Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab

by Dmitry Samarov

  As we near downtown Downers Grove, the happy couple reappears in a more or less standard passenger’s pose; seated upright, that is. We get stuck at the rail crossing, where I have the chance to ask whether the Metra conductors would allow them to do on the train what they’d just finished doing in my cab. They both laugh and say they’re just happy to have some alone time away from the children. The husband seems especially pleased with himself, repeating over and over how now that they’ve just finished fucking in a cab, it’s time to walk around with the kids. They thank me profusely and leave a $30 tip.

  The Sox won too.

  The Check

  He floats down the steps of a downtown high-rise and gives directions to a bank about a mile away. Halfway there he says, “Shit!!! Can we go back?” After retrieving what he’d left behind, we head back to the bank again and he tells me his story.

  Five years ago, he’d been at a nightclub downtown when a fight erupted. His retina was severed by a flying piece of glass. Multiple surgeries and court appearances had finally led him to this moment in this cab. The high-rise was where his lawyer’s office is, and the item we’d had to return for was his settlement check.

  He shows it to me, beaming. All the aggravation has finally paid off: $469,000. He says he’s planning to put most of it away, though we’re headed to the bank to cash it. The only thing I can tell him is to beware of new friends and long-lost relatives coming out of the woodwork. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five. I’d never seen that many zeros on a check other than in the movies.

  He leaves a good tip as I wish him well, then he floats toward the bank’s doors.

  Nose Job

  She stands outside Helen’s Two Way Lounge, squinting through tinted glasses in the afternoon sun to make sure the cab is really for her. “Go down Fullerton, not Armitage. I got this route all worked out . . . Running late, but he knows me, I’m always late, he’ll understand.” Four in the afternoon and her words slurred as if it were four in the morning. Her name is Trish, and she wants to know all about me.

  Finding out I’m Jewish, she exclaims, “Me too! Well, I’m Catholic and Jewish. I think the Catholics and Jews are a lot alike; it’s the Christians like Baptists that I don’t understand . . . I mean if Hitler was here right now, you know where I’d be going, right? Look at this nose. If you knew anything about geology, you’d know I was Jewish!” She ponders these matters quietly for a few moments before adding, “I had an opportunity to get a nose job for free once, but my girlfriend got one and they fucked it all up.” She makes me turn around so she can demonstrate how the lip had somehow been sewn to the nostril. “I’m better off with what God gave me, right?”

  She wishes me a good day and creeps across Armitage to Shoe’s, one of the few odd old man bars left in Lincoln Park, to continue her lost afternoon.

  Whisperer

  An older woman waits on the edge of the parking lot of a community center on Chicago Avenue amid shimmering pools of broken glass. With her white hair tied back in a grandmotherly bun, she doesn’t look like she belongs on this woebegone stretch of the West Side until she begins to speak—or whisper, more accurately.

  I have to turn off the radio, roll up the windows, and practically hold my breath to make out what few directions she offers. Going south on Pulaski, she wants me to turn right on Kinzie, but “slowly, slowly . . .” We pass various salvage emporiums; this is where the trucks trawling the city’s alleys must haul some of their treasures to be converted to cash. Freight tracks ran along the right side of the road, and a ragged man, perched on the concrete divider, is taking a hammer to some object that only he can discern.

  The 10 mph pace does not inspire her to any more precise instructions. We turn into the Northwest Industrial Park, passing warehouses, city fleet facilities, and multiple tractor-trailers backing laboriously into bays to unload their cargo. Finally reaching a cul-de-sac turnaround, she says to stop. She pays up and wanders away distractedly, only to return when she notices me idling while making a phone call. “You have to move along—you’re blocking traffic here,” she hisses, jerking her arms as if to clear room on the roadway. After watching to make sure I’d pulled away down the carless street, she turns back and tentatively steps toward the garbage-strewn lot that is the endpoint of her trek.

  Senior Citizen

  The wind nearly blows the old woman off her feet as the doorman and the caretaker struggle to put her in the back of the taxi. She fights against their help, telling them she can do it herself, spending what little energy she has waving her arms for freedom. The Filipino aide comes around and gets in on the other side and is promptly informed, “I don’t want you along. I want to go by myself. Symphony Hall, driver. You know where that is? It’s across from the Art Institute.”

  The four or five blocks from the East Randolph Street high-rise to the Michigan Avenue drop-off are spent with the two women bickering. The fare is $4.15, and the old woman makes a show of digging through her purse, eventually pulling out a bank deposit envelope. The three singles it contains seem to puzzle her; she shuffles them several times as if hoping to make more appear. She asks her companion if she has any cash. “You know I never carry cash” is the aide’s angry answer. I tell her to just give me what she has and to move along, at which the aide spits out, “She has money—she just don’t want to pay!” while the old lady does her best impression of dementia-induced confusion.

  Extricating her from the backseat takes several more minutes. She wants my number so I can come pick her up at the end of the performance, which I flatly refuse; getting played by her twice in one day would exceed my reserve of goodwill. She makes a show of acting hurt, then leans on her cane and starts toward the symphony’s doors. “Bless you,” the Filipina calls out as I pull away.

  Street Meat

  He flags me down in Old Town, a pipsqueak of a man wearing thick glasses. We head west on North Avenue, and he asks whether the hookers still hang out here. “I used to get blown for twenty dollars by the underpass . . . Me and my buddies used to call ’em Street Meat,” he says proudly, as if he’d coined the term. “They’ve really cleaned it up around here,” he adds, with regret in his voice. When I tell him that most Yuppies preferred to be serviced at home these days, he protests that he likes to get his off the side of the road. He pays and runs across the street to an upscale nightspot.

  A tiny Asian girl gets in at 3 a.m. in Ukrainian Village, going downtown. She lists the services that she will and will not perform to someone on the receiving end of her cell. “I’m a nursing student. No, I’m on my way to a date now. Wanna meet later? What do you look like?” She gets out at a big apartment building with a doorman, near the lake.

  Girls of all sizes and shapes call to be taken to work at VIP’s or the Admiral, the last two big strip clubs in the city. They’re usually silent during the ride, perhaps steeling themselves for the night ahead; it’s hard to be friendly off-duty when you have to fake it for hours on end to make a living. The Admiral offers free admission to cabdrivers, as well as a $10 bonus for steering customers their way. The two professions seem linked somehow, especially in the eyes of out-of-towners—they think that we have stables of willing ladies just waiting to help them cheat on their wives.

  On the West Side in the middle of a snowstorm, the girl is so grateful to finally get a cab. She is a young heavily made-up Latina on her way to the Belden-Stratford, a posh old residential hotel in Lincoln Park. There is no pretense here—she tells me how badly she needs this trick. The guy is a repeat customer. She sympathizes with me, having to be out in this mess. We pull into the drive, and shortly after, an obese older gentleman in a robe comes out, pays the fare, and escorts her inside.

  With their makeup, voices, and flamboyant clothes, none of the four could definitively be classified as either female or male; they are in that sweet spot calculated to appeal to the widest potential clientele.

  They run over from their perch in the Punkin’ Donuts parking l
ot at Belmont and Clark, where they’d been all night, talking up the lonely people trolling for love. They sing along to B96 as we hit Lake Shore Drive and keep it up all the way down to the Dan Ryan. We exit on 63rd Street, and they’re all suddenly silent except for occasional instructions to turn left or right. Then we stop at an abandoned lot, the cab doors fly open, and they scatter in all directions.

  Good-bye, Nerd

  On a Thursday night outside Buddy Guy’s Legends, a man crouches slightly with his left hand extended uncertainly, possibly needing a ride. He pushes past the couple at the curb and into the backseat and barks, “Get on the Eisenhower. Going to Oak Park.”

  His eyes wander away from each other toward opposite ends of his face, spittle glistens from his patchy beard, his hair greased back, teeth crooked and gapped. “They oughta know how to fight, wasn’t doin’ nothin’, fuckin’ nerds. What a joke ha-ha-ha-ha . . . knew a guy once who married a nerd, never amount to nothing.”

  What follows his statement is a series of alternately guttural and whining animal noises apparently continuing a conversation with someone only he can see.

  Off the Austin exit, his last-second instruction is to turn left; he barely bothers because staring out the window and intoning, “Good-bye, nerd; good-bye, nerd; good-bye, nerd,” at all passersby is of far higher priority. Locking eyes briefly in the rearview mirror, he suddenly asks matter-of-factly about how the night’s going. This is more unnerving in its way than the incoherent babble that came before.

  We roll westbound on Roosevelt through Berwyn, then left on Harlem, passing the town Welcome sign for Riverside. Two municipalities past his stated destination, I ask whether we’re close and he answers, “I’ll show you.”

  Approaching the train tracks, he suddenly wants me to pull over; this I accomplish by rudely cutting off an eighteen-wheeler. That’s how ready I am to be rid of him. Fully ready to be stiffed or worse, the long minutes of fumbling through his pockets yield a crumpled $20 along with six ones. “It’s all I got,” he says, to which I offer no argument, more than grateful not to end up a severed head in his icebox. He crosses through braking traffic toward the light of a tavern.

  FRIDAY

  Friday afternoons they flee their offices, anxious to do whatever they can’t while at work. Getting them from and to can add up to a living for many a driver. Of course, this is also when the serious overindulging begins, so those dollars can sometimes feel more like combat pay. For those of us interested in observing the mating rituals and other characteristic behaviors of the urban male and female, there’s no better seat in the house.

  Flood

  The sun attacks the cab’s windshield from a nearly cloudless sky on Friday afternoon, roasting the interior and making the AC strain to its limit, as the two women pile in towels, coolers, four children, and folding chairs en route to North Avenue Beach. They laugh and talk all the way, paying no heed to the gradual darkening up above. By the time we pull up to the mouth of the beach’s parking lot, the first drops wet the windows.

  Three young guys climb in before the ladies have even removed the last of their belongings, asking to go to Lakeview. Nearing the Belmont exit off Lake Shore Drive, the rain picks up, robbing most motorists of the rudimentary driving skills adequate to fairer conditions. The pace slows to a crawl, and drivers’ awareness of details such as lanes and reasonable following distances fall away in favor of white-knuckled survival techniques. My passengers are oblivious to all of this, preoccupied as they are with an in-depth analysis of the underage girls they’d been chatting up by the lakefront volleyball courts. Side streets eventually get us to their destination just as winds begin to whip the downpour sideways and the sky turns a sick green-gray.

  The Cubs game has just ended, which would have made the neighborhood hectic regardless, but combined with the deluge, all unable to find shelter lunge toward any passing taxi like castaways reaching for the last remaining life raft. The two who get to me next are well-lubricated and cracking each other up as we creep westward. The wipers are mostly useless as the force of the torrent allows only the barest outlines of parked cars to remain visible. The taillights ahead serve as the only evidence of roadway. The two-mile trip takes about half an hour. I drive up onto the curb so they won’t drown in the lake that has formed by the door to their condo, earning a few extra dollars’ appreciation.

  Underpasses fill like moats, slowing passage further. Trees splinter, unable to withstand the gales, smashing car hoods and blocking one-way streets. By the time the storm lets up, it feels like it has been beating down on the city for hours when it has only been about forty minutes. The sun reemerges and weary people creep out, shaking off the water like half-drowned rats. The gridlock continues for some time, making good service impossible and causing restiveness in the clientele—several times I have to tell a girl banging her foot against the partition to stop or walk the rest of the way, while a fellow decides that since we’re momentarily idled at a stoplight, he must be home and proceeds to swing the door open just as we start to move again. Perhaps like a full moon the atmospheric conditions fool with their inner equilibrium, but whatever the reason, it makes for a tiring evening of driving. By ten or eleven when the heavens open up once more, it’s like bracing for one last counterpunch in a twelve-round bout.

  Those lucky enough to dodge the raindrops upon leaving the bars and Friday soirées remain largely unaware of the damage. Some wonder why their apartments stand dark as they get out of the cab, joining some half a million residents experiencing power outages. Friday nights are for washing away the weight of the week, and no flooding, however biblical in scope, will thwart the determined weekend warrior from slogging through another eve of inebriation. The job is to ferry them from one oasis to the next whether the route is smooth or pitted and obstructed as it was on this night. Coming through it unscathed would count as some consolation were it not for the fact that the trick would need to be repeated the next night and the night after that with or without the cooperation of Mother Nature.

  He Hit Me

  She sits on the front steps of a condo building. Her mouth is gaping open, but from a distance it isn’t clear whether it’s with joy or grief. When I stop and look closer, that mystery’s soon solved.

  She has coat hangers draped with a couple weeks’ worth of outfits and a little dog milling about. The lights are on in the first-floor apartment, likely the place she’s leaving. She’s on her phone, and with the window down I can hear her sobs. Gathering up her belongings, she makes her way to the cab.

  Choked cries escape her for a couple minutes before a destination can be determined. “He hit me,” she says. “He’s never done that before . . .” They’d been going out only a few months, but this night he was drunk and he hit her in the face. There’s no visible bruise, but she’s in shock.

  Earlier that night I’d resolved not to buy any more cigarettes, but when she asks for one, I pull over at the closest gas station and we both light up. It seems to calm her a bit, though she’s still shaking slightly. I try to convince her that we aren’t all like him. She doesn’t reply.

  She gets out at a loft-style condo building in the old meatpacking district, fumbling with her keys for what seems like an eternity. Her presence stays in the taxi like a ghost for the rest of the night.

  South Side

  By the Pony Inn on Belmont he holds the door open, blocking traffic, sucking in the last few drags off a butt before getting in. “Don’t sweat it, man, there’s a big tip in it for you.

  “Oh good, you’re no A-rab! Got a deal for you: $50 to 111th and Western?” I agree to his terms, so he settles in to hold forth. “The North Side’s OK; lotsa stupid drunk bitches in all the bars. Look, I’m no player, but there were three hot chicks tryin’ to make out with me. Where you live?” The answer makes him light up. “You ever come to the South Side? The hidden gem of the city—best people, all the cops, the firefighters, they all live around there—you’re a Sox fan? Aww, man,
you gotta come out some time!”

  We’re on the Ryan speeding south when he realizes his phone is dead and asks to use mine. “Tryin’ to call my girl. See if she answers. What time is it? Out with her friends, probably wasted, they hate me cuz I haven’t always been the best . . . See, I fucked around with a North Side girl for a while. Way hotter than my girl, but the personality of a piece of Styrofoam. When it comes down to it, ya gotta stick with a South Side girl. It’s goin’ pretty well now.”

  The off-ramps fly by before his sudden request for an exit swerves us off the highway. We head west toward Beverly, his beloved neighborhood, through an area that makes him cast his eyes about with no small amount of unease. “Damn shines dicin’ on the corner and right near my ’hood, a damn shame.

  “Your choice: cash or card? If it’s cash, we gotta stop somewhere. Already spent $150 tonight, and I still gotta meet up with my girl and her cunt-bag friends. She’ll be happy to see me; they won’t . . . Oh well.” He runs out to the 7-Eleven for the ATM. Back out, he looks around, then edges toward the shrubs at the corner of the store’s lot to take a leak before thinking better of it. A flap is torn from the ass of his jeans, revealing blue-and-white horizontal striped boxers. “Sometimes you get the stupidest ideas before coming to your senses. This store’s patrolled all the time. What do I do when Uncle Stupid busts me . . . My whole family’s cops, they say, ‘No way you’re gonna be a cop,’ so I go to law school. Lot more schoolin’, I make the same paycheck. State’s attorney, I got one rule: you got two strikes, you’re going to jail. Makes sense, right?”