Small Talk in a Greasy Spoon
Well people do such things when they are about to have a relationship and I was talking to a lot of people about a lot of things lately. In my cab, a woman says to me, “New York is always cold when it’s hot and hot when it’s cold, ever wonder about that?”
At the Belmore at 3:30 one morning, I’m with Wizard, Dough Boy, Charley T., who, as I say, is black, and we’re comparing fares. The usual shit: How everybody squeezes the cabbie if he can. How they talk at you. How lonely it is. How they don’t even care sometimes if you’re listening. And chicks, they like to chisel you.
I had just gotten bucket loaded by a chick with a ride to Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, so I figured the night was fucked and came there, but then Dough Boy told me he would “bust any bastard who pulled that shit this time of night.”
Wizard says, “Dough Boy likes the dollars too. He’d chase a buck straight into Jersey.”
“Look who’s jabbering,” says Dough Boy. “Who else would come here to squeeze an extra ten bucks out of the rush hour?”
The place was so full of junkies, and black pimps. Repulsive. All that greasy plastic everywhere. Plastic eggs.
One old coot hung onto his coffee cup at the front of the line as if for dear life when we came through.
The ticket bell bonged and Charley T. ordered cold scrambled eggs and studied the racing form.
Well the colored don’t know how to hang onto their money.
There were some street people there too, a girl and a boy at the next table, all lovey-dovey. She was kinda pretty, I guess. Lanky. I don’t really know what she saw in him. He wore an Indian head band.
Wizard says to me, “If I was you, Travis, I’d have copped me a feel. I ain’t too old for that you know, Travis.”
I had nothing to say. She wasn’t my type. I thought of Her. So slender and clean. Not like that slutty-looking hippie girl at the next table.
Dough Boy asked, “You run all over town, don’t ya, Travis?”
“A ladies’ man,” Wizard said.
I wasn’t listening. I was thinking how clean her body must be, and what she looked like without clothes, next to me, if I ever
Hell, shit, I have a right to my own thoughts, but I was interrupted by that Goddamned Dough Boy who was a needler and a nosy-body. He said he understood I handled all the rough traffic, and did I carry a gun?
Naw
Well did I need one?
Pondered that a second before saying, Naw, I suppose not.
Well Dough Boy said that if I ever needed one, he knows a guy who could get me a real nice deal. “Lots of that shit around,” he said.
Wizard says, “The cops and company raise hell they find out.”
I dropped two Alka-Seltzers, and then another red. Maybe we can change the subject.
Dough Boy he says, then, “Truck drivers bring up Harlem Specials that blow up in your hand, but this guy don’t deal no shit. Just quality. If you ever need anything, I could put you in touch.”
Wizard puts in “For a fee.”
“For a fee,” says Dough Boy.
Wizard says, “It’s a good thing to have around the house. Thanks be praised, but I never used mine.”
We started breaking up. Then Dough Boy says, “If there’s this many hackies inside, there must be lots of fares outside.”
Well, he has a wife and kid, a mortgage somewhere in Brooklyn or the Bronx.
Charley T. had nodded off. Dough Boy makes a crack: “Say hello to Malcolm X, Charley.”
And then it was just Wizard and me and we don’t have very much to say to each other. Ever.
I stayed awhile and then I made my excuses, got up, went to the cashier, paid the bill. Got a fare right outside on Park Avenue to Little Italy and on the way back uptown to the garage, another, a fat guy with a sob story about his divorce, a lawyer with a thing for his client’s wife who he is suing for divorce on the grounds of adultery on behalf of his client to get custody of her child.
The guy was bad drunk and he said he felt all mixed up, ethically and professionally.
Words to that effect.
Said the woman and he were having this affair years and years and there was a child involved and she didn’t want her ex, his client, to see the kid and it was just very hard on him as a lawyer because he usually did only Workmen’s Compensation, stuff like that. But because she was such a beautiful woman, when she told him he was the best ever, he felt he couldn’t say anything to his client.
So who, he asked, was he responsible to? The client? The woman?
Well I don’t know. In my journal, I write, Fat men with briefcases carry their lives in a big bulge.
He leaves me on Seventy-second Street near Central Park West, says he thinks of giving it all up sometime and moving into one of the Caribbean Islands, St, Loosha.
When people tell you these things, they don’t really want you to hear really. They just need to have you there to bounce it off. Once I picked up Joanie James. Remember her? She’s not what she used to be.
Well, I suppose that happens to everybody after a while. Even Her. My girl. God, is she beautiful . . .
Betsy Meet Travis Bickle
On April 14th, I wrote the following in my journal:
“Dear Diary—this really happened. I got up the nerve and went into Palantine headquarters today to see her and talk to her.”
No kidding. I got all dressed up: Tie, pressed my army jacket and slacks, shined my shoes, shaved, walked right through that door on my own two feet.
Had the cab parked a block away.
Entered the place quickly, at a quick step march, headed right for her desk. That guy she sees with the curly hair trotted over, too, though I ignored him.
Me: “I want to volunteer.”
I was feeling a little panicky but O.K., I guess, except for wear and tear from lack of sleep.
So he comes over to her right then, too, and interrupts: “If you’ll come this way.” Didn’t even call me sir like they usually do.
Well, I give him the elbow. I’m not budging. I didn’t have enough time to notice what’s going on with her.
I just plant myself there and say, “No, I want to volunteer to you.”
He sort of warns her, in an undertone, “Bets.” Now I know for certain that’s her name. But she waves him away. Everything is going to be O.K. She is looking at me real warmly, I think. Then he goes about his business, and she says to me, “Why? Why is that?”
Me: “Because you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
She seems to like that, in a mild way. She knows I’m coming on, gets startled, though not angry. Those lovely greenish-blue eyes are watching me close.
She: Smiling all the while, “Is that so? But what do you think of Charles Palantine?”
“Who, ma’am?”
“Charles Palantine, the man you want to volunteer to help elect President.”
“Oh, I think he’s wonderful, a wonderful man. Make a great, great President.”
“Do you want to canvass?”
(I’m trembling. Were sort of playing around, I think.)
“Yes, ma’am.”
(She’s grinning a bit now.)
“What do you think of Palantine’s stand on welfare?”
(She’s a real teaser, no doubt about it.)
Me: I’m feeling as though I can finally speak my mind to a friend.
That guy is shuffling his papers a few desks away.
There’s a clatter of typewriters.
“Welfare, ma’am,” I asked very respectful, at first, and polite. Well, even though politics is not my bread and butter, I have my views. “Welfare. Well, I’d say he wants to get all them lazy people off welfare, all them old coots. Make ’em work for a change.”
She gives me a funny look again and then another, unreal, a little more interested.
“Well, that’s not exactly what the Senator has proposed. You might not want to canvass, but there is plenty
of other work we need done: office work, hanging pictures.”
Me: “I’m a good worker, ma’am, a real good worker.”
She says, with her cool little smile, “Call me Betsy, that’s my name. If you talk to Tom over there, he’ll assign you to something.”
“If you don’t mind, Betsy, ma’am, I’d rather work for you.”
“Well, we’re all working tonight.”
When I tell her I drive a taxi at night, she lifts her eyebrows at this, asks, “Well, then, what is it you exactly want to do?”
“If you don’t mind, ma’am, I’d be mighty pleased if you’d go out and have some coffee and a piece of pie with me.”
Well so did she. Seem pleased. Real pleased, even smiled, openly. “All right.” Then she seems to be thinking again. “All right. I see you’re not just another pretty face. Well, I’m taking a break at four o’clock and if you’re here we’ll go to the coffee shop at the corner and have some coffee and pie.”
Tom over there didn’t seem too pleased, but I was. “Oh, I appreciate that, Betsy, ma’am. I’ll be here at four o’clock. Exactly.”
“Betsy,” I went on.
“Yes?” She was delighted with me.
“My name is Travis.”
“Well, thank you, Travis.”
And, after 4:00 P.M., I added the following little note in the same book:
“B even nicer than I thought and very well brought up, too. Her father is some sort of big shot diplomat. Lives a broad. B wouldn’t tell me much. Said her parents had been very cruel to her when she was little. Well, I don’t see how, the way she looks. They must have loved her a lot, though she wouldn’t tell me more. Said it was time she grew up.”
Coffee Shop Rendezvous
Which all goes to prove I took Betsy to the Mayfair Coffee Shop on Broadway and had only just returned when I started writing in my book again.
Me: black coffee and apple pie with a slice of melted yellow cheese. I think that was a good selection. B: coffee and a fruit salad dish. She could have had anything she wanted.
She told me at first about her work with all the volunteers. Fifteen hundred of them. Said, “The organizational problems are just staggering.”
Me: “I know what you mean. I got the same problem. I just can’t get things organized. Little things, I mean. Like my room, and possessions. I should get one of those signs that say, ‘One of these days I’m going to get organized.’ ”
Well I guess I ended up grinning at myself and her like that because she matched me with her own grin then, and laughed, threw back her head with all that blond soft hair and said, again: “Travis, you really are not just another pretty face. I never met anybody like you before.”
“I can believe that.” Though I was blushing.
Betsy asked, “Where do you live?”
Well I explained how it wasn’t much. Uptown. Some joint. Words to that effect. Didn’t want to go into any details with her inside of a coffee shop.
“So,” she asked, “why did you decide to drive a taxi at night?”
Again I explained how I had this regular job for a while days doing this, and that. Words to that effect. This and that sort up stuff. Didn’t go into any of the details about the stock room. Why should I? But I did tell her I never had much to do nights. That I got kinda lonely, and that’s when I decided to work nights.
“It ain’t good to be lonely,” I told her, “you know.”
Betsy says, “After this job I’m looking forward to being alone for a while.”
Me: “Yeah, well . . .”
Well I was feeling sort of out of my league just briefly. “In a cab, you get to meet people. You meet lots of people. It’s good for you.”
Betsy asks, “What kind of people?”
“Just people, people, you know, just people.”
I told her I even had a dead man once and Betsy says, “Really?”
So, I explained how he’d been shot, and I didn’t know that when he just sprawled in the back seat and konked out on me.
“What did you do then?” Betsy asked.
Me: “I started the motor up for one thing. I knew I wasn’t going to get paid, so I dropped him off at the cop shop and they took him.”
(Well, you know, again, I didn’t want to go into any of the amazing unreal details. Just stuck with the obvious. Bullshit like that. Didn’t mention that sick sweet smell, the blood, and that he had sorta soiled himself.)
“That’s really something,” Betsy says, then.
I felt she was pushing me a bit, so I said, “Oh, you see lotsa of freaky stuff in a cab.”
I wasn’t exactly trying to impress her, but it was getting me down being there like that with nothing more to say (a person would never understand, I thought, if I said what was really on my mind), so I said: “People do anything in front of a cabbie. Anything. It’s like you’re not even there.”
Betsy cut me short with another question: “What hours do you work?”
I explained how it all came to about seventy-two hours a week. Betsy (amazed): “You mean you work seventy-two hours a week?”
Me: “Sometimes seventy-six, eighty. Sometimes you can squeeze in a few more hours in the morning.”
Betsy said I must be rich but I just laughed a little and gave her my smile and said: “It keeps ya busy.”
Betsy: “You know what you remind me of?”
“What.”
She’s smiling again. “That song by Kris Kristofferson where it says, ‘He’s a prophet and a pusher, partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction . . .’ ”
Well, you know, as soon as I heard that word, pusher, I half shut off on her. Grew a little riled.
Said, “I’m no pusher, Betsy, honest. I never have pushed . . .”
“Oh,” she said, all wide-eyed. “Well, I didn’t mean that, Travis, honest. Just the other part . . . about the contradiction . . .”
Words to that effect. As I recall. Bullshit like that.
Well, so I said, “Who was that you said, again?”
“The singer?”
Told Betsy I didn’t follow music much.
“Kris,” she said, slowly. “Kris Kristofferson.” And as we’re leaving the shop, she says with a little smile, and her head down, eyes blinking fast, “Remember American Bandstand, Travis . . . er . . . it’s got a good beat, you can dance to it . . . er . . . I’d give it a sixty.”
I confided to my journal why I went to Goody’s afterwards to buy her that Kristopherson record:
“Now that I know her, B,” I wrote, “I can give it to her if we ever go out. A good first meeting. Didn’t like being pushed so much about me. What do I know about her except she’s lovely. Real pretty.
“Such a beauty. Stuff like that. Guess she must just be stringing Tom along. Who am I to her? I always get uncomfortable around a woman after the first few minutes. Don’t always know what’s suppose to happen. What’s coming out of me.
“Stuff like am I making a good impression etc.
“I think I talked too much. She was real easy to talk to. In some ways. In others not. I had to lie a little.
“Anyway she always got more out of me than I got from her. No fair. Don’t want her to betray me. Ever.
“Decided finally I can’t walk around with a broken heart rest of my life over what’s not going to happen with me and some women so I bought her the record. Approx $6. Maybe I’ll take her to a movie. If only I could find out her last name. Must remember to ask her things like that and maybe racial and religious origins.
“Betsy what?”
Behind The Wheel
In case you don’t know it I’m the sort of person there’s always a crisis moving up I’m not doing too well at. It’s always a case of overwhelming odds, I think, except maybe with Betsy. Lately things were always happening to me in the cab I didn’t know what to do about.
That very same afternoon a guy got in, told me to drive him to Amsterdam Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, said, “Hello
, Travis, how are you?”
“I’m fine . . .”
“Good,” he said. “My name is Donald. Can I suck your cock?”
“Well I don’t know about that.” I found myself asking him, “What did you say your name was?”
“Donald,” he said, “but you haven’t answered my question, Travis, have you?”
Well by now we’re at Seventy-eighth and Amsterdam. I pulled my flag on him, a dollar, even, so I say, “Sorry, I don’t think we ever met before.”
“Well, if we had,” he says, handing me a five, then he hands me two singles and takes back the five, “even if we had, would that matter?”
Tells me, “Keep the change.”
Other things would happen too: Like with the tourists. A woman comes in my cab from out of town and asks me to go to the Planetarium. Well, I was so upset I didn’t even know where it was. I carried this little blue book, but that doesn’t help. Couldn’t spell the word, meandered east, when I shoulda gone west.
In those days I was living for tips, nice smiles, the hustle. But in between fares, I somehow managed to drive past Palantine headquarters for another look at Betsy.
My journal reports that on April 27 I called her finally at the office, of course, and she said we could go to the movies together after she got out of work tomorrow, my day off.
On that very same day on the way uptown a party of three very nice well-dressed men stopped me and one of them was, guess who . . . The man Betsy is working so hard for. Mr. Charles Palantine himself. Her boss. Her hero.
Well he looked so much more real in person. Sort of a nice-looking fellow. Like a TV commentator. Well, I just had to check the rear view mirror to know just who I was seeing. But my eyes certainly did not deceive me.
The Senator was talking about how to line up delegates from California when I interrupted him.
Said, “Say, aren’t you the candidate, Charles Palantine? . . .”
Well, I guess that happens to him all the time with his face as big as life in color all over Broadway, but he said, only mildly irritated, “Yes, I am.”
Taxi Driver Page 3
