Call Me a Cab

27

The cab wouldn’t start. Here we were with dry clothes on our bodies and clean clothes in our luggage, the rain replaced by wet shiny sunlight, the newly clean taxi gleaming like a Technicolor movie, and the damn thing refused to start. “Grind, grind,” it said, and then, ominously, it said, “Click.” It had never done that before. I released the key, then turned it again, and once again the starter said, “Click.” I waited, holding the key in the ignition, but the starter had nothing else it wanted to say at this time.

Katharine, up front with me, frowned and said, “Something wrong?”

“Maybe not,” I said, inanely. I manipulated the key twice more, being rewarded with one additional “click” each time, then finally gave it up and sat back to give the dashboard a look of dislike.

“What is it?”

“The starter,” I said. “Or it could be something in the electrical system, but I think it’s the starter. Here we are in Fat Chance, Colorado, on a Sunday, in a Checker cab, and we’re going to need a new starter, or a new generator, or some damn new thing, and a mechanic to put it into the car, and I think we’re in trouble.”

“Oh, dear,” she said.

“I’m sorry about this.”

“It isn’t your fault.” She gazed forlornly out the windshield at what was essentially an alien land; that is to say, a typical American town. “Barry’s going to be so upset.”

“I’ll talk to him,” I offered.

She considered that, then slowly shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

“I’ll have the mechanic talk to him. That is, if we find one. Let’s see if there’s a phonebook in the laundromat.”

There was; a tiny thing, about the size of an expensive paperback edition of Romeo and Juliet, with a small round hole in the upper left corner through which a long dirty string tied it to a nail in the counter under the payphone on which Katharine had just extorted Barry’s agreement to our change of route. In the yellow pages at the back of this book I found Automobile Repairing & Svce, phoned All Ready, Best Bros, Deep River Recking, Folonari, Kahn-Do, Kuhn’s Kwality Svce, Motor Hotel, Pinetop Highway Garage and Smith’s Svce, where at last a ringing phone was answered, by someone with a pleasant but gruff voice, saying, “More trouble.”

“That’s right,” I said. “My car quit. I think it’s the starter.”

“Does it go gruh-gruh-gruh?” The sound he made was uncannily like a car when the battery is low.

“No,” I said. “It goes click.”

“Sounds like the starter,” he admitted. “For openers, you’re gonna need a tow.”

“For starters,” I punned. Or tried to.

“You’ll need one a them, too, like as not. What make? Nothing foreign, I hope.”

“Oh, no,” I said. “One hundred percent American.”

“Well,” he said carefully, “nothing’s one hundred percent American anymore. What are you driving, my friend?”

“Nothing at the moment. Until it stopped, a Checker.”

Silence.

“Hello?”

“A Checker,” came the subdued voice.

“It’s American,” I pointed out, rather defensively.

“So’s Bigfoot,” he said, rallying, “but I never seen one. Checker Marathon, eh?”

“Well, sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“Checker taxi, actually. It’s about the same as a Marathon, a few alterations. Nothing under the hood, I think.”

“One Bigfoot’s about the same as another,” he said. “Where is this creature?”

“Parked about two doors away from the Atomic Laundromat. I don’t know what street, it’s—”

“I know where it is. Yellow taxi?”

“That’s right.”

“Just like in the movies. Be there in ten minutes.”

“Thanks,” I said, and hung up, and stood frowning at the phone.

Katharine was watching my profile, and after a moment she said, “Well? What do you think?”

“I think,” I said, “either he’s going to be the most wonderful experience of our lives, or the worst disaster ever to befall a helpless New York City Checker taxicab.”