BEHIND the WHEEL, confessions of a cabbie
-Rikki Weaver
I’ve started working for RSVP Taxi, and, let me tell you, it’s something else. I didn’t know where to turn. I was driven by the industrial illness known as ambition. The present was blinded by the future beacon. Man, I was miserable. A real 9-to-5er. I had a roof over my head, but no soul in my heart. I was just another assembly-line slave in shambles and shackles. Then things changed. While engaged in my daily drag-ass sunrise routine, post-stunted-shut-eye, I trawled through the morning edition of the ROXETTE GAZETTE, not expecting to find a thing that could remotely pique my prick. Is it just me, or does it seem that the so-called news is anything but new? The world’s a real hotheaded mess. Some call it chaos; I call it stasis. A sticky hot swamp mess. A predictable plateau of circular violence drearily revolving. You’d think the idiots would get it together by now, but what can you do? You can’t fix stupidity, cupidity, or humidity, and you can’t change the weather. However, you can choose to put down the newspaper and plug the ears while screaming, “Get me off this treadmill called Dullsville, Earth.” Lucky for me, though, that particular morning I did not put down the newspaper, plug my ears with flange and shrapnel, and start screaming at the top of my lungs as was par for my typical cussed morning c(o)urse, and it changed things. Yessir, things changed, because right there next to my favorite comic strip, FIGGY’S FEAR FACTORY, was an opportunity I could not refuse. Right there, next to FIGGY flanging bubbles at an anthropomorphic doo-doo and bringing laughter to my tears, was a classified ad for RSVP Taxi:
$$$$$$$$$$ at a ‘dead end’ job ? CALLING all down-and-outers for the oil change of a lifetime nothing shy of a real deal transformation from Caddie to Cabbie Cadaver to Cabbie Codger to Cabbie Cad to Cabbie sick of feeling like a ‘meter maid’ ? like ‘taxidermy’ ? are you feeling like the time is now to run the taximeter ? then scoot your caboose down to RSVP taxi ASAP and accept the invitation to join our ‘elite fleet’ be a DRIVER not a PASSENGER on the road of life ‘best seat in the house’ guaranteed !
let’s get this ‘show on the road’ at RSVP Taxi !
$$$$$$$$$$
I knew I’d be a loose nut behind the wheel if I did not switch gears and change career lanes. What did I have to lose? It’s been a wild ride ever since. Driving a taxi is totally topsy-turvy and I love every second of it. While factories failed me, I find no fault on asphalt. And I’ve also found that I love meeting the people, whether they be the usual suspects to the extraordinary terrestrials. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you about the colorful birds I’ve met and the adventures I’ve had since I became a full-time cabbie at RSVP Taxi. I’ll tell you anyway. I will share just a single snapshot (a picture’s worth a thousand pictures, right?) from my disparate dispatches on the heterogeneous highway, and maybe you will see that RSVP is right for you too:
THE DEATH OF A CASH MAN
A Cash Man calls for a taxi and gets in taxicab No. 1729 (my taxi). I call my taxi Pucker, due to the sound the blower makes. The Cash Man calls it nothing. He doesn’t bother to ask me the name of my taxi. He doesn’t even bother to notice the number of my taxi. He seems withdrawn and weary. I ask him his name. Cash Man says his name is Duffy and he has some problems to call his own. I tell Duffy that it doesn’t surprise me one bit that a man named Duffy caught up in the occupation of a Cash Man has problems. His double-breasted ruffles ought to file a missing report on its decorative buttons. His tie sports hangnail threads mistook for pulled pork tonguings. The general air of fluster Duffy’s fatiguable presence exhales steams the Lexan. The lanolin fumbles off from his royal crown. Dirt and trash lots congregate around his starched. In lazyman’s terms, the guy looks disheveled. I asked Duffy what kind of problems a Cash Man like himself could have. I could not believe his answer:
“Clearly, the moment of impact was not long ago. You, sly as a therapist, have seen my ruffles and taken note of my missing disks. I have watched your eyes rove over my poppings and tongues. My buds and buttons may have popped, but they were luxury buttons, and there’s more from where they came. To be certain, there are plenty more buttons, but no more for me. Let buttons be bygones, for from now on I shall only button my lips. What more can I say? I have lost it all - faculties, reason, buttons and baubles. “I returned home to my father, Kipp Hemphelm, and my son, Biff Adrift, after a lengthy spell of door-to-door cashings, only to find things, how do I say, rearranged?” “Rearranged? How do you mean?” I prodded, therapist that I was. “Well, for starters, they were preoccupied with giving my wife an above-ground burial.” “An above-ground burial?” “Yes, after a preemptive strike directed at matriarchy demanded by the complicit paranoid delusion infecting my father and son, my wife had perished. I walked in the door with a ‘honey I’m home,’ only to find my beloved’s calves to toenails pushing up the periwinkles towards the heavens like some kind of corpse in Figgy’s grotesque factory of mildly comical fear. ‘You worms, what on earth have you done?’ I shrieked, while the scratches of trauma scarred my heart. “‘We’ve only done what we’ve been told to do, brother.’ “‘But we (pointing at Hemp) are father and son, and (turning to Biff) father and son. We are family, but we are not brothers. You are mistaken!’ I exclaimed. “‘It is you who is mistaken, Duffy, for we are all brothers in the red glaze of hell, in the upturned gravel of a Krispy Kreme parking lot on Brainerd Road. The donuts march no more. The shoppe is closed; the red hell remains in filled cake, beads of sweat of brothers screaming at one another on the eternal battlefield. An orange traffic cone amplifies our battle cries.’ “‘What of progress, of miracles, and of beauty and creation? Why would you disintegrate to this monkey state of bald heads and rebel yells? Has he been telling you things again?’ “‘Yeah, brother, he has been telling us things again, through the dividends of miracles.’ “‘But…but, my heart hurts at this definitive desecration upon my beloved blemish of beauty. I look around in disbelief and despair; I see my wife’s toes sticking out of the ground, and my father and son dressed in matching parkas with shaved heads and calling one another “brothers.” I don’t know what to do! I’m in hysterics! I’ll probably parka my eyes out! You two have lost it completely! I can see you have been listening to him again…Wh-why this crime? Why now and why her?’ “‘Gee, pops, why don’t you ask her?’
“Cabbie, I’m not proud of what I did after that, but I don’t regret it either. In fact, I’ve never regretted a thing. I’ve lived my days too blind to remember my crimes, let alone regret them. “I do remember that fateful evening tho. I took my son Duffy, or Biff, or whatever our name is, and knocked his block off. He was wino blotto after I socked it to im. “I didn’t stop there. His head hit the hardwood, and he said something smart like, ‘I deserved that,’ and I really started railing into that punk kid of mine. I mean, just wailing on him. And the sap cried out, ‘Dad, Dad, no… what are you doing? Stop!’ in some sort of loss-of-bowels panic response that made me see red. You better believe it. Here was the person who had killed my wife, the only person on this whole rotten Earth I got along with, and he was telling me how much was too much when it came to his own goddamned punishment. One punch: he says he deserved it. Two, three, four, five, six, ahhh, you can count I’m sure, cabbie… and he was yelping, STOP STOP! “I tell ya, cabbie, these are sick times we live in, when man-family thinks he don’t deserve a proper wailing after committing matricide. So I beat him, my father, to death, and my son too. On account of what they’ve done.” “Cash Man.” “Yea, cabbie?” “I’ve got to ask you something.” “Shoot.” “Matricide is a damnable crime.” “That’s what I’ve been saying all along.” “And I agree with you. But doubt pokes at me concerning your ill-tempered actions. How does your act of patricide and filicide in the name of revenge repair that error of corrupt complicity that your father and son committed?” “It wasn’t my fault; he had been telling me things again, reverend.” “Who is this person who tells three generations of violent male members of the Cash Man family to off each other?” He tilted his head back and laughed. “What’s so funny, Duffy?” “Reverend, he ain’t a person, got me?” “What is he then?” “That I ain’t so sure of. I suppose you could call him…a personality.” “A personality?” “Yea, a personality. A good guy to have hanging around. A card. Brightens the room. Smiles when he’s down.” “A bright smiling card?” “Precisely, rev-y. He’s a bright smiling card… in an upside-down sort of way.” “We talking turkey?” “No, we’re talking tarot. He’s the hanging man.” “Not the hangman?” “Oh, yea, I misspoke, the hangman, not the hanging man. He’s the Hang Man. “And look, cabbie! He’s coming our way right now.” That was no lie. The Hang Man was on his way over, drifting like a DJ over the ashes and ruins of wartraces. I was about to abandon ship, when Cash Man wrapped his fingerlings around my fingers squeezing, “Don’t be afraid. I can see it in his wide open eyes concealed beneath his hood that the Hang Man likes you. You’ve got some personality yourself, doctor. We think you might be fit for our team. The table is set. One seat remains to be filled. That’s the driver’s seat. And we think you’re just the man for that job. Keep your eyes on the Hang Man. The ‘unveiling’ has begun.” The Hang Man slowly slipped his executioner’s pillowcase off. I recognized the man behind the mask. I was face to face with the Dispatcher from RSVP Taxi. I turned around to face the Cash Man, and realized it was not the Cash Man at all, but my boss. “Guys, what gives? Is this some elaborate process to persuade me to apply to RSVP Taxi? Get it together. You already hired me. I’m on your side. I’m on the driver’s side. I’m behind the wheel of life, and I’m grateful for the work.” “You are still in your 90-day ‘evaluation period.’” “I thought my whole jockeying for position phase was over. What is this? Some prank? Duffy, I know you don’t have a family. You made that whole thing up, didn’t you? And, Reg (the Dispatcher -editor’s note), how’d you learn to drift like that? You guys are something else. Let me get back to work. I’m trying to make some moola out here on these mean streets, and you yucksters are blocking my bucksters.” There was no reply. No Dispatcher drifting, and no Cash Man confessing. I had been addressing two phantoms. It’d been what we call in the business, a ‘ghost ride.’ I looked back at Pucker’s back seat. In place of Duffy’s phantom was a meek man in a Noodle Tie apprehensively asking me, as though I was some kind of wild spotted animal about to pounce, “Would it be too much of a bother to let me out here?” “Not quite yet, wimp. How’d you smuggle your way in here anyway?” “What do you mean? I flagged you down and you picked me up. You asked me where I was going, but it’s you who should be asked where you’re going. My god, cabbie, you’ve been talking macabre poppycock about brothers who are fathers who are sons who are conspiring under orders from a hovering hooded executioner who is really a dispatcher to kill their mother ever since you started the meter. Not to mention you’ve been cruising at a snail’s pace. I am in a rather dreadful hurry. Please let me out here. I fear you may be mad.” “Now see here! You call me a liar and a lunatic and expect me to let you out without defending my position? Listen to my side of the story. Okay. I might have changed some things in the story around, but I did not tell a lie. You see, the truth is, I am the Cash Man’s Wife. I’ve done what I could to make my sons proud and to pave the way for a secure future. I’ve gone door-to-door for fifty years selling CASH and I come home to my two sons flanging bubbles at blue bouquets of ornamentals engaged in a mock funeral for yours truly. You call that a poetic act?” “…No.” “That’s cause it ain’t! It’s as stained with sickness as a preschoolteacher’s smock, and I saw right there and then that my two sons Kipp and Biff would never follow in my footsteps. Footsteps are an impossibility. We’ve done away with feet entirely. Don’t you read the ROXETTE? We are soldered onto our machines now. Our brains are computers; we’ve lost what made us human. No intellect, no intuition, no intimacy, just cold hard inflexible computations. I call it ‘switching gears.’ I made the right choice getting behind this wheel. It’s not just the right choice for me, but for every wretched human-computer-pea-brain on this doomed dull planet. I won’t clock out until I’ve picked everyone up and given them a chance to take a spin on the wheel of truth. Nausea kicks in only when the spin is resisted. We must embrace the gravitronic momentum. We must ‘roll with the punches.’ Enjoy the potholes and blowouts. “The wheels endure the pitfalls gracefully. “An automobile sends four wheels to represent Earth, Air, Water, and Fire.” “What of the fifth element, the Aether? The quintessence?” “The fifth element is you and me, Noodle.” “And your phantoms…are they part of the quintessence as well?” “And my phantoms. Damn right, Noodle! And all the saps we’re about to pick up and highbeam the honest-to-god truth at! We are the quinta essentia! We are dissipating in speaking as raw energy barrels onwards. Life is a spirit, a wisp of smoke in the strange turgid and torrential cosmic swell. Life is a whelm of stipple-over meanwhile the dead infinite universe surrounding us collides with itself. We are the spirits at the mercy of momentum. Absent at our own funerals. Too cheap to cry. Too incorporeal to die. We are life - the last specks of it. You and I are going to show them.” “Now, I didn’t sign up for this, m’am. Could you please let me out here?” “Damn you, no! You’re staying put while this Town Clown rolls round Clown Town and piles every last grain of human ordure into this Clown Car. You’re along for this ride whether you like it or not. You, me, and a billion million other fools crammed into this cab are going to laugh our way into the next millennium, dead or alive! If you fail to see the fun in my little plan, then it’s you who is the true clown. You shall be the Noodle King for a Day. And I shall be your Judge. Ordure in the court!” “How about this, cabbie? I’ll tip you reeeeal nice, around 20%, if you just let me out here. Deal or no deal?” “NO DEAL! This ain’t Cash Cab, and I’m no Cash Woman. I don’t accept cash for my servitude. My days of CASH are over! I am a servant.” Still driving, I turn to face Noodle. I pull out a gun and push it against his nose. “Answer me honestly and straightforward for once in your life, you coward. What does it mean to be a servant?” “I suppose, to be a servant, means to serve.” “You nailed it right on the clown nose! Follow-up question: what am I?” “A servant, as far as you are telling me.” “Right you are! Hate to break your brain with a million and one questions, but what kind of servant am I, exactly?” “I don’t know, m’am.” “You don’t know?” “Correct, mah..m..ahm. I don’t know. You haven’t told me what kind of servant you are.” “WRONG! I’ve been practically beating you over the head with what kind of servant I am since Duffy dissolved and you materialized on Pucker’s back seat.” I had the impulse to beat Noodle with the butt of the pistol, but I played it cool and shot holes through the moonroof instead. Someone inside was telling me that me and this guy were going to make waves if we could only hit the ground running. I could see it now: Surf n’ Turf Tough with Noodle and Rikki, running down and over dreams behind the wheel of fun. “Since you can’t see straight past your Noodle Tie, I’ll you tell you what kind of servant I am. I am a quiet servant. A servant of the truth. And a quiet servant doesn’t charge for her services. No true servant of the quiet truth charges for their services. We are destined for the driver’s seat, in control and at your command, your beck and call, at… your service.” “If you are at my service, then please let me out here.” “No can do. We are on our way to the truth.” “I hate your truth.” He triggered my gut weak reflex; I hit him in the nose with the butt of the pistol. The words “you will know my truth” gritted through my teeth. I settled back to admire my work: “Now look at you, a regular old clown with a regular old red clown nose and a Noodle Tie and a briefcase, on his way to a hump seat view of pure truth on the ride of truth.” I looked out the window. That’s when I saw her. She had legs, and pipes, and fingers, and lips. But no feet. Just like me. Just like the world. Noodle was holding his broken nose and whimpering about it. “Noodle, shhh. Quiet! I’m going to pick this bingo up. Now shut your mouth about your pain or I’ll endbutt ya again! We’re on the same team, Noodle. Going down the same road. Quiet servants, remember?” Noodle continued to whimper. I took his response as an affirmative. I pushed open the back passenger door towards her with my putty arm. “Get in, sugar.” She got in. “Thanks for the lift.” “No prob bob. Where you headed?” “It’s not where I’m headed, but where I’m coming from that’s important.” “Aw yea?” I adjusted my putty mirror to saw through her sockets. “And-ah where’s yah coming from, sugar?” “Easy. I made a little sound in the montage of surveillance.” “I thought my ears were burning.” “A lot of chicks feel that way.” “We only feel because we can’t.” “It’s not our fault.” “It never is.” A sigh raptured. She shook me like an 8-ball. Then she read aloud my response:
“No can do.” She shook me again. Again:
“No can do.” And again and again. Always:
“No can do.”
Flustered, she said, “Why the hell not?” “Because we are on the way to the truth.” “Oh! Does that mean that we have entered the-“ “Yes, we have.” “Good golly.” “You ain’t whistling Dixie.” Noodle had been watching our exchange with a puzzle piece furrow. He couldn’t hold it in any longer, “I can’t understand a word you two are saying. I’m stumped. What have we entered?” I looked Noodle’s wimpy and bloody rear-view-mirror-reflection in the eyes. “We have entered Rush Hour.” “Good golly.” “You ain’t whistling Dixie.” Naturally, things started to heat up. Rush Hour is always such a blur of action that I always feel a blues hangover after it’s over. If you’ve never been down our road, you wouldn’t know. Let’s just say, it was very necessary to get to the truth in time before Rush Hour did us in. Too late. The rest I can barely recall. Some days some pieces come back. Those are the hard days. I’d rather forget it all:
. past silk. brother against brother. five hundred foot drop into traffic. thin veil of pierce crown
exposure-suit low on thin ice in early fact. fire craning the diesel at high-speed oxygen arc cutting.
torch scoping visions within virtual nightvision.
dripping infinite hail of flashing before revving the engin.
tilting degradation down grave. in the nick of
time a.s appraisal and a. hail of foley artist cocking back a.t the moment
of invincible holding. patterns
of basic. primacy
upholstery ripped to shreds by the extinct resurrection.
sub-vocal lip reader. gu shoulder hoist humped in harness’ EMT vial touch. trigger pairingg.
concrete dental spread reaching extinction. absorbed in a conversation. darkened terrace. drifting mentalist.
dark alley ceramics. paper “sccuzzy g” format. private area private interior ernet.
. fuck off don’t shoot it.
NOBODY doesn’t like guns the same as nobody takes the GUN again
live-in means living hard opine road. what’s in the briefcase?
likes weapons, not toys to get
reams panting again.
. hands off
the briefcase greasing what.
we witnes sub-draft right. down. the p. line. o uu a gambler? unspool ancient dark corners. missing wall. puts his fist z ipper reloads. . am m s ugar froth o s g vito lope creeping harboring a secret to be t he BRIDE out the window into oblivion nto the works smashing his face right into the ext. wou nd-the wretch in my hands
holding in the dying echo slicing the gestate stitching gun gun gang ride curb pock hard stolen kisses for money. . fuck don’t shoot it.
Wow. What a rush. Glad that hour was over. But where was gun? Where was cash? Where was Pucker? Where was Noodle? What was he hiding in his briefcase? What color was his Noodle Tie? Where was the sugar bingo I picked up? And what was her name? Cleo? Pilate? Kalmgari? Tunichburg? Dough?
It had been a shift of violent scattering and blurry rushes. I’m not going to lie-I was a tad tuckered out. I turned in No. 1729, minus the cab. I said goodnight to the Hang Man, and headed home. I’d rather forget it all…
(RIKKI will return in THE BRIDE SAMPLE)
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