Taxi Driver
Another broken scene in what passes for my life occurs on Wednesday, seemingly pointing to someone’s fault, though whose I can’t be sure. Stuck in gridlock in a cab heading downtown toward Wall Street after a power breakfast at the Regency with Peter Russell, who used to be my dealer before he got a real job, and Eddie Lambert. Russell was wearing a two-button wool sport coat by Redaelli, a cotton shirt by Hackert, a silk tie by Richel, pleated wool trousers by Krizia Uomo and leather Cole-Haan shoes. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about girls in the fourth grade who trade sex for crack and I almost canceled with Lambert and Russell to catch it. Russell ordered for me while I was in the lobby on the phone. It was, unfortunately, a high-fat, high-sodium breakfast and before I could comprehend what was happening, plates of herbed waffles with ham in Madeira cream sauce, grilled sausages and sour cream coffee cake were set at our table and I had to ask the waiter for a pot of decaf herbal tea, a plate of sliced mango with blueberries and a bottle of Evian. In the early morning light that poured through the windows at the Regency I watched as our waiter shaved black truffles gracefully over Lambert’s steaming eggs. Overcome, I broke down and demanded to have the black truffles shaved over my mango slices. Nothing much happened during the breakfast. I had to make another phone call, and when I returned to our table I noticed that a mango slice was missing, but I didn’t accuse anyone. I had other things on my mind: how to help America’s schools, the trust gap, desk sets, a new era of possibilities and what’s in it for me, getting tickets to see Sting in The Threepenny Opera, which just opened on Broadway, how to take more and remember less …
In the cab I’m wearing a double-breasted cashmere and wool overcoat by Studio 000.1 from Ferré, a wool suit with pleated trousers by DeRigueur from Schoeneman, a silk tie by Givenchy Gentleman, socks by Interwoven, shoes by Armani, reading the Wall Street Journal with my Ray-Ban sunglasses on and listening to a Walkman with a Bix Beiderbecke tape playing in it. I put down the Journal, pick up the Post, just to check Page Six. At the light on Seventh and Thirty-fourth, in the cab next to this one sits, I think, Kevin Gladwin, wearing a suit by Ralph Lauren. I lower my sunglasses. Kevin looks up from the new issue of Money magazine and spots me looking over at him in a curious way before his cab moves forward in the traffic. The cab I’m in suddenly breaks free of the gridlock and turns right on Twenty-seventh, taking the West Side Highway down to Wall Street. I put the paper down, concentrate on the music and the weather, how unseasonably cool it is, and I’m just beginning to notice the way the cabdriver looks at me in the rearview mirror. A suspicious, hungry expression keeps changing the features on his face—a mass of clogged pores, ingrown hairs. I sigh, expecting this, ignoring him. Open the hood of a car and it will tell you something about the people who designed it, is just one of many phrases I’m tortured by.
But the driver knocks on the plexiglass divider, motions to me. While taking the Walkman off I notice he’s locked all the doors—I see the locks lower in a flash, hear the hollow clicking noise, the moment I turn the volume off. The cab is speeding faster than it should down the highway, in the far right lane. “Yes?” I ask irritably. “What?”
“Hey, don’t I know you?” he asks in a thick, barely penetrable accent that could easily be either New Jersey or Mediterranean.
“No.” I start putting the Walkman back on.
“You look familiar,” he says. “What’s your name?”
“No I don’t. You don’t either,” I say, then, an afterthought, “Chris Hagen.”
“Come on.” He’s smiling like there’s something wrong. “I know who you are.”
“I’m in a movie. I’m an actor,” I tell him. “A model.”
“Nah, that’s not it,” he says grimly.
“Well”—I lean over, checking his name—“Abdullah, do you have a membership at M.K.?”
He doesn’t answer. I reopen the Post to a photo of the mayor dressed as a pineapple, then close it again and rewind the tape in my Walkman. I start counting to myself—one, two, three, four—my eyes focus in on the meter. Why didn’t I carry a gun with me this morning? Because I didn’t think I had to. The only weapon on me is a used knife from last night.
“No,” he says again. “I’ve seen your face somewhere.”
Finally, exasperated, I ask, trying to appear casual, “You have? Really? Interesting. Just watch the road, Abdullah.”
There’s a long, scary pause while he stares at me in the rearview mirror and the grim smile fades. His face is blank. He says, “I know. Man, I know who you are,” and he’s nodding, his mouth drawn tight. The radio that was tuned in to the news is shut off.
Buildings pass by in a gray-red blur, the cab passes other cabs, the sky changes color from blue to purple to black back to blue. At another light—a red one he races straight through—we pass, on the other side of the West Side Highway, a new D’Agostino’s on the corner where Mars used to be and it moves me to tears, almost, because it’s something that’s identifiable and I get as nostalgic for the market (even though it’s not one I will ever shop at) as I have about anything and I almost interrupt the driver, tell him to pull over, have him let me out, let him keep the change from a ten—no, a twenty—but I can’t move because he’s driving too fast and something intervenes, something unthinkable and ludicrous, and I hear him say it, maybe. “You’re the guy who kill Solly.” His face is locked into a determined grimace. As with everything else, the following happens very quickly, though it feels like an endurance test.
I swallow, lower my sunglasses and tell him to slow down before asking, “Who, may I ask, is Sally?”
“Man, your face is on a wanted poster downtown,” he says, unflinching.
“I think I would like to stop here,” I manage to croak out.
“You’re the guy, right?” He’s looking at me like I’m some kind of viper.
Another cab, its light on, empty, cruises past ours, going at least eighty. I’m not saying anything, just shaking my head. “I am going to take”—I swallow, trembling, open my leather datebook, pull out a Mount Blanc pen from my Bottega Veneta briefcase—“your license number down …”
“You kill Solly,” he says, definitely recognizing me from somewhere, cutting another denial on my part by growling, “You son-of-a-bitch.”
Near the docks downtown he swerves off the highway and races the cab toward the end of a deserted parking area and it hits me somewhere, now, this moment, when he drives into and then over a dilapidated, rust-covered aluminum fence, heading toward water, that all I have to do is put the Walkman on, blot out the sound of the cabdriver, but my hands are twisted into paralyzed fists that I can’t unclench, held captive in the cab as it hurtles toward a destination only the cabdriver, who is obviously deranged, knows. The windows are rolled down partially and I can feel the cool morning air drying the mousse on my scalp. I feel naked, suddenly tiny. My mouth tastes metallic, then it gets worse. My vision: a winter road. But I’m left with one comforting thought: I am rich—millions are not.
“You’ve, like, incorrectly identified me,” I’m saying.
He stops the cab and turns around toward the backseat. He’s holding a gun, the make of which I don’t recognize. I’m staring at him, my quizzical expression changing into something else.
“The watch. The Rolex,” he says simply.
I listen, silent, squirming in my seat.
He repeats, “The watch.”
“Is this some kind of prank?” I ask.
“Get out,” he spits. “Get the f*ck out of the car.”
I stare past the driver’s head, out the windshield, at gulls flying low over the dark, wavy water, and opening the door I step out of the cab, cautiously, no sudden moves. It’s a cold day. My breath steams, wind picks it up, swirls it around.
“The watch, you scumbag,” he says, leaning out the window, the gun aimed at my head.
“Listen, I don’t know what you think you’re doing or what you’re exactly trying to accomplish or what it is you think you’re going to be able to do. I’ve never been fingerprinted, I have alibis—”
“Shut up,” Abdullah growls, cutting me off. “Just shut your f*cking mouth.”
“I am innocent,” I shout with utter conviction.
“The watch.” He cocks the gun.
I unhook the Rolex and, sliding it off my wrist, hand it to him.
“Wallet.” He motions with his gun. “Just the cash.”
Helplessly I take out my new gazelleskin wallet and quickly, my fingers freezing, numb, hand him the cash, which amounts to only three hundred dollars since I didn’t have time to stop at an automated teller before the power breakfast. Solly, I’m guessing, was the cabdriver I killed during the chase scene last fall, even though that guy was Armenian. I suppose I could have killed another one and I am just not recalling this particular incident.
“What are you going to do?” I ask. “Isn’t there a reward of some kind?”
“No. No reward,” he mutters, shuffling the bills with one hand, the gun, still pointed at me, in the other.
“How do you know I’m not going to call you in and get your license revoked?” I ask, handing over a knife I just found in my pocket that looks as if it was dipped into a bowl of blood and hair.
“Because you’re guilty,” he says, and then, “Get that away from me,” waving the gun at the stained knife.
“Like you know,” I mutter angrily.
“The sunglasses.” He points again with the gun.
“How do you know I’m guilty?” I can’t believe I’m asking this patiently.
“Look what you’re doing, a*shole,” he says. “The sunglasses.”
“These are expensive,” I protest, then sigh, realizing the mistake. “I mean cheap. They’re very cheap. Just … Isn’t the money enough?”
“The sunglasses. Give them now,” he grunts.
I take the Wayfarers off and hand them to him. Maybe I really did kill a Solly, though I’m positive that any cabdrivers I’ve killed lately were not American. I probably did. There probably is a wanted poster of me at … where, the taxi—the place where all the taxis congregate? What’s it called? The driver tries the sunglasses on, looks at himself in the rearview mirror and then takes them off. He folds the glasses and puts them in his jacket pocket.
“You’re a dead man.” I smile grimly at him.
“And you’re a yuppie scumbag,” he says.
“You’re a dead man, Abdullah,” I repeat, no joke. “Count on it.”
“Yeah? And you’re a yuppie scumbag. Which is worse?”
He starts the cab up and pulls away from me.
While walking back to the highway I stop, choke back a sob, my throat tightens. “I just want to …” Facing the skyline, through all the baby talk, I murmur, “keep the game going.” As I stand, frozen in position, an old woman emerges behind a Threepenny Opera poster at a deserted bus stop and she’s homeless and begging, hobbling over, her face covered with sores that look like bugs, holding out a shaking red hand. “Oh will you please go away?” I sigh. She tells me to get a haircut.