Hack: Stories from a Chicago Cab

by Dmitry Samarov

  Freakeasy

  They’re in luck. The address I’d been sent to twice didn’t yield a soul, so they can stop shivering on that windswept corner and get in. Two girls and two guys, barely into their twenties. Among the couple dozen articles of clothing covering them, no two match. If colors come close, then sizes diverge; a loose furry top paired with the tightest skirt; unkempt scraggly hair and shiny dance shoes; a straw cowboy hat and a green Day-Glo bracelet. They only get to be this young once.

  The chick in the cowboy hat sits up front and wants to get to know me better—at the close of the night, it’s sometimes tough for them to turn it off. This one will leave a morgue full of victims in her wake before she is through. From batted lashes to a dozen different smiles to the feigned amusement at any and every word, she shows off just a bit of the repertoire. “We were at the Freakeasy tonight,” she says.

  A loft in an industrial stretch of the city, a DJ, a light show, dancing, drugs; in other words, a rave. “No,” the bearded kid in the back insists. “Well, sort of, but more sophisticated, you know, because they’re way beyond that . . . If you’re not into a bunch of hot bitches shaking their asses all night, then I don’t recommend it,” he snickers. “There’s like a bunk bed above the DJ booth and they’ve taken out the mattresses and it’s like a chill-out area,” the chick chimes in. There’s knowing references to various illicit substances and giggling. “Not that we do any of that,” someone in back reassures me. “Gotta be super careful, man, especially in Chicago . . .”

  Every succeeding generation discovers much the same vices and acts as if they’re the first. These kids are hardly out on their own, and it’s vital for them to let the world know how far out they are. I ask the girl why they’re going home so early—only 3 a.m., after all—and she says, “My lady love back there has an early morning thing she’s gotta do and we live in BuFu, Egypt, so . . .” Asking where this Bumfuck, Egypt, is situated reveals it to be Dyer, Indiana, about a forty-five-minute drive out of the city.

  “You should go back to the Freakeasy, man. It was like $20 to get in, but they probably won’t charge you. Just like tell ’em you’re there to pick someone up. They’ll be going till the sun comes up.” She pays up with a collection of sweaty bills, flashes a dazed grin, then follows her friends out of the cab. The rest of the journey to BuFu apparently will be completed by some other mode of transport.

  Marriage

  She dwarfs him by a good foot or so, yet he steers her down the steps and into the backseat with practiced efficiency. “She’s going to 22nd Place and Western,” he says, looking hard at me to be sure that she is delivered there safely.

  “Where are we?” she asks, looking out the window at the deserted early morning street. Being reassured of our location seems to ease her mind a bit, though a few minutes later she wonders how long it’ll be until she’s home. “He wanted me to spend the night, but I gotta go to church in the morning. He always does. He don’t understand—I have no one except my pastor. If I don’t come, he’ll wonder what’s wrong, and the next time he’ll lecture me.

  “I’m so sorry. I’ve been drinking, and you don’t wanna do this . . . He told me that if I get in the cab and leave, it’s over.” Nearing her house, she repeats these things until the tears begin to flow, and in front of the gate it’s clear the burden has not yet been lifted; the engine idles and she keeps asking questions to which I have no answers.

  “I want to marry him so much, but he won’t go into the church, doesn’t believe in it. What can I do? . . . You don’t know me and don’t care about me and this shit, so what do you think I should do? Thank you so much for taking me home, I know you didn’t want to.” Her tearstained face is right up to the open partition, darkly lacquered nails reflecting the streetlights as her hand rests on the runner of the sliding window, threatening the established distance needed to convey customers to their desired destinations without being dragged along in their wake. Without that barrier, the line can be blurred further than the typical alcohol-aided intimacy of a Saturday night.

  “I love him, but he won’t agree to it. The church is all I got. I’ll wake up in two hours and go . . . Will you please wait until I get inside my house?”

  She balances one uncertain foot after the other through the metal gate, then to the door and in, waving her hand and disappearing into the unlit house.

  SUNDAY

  The dregs of Saturday night will often spill into Sunday, but by late morning the pace slackens to a leisurely gait. Even the most determined ragers need to sleep it off eventually. Many cabdrivers, too, choose this as their day of rest. Thus, there’s less competition, so it’s possible to profit without getting too much gray hair. Sunday is also the day for those who work weekends to let loose, so people-watching opportunities still abound.

  Nite Cap

  It’s nearing three o’clock on a Sunday morning, the hour at which bars disgorge their more dedicated patrons. I’m going eastbound on Irving in Portage Park, when a round-faced woman runs out from the Nite Cap calling, “I’ve got one more inside, will you wait please?” I turn on the meter and wait. The marquee above the door advertises a week’s worth of heavy metal cover bands. She comes back out with a blond version of herself in tow. “I can’t believe I got a cab this quick out here, thought for sure we’d be stranded for hours,” she says. “You’re our hero!”

  They’re probably in their early forties, dolled up for a night out, with makeup showing the strain of many hours’ wear. The brunette gives a Roscoe Village address, and we shove off. I hop on the Kennedy to skip a few traffic lights, and when we exit on Addison, they ask if we can stop at the White Castle on the corner of Kedzie.

  The drive-thru queue wraps around the white-parapeted shack. Undaunted, the ladies pass the time recapping their evening. The blonde apparently had been making out with one of the longhairs inside the Nite Cap when her friend dragged her out to the cab. “He was kinda cute, right? I wrote my number across his whole forearm. He said he was still going out, so maybe he’ll call later.” The brunette laughs and asks me my name. “We’re eighties rock chicks, you could tell, right? You know, we like those metal dudes.” The line inches forward, and they bitch about what a fortune this cab ride is turning out to cost.

  Our turn comes, and the blonde launches into her order without any bidding. Her friend squeals for her to shut up. She asks if I want some burgers, and when I say, “Not these,” she concedes that nobody really wants them and that they’d be paying for this decision before morning broke. Finally prompted by the feedback-laden squawk from the speaker, the blonde recites a list that includes sliders, fries, chicken rings, fish nibblers, and half a dozen other items, racking up a $25 bill—which at White Castle is quite an impressive amount for two.

  The rundown of their night continues as we inch toward the window. “We’re not on Taxicab Confessions, are we?” one of them asks. When it was time to pay, the blonde reads the credit card swipe instructions out loud: “ ‘Slide in and out quickly!’ That’s what she said! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Her friend asks me how sick of them I am by now. They both try, with little success, to chat up the kid with the headset in the window.

  Fast-food smells permeate the cab as we pull back out onto Addison. They grow quiet, rustling wrappers, unable to hold off until home, hunger replacing lust. On the brunette’s street, we turn south and stop just past the second speed bump. They stumble out, leaving a trail of wax-paper wrappers in their wake. And so their Saturday night ends with no prince despite a trip to the Castle.

  Modesty

  Five a.m. and the two of them are the last outside the bar’s locked doors. “Your place?” he asks her as they get in, and the Lincoln Park address she offers makes him ask, “You live there?”

  Whether they’d met at the last watering hole or at the one just before that, they make an odd pair. She’s made up and wears clothes that obviously set her back something, whereas he’s a scrawny bespectacled hipster type. The need to
warm another’s bed has bridged the class and cultural chasm once more.

  “I get it,” she says. “Ever since I got to this town, the guys I’ve dated have been infatuated with who I am.” Eliciting no more than a murmured assent, she continues, “I’ve always been the best at anything I’ve ever tried. Oh yeah, I was the Homecoming Queen . . . I’m passionate about everything I do; my sisters were model-gorgeous, in beauty contests, so I’m all about competing and getting what I want.”

  All through her speech, he cowers closer and closer to the window, present in body but edging toward flight. As we pull into the high-rise’s drive, he leaves without a word and loiters uncertainly by the glass doors. “My little boyfriend here is allergic to paying his way. A real winner!” she announces, digging the MasterCard from her purse. She bolts inside, high-fiving the doorman; he follows sheepishly in her wake.

  Soldier

  A little after 5 a.m. Sunday morning and the line for the cashier at the garage stretches all the way back to the pool table. This is a disaster. Fourteen hours driving and this is the reward? She’s the one that double- and triple-counts every nickel too, so I decide to go back out and try to squeeze one last dollar out of the night. Heading toward the nearest late-night bar to see if any tardy revelers are orphaned and in need of assistance, he waves me down. A clean-cut guy in a pea coat, his only request is to smoke; his destination is the farthest northwestern reaches of the city. He gets on the phone.

  “. . . ready for Wednesday? I’ve been keeping in pretty good shape, running every day except yesterday. Went out last night, oof . . . Just hope it’s not like my third deployment, it’s gonna be rough . . . Yeah, somewhere outside Kabul . . . Huh? Man, no, he’s out of his mind, he started some shit with these navy guys two weeks back, went absolutely berserk. Totally unfit, can’t believe they’re letting him back in . . . His plan is to go to Haiti, but that ain’t gonna happen, I hope they send him there because he won’t take orders, he’s just gonna go in and FUCK SHIT UP.

  “My mom’s not doing so well, doubt she’ll make it more than a few months. Once she really starts going downhill, she’ll fade fast. I’ll have to come home, not gonna be in some foreign rat-hole when my mother’s dying . . . Dad’s having a hard time. She can still do the everyday little things, but she can’t handle the big stuff. She calls for help; he’s losing his mind.

  “No, that’s not going well, it’s pretty much over. She’s just about done. She isn’t about to commit to being single for one more year. It’s understandable—I don’t blame her. We had a pretty bad fight about it . . .

  “You know, they’ll have me running point the way they like, going into booby-trapped caves with folks that don’t like us. It’s gonna be bad . . . No, I’m not working with the ___ Airborne again, they really fucked us last time. We were running intel for them, then we hear these blasts, and they just mow down like fifty women and children. We never ordered an air strike! Not a civilian male anywhere in sight, and those psychos are celebrating. They just murdered fifty innocents and they’re proud—what a clusterfuck . . . You know what happened in Fallujah, right? . . . No, that’s the story we told, but . . . so, he’s searching the guy and he’s already given up his weapons, his knife, his AK are laying down, he’s searching him and everything’s normal, then I look over and he just snaps his neck. The guy’s partner sees this and I can tell he’s about to start freaking out, so I go over and slash his throat to just shut him up . . . Bad shit, he won’t listen to his COs. He should’ve been court-martialed, but he’s going back in instead . . . I got a bad feeling the way the things are going over there. Should’ve gotten whacked two or three times over. Always get a bad feeling at the start of these. Bags are packed, HOO-HA, it’s GO TIME! . . . Okay, man, I’ll see ya Wednesday . . .”

  There’s silence and he makes no mention of his conversation, just pays and gets out. I watch him in the rearview mirror just standing and staring at the house, lighting another cigarette, not anxious to go in.

  Back at the garage, the line’s barely moved. Outside dawn is breaking and the soldier’s story lingers.

  Good Omen

  The old man stands on the corner, looking this way and that, a hand cart holding a cardboard box marked EGGS, waiting expectantly at the curb. The cab is parked just beyond him, and as I pass, he points at it and asks, “Is that you?”

  We load the cart carefully into the trunk, the contents of the box covered by cloth, heavy enough to require both our efforts. His destination is within a block of the restaurant I’d decided on for my breakfast. “I’m your first fare, maybe I bring you luck,” he says.

  He’d been waiting out there for the Western bus, but it had seemingly been rerouted because of the Mexican parade. He’s as grateful for the ride as I’m surprised to have someone pay the cost of my breakfast so soon after leaving the house. As a rule, people in my neighborhood don’t take cabs; they wait for the bus without giving the taxi a second glance. It’s understandable, as I rarely take cabs myself—it’s a luxury that many of us cannot afford regularly. I usually drive miles before I spot the first upraised hand and the meter clicks to life.

  We sail north on Western in contented silence, quick glances in the rearview mirror revealing a healthy crop of graying nose hairs but an otherwise placid countenance; both of us are occupied by our own ruminations. His day’s labors apparently at an end, mine only just beginning.

  As I pull over at the corner of Augusta, he pays and asks for assistance with his cargo. The contents shifted a bit as the box was lifted out—food or perhaps something else to be sold on some corner where people pass by, yet remaining mysterious and unnamed. He refastens the straps holding the whole thing together, thanks me, and wheels it away down the sidewalk. I park the cab, buy the Sunday paper from the BP gas station, and go toward the café to put his $10 toward the cost of an omelet and some coffee.

  Worker

  Stopped at a red on a quiet Sunday night. The kid in the bulky sweatshirt and spiked hair stands waiting at the bus stop, peeking through the cab’s window tentatively before reaching out a palm to ascertain whether it’s available. “Thanks, man. Cold as shit out there. Was nice and sunny, then six o’clock hit and it dropped like a motherfucker . . . See, I was hangin’ with my girl, and she’s the kind that likes to go walk outside after a meal. Course she didn’t bring no sweater, so I gave ’er mine and near froze my ass off.”

  He wants to know if the Bears won and, hearing that they did, explains about how his friend knows this site where you can watch all the fights and games for free. “He’s got it hooked up to his plasma, it’s all hi-def, and you don’t have to pay nothin’.” He wants to know how late my shift runs. “Wow, that’s so late, and I bitch about my hours. Gotta be there 4 a.m. and stay till 10.”

  He takes care of the lawns of repo’d houses. “It’s easy, we just go in there with a weed-whacker—one, two, three, we’re done. There’s like seventy-two in Chicago, then a shitload more in the ’burbs. They’re adding more all the time.” He got the job because his uncle, who ran a fence company, was asked by a real estate pal if he knew anyone who could help with the maintenance of all the seized property piling up on his plate. Recognizing a payday when he saw it, he brought the nephews and cousins in to share a piece of the action. “It’s all right, I guess. I applied at that new La Quinta Inn Downtown; there were like thousands waiting. I was there six hours, but I thought it’d work out cuz I had an in. I was gonna be a mini-bar attendant, $13 an hour, but they wouldn’t give it to me since I ain’t twenty-one.”

  He is just out of high school and the only one of his friends with a steady job. “I’d rather be working. They have side jobs, this and that, but it’s mostly just hangin’ around.” He wants to keep talking, but we’re at his house, so he pays up and darts out. There’s always more, but the story hardly ever continues past the allotted time, the length of the ride is all that’s offered. Often, though, it’s more than enough to get a glimpse into another’s
world.

  On Tap

  The fat disheveled man gropes the girl with his left hand, his right raised toward the street, the whole scene lit by the Old Style sign overhead.

  Giving her one last squeeze, he guides her into the cab, then blows a kiss in farewell and goes into the bar. She doesn’t look back at him. “Austin and Roosevelt, but pull around the corner where he can’t see. Should take my ass home, but sometimes the devil gets in you,” she tells me. She has me pull over and gets on her cell, cooing, “Where you at, baby? You still partying downtown? Yeah, just got done with my date . . . Oh, all right. I’ll jus’ go home, then.” She lets the disappointment sink in for a moment, then tells me to head toward the highway.

  A glance or two in the rearview mirror registers a woman in her late twenties or early thirties. The elaborate eyeliner, tight-fitting geometrically printed dress, and long straightened hair worn up with a kerchief in a matching pattern gives her a ’50s look. The slob at the bar back there must have paid a good chunk of his paycheck for her company. She tells me that she’s staying with two gay guys out in Berwyn after wrecking her place. “They make me call when I’m on my way home so they can let me in. They don’t trust me with my own keys, and I don’t blame them. They’re all right . . . It’s only ten o’clock so I should be OK.”

  We speed west on the Eisenhower in silence, thinking our own thoughts. Does she regularly meet up with grubby old men at crummy bars, or is this reserved for quiet Sunday evenings when no better prospects present themselves? There’s no polite way to broach such a subject, so I content myself with speculating. I recognize this silence of hers, however—it’s the same as the stripper’s en route to the club, the quiet time spent girding herself for what she has to do to get by another day.