Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab

by Dmitry Samarov

  After a few final minute yet none-too-precise directions, we come to rest at the corner of 105th and Western. “Take $60, man, you earned it the way you hauled ass on that highway. I’ve taken this ride before, and with those towelheads it’s all, yabba-dabba and shit, you’re the best. Good convo, I mean it, man, you gotta come to the South Side.”

  MEN ONLY

  Coming up to Damen Avenue Friday night after 1 a.m., driving west on Webster past the expressway underpass on the northern edge of Bucktown. Two squat forms wave, then shuffle up to the taxi. Both men look to be in their late forties: stout, compact, and bespectacled. The one without the thick black mustache asks for a Clark Street address in the Loop, so we hit the highway ramp and are off. The litany begins even before we merge into the downtown-bound traffic: “They don’t like you, Bob; in fact, they hate your guts.”

  He has a speech impediment that turns his r’s and l’s into w’s, making him sound a bit like Elmer Fudd.

  “They can’t stand you. Admit it, they don’t even like you,” he continues, while Bob suffers in weary silence. “It’s because you’re a troublemaker, Bob. Why you have to be like that?”

  Several variations on the theme follow, punctuated by emphatic gestures of pudgy hands, before Bob can stand it no more, asking in a gruff but quiet voice, “Why? Why don’t they like me and they like you? I didn’t do nothing to them.”

  His tormentor, snot running unrestrained from nose into mouth, has a ready answer. “They see you bossing me around, they don’t like it. Why you always boss me around, Bob? They like me because I buy ’em drinks. They don’t like you at all. They can’t stand you, Bob. Admit it.”

  There’s a practiced, almost ritualized rhythm to the list of grievances. The plaintive tone is more child’s whine than adult’s vent; they’ve done this many times before, and both know their roles.

  We pull up to a MEN ONLY sign on South Clark, starkly backlit in white, advertising a transients’ hotel. It stands across the street from the Federal Corrections facility—an ominously sharp-angled concrete high-rise with vertical slits for windows. A rummy runs screaming incoherently toward the staircase below that sign, as Bob’s companion pops out of the cab and goes inside. The Board of Trade is around the corner, and in the daytime the seedy, forlorn feel of this block is disguised by the bustle of the throngs. At 1:30 a.m. there’s no such facade, the liquor store a few doors down providing the only oasis of activity.

  Bob sits quietly waiting for his partner, who returns, panting. “He said they’re at Midway.” So it was back onto the freeway en route to the little airport on the Southwest Side.

  The listing of Bob’s faults resumes, and his only defense is to insert “I take care of you” occasionally amid his partner’s assertions. At the curb on the desolate arrivals level at Midway, Bob gets on his phone, reciting landmarks such as the airline names listed above the locked sliding doors to someone on the other end. “Is this a bus terminal?” he asks me. Their friends are apparently at the bus stop, so we circle back down to the lower level, Bob narrating the trek with vivid descriptions of all that passes before his eyes out the left rear window. Two scruffy types approach and make as if to get into the taxi. “Can you take us to Toyota Park?” one asks.

  I beg off. Bob pays up, asking for a receipt and inspecting it carefully, then wanders away with his friends in search of further transport. Why are they going to a soccer stadium in the suburbs before the break of dawn? Is Bob really such a bad guy? These as well as many other queries go unanswered. A cab ride allows but an obstructed glimpse into the lives of those conveyed, and to ask more would be to ask too much . . .

  Shit Happens When You Party Naked

  Outside the Continental at 3 a.m., her three friends pile in the back, while she sits up front. “How old do you think I am?” she asks, and when I say fourteen, she pushes for an honest answer. When my guess is twenty-three, she’s offended. “Omigod, you think I’m that old?”

  She’s just dumped her boyfriend and feels guilty. Why? Because he’d broken up with her, but after they got back together, she left him just out of spite. She makes me turn my head and look at her friend in the back. “Isn’t she beautiful?” she asks.

  “Yes, she’s beautiful,” I answer.

  Leaving him wasn’t enough, though; she also slept with his best friend. “Shit happens when you party naked!” she tells me as they jump out of the cab on their way to Walgreen’s to buy frozen pizza.

  Riptide

  Four a.m. outside Marie’s Riptide Lounge. Coming off the Kennedy, the familiar waving figures attract my cab like a magnet.

  Two girls and one guy. The first gets in, urging her friend to follow. The guy hops in, but the other girl keeps walking away.

  The street’s deserted, and though they’re strangers, they decide to split the cab. He’s a cop in the ’burbs; she works in a hospital on the South Side. He knows the place, a friend’s mom works there.

  “Small world, huh?” she says.

  Her stop’s first, but as we pull up the banter ceases, broken by the sucking and smacking sounds of a first kiss. She asks him up moments later.

  It stays with me for weeks. A few drinks, a couple distant shared acquaintances, then an invitation to spend the night.

  Is it really that simple?

  Drive-Thru

  After the bars close, it’s time to eat. There are 24-hour greasy spoons, convenience stores with frozen pizzas and junk food, and places that deliver late into the night, but most people can’t wait that long, so it’s off to the drive-thru.

  McDonald’s realized a while ago that the people staggering out of taverns were underserved (in their culinary options) and began to leave their drive-thrus open all night. They weren’t the first—White Castle’s been open round the clock forever, but they tend to be in poor or out-of-the-way neighborhoods while McDonald’s are everywhere.

  Typically, it’ll come to my passengers as a brilliant brainstorm: Let’s go to the drive-thru! They ask tentatively, fearing the worst. Then when I agree, they offer to buy me food, so grateful that their wishes are about to be fulfilled.

  A girl who barely escaped the unwanted advances of some creep at a party, barely sober enough to get into the cab on her own, asks to go to McDonald’s and promptly throws up most of her strawberry shake all over the backseat after taking just a few sips.

  A middle-aged run-down woman with teeth missing offers to blow me in exchange for a ride. She stands just past the second window of the drive-thru where they hand out the food, hoping to capitalize on the generosity or desperation of the inebriated.

  A homeless-looking man walks up and down the advancing line of cars asking for cheeseburgers. At the window the cashier implores me not to have mercy on him as he’s had six or seven burgers already. “He’s not really hungry at all,” she insists.

  Walk-ups are forbidden, so many pay for a cab solely to go through the drive-thru. Apparently reaching through a car window is thought to keep the employees safe.

  An angry man with a backpack marches right up to the window and demands service. The line of waiting cars and dumbfounded employees are of no concern to him. He wants his cheeseburger and that’s all there is to it. Advancing gently forward, I nudge him out of the way. I want my cheeseburger more.

  Two guys outside a White Castle nearly get themselves run over making my cab stop. They’re loaded down with a king’s ransom of fast food, which they tear into before their asses hit the backseat. I’d saved their lives, to hear them tell it. We head north on Western, and in between gnawing on sliders, one of them becomes suspicious. “You’re going the wrong way, man.” His friend tries to shut him up, but his doubts persist until we reach his front door. The lethal combination of booze and late-night grazing reverse north and south once more.

  The nights often end picking French fries, pieces of processed cheese, and assorted sticky items out of the backseat. The remnants of another evening of revelry, these bits of food would ha
rdly reveal the doings of those who had eaten them. In that spent inebriated state, we devolve into primitive foraging animals, drawn to those inviting neon lights and the parade of others lining up for the sustenance doled out through a sliding window.

  SATURDAY

  If a cabdriver can’t make it on a Saturday, it’s time to try some other line of work. It’s also when the clientele will be drunker, stupider, and more belligerent than any other day except holidays. If one is inclined to despair of the species, this is the day to give up the ghost. However, we’ve all got to get by, so it’s time to get to it; we can take the rest of the week to restore our faith in humanity.

  Uglyville

  Every weekend trolleys roll around the city filled with revelers, stopping to spit them out at taverns, then gathering them back up, plying them with more drinks en route to the next watering hole. Passing them, as they creep along snail-like on their rounds, the mirth on board seems forced if not outright false. Whatever it is that these people do the rest of the week that inspires them to climb aboard makes me think it must be something fairly awful.

  A girl in a salmon-hued form-fitting dress bends over in the bushes while others stagger about the still trolley. It’s come to rest at a stop sign with no regard for those who may wish to use this quiet lane for passage. As I make a wide turn around it, narrowly avoiding oncoming traffic, two ladies hurl themselves into view, commanding my attention by frantically waving their arms, while balancing on teetering heels. A brunette in black and a blonde in white, they should’ve had their own theme song. “Halsted and Armitage, please,” the brunette says, then asks her fair-haired friend, “Are you gonna be OK? I totally saw that. What’s his problem?” She stops her questions to take a call, after which her tone changes a bit. “I don’t wanna be that kind of a friend, but he bought me dinner so I, like, owe it to him to meet up. He’s at the Tonic Room. I don’t even know where that is. I’ll be home soon.” With that, we watch the blonde stumble to her doorway and disappear inside.

  “She’s my best friend. We were on that booze bus down the street from where you got us. Someone threw a beer at her head, and her boyfriend laughed instead of standing up for her. Jesus, what are we, eighteen or something? A real Trolley to Uglyville. Some Shirley Temple–looking bitch accused me of making eyes at her husband. Is it my fault he was flirting with me?”

  The blonde had dated the guy only four months but was already telling him that she loved him. He repaid her affection by staying out all night doing coke, making him an hour late for the brunch she’d arranged for her parents to meet him. She couldn’t fathom why he’d light up a joint on the corner with his buddies in broad daylight. That afternoon they’d all started drinking early. “He isn’t like that; it’s just when he’s around his douche-bag buddies, it brings out the worst in him,” she insists. How they ended up on the trolley isn’t ever made completely clear, but by the time the cup had hit her friend’s head, they were all far past wasted. It wasn’t that it hurt; it was his reaction that wounded—why would he revel in her misery?

  Nothing is answered as we stop at the Tonic Room. “She should dump him, right?” The only answer is to nod and take her money. Her role in this whole thing, aside from that of unreliable narrator, is never revealed.

  Too Much Information

  Sometimes a guy will launch into his story with no prompting at all.

  “What a weekend! My buddy, he’s a federal judge, sets me up with this girl. In this huge house in Miami, she’s like twenty-one, hot as hell . . . So they’re all outside the bedroom beating on each other, and I’m inside, fucking this girl for like three hours. Do you like pussy? Cuz I’m gonna turn forty next month, and I’ll tell ya, they don’t come around like they used to. Nothing like being with one half your age, right? So she starts freaking out, wanting to leave cuz of the commotion, and I say no and grab her by the hand. Outside, there’s an ax that’s entered the picture, it’s crazy. But it turns out she likes it rough, so all they can hear through the door is SLAP SLAP SLAP, me pummeling her ass . . .

  “So me and my federal judge pal have a falling-out, and ya know what he can do? Since 9/11 and Homeland Security and shit, he puts me on the list. I can’t get on a plane. Didn’t used to be that way—I had a DUI in Illinois, so I just got a license in another state, then I went overseas and got an international ID! But now all the agencies are talking to each other, had to go to Group Dynamics therapy, anger management, Cocaine Anonymous, all to get the damn thing back . . . How did I lose it? Well, the cops had it in for me cuz we’d gotten one of ’em fired for a racial beat-down, so they watched me for eighteen months and finally got me. They said to pull over, but I had all kinds of drugs on me, so I figured I’d save $150 on the tow and just drive to the police station. They had nine cruisers following me, going thirty miles an hour.

  “Finally got back to Chicago, should still be there banging that chick, but what do I do first thing? Back to the bar and drink more tequila . . . I love you guys, you save my life listening to my shit—is this Taxicab Confessions? Just kidding, man, you’re the best! Take it easy, brother, be safe.”

  Player of the Game

  “Ashland and Cortez. Take me there fast. There’s cocaine there.” These are his words before he even sits down. He gets in out of the throng on Clark in the middle of Wrigleyville. His eyes are hidden behind cheap white plastic-rimmed sunglasses shielding him from the glare of night, his chin and cheeks decorated with a hipster’s stubble, his red retro T-shirt with “PLAYER OF THE GAME” spelled out in white with ornamental stars completing the design.

  “Just being honest. Whatever you think at this time of night, man, just get me there fast,” he says, then, satisfied with my proposed route, he launches into a soliloquy about whether it’s a good idea for his friend to cheat on his wife with someone from the office. Then he falls silent.

  From time to time, he inquires as to our progress, then sinks back into his openmouthed stupor. “Whoa, this is really far south. Where is Cortez, anyway?” Having only every fifth question answered or even acknowledged doesn’t faze him in the least. We pull up to the address, and he casts an uncertain look toward the condo, then back at me, before paying up and stumbling across the street.

  The Difference between North and South

  He lists from side to side at a stop sign, raising his arm in my direction. The work it takes him to name his destination should’ve told me to leave him where he was. After several attempts to understand one another, we finally settle on the Chicago Board of Trade in the Loop.

  There’s a state of inebriation just short of blackout in which random disconnected phrases escape a drunk’s mouth, where he is convinced that his friends are still talking to him when, in fact, he’s alone in a taxi heading home. He attempts conversation without much success, then begins to grow agitated; he’s convinced that I’m taking him the wrong way, trying to rip him off. We’re headed southbound on Lakeshore Drive, so I helpfully point at the dark void of the lake to our left, to ease his fears.

  This unfortunately only serves to enrage him more. He boasts of his great wealth, his condo downtown, and more, to prove that no lousy hack could put one over on him. When this line of reasoning doesn’t win the day, he resorts to insults. I won’t repeat the long litany save for what he punctuates it all with—

  “YOU’RE A FUCKIN’ NIGGER!”

  I stifle a laugh and don’t respond until we reach his address. He apologizes and pays for his fare, then teeters out, still unsure on his feet, headed God knows where.

  The Fellas

  Four pile in early in the evening. We all know them too well. A few years out of school, just married but before the kids and the inevitable move to the ’burbs; or still playing the field, getting obliterated every weekend. Get them together and the collective IQ might not muster the know-how to change a lightbulb. They call each other only by last name as if they’re teammates, but more likely from some vestigial custom of fraternity days. They ki
d about fucking the girlfriends of buddies who aren’t there. As we near the bar, they make their final preparations. Jenson’s definitely going to be the wingman, while Jones and Fletcher will hang back, then come in to close the deal. There better be some talent at this joint, they all agree.

  Stopped at a red, I look to the left. On the sidewalk outside Tavern in Wicker Park, a shirtless man balls his fists, ready to take on all comers. Eyes flit this way and that, muscles flex, then go slack. There’s no one within ten feet of him, so, seeing no takers, he picks up his white T-shirt off the ground and puts it back on. Tucking it in carefully, he gives the street a last once-over and goes back into the bar. The light turns green.

  Two men and a woman stumble out of the condo loft building. Whether to go for the left or right door becomes a complicated decision, but they eventually persevere. “Guess I’m sitting bitch,” the one in the middle announces to all concerned. They’re making two stops (the bitch’s being first of course). The fellow by the window is in Mardi Gras beads in the dead of winter. His eyes might as well have X’s over them like they do in the old cartoons; he’s no longer on this plane. He knows, however, that he wants to keep partying with his pal. The girl will have none of it, informing him in a stern, motherly tone that it’s time to go home.

  Extricating the “bitch” is accomplished at a glacial pace with phones and crumpled bills dropped and picked up several times. He makes one more attempt to talk her into prolonging the revelry before climbing back in and laying his head on her lap.

  At their house, she hands me the fare, accompanied by a look that says that this kind of thing is getting old fast. “C’mon, Jeff, it’s time to go home!” she says, and stalks off. There’s a glove left on the backseat, and when I hand it to him, he grins and says, “Hey, thass Coleman’s glove!” as if discovering a lost toy. He waves it my way, then staggers in the direction in which she disappeared.