Something occurred a couple of Sundays ago - at nine-thirty in the evening - of short duration - but one of those things you realize almost immediately you will never forget.
It was a sound.
I had picked up two guys and a girl, thirty-somethings, at 72nd Street and 5th Avenue, and we headed across Central Park toward their destination of 84th and Amsterdam on the Upper West Side. The ride was mundane - they spoke among themselves - about food, I think - until we were cruising across West 83rd, a one-way street, halfway between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.
Then there was something there in the middle of that block, an obstruction that brought us to a temporary halt. A police car just ahead of us, with its lights flashing but no siren, was driving slowly around a rental truck that was just sitting there, as if it had chosen the middle of the street to be its parking space. Not knowing if I should follow the cops around the truck, I stopped and we paused for a few moments.
Suddenly there was a howl - actually three or four staccato screams, each about three seconds in length - coming from the area just in front of the rental truck, but out of my sight.
Right away I knew this sound was different than any I’d encountered before - it just didn’t fit into any of the categories of types of sounds on my experiential track. First of all, the loudness of it. It had to have been made by a large male human being for its low pitched wavelength to have been created, but it sounded almost non-human, more like an animal.
Then, the abruptness of it. There had been relative silence on the street just moments before it began - and then, bam! - out of nowhere, this howling.
Also there was an involuntary quality to these screams. Almost always when people make loud noises you know they have some control of the sound that is emanating from their bodies. But this noise was out of the control of the person making it, as if it were being squeezed out of his body, like toothpaste from a tube.
“That is the sound of something not good,” I said to my passengers, who had ceased conversation and were also trying to figure out what could be causing it. Then the girl in the back made a statement that answered the question. You know how when the truth is indicated all the nuances fall into place and you know, yeah, that’s it, that’s what it is. Whether the recognition is of something that is good or bad, there is a release of mental energy when the confusion is resolved, a feeling of relief when the correct item is indicated.
“Someone is being tasered,” she said.
Sure enough, as we slowly drove around the rental truck, we could see that three or four cops had pinned a large man face down on the sidewalk and were putting cuffs on him. I stopped the cab momentarily to comprehend what I was seeing and thought of taking out my camera, but then decided against it, thinking - who knows? - the cops may be offended and decide to write me a ticket for blocking traffic, or whatever.
I moved along, wondering if the police had been justified in using such force. Of course I had no way of knowing, as I hadn’t observed what had come before. My passengers, not appearing to be affected by the incident, ended their momentary pause and picked up the conversation where they’d left off, demonstrating some hefty nonchalance.
New York, as I wrote in my book, is a place where unexpected realities can very suddenly appear before you and then just as suddenly disappear. If we’d driven down West 83rd three minutes earlier or later, we’d probably not have known that anything unusual was about to happen, or had just occurred.
It’s a city that is so capable of these sudden mood swings.
Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reality. Show all posts
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Spider Man
The guy got in at three a.m. wearing a Wo Hop t-shirt. This was interesting because who would have thought that Wo Hop, my favorite all-night Chinese joint on Mott Street, would ever be the kind of place to have a logo on an article of clothing? And what kind of person would boastfully display it on his chest, as if to say, "You want dumplings? My Wo Hop dumplings will scrub the floor with your stinkin' Golden Monkey dumplings. You got that, lucky boy?"
But then again sometimes it is better to know. Like knowing that when you click here you'll suddenly find yourself at Pictures From A Taxi. And no one will try to talk you into eating a bug.
So it had to be properly acknowledged.
"A Wo Hop t-shirt! Wow, you don't see many of those!" I exclaimed even before he could tell me he wanted to go to Astoria. "Yeah, man, Wo Hop rules," he replied with a happy-face smile and a certain half-here, half-there demeanor that told me immediately that he was a jolly drunk who was ready to expound. This would be a fun ride.
"I love that place," I continued. "For one thing, its location. You drive down Mott and there's that dog-leg to the left and late at night the street is as slippery as ice from a garbage truck spillover and it looks kind of creepy like a scene from a Bogart movie at four in the morning, and it's so dark and deserted, but look, wow, Wo Hop is open."
The guy was right on it. "Yeah," he joined in, "you do down those stairs and there'll be, like, five Asian guys sitting there looking at you like what the hell are you doin' here?"
"The Chinese mafia.""No doubt! No doubt, and they keep lookin' at you like you're a cop and before you can sit down the tea kettle arrives and in like thirty seconds you've got your wonton and a minute later there are the egg rolls and the duck sauce."
"And the mustard sauce."
"Yeah, and the mustard, man, and then a minute after that the dumplings show up and you're in piggy heaven, man!"
"You like 'em fried or steamed?"
"What?"
"The dumplings - fried or steamed?"
"Oh, yeah, fried, definitely, mucho on the soy."
"Mmm, so good!"
Pavlov-like, I could feel my saliva glands kicking in. Damn, those dumplings are good and, as I steered the cab onto the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge, I started thinking maybe I should shoot down to Chinatown after I dropped the guy off. There are times when it's best to just give in to the dumpling urge. Mucho on the soy.
"Hey," I said to my passenger as a thought came to me, "have you ever ordered anything particularly freaky at Wo Hop? Don't they have some really weird stuff on the menu?"
"You mean like octopus or something?"
"Yeah."
He thought about it for a moment and smiled. "Oh, yeah, snails."
"Snails?"
"Yeah, snails in black bean sauce."
I laughed. "Oh my God," I said, "you ate a snail?"
"Shit, yeah, I ate a bunch of them," he replied, still smiling.
"Ewww, I don't think I could eat that," I said. "Isn't a snail an insect?"
"No, no, a snail's like a mollusk or something. It's got a shell, like a clam. You eat clams, don't you?"
"Uh, yeah."
The guy had a point.
"How was it?"
"Oh, it was delicious, man. You stir it up with the rice. Really good, actually."
I had to admit that, since it wasn't an insect, I could see myself trying it someday. I draw a hard line in the sand when it comes to eating insects, though. I wouldn't get very far on The Fear Factor.
"What was the weirdest thing you ever ate?" I inquired. It was a logical question to ask at this point in the conversation.
A goofy smile came over his face.
"I ate a tarantula once," he said.
I was stunned for a moment as my mind's computer tried to process this information. Did he just say "tarantula"? Yes, he did. Isn't "tarantula" a huge, hairy spider? Yes, it is. There isn't some chocolate bar or energy drink called "Tarantula", is there? No, there is not. So what he's saying is that he ate - that is, he put into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed - a huge, hairy spider? Uh, yes, that's what he's saying.
I looked at him again in the mirror. The goofy smile was still there.
"You ate a tarantula!!!???" I all but screamed. "Are you serious?"
"Uh huh," he confirmed, with a just perceptible trace of pride in his voice.
"Oh my God! How did that happen?"
"I was in Thailand and these guys I was with, we went into this restaurant and it became like a dare thing. So one guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', then another guy says, 'I'll eat it if you will', and it was like I wanted to show them that I was as crazy as they were."
"So you ate it."
"Yeah."
"Did they cook it?"
"Yeah, they fried it in some sauce."
"Isn't a tarantula poisonous? What about the fangs?"
"Yeah, they took that shit out before they cooked it."
"You hope!"
"Right!" he said with a dumbass-me laugh.
"So how did it taste? Don't tell me it tasted like chicken."
"Actually, it did taste like chicken."
"That's funny," I replied, Groucho Marx style, "cause I once ate a chicken that tasted just like a tarantula."
The joke went whizzing by his head and on into outer space without being noticed. After couple more minutes of tarantula talk, we arrived at his apartment house on 30th Avenue. He paid me the $12.30 fare and threw in a $2.70 tip - not bad for an insect-eater - and stepped out of the cab.
"I once ate a centipede, too," he called back as he started to walk off toward his building.
"Was that in Thailand as well?"
"No, that was in Mexico."
So the guy had the distinction of having eaten disgusting, multi-legged creatures on two different continents.
He disappeared into his place and was gone and I turned the cab back toward Midtown, the urge to go to Chinatown having somehow suddenly left me.
The thought came to me back on the 59th Street Bridge that had this guy told me all this and had not been just a passenger in my cab but instead was, say, a friend or a coworker, I would always think of him, before I would think of anything else he might have done in his life, as the guy who had eaten a tarantula. Let's say he had once done something great, like spending two years of his life in the Peace Corps. I would think of him as the Peace Corps volunteer who had once eaten a tarantula. Or if he had once rushed into a burning building to save someone's life, he would be the guy who had rushed into a burning building who had once eaten a tarantula.
Sometimes it's just better not to know.
********
Saturday, October 30, 2010
If A Tree Falls In A Forest...
It takes about twenty minutes of driving around the city without a passenger for a taxi driver to start getting edgy. It's at about the twenty-minute mark that you realize I am not making any money and things begin to look oh-so-serious. So I was delighted on a Thursday night at 2 a.m. a few weeks ago when I picked up a fare right at the twenty-minute mark - two men in tuxedos, bow ties removed, with an older woman in an evening gown - who wanted to go to Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Bingo!
The out of town ride is like hitting the jackpot. You usually wind up making double the money you normally would have made for the time spent it takes to get there and back. The fare is not done on the meter - it's a "let's make a deal" situation, the price being agreed upon by driver and passenger before the journey begins.
My three passengers climbed into the back seat. It took me five seconds to conclude that they were merrily sloshed. There are mean drunks and there are happy drunks and these were the latter, which of course is better than the former. The older lady, in her mid-60s I would guess, and one of the men took the middle and right-rear positions on the back seat, behind the cab's partition, and the other man sat down on the left side, which meant he was in a better position from which to have a conversation with me through the opened partition window. The other two wound up kind of slumping over each other, laughing and chattering away only between themselves. The charge for the ride was negotiated with the fellow more directly behind me and what we agreed on was $40, to be paid in cash at the end of the ride. It was actually a bit on the low end for the twenty-minute trip to Fort Lee, but it was still good money for thirty minutes of my time (twenty to Fort Lee and ten back to the Upper West Side of Manhattan), so I was happy. I drove straight across 57th Street to the Henry Hudson Parkway, and we were on our way.
Well, the first thing I wanted to know about was, why the tuxes? Obviously, there had to have been an event. The gentleman behind me, who turned out to be an able conversationalist, explained. They had been to a fund-raising event at Cipriani's for a charity that provides medical treatment to children in South America who were born with a cleft palate. Doctors are flown in and perform corrective surgery on indigent people free of charge. It's something he and his family had been involved in for many years. The woman to his right was his aunt and the man beside her was her son, his cousin.
When he told me that, it immediately struck me that his aunt and cousin were more physically engaged with each other than I was used to seeing between a mother and an adult son. Her head was nestled just beneath his shoulder and he was caressing her hair in a manner more commonly seen with lovers. The way they laughed and spoke softly to each other created a kind of bubble around them which would prevent an intrusion from unwelcome visitors, another thing that lovers tend to do. But I dismissed any suspicions of an incestuous relationship and attributed their behavior to having spent a bit too much time with Johnnie Walker and Margarita. Still, it was odd. Fortunately I had this other fellow to talk to.
I commended him on the good work his family was doing and for the remainder of the ride learned something about cleft palates, cleft lips, and how the condition, a birth defect, could be surgically repaired. It was really a wonderful thing the charity was doing, the kind of information that rehabilitates a belief in the goodness and generosity of people in general.
We crossed the George Washington Bridge and were instantly in Fort Lee, where I was directed around several darkened side streets until we arrived at their destination, a parking lot beside a church. Normally passengers pay me by handing money through the partition window, as they should, but instead of doing that, all three of them got out of the cab at the same time. I wasn't concerned. It was crowded back there and it could be difficult to reach into a pocket in a cramped space. I expected the passenger with whom I had been chatting to appear at my driver's side window with my forty bucks, but he did not. Instead, the other man, with whom I had not spoken during the ride, appeared beside me and just stood there without making any attempt to pay me. Ten... fifteen... twenty seconds went by without a word or a dollar coming forth, so finally I said:
"Uh, that's forty dollars, sir."
I thought I would see him reach into a pocket for the cash, but instead I heard this:
"I paid you."
I was stunned.
"You haven't paid me yet, sir," I said.
"I just paid you," he replied firmly, although through a drunken haze.
"Uh, sir, you have not paid me," I returned without raising my voice.
"Hey, I just paid you, you shit!"
It turned out the guy was not a "happy drunk" after all - he was the other kind. I was suddenly confronted with a situation which I had occasionally wondered about, but which had never occurred in all my years. What would happen if a passenger simply insisted that he'd paid you? How could you prove to a cop that he was lying? It would be your word against his, and as long as he didn't fear he'd be physically assaulted by the cab driver, it seemed to me he could get away without paying by just pretending that he'd paid.
But this fellow wasn't pretending. He'd probably stepped up to the side of the cab with the intention of paying, but once he got beside me an image in his boozed-up mind of having already paid the fare had become his reality. As far as he was concerned, there was no question about it: he'd already paid me and the transaction had been concluded. In fact, he may have been just standing there because he was expecting me to give him change!
And then the absurdity took a turn for the worse.
Keeping my cool even though he'd just referred to me as "you shit", I repeated in an even voice that I had not been paid. His response:
"You wanna get your ass kicked, shithead... huh? Come on, get out of the cab, you fuck!"
That "I am on the wrong planet" feeling came over me. A grown man in a tuxedo who was returning home from a completely worthwhile charity event is now preparing to duke it out with his taxi driver over a currency dispute caused by his inability to differentiate his own fantasy island from the physical universe. Beam me up, Scottie!
It was time to call for the cousin.
Fortunately I was able to get him to come over without having to step out of the cab and possibly getting slugged. After just a few seconds of explanation he realized what was happening, apologized, and handed me $60, keep-the-change style, and that was that. I pulled out of there and headed back toward the George Washington Bridge.
The incident got me thinking about the nature of reality. What is "reality", anyway? If you have the courage to look this word up in a dictionary, you will find ambiguity and contradiction. One definition has it as the state or quality of occurring as fact - that is, not imaginary or fictitious. Another definition includes a kind of existence or universe either connected with or independent of others, as in "alternative realities". Another calls it the totality of "real" things in the world, independent of people's knowledge or perception of them. But right there, the question could be asked how something could be assumed to be actual if we cannot perceive it. And, if we were to assume that there were things that were in existence that were beyond our perception, wouldn't that make them imaginary and therefore, by one definition of reality, not real?
You see how this can drive you crazy.
As far as my belligerent passenger was concerned, he had paid the fare in full (and perhaps had even given me a generous tip) and now I was trying to cheat him. And it made perfect sense to him that he shouldn't let a dishonest creep like me get away with it. This was quite real to him.
It brings to mind that most basic of philosophical questions: if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it as it hits the ground, did it make a sound?
I now have the answer to that question.
The answer is no.
Bingo!
The out of town ride is like hitting the jackpot. You usually wind up making double the money you normally would have made for the time spent it takes to get there and back. The fare is not done on the meter - it's a "let's make a deal" situation, the price being agreed upon by driver and passenger before the journey begins.
My three passengers climbed into the back seat. It took me five seconds to conclude that they were merrily sloshed. There are mean drunks and there are happy drunks and these were the latter, which of course is better than the former. The older lady, in her mid-60s I would guess, and one of the men took the middle and right-rear positions on the back seat, behind the cab's partition, and the other man sat down on the left side, which meant he was in a better position from which to have a conversation with me through the opened partition window. The other two wound up kind of slumping over each other, laughing and chattering away only between themselves. The charge for the ride was negotiated with the fellow more directly behind me and what we agreed on was $40, to be paid in cash at the end of the ride. It was actually a bit on the low end for the twenty-minute trip to Fort Lee, but it was still good money for thirty minutes of my time (twenty to Fort Lee and ten back to the Upper West Side of Manhattan), so I was happy. I drove straight across 57th Street to the Henry Hudson Parkway, and we were on our way.
Well, the first thing I wanted to know about was, why the tuxes? Obviously, there had to have been an event. The gentleman behind me, who turned out to be an able conversationalist, explained. They had been to a fund-raising event at Cipriani's for a charity that provides medical treatment to children in South America who were born with a cleft palate. Doctors are flown in and perform corrective surgery on indigent people free of charge. It's something he and his family had been involved in for many years. The woman to his right was his aunt and the man beside her was her son, his cousin.
When he told me that, it immediately struck me that his aunt and cousin were more physically engaged with each other than I was used to seeing between a mother and an adult son. Her head was nestled just beneath his shoulder and he was caressing her hair in a manner more commonly seen with lovers. The way they laughed and spoke softly to each other created a kind of bubble around them which would prevent an intrusion from unwelcome visitors, another thing that lovers tend to do. But I dismissed any suspicions of an incestuous relationship and attributed their behavior to having spent a bit too much time with Johnnie Walker and Margarita. Still, it was odd. Fortunately I had this other fellow to talk to.
I commended him on the good work his family was doing and for the remainder of the ride learned something about cleft palates, cleft lips, and how the condition, a birth defect, could be surgically repaired. It was really a wonderful thing the charity was doing, the kind of information that rehabilitates a belief in the goodness and generosity of people in general.
We crossed the George Washington Bridge and were instantly in Fort Lee, where I was directed around several darkened side streets until we arrived at their destination, a parking lot beside a church. Normally passengers pay me by handing money through the partition window, as they should, but instead of doing that, all three of them got out of the cab at the same time. I wasn't concerned. It was crowded back there and it could be difficult to reach into a pocket in a cramped space. I expected the passenger with whom I had been chatting to appear at my driver's side window with my forty bucks, but he did not. Instead, the other man, with whom I had not spoken during the ride, appeared beside me and just stood there without making any attempt to pay me. Ten... fifteen... twenty seconds went by without a word or a dollar coming forth, so finally I said:
"Uh, that's forty dollars, sir."
I thought I would see him reach into a pocket for the cash, but instead I heard this:
"I paid you."
I was stunned.
"You haven't paid me yet, sir," I said.
"I just paid you," he replied firmly, although through a drunken haze.
"Uh, sir, you have not paid me," I returned without raising my voice.
"Hey, I just paid you, you shit!"
It turned out the guy was not a "happy drunk" after all - he was the other kind. I was suddenly confronted with a situation which I had occasionally wondered about, but which had never occurred in all my years. What would happen if a passenger simply insisted that he'd paid you? How could you prove to a cop that he was lying? It would be your word against his, and as long as he didn't fear he'd be physically assaulted by the cab driver, it seemed to me he could get away without paying by just pretending that he'd paid.
But this fellow wasn't pretending. He'd probably stepped up to the side of the cab with the intention of paying, but once he got beside me an image in his boozed-up mind of having already paid the fare had become his reality. As far as he was concerned, there was no question about it: he'd already paid me and the transaction had been concluded. In fact, he may have been just standing there because he was expecting me to give him change!
And then the absurdity took a turn for the worse.
Keeping my cool even though he'd just referred to me as "you shit", I repeated in an even voice that I had not been paid. His response:
"You wanna get your ass kicked, shithead... huh? Come on, get out of the cab, you fuck!"
That "I am on the wrong planet" feeling came over me. A grown man in a tuxedo who was returning home from a completely worthwhile charity event is now preparing to duke it out with his taxi driver over a currency dispute caused by his inability to differentiate his own fantasy island from the physical universe. Beam me up, Scottie!
It was time to call for the cousin.
Fortunately I was able to get him to come over without having to step out of the cab and possibly getting slugged. After just a few seconds of explanation he realized what was happening, apologized, and handed me $60, keep-the-change style, and that was that. I pulled out of there and headed back toward the George Washington Bridge.
The incident got me thinking about the nature of reality. What is "reality", anyway? If you have the courage to look this word up in a dictionary, you will find ambiguity and contradiction. One definition has it as the state or quality of occurring as fact - that is, not imaginary or fictitious. Another definition includes a kind of existence or universe either connected with or independent of others, as in "alternative realities". Another calls it the totality of "real" things in the world, independent of people's knowledge or perception of them. But right there, the question could be asked how something could be assumed to be actual if we cannot perceive it. And, if we were to assume that there were things that were in existence that were beyond our perception, wouldn't that make them imaginary and therefore, by one definition of reality, not real?
You see how this can drive you crazy.
As far as my belligerent passenger was concerned, he had paid the fare in full (and perhaps had even given me a generous tip) and now I was trying to cheat him. And it made perfect sense to him that he shouldn't let a dishonest creep like me get away with it. This was quite real to him.
It brings to mind that most basic of philosophical questions: if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it as it hits the ground, did it make a sound?
I now have the answer to that question.
The answer is no.
********
And now that that's been resolved, why not click here for Pictures From A Taxi? It's sooo real.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Good Morning, Have A Nice Night
A comment I often hear from passengers just after they learn how long I've been driving a cab is, "Wow, you must have seen it all!" My standard reply is, "Yeah, I have seen it all. Until I see the next thing."
As an example, let's take the crime of robbery. Many years ago two men jumped in my cab in a rush in front of the Hilton Hotel on 6th Avenue. They stayed in the taxi for only about three minutes before ordering me to pull over, then they paid the fare and disappeared into the street. A few moments later I discovered an opened briefcase and an opened piece of luggage lying on the floorboard back there with various items scattered around, which I suspected were the leftovers from a crime. I returned to the hotel, reported the incident, and had my suspicion confirmed - a guest waiting on the check-in line had placed his briefcase and luggage on the floor, had been distracted, and then discovered they were gone. My passengers had used my cab as a getaway car.
"Wow," I thought, "now I've seen it all!"
And that's what I continued to think until a few years later when I had a passenger actually mugged while sitting in the back seat by three slick thieves who approached the cab from the street while we were stopped at a red light in Chinatown.
"Wow," I thought, "now I have seen it all!"
And that's what I continued to think until a few years later when I had a passenger in my cab get robbed by the person sitting next to him in the cab! They were two men who'd emerged from a gay bar in Midtown and were en route to a residential address on the Upper West Side. Suddenly there was commotion in the back seat, the two of them wrestling around. I thought it was groping but what was actually going on was grabbing. The larger man was assaulting the other one and grabbed money from his pocket. He then opened his door, causing me to stop abruptly, and scurried off into the darkness. What had been thought by the victim to be a "pick up" had actually been a "set up".
"Wow," I thought, "now I really have seen it all!"
I'm mentioning this because now I can finally and definitively say that I have indeed seen it all. It wasn't a robbery, it was something else. But this is it, it's official, the book is closed. I have now seen it all...
It happened on the 6th of July of this year, a Tuesday, at exactly 7:55 p.m. I had just dropped off a passenger at the Marriott hotel on 92nd Street between 1st and York, a residential area on the Upper East Side, when I had a bit of good fortune in the form of a new passenger entering the cab as soon as the old one got out. Quick turnovers of passengers are the ingredients of a good money night.
My new passenger was a middle-aged woman, around fifty years old, neatly dressed, who told me she wanted to go uptown to 106th Street and 5th Avenue. I said okay, turned on the meter, and we were on our way. I made a couple of turns, waited at a couple of red lights, and was soon cruising up 1st Avenue. It was simple navigation - a left on 106th, across Spanish Harlem to 5th, and there we would be.
During the ride up to this point my passenger had been talking with someone on her cell phone, which is so common today. When that conversation ended she put aside her phone and spoke directly to me.
"Excuse me, driver," she asked, "do you know what time it is?"
I looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. It was visible from the back seat, so I wondered why she hadn't just looked at it herself. But, no matter, I was glad to accommodate.
"7:55," I said.
Instead of a "thank you", there was a silence. I looked at her in the mirror to see by her facial expression if she had heard me. She had, but she seemed confused. Then she spoke:
"A.M. or P.M.?" she asked.
"P.M., of course!" I replied, laughing.
I looked at her again in the mirror. To my surprise, she wasn't smiling. Her expression was rather grim, as if she'd just received some bad news.
"Are you sure?" she asked, almost pleading.
"Ma'am," I replied, "there are three things I'm certain of. Everything else is debatable , but these three things I am certain of - my name, my address, and whether it is night or day. Yes, I'm sure! It's P.M.!" I laughed again. Clearly, this was hysterical.
"You're really sure?" she asked again, this time with a touch of resignation and sadness in her voice, as if her fate had just been revealed to her.
"I'll tell you what," I said, "if the sun hasn't gone down by nine o'clock, I'll refund you the money for this ride. I'll give you my card, you can call me." This was funny!
"Oh, my god," she muttered, more to herself than to me.
"You thought it was 7:55 in the morning?"
"Yes," she replied, almost in a whisper, seemingly ashamed of herself and going into an introspective spin.
Interestingly, if one were to judge only by the brightness of the sky, it could have been either morning or evening. In July the sun rises at around 6 and sets at around 9. Still, since the invention of the sundial Man has had better ways of knowing what time it is than by just looking up. I realized she was in need of some taxi driver counseling, so I jumped into it.
"Why would you think it was the A.M.?" I asked, with considerable curiosity.
And she told me this story...
Her home and her company are in the midwestern state of Arkansas but she had been living and working in New York on a special project for the last six months as a "systems coordinator" at the Cardinal Spellman Hospital at 106th and 5th Avenue. The Marriott Hotel, where I picked her up, has been her home away from home all these months. At four o'clock, earlier that evening, she finished her day at the hospital, went back to her room in the Marriott, and decided to take a nap before waking at 7:00 to do a bit more on her project. She set her alarm and went to sleep.
When she awoke at 7, she had completely forgotten about the idea of doing more work in her hotel room and thought it was morning. She got out of bed, took a shower, dressed, did her face and her hair and went downstairs to get a cab. When she found one (mine) she was simply on her way to work to start a new day, having no idea it actually was not a new day.
Then her cell phone rang. It was her husband in Arkansas, calling to tell her he was sorry he hadn't called earlier, but he'd just gotten home. This confused her because she thought he should still be in bed asleep (it was 6:55 in Arkansas). He didn't usually get up until 7:30. He told her he'd had to work overtime at his job, that's why he was late getting home. She thought he meant he'd been working all night, and that never had happened before, so she asked him what in the world was so important that they expected him to stay at the job all night. He told her he hadn't been working all night, he'd only been working until 6:30.
"Then why didn't you call me last night?" she'd asked.
"I did call you last night," he'd replied.
"No, you didn't," she'd said, "I went to bed without hearing from you."
He reminded her of what they had talked about and she told him that that wasn't last night, it was two nights ago. Completely confused, it occurred to her that he might be putting her on. So she told her husband she'd call him back in a few minutes and ended the phone call. She knew of a way to find out the truth.
She would just ask her cab driver what time it was.
So there we were, on 106th and 2nd, in a reality free-fall zone.
"Should I take you back to the hotel?" I asked.
"Yes, I guess so," she replied from the haze.
I felt sympathetic toward her and tried to cheer her up. It was an understandable confusion, I said, and from the light of the sky it really could have been either A.M. or P.M. She didn't seem particularly consoled, so I tried to think of something else to tell her, something that would be worse, and I came up with this...
"Listen, if you think this is so terrible, not once, not twice. but three times I've had tourists in my cab who not only did not know the location of the hotel they were staying at, they didn't know the name of the hotel, either. Each time we had to wander around the city trying to locate their hotel by descriptions of landmarks only." (Oddly enough, all three times they were Englishmen. Go figure.)
That may have helped a bit. Looking at her in the mirror, I thought I saw a slight smile back there.
Her ride into the Twilight Zone and back came to $7.90. She paid with a corporate credit card and threw in a $1.50 tip. I thought it was appropriate that her company should pay. Strange city. Too many months away. Taking your work home with you to a place that's not even your home. In the military they have an expression for it:
"Shell shock".
As an example, let's take the crime of robbery. Many years ago two men jumped in my cab in a rush in front of the Hilton Hotel on 6th Avenue. They stayed in the taxi for only about three minutes before ordering me to pull over, then they paid the fare and disappeared into the street. A few moments later I discovered an opened briefcase and an opened piece of luggage lying on the floorboard back there with various items scattered around, which I suspected were the leftovers from a crime. I returned to the hotel, reported the incident, and had my suspicion confirmed - a guest waiting on the check-in line had placed his briefcase and luggage on the floor, had been distracted, and then discovered they were gone. My passengers had used my cab as a getaway car.
"Wow," I thought, "now I've seen it all!"
And that's what I continued to think until a few years later when I had a passenger actually mugged while sitting in the back seat by three slick thieves who approached the cab from the street while we were stopped at a red light in Chinatown.
"Wow," I thought, "now I have seen it all!"
And that's what I continued to think until a few years later when I had a passenger in my cab get robbed by the person sitting next to him in the cab! They were two men who'd emerged from a gay bar in Midtown and were en route to a residential address on the Upper West Side. Suddenly there was commotion in the back seat, the two of them wrestling around. I thought it was groping but what was actually going on was grabbing. The larger man was assaulting the other one and grabbed money from his pocket. He then opened his door, causing me to stop abruptly, and scurried off into the darkness. What had been thought by the victim to be a "pick up" had actually been a "set up".
"Wow," I thought, "now I really have seen it all!"
I'm mentioning this because now I can finally and definitively say that I have indeed seen it all. It wasn't a robbery, it was something else. But this is it, it's official, the book is closed. I have now seen it all...
It happened on the 6th of July of this year, a Tuesday, at exactly 7:55 p.m. I had just dropped off a passenger at the Marriott hotel on 92nd Street between 1st and York, a residential area on the Upper East Side, when I had a bit of good fortune in the form of a new passenger entering the cab as soon as the old one got out. Quick turnovers of passengers are the ingredients of a good money night.
My new passenger was a middle-aged woman, around fifty years old, neatly dressed, who told me she wanted to go uptown to 106th Street and 5th Avenue. I said okay, turned on the meter, and we were on our way. I made a couple of turns, waited at a couple of red lights, and was soon cruising up 1st Avenue. It was simple navigation - a left on 106th, across Spanish Harlem to 5th, and there we would be.
During the ride up to this point my passenger had been talking with someone on her cell phone, which is so common today. When that conversation ended she put aside her phone and spoke directly to me.
"Excuse me, driver," she asked, "do you know what time it is?"
I looked at the digital clock on the dashboard. It was visible from the back seat, so I wondered why she hadn't just looked at it herself. But, no matter, I was glad to accommodate.
"7:55," I said.
Instead of a "thank you", there was a silence. I looked at her in the mirror to see by her facial expression if she had heard me. She had, but she seemed confused. Then she spoke:
"A.M. or P.M.?" she asked.
"P.M., of course!" I replied, laughing.
I looked at her again in the mirror. To my surprise, she wasn't smiling. Her expression was rather grim, as if she'd just received some bad news.
"Are you sure?" she asked, almost pleading.
"Ma'am," I replied, "there are three things I'm certain of. Everything else is debatable , but these three things I am certain of - my name, my address, and whether it is night or day. Yes, I'm sure! It's P.M.!" I laughed again. Clearly, this was hysterical.
"You're really sure?" she asked again, this time with a touch of resignation and sadness in her voice, as if her fate had just been revealed to her.
"I'll tell you what," I said, "if the sun hasn't gone down by nine o'clock, I'll refund you the money for this ride. I'll give you my card, you can call me." This was funny!
"Oh, my god," she muttered, more to herself than to me.
"You thought it was 7:55 in the morning?"
"Yes," she replied, almost in a whisper, seemingly ashamed of herself and going into an introspective spin.
Interestingly, if one were to judge only by the brightness of the sky, it could have been either morning or evening. In July the sun rises at around 6 and sets at around 9. Still, since the invention of the sundial Man has had better ways of knowing what time it is than by just looking up. I realized she was in need of some taxi driver counseling, so I jumped into it.
"Why would you think it was the A.M.?" I asked, with considerable curiosity.
And she told me this story...
Her home and her company are in the midwestern state of Arkansas but she had been living and working in New York on a special project for the last six months as a "systems coordinator" at the Cardinal Spellman Hospital at 106th and 5th Avenue. The Marriott Hotel, where I picked her up, has been her home away from home all these months. At four o'clock, earlier that evening, she finished her day at the hospital, went back to her room in the Marriott, and decided to take a nap before waking at 7:00 to do a bit more on her project. She set her alarm and went to sleep.
When she awoke at 7, she had completely forgotten about the idea of doing more work in her hotel room and thought it was morning. She got out of bed, took a shower, dressed, did her face and her hair and went downstairs to get a cab. When she found one (mine) she was simply on her way to work to start a new day, having no idea it actually was not a new day.
Then her cell phone rang. It was her husband in Arkansas, calling to tell her he was sorry he hadn't called earlier, but he'd just gotten home. This confused her because she thought he should still be in bed asleep (it was 6:55 in Arkansas). He didn't usually get up until 7:30. He told her he'd had to work overtime at his job, that's why he was late getting home. She thought he meant he'd been working all night, and that never had happened before, so she asked him what in the world was so important that they expected him to stay at the job all night. He told her he hadn't been working all night, he'd only been working until 6:30.
"Then why didn't you call me last night?" she'd asked.
"I did call you last night," he'd replied.
"No, you didn't," she'd said, "I went to bed without hearing from you."
He reminded her of what they had talked about and she told him that that wasn't last night, it was two nights ago. Completely confused, it occurred to her that he might be putting her on. So she told her husband she'd call him back in a few minutes and ended the phone call. She knew of a way to find out the truth.
She would just ask her cab driver what time it was.
So there we were, on 106th and 2nd, in a reality free-fall zone.
"Should I take you back to the hotel?" I asked.
"Yes, I guess so," she replied from the haze.
I felt sympathetic toward her and tried to cheer her up. It was an understandable confusion, I said, and from the light of the sky it really could have been either A.M. or P.M. She didn't seem particularly consoled, so I tried to think of something else to tell her, something that would be worse, and I came up with this...
"Listen, if you think this is so terrible, not once, not twice. but three times I've had tourists in my cab who not only did not know the location of the hotel they were staying at, they didn't know the name of the hotel, either. Each time we had to wander around the city trying to locate their hotel by descriptions of landmarks only." (Oddly enough, all three times they were Englishmen. Go figure.)
That may have helped a bit. Looking at her in the mirror, I thought I saw a slight smile back there.
Her ride into the Twilight Zone and back came to $7.90. She paid with a corporate credit card and threw in a $1.50 tip. I thought it was appropriate that her company should pay. Strange city. Too many months away. Taking your work home with you to a place that's not even your home. In the military they have an expression for it:
"Shell shock".
********
People have also been known to have been shocked by clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi. It could happen to you.
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