew lots of geniuses - lots of them."

I don't know know about his geniuses but his "art" explained why he owned a cab company.

When my political group began getting notice, Maurice pulled me aside and gave me a lengthy talk about how bad conditions had been for workers back at the turn of the 20th century. You know: 18 hour work days, company stores, sleeping on the job site etc etc. His point of course was that he wasn't all that bad.

Certainly, Maurice could be charming.

There was a veteran driver who was one of the last to belong to the dying union. Maurice made the driver a member of his coffee klatch and told him that he could keep all his benefits if he quit the union. Maurice would personally guarantee that the driver would still have his wage rate, his paid vacations, his retirement and his medical benefits.

"Why pay those damn union dues?" Maurice asked.

The driver took him up on the deal and went on vacation. When he came back, he discovered that he no longer had a job.

"But what about our agreement?" the man pathetically asked as he stood at the door of the Maurice's office.

Maurice got up and walked over to the driver.

"What agreement?" he snarled as he closed the door in the man's face.