 Tuesday Afternoon Downtown is where the business is supposed to be. Out here in Oakland at least, it's just a rumor. Last week, for instance, I found myself downtown. I called into dispatch to get in line for any calls coming in downtown. I was third in line I think. So, I went to the BART cabstand to wait it out (the SF Bay Area equivalent of a subway). I got lucky and was only fifth in the cabstand line. It may not sound like much, but... well actually it isn't much to speak of. I had a long wait ahead, and I settled down with a novel, lit a cigarette, and tried to wiggle around until my ass found a comfortable place in the seat that so many other drivers and cops before me had broken in. After about 20 minutes of careful impersonation of patience, I had reached second place in the cabstand line. The dispatch line hadn't moved an inch. I had just gotten out to stretch my legs and get the circulation working in my ass, when a pile of young kids approached the Indian who was ahead of me in the cabstand line, looking for a cab. There were six of them though, and he didn't want to take the chance on some cop getting overzealous about some esoteric seatbelt law and busting his ass. I couldn't blame him. I could see where he was coming from even... but, nonetheless, I didn't really give a shit myself. "Sure, I'll take you, if you think you can pile in..." I offered. They smiled, and giggled, and generally seemed to be having a good time about it. Five of them piled into the backseat, and the skinny girl with the steel rimmed teeth climbed into the front with me. She was even kind of cute, in a sort of barely-pubescent Black/Mexican ghetto-trash gangsta-wanna-be kind of way ( a personal defect of taste that it's better not to go into... ). As I tried to wedge the cab back out into traffic though, to take the lot of 'em out to Alameda ( a sort of quaint island in the bay between Oakland and SF), she looked at me and said "Hey, you kind of look like the Backstreet Boys..." Now, I should've kicked the lot of them the fuck out of my cab right there. And next time, I will... but that day I was desperate for money... Every driver I've ever asked about how he got robbed... has started his story with 'well, I was desperate for a fare, and...' . We all swear we'll know better than that when the time comes... and yet cabbies get killed every week in this fucking business... Anyway, I let it slide. "Well, that's quite the... insult..." I answered... and let it slide. I even let her change the radio station, which wasn't such a big deal since everything I'd been able to find sucked... And I followed her directions, glancing occasionally at her classically pretty friend, sitting on the lap of one of the guys of the group, her face pressed up against the shield and staring at me in the rearview... I followed their directions to what turned out to be a section 8 housing project... I'd never seen a project in sunny Alameda before, so I tried not to think too much about the implications. I tried to be noble, and not let the stereotypes cloud my noble instincts. The fare was $8, and as I pulled up in the parking lot, and they started, understandably, trying to unpack themselves, I waited patiently, watching to spot which one was gonna reach into a pocket to pay me... and... maybe that one... oh yeah, that guy seems to be... no... no, they're all just spreading into a wider and wider circle... So I got out. I cut the engine, pulled the key, ignored the rear door some of the kids'd left open, and just followed them into the parking lot. I was outnumbered 6 to 1, though only 3 were guys, and even they didn't look like they were fully grown, maybe 16 year olds at best... but, as they giggled, and ran 10 steps each in various directions, and then looked back over their shoulders to gauge if they were the ones that were going to be playing tag... and giggled some more, I just couldn't be bothered. I felt like I was 12 again, and playing on the playground. Only I knew that charges would be pressed against me if I caught any of them... because I was liable to break bones. But they were too cute. Kids playing tag on the playground... less serious even than I was that night in Mexico City when I couldn't get the waitress to bring me a check at a bar, and so I wandered right out the door and blew off paying... It was rather poignant really, in an art flick sort of way. It was a good thing I didn't bother to carry my gun to work. Target shooting would've been just too tempting. In the end I just couldn't take the scene seriously enough, over $8, to go chasing after them. And besides, I'd worn my Mexican sandals that day, and they were so broken down they'd've fallen off my feet inside of 10 feet of pursuit, and I'd've wound up chasing them barefoot through the upscale-neighborhood-low-income-housing-project parking lot... So I let them go. And the next day, as I was simmering, bored again at the downtown cabstand, I decided I was gonna indulge my asshole tendencies. I still had the ID of yet another asshole who'd been taken away in handcuffs without paying me the $50 he'd owed me... and I noticed one of the cops who'd been there that day on the corner. The one who'd been telling the story about the guy taking a shit in the middle of the civic center... So I left my cab unattended in the truck loading zone, outside the cabstand, which is yet another technically ticketable offense, figuring that going to talk to a cop was a reasonable excuse... and I sauntered on up to him. After a quick re-cap of that wonderful day, he remembered who I was. "So, yeah... the bastard still hasn't given me my money... so, I was wondering, if I just give you this ID of his, can you slap him with a fare evasion ticket, or whatever you do with that?..." He just nodded, and then shook his head, and then sort of grinned. "Yeah... I remember, and I'm sorry to see you not get your money... but no, he went to jail alright... he's facing felony charges for fraud. It turns out that he'd been pulling that con for months, depositing money, and then going around to bank after bank to withdraw more funds than he'd deposited before the system could catch up with him..." He shrugged. "So... fare evasion wouldn't make a fuck-wad of difference to him at this point??" I asked... seeing the writing on the walls more clearly than I would've liked. "You know... odds are they wouldn't even bother to prosecute it, with him facing a felony like that... I'm sorry." And he did genuinely look sorry. And mildly amused. And I noticed he had an OPD turtleneck, with some nice embroidery, under his flak jacket, under his uniform. He was one fly mother fucker... kind of looked like Louis Gossett Jr., as a matter of fact. "Yeah... well, I guess I'll hold onto his ID myself then..." I muttered, and went back to my cab. It works alright as a bookmark... I do a lot of reading still. Christ knows I'm not gonna go out of my way to make sure to give good service to the cab clientele of the city these days. Fuck 'em... I dread what kind of desperate, bad decisions I'll make on the day I finish a book before the day is out though. God forbid I should forget to be an asshole... the Old Waybills there's No Place Like Home... You gotta be shitting me Alex |