The Rabbit

"This town's gone to hell," Big Walt told as we broke for coffee. "Look at that," he said sweeping his arm toward the shops across the street. There were a couple of Mexican fruit and vegetable stores and a Vietnamese fish market with several people shopping at them.

"I grew up in this neighborhood," he said. "Now it's a fucking slum."

"I mean, San Francisco used to have class. I used to be proud to drive a cab here. Half the scumbags these days don't know how to act - know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I think I do."

"I mean, used to be you'd take a bar or restaurant call and, if the customer left, the bartender or the hostess'd give ya a couple bucks - maybe even a fin. Just by way of appreciation. Remember that?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Now they look at ya like you're bothin' them. One hostess snapped at me, "they're gone - whatya want me to tell ya?

"'How about tellin' me you'll give me a couple bucks for my trouble,'" I told her. So she told me, 'how about I just call another company' - and in a snotty tone of voice. As if that would be a punishment. 'Go ahead' I told her, 'soon enough you won't get no cabs at all.'"

"I don't pick 'em up anymore," he continued.

"Bars and restaurants?"

"Yeah - and hostesses. I'm done with those bitches. Ditto for waitresses. And bartenders - they're all a bunch of low-class snobs. They actually think they're better than we are!!! I mean, how much brains does it take to carry a drink? ... And, I've had it with freaks and weirdos ... I don't pick up guys with baseball caps on sideways or backwards, women with tattoos, girls with rings in their noses, guys with red tattoos, guys with their pants hung around their knees, girls with holes in their jeans, men with sandals, women with big boots, guys with sunglass on top of their heads ... and sailors? Who needs those cheap drunken bums ... And, construction workers used to know how to tip. Not anymore ... I don't pick up Australians, Italians, the English or tourists from Minnesota for the same reason ... I don't pick guys carryin' big radios or anybody talking on a cell phone. Drives you crazy. I wouldn't own one myself ... And I don't pick up minorities."

"But Walt," I pointed out, "more than half the people in this city are minorities."

"Somebody's got to make a stand."

"What about yuppies?"

"I used to pick up the women until I had this investment banker type - you know, your typical Stanford snob bitch. She snapped out a location without so much as a hello - like they do - and I started to drive when she suddenly screamed."

"What'aya yelling about?" I snapped. "You could cause an accident doin' that."

"But there's an animal back here," she said.

"Don't worry about that," I told her, "it's just a rabbit."

"A rabbit?!"

"Don't worry about it, it's dead."

"Dead?!"

"Yeah - I keep tellin' the day driver to clean it up but the lazy bum just ignores me."

"Would it take too much effect to throw it out yourself?" she asked in this snotty, sarcastic voice.

"I tell ya - I snapped. I mean, if there's one thing I can't stand it's sarcasm. If you got something to say. just come out and say it."

"You know," I told her, "one thing I can't stand it's sarcasm. If you got something to say, just come out and say it."

"Why don't throw it out yourself?" she asked in the same snotty tone of voice.

"Because it's the day driver's responsibility not mine." I told her again. "Not that responsibility is anything you'd know about. No - you just sit in the back, snap out commands and think you get someplace by magic - You don't think about how much skill and training goes into this job - how much real intelligence - not the abstract shit you live on - if it weren't for my responsibility you wouldn't even get nowhere alive - and you talk to me - I wouldn't talk to a dog in the tone of voice you use on me! Thanks for treating me worse than your dog!"

"And thanks," she cooldly replied, "for finally revealing the meaning of that obscure biblical passage."

"What biblical passage?" I asked her.

"The one that goes, 'and she was smote by the jawbone of an ass.'"

"I mean, a Stanford graduate and she can't even get the quote right - it's 'He was smote' ... "

"So what'd you say?"

"I didn't say nothin'. I 86'd the bitch ... "

"I tell you, man," Walt continued, "I'm getting out of this business . Used to be you could earn a decent living - not anymore."

Flying Off to Roma

Tall, wearing a stylish pants-suit and in her early thirties, she put a couple of packages onto the back seat before climbing in herself.

She was open, friendly, and attractive but not my type - not that it would've mattered. Thinking of me as a "partner" simply would not have entered her head. She wasn't a snob. She just belonged to a different world. She would no more think of having sex with me than she would with a pet cat she was fond of.

"I've got to run some errands ... it'll take three or four stops," she said breezily, "I hope you don't mind ... I can always grab another cab if you have to be somewhere."

Usually, I do mind. But my policy on this is: if they ask - I don't mind, if they demand - I do. Besides, she looked like a true San Franciscan, that is, a 30% tipper.

First we went to her laundry.

"I've been dating this fantastic man," she told me en route, "he's a little bit older but he's highly successful. He has just the littlest touch of grey hair - but he's very fit ... he plays baseball and he has a great sense of humor."

"Sounds like a good catch ... if you ladies still talk like that."

"We don't talk like that - but we think it," she said with a laugh as she got out to drop off her clothes.

When she returned, we headed for her wine shop.

"We go to the operas and ballets and we eat at all the top restaurants."

"Sounds great."

"Yes, he spoils me ... but I've met this other guy ... he's more my age - actually a little younger and he's not nearly as stable or secure ... in fact he's a little wild ... but he's ... how shall I put it?"

"More passionate."

"Yes - exactly - more passionate. Exactly the word. Passionate. Anyway ..."

We arrived a the wine shop.

"... to be continued."

She came back with the wine and I drove her to a fancy foods store.

"So my problem is," she continued, "he wants me to go to Roma with him."

"Which one? El Appassionato or Mr. stable."

"El Appassionato," she replied, "very appropriate name."

"So what's the problem?"

"Well ... maybe he's a little too appassionato, too wild."

"He's wouldn't want to marry you?"

"I ... don't ... know if I'd want to marry him. I'd have to worry too much about where was all the time - if you know what I mean? ... but still ..."

"He's very passionate."

"Yes."

"So you're afraid that things ultimitley won't work out in Roma and your trip might cost you Mr. Secure."

"Exactly," she told me as stepped out to buy the groceries.

When she returned, I asked her,

"You don't intend to tell Secure that you'll be traveling with Appasionato do you?"

"Well, of course not!" she replied. slightly annoyed by the question. "I'll tell him I'm going with the girls."

"Then, I don't see what the problem is ... go to Roma and if you come back, the older dude will still be waiting for ya.'

"Are you sure?" she asked, concerned and a little doubtful.

"Of course. If you don't go to Roma you'll regret it the rest of your life."

"I guess you're right," she said, sighing with relief. "That's a load off my mind."

She counted out the 30%, then happily tossed in an extra ten.

Not PC?

A large African American climbed gingerly into my backseat. He wore a three-piece suit, was in his 60s, overweight, and moved slowly as if in great pain.

He sat for a moment and stared blankly in front of him.

"You want to go somewhere?" I asked him with a mild attempt at wit.

"Not really," he said in tired voice. "My brother just passed."

"I'm sorry," I told him.

"Yeah, I know. Me too ... I guess you better take me home."

He lived in the Ingleside, one those neighborhoods that real estate salespeople describe as "borderline but up and coming." Unfortunately, this one was going down and out. The week before a woman had been shot in a laundromat.

It thus was a neighborhood that cab drivers weren't fond enough of visiting to learn the best way to get there. It was tricky. You had to go around Mt. Davidson and, for someone who didn't know the area, it might look like you were going the "long way." I had just turned off Portola when my customer pulled a Mr. Hyde on me.

"Where you think you're going, Boy?!" he bellowed.

"I think I'm taking you home."

"Do I look like I was born yesterday?"

"No, of course not ..."

"I was born in this town!"

"Listen - I don't know how else you've been going but this is the best route."

"Don't give me that shit, Boy! Here look -"

He pulled a cab receipt out of his wallet and showed it to me. The amount written down was about half of what the fare should have been.

"How do you explain that?!" he demanded.

"Well .. I imagine that you wrote it yourself."

"I warned you not to give me shit! Fuck it - I'm not even goin' to talk to you - give me the manager! Get him on that radio! Now! Boy!"

I turned around and calmly looked him in the eye.

"Who you starin' at? Cat got your tongue? Get me the police! You heard me! Boy! What's the matter? Boy! - you deaf!"

He kept it up, "Mau Mauing" me in the grand style. I understood him. I too came of age in the '60s. The corporations were the enemy, the system, "whitey," "The Man." I could dig it. The lowest form of life was the middle class. It was okay to cheat the government or the companies or the cops, to cheat "The Man," because "The Man" cheated you.

Somehow or another I'd also become "The Man" on my $30,000 a year. The dude was playing a game, trying to intimidate me into giving him a reduced fare. He and his brother had probably been working this scam for thirty years. Then they'd laugh about it when they got home.

I think by pulling this act on me he was keeping his brother alive.

I just kept staring at him until he fell silent and looked quizzically back at me.

"I haven't been a boy in fifty years," I told him quietly, "and I live in this neighborhood."

He held my look for a moment and, then, he must have realized both what he was doing and that his brother was dead. He caved in.

"Oh, my God! I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said, fighting back tears, "I'm so sorry."

Upward Mobility

"Convent Sacred Heart!" The girl snapped without looking at me as she stepped into the back of the taxi. She was 15 and, except for being a few inches taller, looked almost exactly like her mother, Brandi, who followed right behind her.

Brandi did glance at me but showed no sign of recognition. This hardly surprised me. The girl might not know what her mother did for a living. Besides, I hadn't been with Brandi for a few years and, with all the men in her life, I'd be easy enough to forget. But she still had to be selling it. No way she could've afforded to send her daughter to that school as a grocery clerk or a waitress.

Just by looking at her, you'd never guess her profession. Brandi was attractive but plain and dressed plainly - usually in slacks, a blouse, a light jacket and sandals. She seemed a little simple when you talked to her but she had to be the smartest pro on the streets. Her attire was a disguise that no cop could penetrate. In the dozen years I'd known her, she'd never been arrested.

She always worked a little outside of the mainstream. When the whores took over O'Farrell, Brandi cruised Post. When they moved uphill, so did she. When the cops busted the bitches on Sutter, she was already comfortably cruising Bush and Pine. She stayed away from bars, picking up her customers in bus stops, at sandwich shops and breakfast places, at laundromats and bookstores. She was so subtle in the way she went about her business that the owners of the stores where she hung out never realized what she was doing.

And she treated her customers right - giving them what they paid for instead of ripping them off like so many of the other sluts. She had a steady stream of regulars.

Still - for her to pay the bills at a prestigious private school was quite a feat. She was from the street - uneducated and unpolished. She couldn't have worked out of exclusive hotels or for an elite escort service. She couldn't have had too many thousand dollar paydays.

Brandi and her daughter gossiped in the backseat like they were sisters. They talked about an upcoming dance and one of the teachers. But mostly they gossiped about a social world populated with girls named Megan, Danielle, Stephanie, Vanessa and Jade.

When we arrived at the school, a Mansion overlooking the bay, Brandi paid and thanked me but her daughter ignored my thanks with a look of destain.

They walked toward the front door still gossiping when two teenage girls, walking from another direction, waved. It might've been Vanessa and Jade. The daughter gave a big smile, waved back and started walking quickly toward them.

Brandi also picked up her pace to keep in step. The daughter suddenly turned and gave her mother a look - embarrassment covering a hint of that destain. "What are you doing?" It asked.

Brandi stopped while her daughter turned and ran to greet her friends.

Brandi lit a cigarette and watched them disappear through the doorway.

As I drove off, she was wandering slowly back and forth near the top of the hill, smoking and glancing from the Mansion to the bay.

The A-Rab

"And, oh yeah, you'll be happy to hear that all the drivers at this company are white," Franks told me with an insider's smile. Then he winked, "except for the tokens."

Here I stood in San Francisco in the 21st century and I'd accidentally found my way to the Aryan Brotherhood. I thought people like Franks were extinct. Why is it that racists always assume that, if you're white, you agree with them? I mean, I'd met the guy over a conversation about The Snow Leopard for god's sake.

"Yes," I said smiling weakly, wondering how long it would take me to find another job.

The racial element didn't turn up much in day to day life and I stopped planning to leave. The conversations among the drivers were about the same as they were everywhere else except that I didn't get a chance to practice my broken Spanish or my barbaric Chinese.

Like all cab drivers, they lied about how much money they made. Every one of them had a story about his $500 days. Ridiculous! I could never figure it out. The driver talking would be lying and the driver listening would know he was lying and the driver talking would know that the driver listening knew he (the talking driver) was lying and ... they'd talk like this for thirty minutes. Made me long for the porno rap of my construction days.

After I'd been there about two months, Franks started complaining about this "A-Rab" who owed him $150 for underpaying his long-term lease. The "A-Rab" took the cab home with him and owned the car so Franks had no way to get the money. All he could do was bitch, which he did obsessively every time I saw him.

One afternoon when I was waiting for my cab, a mechanic ran over to tell Franks that the "A-Rab" had snuck into the garage to fix his car. Franks and the mechanic ran over to the garage.

A few moments later I heard a crash and, through a window, I could see Franks punching the guy while the mechanic held him. I couldn't believe it! For $150?

I ran over with three or four other guys and pulled Franks off. He spun to throw a punch at me then pulled it back when he realized that he was staring eye-level at my chest. He looked around with a dazed expression on his face. It must have seemed like his Aryan brothers had turned on him. I could read the next thought that crossed his forehead. It said, "lawsuit."

Franks suddenly became apologetic and misunderstood.

"This is isn't what it looks like," he said.

"That's good," I told him, "because it looks like a split lip and a broken nose."

A Stalker

Tall, blond and beautiful she took up jijitsu again when she started driving cab. The day shift was safer but she drove nights because the money was better. She could break a wrist with one quick move and throw a man three times her weight. She carried a taser but only used it once.

Her best protection was her personality. Open and friendly, she had a talent for turning men into guys. She knew how to deflect a pass without hurting a man or making him angry. Almost all her friends were guys who had started out by trying to be lovers.

As a rule she didn't date customers. One exception turned out to be a case in point. She usually didn't go for men shorter than she was either but he was cute, sexy and very funny. She slept with him on the second date. It was a mistake. The sex was great but he acted as if they were an instant couple. He called every day and starting making plans for them without even asking her.

She didn't want an intense relationship. She didn't have time for it. She'd discovered that she had a talent for computers and was taking courses. Her two girls were still in high school.

He had some little clerical job that paid him even less than she made. Besides - he had needs. He needed to be nurtured. He needed love. She had two kids already. She didn't have time for another.

She stopped sleeping with him but he wouldn't go away. He kept calling. She made subtle hints but he ignored them. She started hanging up on him. Then he started stalking her - following her everywhere. Finally, she got a male friend of hers to come over and spent the night.

The next morning when they went out, the little man was standing there, angry and agitated. He obviously hadn't slept. He was almost crying as he shouted,

"I love you and you treat me like this? You'll never find anybody who loves you like I do! I cared for you! I would've done anything for you! I would've made you happy! You'll never see me again!"

He was so pathetic that she almost apologized. It was a low trick but it worked. He never called again but she did see him once a year later.

She was cruising in her cab on Columbus looking for a fare when she spotted him.

He was walking with a plain women his own height. They were holding hands and staring into each other's eyes, lost to the world, in love, happy.

Overnight

"I used to be beautiful." She said with a light laugh. "You don't believe it, huh?"

I turned around and glanced at her in the back seat. She looked middle-fifties and dumpy. If you studied her face, you could see that she might once have been beautiful.

"You're a fine looking woman," I told her.

She broke out laughing.

"You're a lousy liar," she said.

"Other women have told me that."

"No - I was drop-dead gorgeous," she said, as if stating an obvious fact. "And I have Asian genes - when I was 60 I looked 35 - and I was fine. A Body an 18 year old would kill for. I would've had you eating out of my hand."

"It my case that wouldn't be hard."

She laughed and continued.

"I had a beautiful twenty-five year old boyfriend. Hard body. Filipino like me. It was the greatest passion of my life."

"I mean, it was crazy. I couldn't get enough of him. If he didn't call, I went insanely jealous. I couldn't eat. I'd walk around in agony - I mean physical pain. I never felt nothin' like it before. I couldn't sleep if he wasn't with me. I'd just stay up worryin', imagining him with other women."

"It turned out he was sleepin' around. Maybe my jealousy started it. I mean I accused him so much maybe he thought,

'Fuck it! I might as well get some.'"

"I started sleeping around for revenge. I screwed his best friend and let him know it."

"We fought all the time. Hysterical fights. I threw a knife at him."

"It got crazier and crazier. We'd break up and when we got back together it would be hotter than it was before. Then we'd fight again and break up again. It was like an addiction."

"I came in one afternoon and found him doing my niece on my bed - ON MY BED - they didn't see me. They were really goin' at it. I mean, they were really fucking!"

"So I went and got the gun and came back and they were still at it. They had so much energy. I suddenly thought,

'Yeah they belong together' and I said to myself, 'what the hell are you doin' Marcie? You're 60 years old.'''

"That was it. From that moment, I just let myself go. That was last year."

She laughed again.

"You don't believe me but it's true. I turned old overnight ..."

I stopped the cab and she paid me.

"Thanks for getting me home so fast. I'm just in time for the Surviver final. I'm really lookin' forward to it. It should really be exciting."