Means Of Exchange

Recently I had one of those iffy passengers who fell right in the middle of the Trouble/No Trouble Line of Demarcation. He might be okay, he might not be okay - I couldn't tell.

He was a twenty-something, medium height, medium weight, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, with a Detroit Tigers baseball cap topping off the package. So he looked all right as I approached him, his hand in the air, on 2nd Avenue up in the Upper East Side. But a moment after I brought the cab to a complete stop I noticed the first sign of trouble. It was a nuance thing, just a little tiny thing only a veteran cabbie would spot: it took him just slightly too long to open the rear door. Normally you stop and there is a one to two second elapse of time before you hear the click of the door handle being lifted. It took this fellow three to four seconds to accomplish that task. If he'd been with other people it wouldn't have appeared on the radar screen as he could have been saying goodnight to his friends, but this guy was alone. Figuring in the additional factors that it was two-thirty in the morning and he was in an area where there is a multitude of bars all still open even though it was a Tuesday, and it translates to the driver as only one thing:

he's drunk.

Now, some of us realize this and drive off immediately. But I'm not as quick as I used to be and, besides, it's dead slow on Tuesday at 2:30 a.m. and if I don't take this guy it could be - who knows? - half an hour before I get another passenger in my cab. And karma being what it is, that next passenger will probably be a drunk, too. So I stayed put and awaited fate. The question now became, how serious would it be with this guy? How drunk was he?

The first thing you have to do is put him through a little coherency test. Is he capable of communication? Can he tell you where he wants to go? Obviously if he can't do this the ride never begins. So you don't start driving or turn on the meter until he clears that hurdle. This guy, although he was taking too long to respond, was not so drunk that he couldn't tell me that 7th Street between Avenues C and D was his destination. So I started moving forward.

"Do you want to take the Drive?" I asked. We would either jump on the FDR Drive, a highway, or head down to Alphabet City on 2nd Avenue. The Drive would be faster.

No answer.

"Take the Drive?" I repeated.

I looked at him in the mirror. Oh, shit, he was slumping over. Immediately the possibility of three bad things presented themselves to me mentally:

a) he may vomit;

b) he may be so out of it that he doesn't realize that he has gotten into a cab and has no way of paying for the ride;

c) he may descend into complete unconsciousness and be unable to be awakened.

And now I was stuck with him. He'd given me an address, he'd closed the door behind him, and we were moving. I could think of nothing to do but hope for the best and take him where he'd said to go.

"I'm taking the Drive," I called out, knowing I was speaking to an inanimate object. I made a left on 79th and within a minute we were on the FDR's 73rd Street entrance ramp at the edge of the East River. The tension was mounting up within me. The biggest fear of the three bad things is a) above. Puke spilling out onto the back seat of the cab is a horror of Stephen King proportions to a taxi driver. But there are ways of trying to handle the vomit candidate and the best of them is to keep him talking. Unfortunately that wasn't possible with this guy. All I could do was get him to his place as quickly as possible in order to reduce his window of opportunity. So I picked up my speed and whispered a little prayer to the Patron Saint of Please Don't Throw Up In My Cab.

I took the long way to the Houston Street exit, knowing he wouldn't object, since it was the fastest way to get him there. In less than five minutes we were off the Drive and cruising up Avenue D toward 7th Street. I made the left there and steeled myself for what was to come - how bad would it be?

"So where should I stop?" I kind of yelled toward the general vicinity of the rear compartment.

Not surprisingly, once again there was no response.

I pulled the cab over to the curb, stopped, and turned around in my seat, fearing I would see the guy covered in vomit. But, hooray, there was none - just a human body lying flat on the seat in marinated slumber. My task now was merely to wake him up, a far better situation than having to clean up the former contents of his esophagus.

"Hey, buddy, we're here, wake up!" I announced.

He stirred slightly. There was hope.

I raised the volume. "Buddy, we're here - WAKE UP!"

He opened his eyes. Good man.

"We're on 7th between C and D," I said in a normal voice. "So where is your building?"

Arousing from his dreams, he looked around at his surroundings. I could see from the expression on his face that he understood that he was in a taxicab and that I was a taxi driver. So of the three possibilities listed above, he'd made it past a) and c). All he had to do now was tell me where exactly he lived and pay me the $16.30 on the meter.

"Where's you building?" I repeated.

He looked a me a bit oddly, not as if he didn't understand the words I was saying but as if he didn't understand why I would want to know. There's a certain stage of drunkenness in which the gears are turning but they don't mesh together and result in forward motion, like a car with a transmission problem.

"Your building - where is it?" I asked again, thinking if I rephrased the question I might get an answer.

"Go downa da cawna," he said, still half-asleep. This was progress. I drove down to Avenue C, made a right at the corner, and pulled into an empty space at the curb. Okay, I'd done my job, now it was time to get paid and be on my way. Time is money in my business. Or at least hopefully it is.

"It's $16.30 on the meter," I said flatly.

Silence.

I looked at him again in the mirror and saw that his head was slumped over on his shoulder and his eyes were closed. The motion of the cab on our little half-block journey to C had rocked him back to sleep. He would have looked cute if he'd been a six-year-old boy.

"It's $16.30," I called to the back in a near yell.

He stirred.

"16.30," I repeated, calmly.

He now understood that it was his job to find either $16.30 or a credit card on his person and he began to move his hands around into various pockets in his clothing in order to accomplish this task. I sensed trouble but gave him the benefit of the doubt in my mind as I awaited payment. Like many drunks he probably had the money but didn't remember where he'd put it.

I waited.

A minute went by.

Turning again to the back seat, I saw that he'd suffered a setback in his mission - he was slumped over again with eyes closed. I would have to take control of the situation. God, how I hated this, you have no idea.

"Buddy, wake up."

He stirred.

"C'mon, it's $16.30 on the meter. You gotta pay me so I can get back to work."

"...yeah...okay..."

Once again, his hands began searching. What was good here was that at least he wasn't trying to be evasive. I had no sense that he was going to try to beat the fare. From this we could progress. I still thought it was a better than even chance that I'd be paid.

So I waited.

Thirty seconds went by, but I could here the sounds of his hands patting himself down. Still hopeful.

Sixty seconds.

Nothing. Time's up.

"What's happening?" I asked in a not-friendly way.

"All I got is two dollars."

"How about a credit card? You have a credit card?"

"Uh... no..."

Damn.

"You mean you got in my cab with two dollars in your pocket and no credit card?"

"uh... well..."

And with that he resumed his search of pockets and any other crevices he could get his hands into. I was pissed but not outraged. Again, I appreciated that he wasn't trying to bullshit me. He wasn't trying to tell me to "wait here while I go get the money" and then of course you never see him again. He wasn't trying to pay with just the two dollars. To the contrary, he was earnestly, albeit drunkenly, trying to find the money which was somehow mysteriously eluding him.

Still, I wanted to get paid. So I decided to do something that has proven to be remarkably effective in similar situations in the past. And that is, to get a cop. It is amazing how often a passenger is suddenly able to find his money when a cop shows up.

Now, New York must be the most policed city in the world. In most areas of Manhattan you can't stand in the same spot for more than two minutes before a police car drives by, even at two in the morning. This can be intimidating if you're a driver and you're worried about being pulled over for some stupid infraction. But it's great if you actually need a cop.

Sure enough, after about a minute and a half of watching in my side view mirror with one eye and and keeping my attention on my passenger in the rear view mirror with the other, I spotted a cruiser coming up slowly behind me on Avenue C. I opened my door, stepped out of the cab, and waved at the cops.

They stopped beside me. As always, there were two in the car. The officer sitting on the right rolled down his window. With that blank, neutral gaze that cops have when they're entering a scene, he asked me with only the expression on his face what was up. I told him the situation: passenger, probably drunk - $16.30 on the meter - two dollars - no credit card. In unison, they stepped out of the patrol car, walked slowly to the rear of the cab, and opened the passenger's door.

"Good evening, sir, the driver says you don't have enough money to pay the fare," one of them said, flatly.

My passenger, replying in a new found coherency, indicated that he was trying to find his money, it must be here somewhere. The cop said okay, find it. After another minute of futile hand motions, Mister Sobering Up Quickly admitted to the cop that all he had was two bucks. And no credit card. The officer suggested that perhaps he could call someone who could come over and pay the fare. And added that if he could not produce the required sixteen dollars and thirty cents that he would be placed under arrest for theft of services.

That will get your attention.

Like a surreal reversal of the hit TV show Cash Cab, my passenger had a shout-out with which to call a friend and beg for help. I could almost hear the sounds of quiz show music in the background as he nervously dialed a number and waited for a connection to come through. And then, good news, his friend was on the line. He told him the situation, adding that he was about to get "fucking arrested" for not being able to pay for a taxi ride. But his face turned from hope to despair as he learned that his would-be saviour was nowhere in the vicinity at the moment and could not help him out.

Perhaps he could call someone else, the cop suggested.

He could not, my passenger replied, since he didn't know anyone else who lived anywhere around here.

The jig was up. Like a condemned man about to walk the plank, he told the officer he was out of options and resigned himself to his fate. The cop who had been standing beside the first cop came over to me and started to take my information for his police report. Meanwhile the first cop was informing my passenger in a formal manner that he was about to be placed under arrest. He had him step out of the cab and place his hands behind his back as a prelude to being handcuffed.

It was an awful scene and I was not pleased with it as I did not perceive my passenger to be an evil person. In fact, I had come to kind of like the guy. I saw him as a basically well-intentioned individual who may or may not have a drinking problem. And I admired him for not trying to insult my own or the cops' intelligence.

Being hauled off in cuffs was way too much of a penalty here. But, on the other hand, I still wanted to get paid. I knew that if he was arrested I would eventually get a phone call from the precinct informing me that I could come down and pick up my $16.30. No one was going to sit in jail for very long before somehow coming up with that relatively paltry sum. I mentally searched for a solution to the problem and after a few moments I found it.

It was sitting on his head.

I turned around in my seat and called over to the about-to-be jailbird. With the first cop's permission he leaned back into the rear compartment to hear what I had to say.

"I'll make you a deal," I proposed. "In exchange for the ride, I'll take your Tiger's cap. Give me the hat and we'll call it even."

You have never seen the word "elation" better expressed than by the look that appeared on my passenger's face. His baseball cap was immediately placed into my possession and both his hands reached forward to embrace my own as he thanked me, thanked me, thanked me from the bottom of his heart.

"The offending party and myself have reached an agreement in this matter," I declared in mock seriousness to the officer standing beside me who'd been filling out his report, "and I consider the situation to be resolved." A slight smile appeared on his face, the only expression of emotion that was made by either of them. He closed his book and walked over to where the first cop was standing, who was already sending my passenger on his way.

And so, that was that. My passenger was released from custody, headed back toward Avenue D on 7th Street, and disappeared into the shadows, hatless. I thanked the cops and they, too, quickly vanished. I was left sitting there on the corner of C and 7th for another minute, filling out the details on my trip sheet and reflecting on what had just gone down. The truth is, it would have been enough of an exchange for me to just have been thanked so profusely like that. But now I had a new hat, to boot.

All I could think was one thing.

Go Tigers!

********

That, and one other thing: click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Heat Is On

There are certain people who, when you see them coming toward you, you're thinking, "Oh, please, don't get in my cab. Just keep on walking, don't stop, keep going. whatever you do, don't open the door, don't do that!" And then, as they do open the door, it's "Oh, shit." Because you already know they're going to be trouble and now your job description has been changed from "taxi driver" to "trouble-person-handler".

I had a character like that a couple of weeks ago on a Friday night at around midnight at 31st and 8th, just south of Penn Station. He lumbered toward me as I was waiting at a red light doing the semi-coherent shuffle - one foot forward, one foot to the left, one foot forward, one foot to the right - and came to a landing on my right rear door, which he proceeded to open a bit too slowly. He plopped himself down on the back seat and I was stuck with him.

He was in his early thirties, I would say, and seemed to be a mix of ethnicities. Maybe a little Hispanic, maybe a little Italian, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, it was hard to tell. He wore the black leather jacket of someone who might have signed up for membership in the rough side of town, like he could belong to a gang, but you couldn't be sure. His black hair was shaved in some areas and was long in others, very I've-gotta-be-me, probably the product of some East Village hair styling Picasso.

Most people, when they enter a taxi, they tell the driver where they want to go, but this guy just sat there as the rear of the taxi filled up with smoke from the cigarette he held in his hand. With some passengers a lit cigarette, currently forbidden by the nanny state, would be the subject of some negotiation as to whether or not it could stay or go. With this guy I knew instinctively that a hard line was the right approach.

"No cigarettes in the cab, sir," I said, not leaving room for discussion.

He tossed it out the window without protest. That was easier than I thought it would be.

"Where are you heading?"

Four seconds, five seconds... no reply.

"Where are you going?"

And then, in a voice barely audible, "one sisteen."

"Sorry, what?"

Slightly louder, "one sisteen."

"116th Street? 116th and what?"

Three seconds, four seconds... "Amsherram."

"Sorry, what? 116th and what?"

"Amsherram."

"Amsterdam?"

Three seconds... "Yeah." And then this: "I got plenny-a money, man," and he pulled out a wad of bills and held it up so I could see for myself in the mirror. I pulled out into the traffic on 8th Avenue and headed uptown.

Now, there are three things you worry about with passengers like this. First, he may be so stoned out that he's unaware of whether or not he has enough, or even any, cash in one of his pockets and then, when you get him to his destination, the new game is, "Let's Find Your Money". But the guy obviously had enough money, so that was not an issue, and that was good. Second, does the passenger really know where he wants to go? You get him there and then he announces that this isn't where he wants to be and he accuses you of "taking him for a ride". And third, is he a vomit candidate?

I looked him over carefully in the mirror and decided that, although it wasn't out of the realm of possibility, he was not likely to throw up. Pukers are almost always drunks. They usually display their condition by slumping over to one side, often winding up horizontally on the seat, and the alarm goes off for the driver when he realizes he can no longer see them in the mirror. This guy didn't do that. He remained upright and, although his head would droop forward, I didn't think he'd been drinking. I did think he was stoned and in a daze from whatever drug he'd been taking, but he didn't strike me as someone who was about to part with his dinner. So that was also good.

Whether or not he really knew where he wanted to go remained to be seen. Now that I had a destination, I put my attention on navigation and made a left on 33rd and shot over to 10th Avenue, which changes its name to Amsterdam when you cross 59th Street. So we were on our way. For the next forty blocks or so the ride was uneventful. He seemed semi-okay. He was on his cell phone and was mumbling with someone who must have been able to understand what he was saying, although from what I could hear, it sounded unintelligible. When we reached 79th Street, he mumbled something in my direction.

"A hunriddafor," was what I heard, or something like it.

"Sorry, what?"

Three seconds, four seconds, and then, softly, "A hun'red." Three more seconds, and then, "An' four."

"A hundred and fourth street?"

He grunted agreement.

We continued up Amsterdam and arrived at our new destination in about three minutes. I pulled up on the right side of the avenue and stopped.

"Argunmuggawishkeygumma," he garbled, or some such sound that was completely undecipherable. I looked at him wearily in the mirror, having gotten to the point where I was just sick of dealing with the guy. Realizing I couldn't understand a word he was saying, he tried sign language and pointed to the right to indicate that he wanted me to make a right turn and continue driving toward Columbus Avenue. I complied. We drove slowly across 104th and finally, just before the end of the block, he made another sound that meant that I should stop the cab. I did so.

The fare was $12.70. He reached for his wad of cash and handed me two bills. One was a ten and the other... whoa, the other was a hundred dollar bill.

For a taxi driver, this is a moment of truth. Here is a passenger who is ripe for the taking. Semi-coherent, drugged-up, a dumb-looking thug with a fistful of money - it would be easy to take advantage of him. I held the two bills up so he could see them through the partition.

"Sir," I said, "you gave me a ten and a hundred."

He made some sounds and a gesture that meant that I should return the bills to him, which I did. He then handed me a twenty.

"Out of twenty," I said, and started to count out the difference from my own money. Before I could give it to him, however, he opened the door and told me to keep the change in words I could actually understand. This was a great tip and I said "thank you" at above normal decibel level to be sure he could hear me. He then closed the door and disappeared into the darkness of Columbus Avenue.

I turned the corner and my honesty was rewarded by an immediate fare of three kids from Spain who were en route to Times Square. You don't really expect to get another fare until you are back in Midtown, a ten minute hike, so it was like money found. The Spanish kids were tourists who were all agog at finally being in the Promised Land of New York City, a dream come true for them. We had a lively run downtown and when I dropped them off at 47th and 7th I was feeling a bit exuberant myself, except for one thing.

There was something about that last ride that was keeping my attention on it.

As I started driving around Times Square looking for my next fare, I reviewed everything that had happened with that guy. For one thing, the amount of smoke coming from his mouth just after he go in the cab was abnormally huge. When people enter a taxi with a cigarette burning (a rarity today) the entire back area never fills up with smoke within five seconds. People know you're not supposed to smoke in a cab, but this guy made it obvious. And when I'd told him to put it out, he suddenly didn't seem particularly semi-coherent as he complied immediately without protest. That was an outpoint. It didn't fit.

Then, although he couldn't coherently tell me where he wanted to go, he didn't have any trouble showing me all the money he was carrying. The only time a passenger shows you his money without being asked to do so is when he is an inner-city guy who is going to the ghetto and wants to assure you that he's not going to rip you off. People who are so stoned that they can't pronounce the name of the street they want to go to don't have the mental acuity to offer you assurance by showing you their cash. It was another outpoint.

Finally, at the end of the ride he had held up the two bills separately in his hand, so it would be easy to see what they were. Usually when a bill is mistakenly rendered by a passenger, the mistake is hidden by the other bills that surround it. In this case it was glaringly obvious that he was overpaying. It was also an oddity.

I drove around for awhile running the incident over in my mind. And then it hit me.

That guy had been a cop!

The Taxi and Limousine Commission or the Police Department will occasionally send out decoys to test the integrity of taxi drivers. Many years ago I had a middle-aged, conservatively dressed African-American man hail me in Midtown and direct me to drive up to Harlem. I went a block in the right direction and he then identified himself as a TLC inspector. I had passed the test and was actually given a receipt to prove it. So these things are done, particularly after something has hit the fan in the industry. And, indeed, something had hit the fan a few days prior to this ride.

The news had been widely reported that out of approximately 44,000 taxi drivers in New York City, about 30,000 of them had been ripping off passengers by hitting a button on the meter that automatically adds an out-of-town charge to the fare. This was according to the GPS tracking mechanisms that are now installed in every cab in the city. It was an astoundingly large number of drivers and the TLC chairman and other city officials were duly upset at the revelation.

So the heat is on. This was further borne out by stories I began to hear from other taxi drivers of tickets being handed out for offenses that are normally overlooked, such as failure to signal a lane change or discharging a passenger more than twelve inches from the curb. Also there were stories of other set-ups, such as decoy cops hailing New York cabs on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel in Hoboken to see if the driver will pick them up (a no-no since New York cabs can only pick up passengers within the city limits).

It was later reported that this initial report of widespread overcharging had been grossly exaggerated, by the way. Most of the instances of the out of town button being wrongly hit on the meter have turned out to be mistakes, and the number of cabbies who had done it repeatedly was closer to 3,000 not 30,000. Still, that is unacceptable as there is no excuse to ever rip off a customer and this sort of thing gives honest drivers a bad name.

So we'll see if the heat gets turned off.

********

Rumor has it that another way of getting the heat off is to click here for Pictures From A Taxi. Just a rumor, of course.

My Cab Runneth Over

Sometimes during the course of a shift a taxi driver may notice that events of the night seem to be taking on the form of a theme. Let's say, for example, that you get three drunks on three separate rides and they all have red hair. You would think of that shift as the "Night of the Red-Headed Drunks". Or you get not one, but two passengers who offer you a big tip if you'll allow them to continue smoking their cigars in the cab and then two more who just light up cigarettes without even asking if it's okay. That shift would live in your memory as "A Smokey Night in New York City".

I had a shift last Tuesday that had a theme of its own. It was all about fluidity. Not the figurative kind. The literal kind. Of the three forms of matter - solids, liquids, and gases - the one that gives taxi drivers the most trouble by far is liquids. Gases aren't too great either but they can't compare to the misery caused by liquids that are out of control. Any cab driver reading this will immediately think of some outrageous incident involving a liquid that wasn't in the place where that liquid should have been. It happens to everyone who drives a cab.

The precursor to my evening was the weather itself. It was the kind of night that writers think of when they write, "It was a dark and stormy night..." Well, it was a dark and stormy night. Actually, come to think of it, every night is a dark night or it wouldn't be a night, would it? But I digress. This one was dark and stormy. The rain was cold, just a few degrees above the freezing mark, and it was a steady, unrelenting kind of rain, the kind that, if you weren't careful, could make you start thinking about how miserable not only the weather is, but how miserable existence itself is. It was that kind of rain.

So the stage was set. The first sign of trouble was at 7:11 when a young lady got in at 64th and Park, headed for Suffolk and Rivington in the Lower East Side. "Take the FDR," she said, and then settled back in her seat with her cell phone glued to her ear. The FDR (named for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States) is the highway that runs along the east side of Manhattan and is the fastest way downtown, so I had no problem with her route. It was her next comment that gave me pause.

"I'm feeling nauseous," she suddenly announced out of nowhere. I wasn't sure if she was directing her origination to me or to the person on her cell phone, but it was said loud enough for me to hear it and when I hear the word "nauseous" it gets my FULL ATTENTION. It's like telling your dog that it's meal time. The ears go straight up.

I stopped at a red light at 64th and 2nd a moment later and turned completely around in my seat to take a good look at her. She seemed all right. "You're feeling nauseous?" I inquired. "Oh, don't worry," she replied rather pleasantly, "if I'm going to throw up I'll get out of the cab first. But I'll be okay."

That was troubling. The problem was that I would be on the FDR in about a minute and on that highway there are no shoulders, thus no place to pull over. So I had to make a quick decision. Either she was a good or a bad vomit risk. If she was bad, I'd have to insist on staying off the FDR and sticking to the streets. If good, we would proceed as planned. I put her through a mental filter. She showed no signs of being drunk - that was good. She didn't have any signs of being sick - that was good. And she was conversing cheerfully with whomever was on the phone with her. Good again. I decided to get on the highway.

Now, since this is a post about misbehaving liquids, you're probably thinking that was a big mistake and she barfed in the cab. But, no! My judgement was good and we made it down to Suffolk and Rivington without further ado. It turned out this fare was just an incident in a theme.

The night went on. The rain continued and continued, only letting up for brief moments before resuming its assault. One passenger commented that "at least it isn't snow", but I informed him that snow was in the forecast for the next day. A gloom had set in, an ominous feeling that we were in the hands of a deity who was out to get us for something we must have done but could not remember what. It was a feeling that was exacerbated within me by the behavior of a 30-something male who got in the cab at Church and Vesey at 9:45 and wanted to go to the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn.

I went up Church and made a right on Canal, heading for the Manhattan Bridge. We stopped for a red at the corner of Lafayette and then, without warning, he told me to pull over.

"I have to piss," he proclaimed, as if this was something that happens all the time in the course of a taxi ride.

A sense of urgency set in. A pisser isn't as alarming as a puker, but it's alarming enough and I didn't have a read on this guy. Was he about to pee in his pants, and thus on the floorboard? That could be almost as bad as vomit. There was a garbage truck on my right that was blocking me from being able to get over to the curb and I told him to hold on until the truck moved. But he didn't hold on. He opened his door and went directly to a newsstand that was closed up for the night and took aim.

Meanwhile, the light turned green, the garbage truck moved out of the way, and I had a few moments for reflection while I waited for my passenger to finish making his contribution to the evening's rainfall. I realized this was only the fifth time in 32 years of cab driving that someone had gotten out in the middle of a ride to take a piss. (Yes, I've counted them.) So he'd entered an elite group. But beyond that, I considered the possibility that some kind of karma was at work here. All this rain, then there was the girl, and now this guy with his bladder. If I indeed was being toyed with by Fate, would Fate be kind? Or would I be washed away as if I were a metaphor in Somebody's parable?

The night went on. I brought my passenger to his building on Taaffe Place and headed back to the city. The rain just kept coming down and a wind had picked up that was really blowing things around, making garbage bags fly across the avenues like some kind of urban tumbleweed. But hours went by and the rhythmic counting of my windshield wipers finally had me forgetting about the possibility of a confrontation with a liquid destiny.

Perhaps it was this complacency that made me a target for a passenger who got in at 12:40 at 21st and 7th and was heading down to Varick and Broome. He was a middle-aged gentleman carrying a huge, flat object wrapped in a huge plastic covering, presumably to protect it from the rain. He placed the object carefully across the back seat and then slid in next to it. Of course, I was curious about what it was, so I asked him about this thing resting beside him on the seat.

He told me it was a sign. It turned out he was a sign maker by trade and the sign he was carrying was going to be displayed on the front of a store but first he needed to bring it back to his studio for some final touches. He was a friendly person and, since I was interested to learn about his craft, a lively conversation ensued. He told me he'd been doing it for ten years, that business was always good since there were only three other sign makers in that part of the city, that his business was recession-proof, and that he wished he'd started doing it long before he did, instead of wasting his time at his previous occupation, a building superintendent. Now he was his own boss and was making great money doing something he really enjoyed. And it was also in harmony with his talent as a fine artist - he was a painter.

He went on to tell me about a project he hopes to be commissioned to do by the city. Sixth Avenue, when it was renamed "Avenue of the Americas" many years ago, used to have circular renditions of the coats of arms of all the countries in North, South, and Central America displayed beneath street lamps all the way from Tribeca up to Central Park. Most of them are now gone and the few that remain are in very poor condition. He told me he wants to be the one to restore these heraldic devices. And, he confided, he has a friend who knows Mayor Bloomberg personally, so he thinks he may have an insider's shot at landing the job.

Well, the guy struck me as being a genuine craftsman, a master of his trade, and a relatively fulfilled human being. It was a pleasure to talk with him and I felt a good rapport as he paid me the fare. He opened the door, took one step out into the rain, and then he blurted out two ominous-sounding words:

"Oh, shit."

"What's the matter?"

"Uh, the paint spilled."

This didn't compute. Paint spilled? What paint? How could paint spill? I didn't know what he was he talking about.

"What do you mean?"

"I had a can of paint in the bottom of my bag. It must have fallen out of the bag while we were talking."

"What??? You mean you spilled paint in the cab?"

"Uh, yeah. Sorry."

I jumped out into the rain and looked in the rear. A puddle of white paint covered the right rear floorboard area and there were splatterings on the hump and on the left door panel as well. It was a disaster.

"Do you have any paper towels?" he asked.

"Not enough to clean up that mess!" I said. "Oh my god, is that stuff oil-based?" I cried out in desperation. If it was, I knew that no one could ever get it out and that a) my night was over, b) the entire vinyl floorboard covering would have to be replaced, and c) if this guy didn't pay for it, I would wind up with the bill from the taxi garage. It was enough to make vomit look like a good thing.

"No, it's acrylic. I can get it out with soap and water."

"Thank god!"

And with that, my passenger told me he was going to go down Broome Street to his studio and that he'd come back with soap and towels. He then took off in the rain, taking his sign in its plastic bag with him.

It was a moment of truth. I wasn't sure if he'd return at all and had to make an instant decision - should I insist on accompanying him to his place to make sure he didn't run off on me? Or should I let him go without a word of protest? I decided to trust him, based on my impression of him as being an honest person.

Well, it's nice to be right about someone's character - in two minutes he was back with a couple of towels and a bottle of Fantastic cleaner. Fifteen minutes later, the mess was pretty much gone. I complimented him for taking responsibility for what he'd done and we shook hands.

I was back in business, although the time I'd spent standing out in the rain watching him clean up left me close to soaking wet. But that was as it should have been, considering the theme of the evening:

My Cab Runneth Over.

********

Now, if you're ever feeling washed away yourself, here's a little life preserver for you: just click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

Sunday On A Roll

There's a certain phenomenon that exists in sports, gambling, and taxi driving called being "on a roll". If you're "on a roll" it means that you just can't miss. Things are going your way without effort, without even trying. If you were throwing dice at a craps game, you would just win, win, win. If you'd bought a ticket at a raffle, the name that would be picked out of the hat would be yours. It's as if you're on a psychic toboggan ride. Nobody seems to know how it happens, but, if we could bottle it, surely our troubles would be over.

I had a day like that last Sunday. I found myself on a roll. Didn't know how it happened, but it was great while it lasted.

5:25 p.m. - My first ride of the night. A nice little old lady was assisted into the cab at 46th Street and 10th Avenue by someone on the street and then rode with me uptown to the corner of 62nd and Broadway. After she paid me I saw that she might need some help getting out so I came around and literally give her my hand in order to provide that extra little pull she needed to enable her leg to come up high enough to get over the raised area where the back door meets the floorboard. It's something you have to watch out for with the elderly if you're a cab driver. Many older people will refuse an offer for assistance, so I've found it's wise to just come around without asking and open the door for them if it's not already opened or, if it is, just stand there and be ready to lend a hand. Perhaps it was this little good deed that led to the roll. For standing there before I could close the door was my next fare, a blonde.

5:34 p.m. - She was off to LaGuardia with no luggage. This in itself is enough to start a conversation - "no luggage?" - and that simple question led to a discussion about her life and aspirations and a bit of my own story, too. Why no luggage? Because she was a day tripper who'd just come in from Boston to audition for admission to Julliard's graduate school for opera singers. She'd already graduated from the New England Conservatory of Music and New York is the next very logical place to continue to pursue such a career. I asked her if she was able to read music as a singer - that is, to be able to sing by looking at the notes on the page and she replied that she could. This ability impresses me even more than being able to play an instrument from the written page since it seems to me to be more difficult to do, and I told her so. I was then able to impress her a little by telling her that I once had the opera star Beverly Sills in my cab. It pleased me to see her reaction to this revelation - "Wow! You did?!!" - because, really, how many people out there are going to be interested in knowing that? Opera is kind of a cult. It has a strong following, but not in great numbers. It shows me, though, that I must have some kind of a celebrity story for all tastes. (The latest count I did of the number of celebrities who've been in my cab came to 124. They add up over the years.) I went on to tell my aspiring diva that we had something in common in that I, too, once studied music in Boston. I'd spent one misbegotten semester at the Berklee School of Music in 1969 when the school was so new that they'd let anyone (me) in. By the time we got to LaGuardia we were in a pretty good affinity due to the abundance of communication, so I asked her name in case she should someday be famous herself and I could say, "Yeah, I had her in my cab when she was still an unknown", and she said it was Charley something. It occurred to me that there's never been an opera singer who went by one name, so I suggested she might want to just go with "Charley". She could be the Madonna of the opera world. Or the Cher, at least. If that happens, remember you heard it here first.

Now, getting a fare to LaGuardia in the early evening on a Sunday is in itself a sign that things are going your way. It's the time of the week when you are most likely to get an immediate ride back to the city, and that's fast money. I did a quick check of the taxi waiting areas (there are five of them at LaGuardia) and decided that the American Airlines lot was the best bet. In ten minutes I was on my way to Greenwich Village with a cheerful couple who appreciated my traffic-avoiding navigation and tipped generously. Back in Manhattan by 7:04. On a roll!

7:10 p.m. - I drove up 6th Avenue looking for my next fare and pulled up in front of the Bed, Bath and Beyond at 18th Street. No passengers, but the doorman of the place came up to me and handed me a little yellow card with little pictures of 30 shopping bags on it. He explained that if I either pick up or deliver customers to the store 30 times on Saturdays or Sundays between 3 and 7 p.m., I will receive a $20 gift certificate from the store. And then he punched the first bag with his hole puncher. I thought it was a creative way for the store to attract taxis when they apparently need them the most. It's not a lot of money, but in the world of taxi driving any reward from an establishment for servicing their public is a rarity, indeed. In fact, the only other place I know of in all of New York that gives a cabbie a prize for delivering a customer is a certain strip joint in Midtown. Just after the newly-arrived patron enters the place, the doorman will come over and adroitly hand the taxi driver an envelope with a $5 bill inside.

After just a minute of hanging around, a couple of guys jumped in and we drove up to 92nd and Central Park West. I showed them the yellow card I'd just been given and this somehow began a convoluted conversation about animals, politicians, and celebrities. When we arrived at their destination the more talkative of the two gave me a $5 tip on a $15 fare and told me it was the most interesting taxi ride he'd ever taken. Which gets me thinking it's not me, it's the roll, and I start feeling a bit in awe regarding the roll, wondering how long it could continue.

9:00 p.m. My next six fares were unremarkable, just so-so rides with nothing special going on, and I'm thinking my lucky streak is over. Nine o'clock is break time and since I found myself on the Upper East Side I decided to flick on my "off-duty" light and head over to the Starbuck's on 87th and Lex, one of my favorites (easy parking and two clean bathrooms). As is my custom, once I park the cab and step outside, I first open a back door and check for garbage before locking up. Something immediately caught my eye on the floor. It's something that, to a cab driver, is like a row of five cherries popping up on a slot machine to a gambler.

It was a wallet.

Ding-ding-ding!

Now, there are two kinds of wallets you can find on the floor of a taxicab. One is a wallet that has been emptied by a previous passenger. And the other is one that has not. This wallet was of the latter variety.

Ding-ding-ding!

I don't want you to think that I'm the kind of person who would find something of value and not try to return it. To the contrary, I have a very solid policy in this regard. I will make every effort to return the item unless the person who lost it was, in my opinion, outrightly evil. And that has happened only once in 32 years. My success rate is quite high, probably around 90 per cent, not counting things like umbrellas, gloves, and hats whose value isn't worth the trouble it would take to hunt the person down. I'm talking about items such as cell phones, wallets, and bicycles (yes, someone once left a bicycle in the trunk of my cab). The reason the bells of the jackpot go off when you find something like this is that invariably the person who gets it back is going to give you a significant reward.

I snatched the wallet from the floor and returned to the front seat of the cab. Examining its contents, I found about $60 in cash, a single credit card, a Medicare identification card, some phone numbers of doctors, and, fortunately, the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the person who owned the wallet and her children. This meant that returning the wallet was going to be easy to do.

I did a little detective work to try to figure out which passenger it could be. The clues I had were that it was a female who was old enough to be eligible for Medicare and had at least two grown children. I looked over my trip sheet and reviewed who'd been in my cab that night, and I realized it could only belong to one person: it was the little old lady who had been my first passenger. She must have dropped it when I was assisting her out of the taxi. The amazing thing is that I had taken nine fares since then and, counting the numbers in the column of the trip sheet that tells you how many passengers had been in each ride, these nine fares consisted of 17 people. In other words, 17 people had come in and out of my cab and no one had noticed the wallet on the floor! And that is quite remarkable.

I got out my cell phone and dialed her number. The call was answered by the desk clerk in what turned out to be an assisted living facility on the West Side. I asked if this certain person lived there, he said she did, and I told him I was a taxi driver who had her wallet. He told me she was out of the building and suggested that I just drop it off with him, but of course that was not going to happen. Trying not to insult the guy, I told him that I'd be working all night and that this was something I could give only to the lady herself. I gave him my number and asked him to give it to her when she came in. If I give the wallet to him, there goes the reward, there goes the satisfaction I get from seeing someone's faith in humanity rehabilitated, and how would I know if he would actually give it to her, anyway? I don't know this guy from Adam. Or Eve, for that matter.

I went into my Starbuck's, used the restroom, got my tall black, returned to the cab, opened up my bran muffin from Trader Joe's, and went back to work, cruising down Lex without a fare (but with caffeine) until I got to Midtown.

9:33 p.m. - My phone rings. I immediately flicked on my "off-duty" light once again and pulled over to the curb, knowing the call would be for the wallet. It was the daughter of the little old lady, overjoyed. She told me the address of her mother's facility and I told her I would be there in about ten minutes.

Just as I was about to drive off, three exuberant women came rushing up to the side of the cab seeking my services. I told them I was off-duty but if they were going my way I could take them. Not forgetting that I was on a roll, it didn't really surprise me that where they wanted to go was only two blocks away from where I was heading. They jumped in the cab. We rolled on.

Well, it turned out they were from Virginia and were having themselves a great time in the big city. They told me they come to New York every year during "this week" and, from what I could gather, it was an annual, get down and boogie, what-happens-in-New-York-stays-in-New-York weekend. They were so bubbly that I felt comfortable telling them, in order to show that New Yorkers in general are wonderful people and that I in particular am a wonderful person, that, hey, look at this, I am on my way to return a passenger's wallet. And I held it up for all to see. I might as well have told them that I'd discovered that the cure for arthritis was drinking martinis. I was an instant hero. They gave me twenty dollars for a $6.30 fare and, in the immortal words of Harry Chapin, I stuffed the bill in my shirt. It occurred to me about ten seconds later that maybe I should always have a wallet handy to show passengers that "I'm on my way to returning it". I could make a fortune.

9:46 p.m. - I arrive at the assisted living facility and the daughter of the little old lady was right there, waiting for me just outside the entrance to the place. She was about my own age, filled with gratitude, and I could see from the way she spoke that she cared deeply about her mother who, she said, was sure that "that nice cab driver" would return her wallet to her. She handed me a couple of bills, thanked me again, and we went our ways. Stopping at the red light at the next intersection, I looked at what she'd given me and saw it was two twenty dollar bills. A bit exorbitant, I thought, but much appreciated.

9:53 p.m. - At this point, I'm beginning to feel impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and, as if to test me, two passengers get in at 47th and 8th who, under normal circumstances, would have been able to get under my skin. They were two middle-aged, obese females, one of whom not only had great difficulty simply getting into the cab, but also was attempting to gain sympathy from the other by whining and moaning on about her range of motion difficulties. They were coming from a play and I overheard the whiner say, "if it wasn't Mamet, it never would have made it to Broadway". In other words, it was a new David Mamet drama and they didn't care for it. Now, I am a David Mamet fan so that comment, along with their upper crust, academic-condescension way of speaking, would normally have been enough to bring me down a notch. But not tonight. Even their ten per cent tip when I dropped them off at 89th and Riverside didn't put a dent in my elan vital. I was on a roll, after all.

But then things seemed to even out. I took several unspectacular rides. I thought it was over. But, no!

11:35 p.m. - I pick up a couple near Washington Square in the Village who are en route to the posh Regency Hotel in the Upper East Side. They were from another country - I'm not sure which - in great spirits, and enjoying each other's company. We didn't have much conversation during the ride other than my pointing out that the Park Avenue Tunnel, through which we passed, was originally built for trains. Then when we got to the Regency, the gentleman told me that he "likes the way I drive" and gave me $25 for an $11.90 fare. And asked for my card. As I drove off, I'm thinking I'm so hot I may have to be declared a fire hazard. The roll!

But I hit another lull. It had to be over. Then, this...

2:55 a.m. - I pick up a middle-aged man in Midtown who wants to go to a section in Brooklyn right under the Manhattan Bridge that's known as "Dumbo". It's pretty much a non-conversational ride, but about halfway there, just to break a bit of monotony setting in, I asked the fellow if he knew what "Dumbo" stood for. He didn't, so I told him - it's an acronym for "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass". He seemed to appreciate this, so I went on to ask if he knew what Tribeca meant. He didn't know that either, so I told him it was for "Triangle Below Canal". Another five minutes or so went by without much conversation, and then as we were getting close to his destination he suddenly asks me if I know what the numbers in Union Square mean! Now, this is not a question that is normally asked of a cab driver - in fact I don't think anyone has ever asked me that, ever - which wouldn't be any big deal in itself, but when you consider that the last post in this blog was on this very subject, then his asking me this question at this particular time is something that might be considered beyond coincidence. So I told him what the numbers mean and also told him that of all the people in the world of whom he could have theoretically asked that question, I am undoubtedly the only person in the world who could hand him a card containing the web address of his own blog and direct him to the most recently written entry which would explain and demonstrate, via video, the answer to his question. And I gave him my card.

At this point I had to consider the very real possibility that for reasons unknown I had been imbued with godlike powers and should seriously consider starting my own religion, but of course you know that whenever you start blowing bubbles like this someone shows up with a pin...

3:31 a.m. - I pull over on Carmine Street in the Village for a young lady who has just finished kissing some guy and wants to go to 40th between Broadway and 6th. She was kind of pretty and seemed tired and done for the night, so there was no talking, really, just a straight run up 6th Avenue. And then these horrifying words: "I don't feel good". Oh my god, that translates immediately as: "I'm going to throw up now". Without needing to ask for any further information, I knew I had to instantly bring the cab to a halt and get her out because within a few moments there would be puke all over the place. But I was in the middle of the avenue and, wouldn't you know, there was a vehicle at this hour of the night blocking me, meaning it would cost me an extra three or four seconds to get over to the curb. And that additional time could mean that God was about to spit on me for my arrogance as well as whatever the girl was about to do. It just suddenly seemed somehow ironically fitting that my perfect night would end with me cleaning up vomit.

But it didn't happen!

We made it to the curb and she puked on the street.

Still on a roll!

4:30 a.m. - I finished the night off by taking a young man who was a systems troubleshooter to Brooklyn from Midtown. He'd just spent the night repairing a company's computers on an emergency basis and I realized here was the perfect person to ask about some trouble I've been having with my own computer. One of the few perks of driving a cab is that you can always get free legal advice and free computer advice from passengers. So I told him my computer, a pc with Windows XP, has been slowing down lately. He made an analogy with a truck that is carrying a heavy load - the more weight, the slower the truck can go, and recommended that I quit some of the always-running programs whose icons appear at the bottom right-hand side of the screen. I did this and it has helped enormously, which is why I pass it along to you, a little cherry to top off my Sunday on a roll.

********

Along with Sundays on a roll, I would also recommend ham and Swiss on a roll with a dash of mustard and a click right here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Bad And The Beautiful

You know, you drive a cab and people get in and people get out and most people are okay or even better than okay but then one comes in who is really, I mean really, something God must have created when He was sitting on the crapper. When somebody like that enters my cab, I put up with it and within ten minutes they are gone and happily out of my universe forever. But if a short time goes by and then another one gets in, I know what's going on. I have hit an unexpected squall of bad karma and, like a fisherman in a storm, I have no choice but to ride it out and hope I can stay afloat. So to speak.

Tuesday night was like that.

It started with my second fare. She was a particular type of character whom I have run into occasionally and whom I dub the Woe Is Me Person, sort of a professional victim. This is someone who is perpetually "suffering" from one malady or another and by cleverly making you feel guilty about it is able to manipulate you if you're not too bright. She was sixty-something, built like a boxcar, and had that "I am in such pain but don't mind me" thing going on. Sitting next to her was the cowed lackey whom I suspect has been saying "Yes, dear" for the last thirty years, her husband.

They got in on the west side of 56th and 5th and she told me their destination was a deli at 57th and Lex, a thankfully short ride. She mentioned the name of the deli. Did I know it?

"M'am, I don't know delis by their names, except the famous ones like the Carnegie Deli. But I do know 57th and Lex. I'll take you there." She spoke to her husband just loud enough for me to hear, "He doesn't know the deli." I ignored the invitation to an argument and started to drive.

It was 93 degrees Fahrenheit (that's damned hot for those of you who use centigrade) that day but fortunately the cab I had for the shift had excellent A/C and the compartment was quite comfortable. We drove less than a block, and then, her suffering voice:

"Driver, could you turn off the air conditioning, please? I have a cold and I need the windows open. Thank you."

It wasn't a request. It was an order. Turn off the A/C on a sweltering hot day.

What I should have done was to have told her that she can shut off the A/C button which controls the flow of air in the rear of the taxi herself while I close the partition to keep the cold air in the front of the cab. That would have stared the tiger in the face and probably put an end to my upcoming karma situation, but instead I complied and told her she was probably the only person in New York City who didn't want air conditioning today. My oblique comment was ignored.

I made a left on 54th Street and headed east. It was rush hour and the traffic was bumper to bumper. As I pulled up to stop at the red light at Madison Avenue, I heard this:

"Driver, please don't drive too fast. I have a bad back."

What I should have said: "Lady, do you have bad eyes, too? Look, the traffic is at a standstill. I couldn't drive too fast if I wanted to. And I do want to."

What I did say: nothing.

When you're dealing with the mechanics of karma, this is a mistake. Taking it on the chin is a way of keeping the negative energy in your own space and that makes you a magnet for the next lousy thing to happen. But I didn't realize this at the moment. I just adopted the mode of suffering saintliness myself and drove them to the damned deli on 57th Street and then shot invisible arrows through her bad back as she exited the taxi and walked into the deli by herself, leaving her husband/servant behind to pay me the fare.

Well, good riddance. But it didn't take long for her replacement to arrive.

I drove down Lex and within five minutes was hailed by a middle-aged woman at 45th Street - a woman who seemed okay at first but turned out to be another type of character I encounter from time to time: The Evil Jockey. This is a passenger who assumes you are a moron and takes control of the navigation aspect of the ride by telling you not only the route to take but which lane to be in, what speed to drive at, and where exactly to turn left or right. Sprinkled in with this will be comments such as, "Come on, you can make that light!" The passenger is the jockey. You are the horse.

She was a businesswoman going to 33rd and 6th who had not given herself enough time to get to what she said was an important meeting. When the ride began, she was conversational and pleasant. In fact, I even made the mistake of telling her I'd been driving a cab for twenty-nine years when the talk went in that direction. But when we became stuck in heavy traffic at 42nd Street (due to the explosion a couple of weeks ago that shut down Lexington Avenue between 42nd and 39th Streets), with the speed of a light switch she became the bitch from hell.

"You'd better change lanes. You're in the slow lane."

Bingo. With that single disrespectful communication she turned me into a driver who cared about getting her to that meeting on time to one who didn't particularly give a damn if she was late or not. Not that I intended to sabotage the ride. But the mental machinery was turned on that seems to control whether things go right or things go wrong. And wrong it went.

First, it took three minutes to get through the light at 42nd Street. But the tension in the cab made it seem like fifteen. Next, when I told her I intended to take 5th Avenue downtown she ordered me to go straight on 42nd and make the left on 7th Avenue. Then, after circumventing heavy traffic at Broadway and making the turn she ordered, she took issue with me for not turning on Broadway since it would have taken us more directly to her destination. I started to lose my cool.

"Look, you told me to take 7th Avenue, so that's what I did!"

"Broadway would have been more direct."

"You told me to take 7th."

"You've been driving a cab for twenty-nine years and you don't know that Broadway is more direct? I don't buy it."

"I don't care if you buy it or not. You told me to take 7th and that's what I did. And anyway, there was heavy traffic at Broadway and if we'd taken it we'd still be back there waiting to make the left turn."

In divorce proceedings this would be called "irreconcilable differences". We had reached a point, after being together in a cab for only twelve minutes, of hating each other's guts.

"And now you're going to tell me you can't make a left on 34th Street?" she asked in a hostile tone. (She had ordered me to stop on 7th Avenue at 34th Street and there's a no left turn sign at that intersection until 8 pm. It was then 7:30.)

"That's right."

"Here."

She handed me a ten dollar bill for a $9.10 fare. I handed back to her 90 cents in change, not expecting or wanting a tip. She had decided she'd rather walk the long block to 6th Avenue than endure any further futility with a retarded taxi driver and left the cab with no further words exchanged.

But those invisible arrows were flying all over the place.

What I didn't tell her was that if we'd driven down to 32nd Street and made a left, I could have had her within a short block of her destination in thirty seconds. But by this time, of course, I was rooting for her not only to be late, but to lose her job and wind up sleeping in a cardboard box on the street.

So it seemed that with the way the shift was going, I was being set up by forces beyond my control to have a completely disastrous night. Who knows what else might happen when you start pulling in people like this? A flat tire? An accident? The cab breaks down in the Bronx?

So I confronted what was going on. Yes, I was somehow attracting negativity. I couldn't see two monsters like this in a row as being a coincidence. But wait, by simply observing this I could bring an end to it. There was no need for me to take a karmic whipping. I could simply decide that okay, that's it, no more bad rides tonight. I'm a good guy. I'm a great cab driver. No need for these things to happen to me.

And right away my night turned around.

Immediately I picked up a great fare who was all smiles and seemed to think she was just the luckiest woman in the world to have me as her taxi driver. And then there was a Japanese couple who were big Yankee fans. And a man from Philadelphia who discussed with me the importance of Alexander Hamilton to United States history. I was having one great fare after another, culminating in this at 10:30:

Pictured here are newlyweds Eric and Sabina and Sabina's parents from Poland. I drove them (and a lot of flowers) from a restaurant on the West Side where their wedding reception had taken place to their apartment on 40th and Lex. Eric and Sabina had been dating for about a year and decided to get married to coincide with Sabina's parents visit to the United States. I want to tell you, if you drive a cab you can't get a ride that's more joyous than this.

So it taught me a lesson. You don't have to go into agreement with what would seem to be the inevitability of bad karma. We're not the dimwits of destiny. We write the words to our own music and we dance the way we damn well decide we want to dance.

Right? Right!

I continued to drive on into the night wondering if I could get anything to top a bride and a groom being in my cab. What could come next? How about a Hollywood film director who decides he wants to use me in his next movie about taxi drivers? Maybe Martin Scorcese himself! My mind began to wander... Taxi Driver 2... hmmm...

The night went on. A little after midnight I was hailed in front of a gay bar called "Therapy" on 52nd between 8th and 9th. Some guy was saying goodbye to a young lady and kind of escorted her into my cab. (It has become fashionable in NYC for girls to hang out in gay bars.) She told me her destination was in Astoria, Queens, and after a brief discussion about the best way to get there, we were on our way.

I was still in a great mood and wanting to communicate with everyone, so I attempted to start a conversation with this person but found, after a couple of failed tries, that she was not the chatty type. So I put my eyes on the road and just drove. C'est la vie.

However, as I was crossing the lower level of the 59th Street Bridge, I became alarmed at something - I could no longer see her in my rear-view mirror. I turned around to see what was up and saw that she was lying face down across the back seat. Oh my god, she was a vomit candidate.

"Are you all right?"

Her head tilted upward slightly. "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm just tired."

I wasn't convinced. Sometimes people who are drunk and on the verge of barfing in a cab are afraid the driver will throw them out if he thinks they're about to be sick. So they con the driver with lies.

"Listen, if you feel like you're gonna be sick, just tell me so I can pull over."

"I'm okay. I'm just tired," she said in what was almost a whisper.

What can a driver do in this situation? You can't just throw somebody out because you think she's going to vomit. Maybe she was just tired. I had no choice but to keep driving and hope she was on the level.

It took six or seven more minutes to get her in front of her apartment building on 28th Avenue. I looked back at her and observed the seat, half-expecting to see barf on it. But the seat was clean. The girl, however, was still sprawled across it and was now out like a light. I had to yell at her to get her awake enough to realize she had arrived at her home.

She opened her eyes. And then she sat up.

And that was all it took. The change of position of her body was the impetus that sent about a gallon of creamy puke spilling from her mouth, down her arm, and all over the back seat.

I sprang like a leopard to the back door and opened it in the same way that cops do when they're raiding a house where drug dealers are living. I was outraged, to put it mildly.

"Oh, shit!" I screamed. "Why didn't you tell me to pull over? Dammit!"

But my rage drew nothing but a pukey blank stare. The alcohol had kicked in and she was out of it. It took her about five minutes in her semi-conscious state to find the money to pay for the fare and kick in an extra twenty dollars at my not too subtle suggestion. And all the while covered in her own vomit.

She then stood up, took a few steps toward her building, and collapsed on the sidewalk. As pissed off as I was, I still did the right thing and took her by the arm and guided her to her place and made sure she got into it all right. I then had to wipe her puke off my own hand and deal with the mess she'd left me. Just fucking wonderful.

I went to work with my paper towels, Windex, and air freshener spray. After about twenty minutes of disgusting, humiliating labor, I thought I had it licked (pardon my choice of words) and went back to work. But after a passenger asked me if someone had thrown up in the cab, I had to confront the fact that I needed to bring the damn thing back to the garage. There the hard-working Tonio, one of the all-night guys, helped me remove the back seat and hose both it and the floorboards down. The fact is, her vomit had seeped under the seat through the seat belt openings and onto the floorboard. After we wiped it down with cloth towels, the job was finally done for real.

I took a few more fares that night, but that was basically it. The puker had put a pretty heavy exclamation point onto what had already been a very memorable evening.

And what that exclamation point meant to me was this: remember all that stuff I was saying about how we write the words to our own music and all? Well, who or whatever's in charge of that karma thing doesn't seem to like hearing talk like that. It might be a good idea to keep your voice down when talking about all that free will stuff, all right?

Just a thought.

Of course, we still have free will to click here to see Pictures From A Taxi. Right?