In the past, I have shared a series of stories from my days publishing small town newspapers, from a job I had selling cars, about my time in the Army, and some tales of the offbeat adventures and misadventures I’ve gotten into in a series called Nick Happens. Now, I thought I would share some stories about a period in my life many years ago when I drove a taxicab in Tucson, Arizona. Oh, some of the things I witnessed back then! I’ve told more than one prospective author that if they really want to learn about human nature, they need to become a cop, a nurse, or a cab driver. You will see the best and worst of people in any of those jobs.
Note: This is a long one, but I think you’ll enjoy it.
I was hanging around the dispatch office killing time on a slow Sunday afternoon and Steve, the regular dispatcher, asked me to cover the phones while he went to the bathroom.
I answered a call, and the voice on the other end sounded as sexy as they come. Caller told me she had a job interview the next day and wanted to know how much the fare was from her house to the business and back. I checked the two addresses and gave her an estimate.
“Oh, thank you so much,” she said, “I really appreciate it.”
“Always happy to help, ma’am,” I told her.
“My gosh, I’ve always heard that cab drivers were rude, but you sound absolutely wonderful,” she breathed.
“Oh, we’re just people,” I assured her. “Some good and some bad, I guess.”
She lowered her voice and asked, “So tell me, do you ever get bad?”
“I’ve been known to,” I told her, enjoying the banter.
“Oh, I like that! Sometimes I get bad, too!”
By then Steve was back at the radio console, and he pushed the button for the speakerphone.
“Oh darn,” the caller said, with a pout in her voice. “Please tell me you’re not married?”
“No ma’am,” I’m divorced.”
“Oh, don’t call me ma’am. It’s Tammy. What’s your name?”
I told her my name, then Tammy suggested, “Gee, maybe you could pick me up tomorrow and take me to my job interview, Nick.”
“Maybe.”
By now Steve and a driver friend named Maury were enjoying the show, grinning as I chatted with the voice that dripped honey over the phone.
“You know, once I get done with that interview, I won’t have anything to do all afternoon,” she told me. “And I get so stressed out when I have a job interview. I wish I knew some way to work off all that stress.”
About then, we got a rush of calls, and I had to get back to work, but not before taking the woman’s name and address, and promising I’d pick her up right on time the next day.
I hung up the telephone, gave Maury and Steve high fives, and took off to pick up a fare.
The next day when I went to work, both Steve and Maury were eager to see how my “date” was going to work out.
“Okay, now listen to me,” Steve said. “Just in case something goes wrong, you call me on the radio to check in, and say Code 29. I’ll know that means you need an excuse to get away, and I’ll tell you that your son’s school called and he’s sick and needs you to pick him up, okay?”
“Sounds good, but I won’t need any excuses,” I assured Steve. “This woman’s voice sounds like pure heaven!”
I hit the street, picking up a few fares before the appointed time for my “date.” A few blocks from her address Steve radioed to tell me that my special appointment was on the phone, checking to make sure I was on the way.
“I’m three minutes away,” I told him.
When I turned onto Tammy’s street, it was easy to find her house. It was the one with the very large woman standing in the street doing jumping jacks. Even if she had been standing still, the fluorescent muumuu she was wearing would have been hard to miss!
Before the cab had come to a complete stop (I had to stop, there was no room on the street to drive around her) Tammy wretched the front door open and slid into the front seat beside me. It wasn’t so much physical attraction as gravity that made me slide toward her.
Her makeup looked like it had been applied by Picasso, but Tammy was one of those girls with perfect white teeth. Unfortunately, I never got to see them because she had left them soaking in a glass on her bathroom sink. But that didn’t keep her from talking. Tammy talked a lot. In fact, she never stopped talking during the twenty-minute drive to her job interview. I have never learned so much about a person in such a short time!
I learned that Tammy was an old pro at job interviews. She must have been, because she had worked at every restaurant, convenience store, and bar in Tucson. You can squeeze a lot of jobs into a month if you never stay more than a shift or two.
I learned that Tammy had three kids, two of whom lived with their respective fathers’ parents, and one who was in a foster home.
I learned that Tammy was undergoing medical treatment for problems with her gallbladder, for water on her knee, and for a recurring urinary tract infection.
I learned that Tammy had a husband somewhere, but she couldn’t remember if he was currently incarcerated or on the lam to keep from being incarcerated.
I also learned that Tammy had a very strong and varied sex drive. By the time we arrived at her job interview, I think I knew exactly what a young man must feel like on his first afternoon in prison, facing the long night that was surely coming.
The amazing thing was not just all of the information that Tammy could share in such a short time, it was that she did it while shoving massive handfuls of barbecued potato chips into her mouth with one hand and massaging my thigh with the other.
The minute Tammy was inside the entrance of the greasy spoon restaurant where she hoped to land employment, I grabbed my microphone and called Steve.
“Save me!” I said.
Even through the airwaves, I could hear the chuckle in Steve’s voice when he asked, “How bad is it?”
“It’s bad, Steve. Really, really bad!”
“But she sounded so nice on the phone,” he said, and in the background I could hear laughter.
“Is everybody in the office listening to this?” I demanded.
“Of course not,” Steve told me. “Everybody couldn’t fit inside the office. I had to patch you through to the outside speaker.”
I seriously considered shooting myself right about then, but I was afraid if I did, Tammy would eat my body before I could have the Christian burial my mother would have wanted for me. I contented myself with wiping bits of damp potato chips off the dashboard and the inside of the windshield while I reminded Steve of our predetermined rescue plan. He assured me that he was standing by, waiting for my check in, and he’d bail me out with the urgent message about my sick child.
It was a short job interview, and the old taxi’s springs creaked as Tammy crawled back in beside me.
“Well, that was a waste of time!”
“The job already filled?” I asked, as she grabbed the potato chip bag, searched inside and found it empty, then tilted it up to her mouth to pour in any last crumbs.
“I forgot I worked here last year. It didn’t work out, and they said they have a strict policy about rehires.”
She crunched the empty bag into a ball and threw it out the window, then wiped off at least half the dregs that clung to her face, smiled and scooted even closer to me, if that was possible.
“Anyway,” she said, “who needs a job, right?
With that she groped me in a way that produced a reaction in certain parts of my anatomy that I had only experienced once before, during a long, cold winter spent in Minnesota.
“Uh, yeah. Hey, I need to check in with my dispatcher, we’re supposed to call in every half hour. It’s a security thing, with so many robberies and all.”
It took me a couple of attempts to reach past her and get to the microphone, and as I keyed the button, Tammy started blowing in my ear. At that point, the parts of me that had been experiencing shrinkage just said the hell with it and left for Antarctica. I really envied that young man on his first night in prison.
“309,” I said into the microphone, only to be greeted with silence. Or maybe I couldn’t hear a reply with Tammy’s tongue and some leftover potato chip crumbs working their down my ear canal toward my brain.
I waited for a moment while Tammy asked me how I felt about cats, since she had six of them.
“309,” I repeated. Where was Steve? It wasn’t that big of an office.
“309.” By now I was almost pleading for a response.
Eventually, Steve’s welcome voice came over the radio, a verbal beacon in the sea of darkness that had overtaken my life.
“309, is that you?”
“Yes, calling in with a Code 29.”
“Code what, 309?”
“A Code 29.”
“Is this cab 29 or cab 309?”
I mentally cursed Steve, as I said, “It’s cab 309, calling in with a Code 29.”
“Oh, 309! Is that you, Nick?”
“Yeah, Steve, it’s me.”
“What did you need, 309?”
“I was calling in with a Code 29.”
“Code 29?”
“Yes, a Code 29.”
“Stand by, 309.”
I had gone past mentally cursing Steve and moved on to cursing his mother, his father, his wife, his children, and his family dog.
Finally, he returned to the radio.
“Uh, 309?”
“Yes, Steve.”
“I just checked the code books, and I can’t find any reference to a Code 29. Did you mean a Code 9?”
“No, a Code 29. Two-Nine.”
“Stand by, 309.”
How could it take only twenty minutes to drive to Tammy’s destination, but two hours to drive back to her home? And was two hours long enough?
“Cab 309?”
“Yes, Steve.”
“Listen, I talked to everybody here. I talked to Maury, I talked to Sandra, the bookkeeper, I talked to George out in the garage, and I even talked to the boss. Nobody here has ever heard of a Code 29.”
A large dump truck was coming at us from the opposite direction, and I considered swerving into its path, but I was pretty sure I’d wind up an invalid and Tammy would be my caregiver.
“Anyway, 309, I have an important message. Can you copy?”
“Yes, I can copy,” I said eagerly.
Good old Steve. He had to have his fun at my expense, but he was coming through in the end. He wouldn’t let me down.
“Actually, I have three messages here for you. Can you copy?”
“Yes, Steve, I can copy!”
“Okay, hang on a second. Oh, here they are. The first one’s from Bill, the manager. He said things are really slow today so you can take the rest of the day off. He said it’s going to be slow tonight too, so just go ahead and take your cab home so you can get an early start in the morning.”
My heart fell down to the empty place in my body where my scrotum used to live before it moved to Antarctica.
“Oh yeah, here’s another message. This one’s from Maury. He said that you being a single dad and all, you need a break. So him and his wife are picking up your son from school and he’s spending the night with their boys.”
Where was that dump truck? I’d take my chances, at this point.
“And the third message is from me,” said Steve. “Actually, it’s a quote I read someplace – ‘Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.’”
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And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.
Thought For The Day – The worst dates make the best stories.
