Call Me a Cab

13

By six-thirty, we were barely fifty miles into Missouri, with only four hundred on the day, but I was done in. After yesterday’s six-hundred-mile dash, we were now just over a thousand miles from New York, about a third of the way, which was plenty. “Holiday Inn ahead,” I called.

“What? Fine. You’re ready to stop?”

“I’ve been ready to stop.” It had been a grinding day.

“Oh. You should have said something.”

“I’ve just been waiting for a Holiday Inn.”

I had also been thinking about Holiday Inn, and yesterday’s experiences, so as I took the exit ramp I said, “I have a suggestion, if you don’t mind it.”

“Try me.”

“I’ll wait in the car, while you go register.”

“Fine,” she said, as though she’d been privately thinking the same thing. “That would be simpler.”

And so it was. She spent less than five minutes inside, then came out with a pair of keys and my instructions for driving around to our section of the building. Again we were on the second floor — up an outside staircase to the corridor — and again our doors were opposite one another. We agreed to meet at eight for dinner and I went into my room, which was the same room. I mean, the same room as last night, in Ohio. Same furniture in the same layout, same color scheme, same light fixtures, even the same pair of prints on the wall.

No, I can’t say that, I can’t be sure they were exactly the same elaborately framed prints hanging over the bed, because I hadn’t studied last night’s; but the difference between fake Utrillos are so minor anyway that these were essentially the same even if they weren’t. A curving uphill street in a Spanish town, chalky dusty street and buildings, a bit of red curtain in a dark slightly-out-of-focus window. That was one of tonight’s entries; the other didn’t have the bit of red curtain, but in a slightly-out-of-focus doorway it had what was either a sleeping child or a pile of laundry.

You can look at Holiday Inn art only so long, and soon I switched on and to the TV, settling down on the bed to watch the local news. You don’t really get local news in New York, not in that hometown way, because New York is too big and indifferent to anybody’s hometown, even if you were born there and live there without interruption all your life. For an automobile accident, say, to make it on New York’s local news, it has to have taken place on the George Washington Bridge at rush hour, between a truckload of dynamite and a car driven by fleeing terrorists who’ve just kidnapped the Israeli ambassador. And sunk the bridge. In the sticks, for an automobile to make the TV news, all it has to do is hit something. Anything. A fire hydrant will do.

I was observing without much absorption a news item about high school band uniforms when there came a knock at the door. Killing the TV with a jab of my thumb, I went over to open the door and it was Katharine. She looked slightly worried, but trying to hide it, and she said, “Barry would like to talk to you.”

“Barry?” I looked with some alarm down the hall. “Here?”

“On the phone, in my room. I called him.”

“Oh. What’s he want to talk about?”

“He just asked to speak to you.”

Why was she looking so worried? “Okay,” I said, and followed her across the hall. Her room was the same as mine, except the carpet and drapery colors had been reversed. It looked like the same ur-Utrillos on the wall, but I couldn’t get close enough to be sure.

The phone — do they still call that shade of green ‘avocado’? — had been moved with its long cord away from its normal home on the bedside stand over to the round Formica walnut-grain table by the window. I sat on the chair beside it, picked up the receiver, and said, “Hello?”

“Is that the driver?” He sounded less pleasant than when I’d overheard him with Katharine.

“That’s right,” I said.

“This is Barry Gilbert. I didn’t catch your name.”

I didn’t throw it; well, you don’t actually say that, do you? “Thomas Fletcher,” I said.

“I’ve been following your route here, Fletcher,” he said, “and it doesn’t seem to me you’re coming out the quickest way.”

“Oh, no?”

“Why aren’t you down on Interstate 40?”

“I don’t have my maps here with me,” I said. “They’re in the cab. What’s this Interstate 40?” And, listening to myself, I heard with some surprise that I was sounding more tough and more like your standard cabdrivuh than normal. I sounded, in fact, like my father. Now, why was I doing that?

“Interstate 40 is the most direct route,” the bridegroom was saying. “Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, right on into Los Angeles.”

“Oh, yeah, I know the one you mean. I coulda dropped down on 81 from Pennsylvania, picked up 40 down south someplace.” And from the corner of my eye I noticed Katharine now looking relieved, all worry gone. So that was it; she’d been afraid I wouldn’t come across as the cliché cabdriver type she’d been claiming for me, that I’d sound too young or too educated and set off Barry’s jealousy. So here we were in a conspiracy again, this time against her husband-to-be. Was this a healthy relationship?

Meanwhile, our victim was talking highways. “Here you are staying north,” he said, “and there’s no point in it, you’ll only add extra mileage. Tell me something, Fletcher, just between you and me. I know you’re not alone there, so all you have to do is say yes or no. Is this Miss Scott’s idea?”

“No.” He wasn’t the one I was in the conspiracy with.

“Then I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t understand what you’re doing on Route 70.”

“Well, in the first place,” I told him, “I’m driving the cab and you aren’t even the customer. In the second place, it’s summertime and the cab isn’t air-conditioned, so I’d rather do St. Louis than Memphis. And in the third place, my route is just as short. I’ll take 70 out to Utah, then drop down 15 to L.A., and it’ll work out the same within a couple miles.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” I could hear him rustling maps. “I see. I see. Down through Vegas.”

“Right.”

“Is that the idea, Fletcher? You want to see Vegas at somebody else’s expense?”

“You work out the mileage, Mac,” I told him. “And then I tell you what you do. You don’t do any cab driving, and I don’t do any face changing. Here’s your intended.” And I handed the phone to Katharine, saying, “If I was on my way to marry that guy, I’d go by tricycle.”

“He’s just upset,” she said, sotto voce.

So was I. “Do I go criticize his noses?”

“I’ll talk to you later, Tom.” And into the phone she said, “Barry? Are you there?”

Of course he was there; hanging by his thumbs. So long as he wasn’t insulting my map-reading abilities — or my motivations: see Las Vegas at somebody else’s expense indeed — I could sympathize with what the poor bastard was going through. How long must it have taken him to build up to this ultimatum? Come out and get married right now, or forget the whole thing. Scary. So finally he’d psyched himself up to it, he’d delivered the take-it-or-leave-it challenge, she’d agreed with him and accepted his terms, and what relief he must have felt knowing the suspense was finally over. And now here he was, with nothing resolved and the whole mess lasting an extra week. I too, in his position, might become a bit short-tempered, and might even take it out on an innocent bystander. Contenting myself with these thoughts — and also with the thought that I was not in Barry’s position and not likely to be — I left Katharine stroking his fur in the right direction and returned to my own room and my TV, which was now concerning itself with the local sports scene.

You talk about fascinating.