Call Me a Cab

36

George’s shirt today was named Howard. It made him seem more formal, somehow, more a serious person. Being separated from his towtruck also helped. He came out to the Holiday Inn to pick us up about two-thirty, driving another disreputable automobile, this one a Ford station wagon with half the chrome ripped off and a lot of shock absorbers and stray pieces of metal in the back. Around noon I’d told my sob story to the lovers at the front desk, and they’d agreed to keep our luggage behind the counter until we could leave; following which we’d eaten a cardboard lunch and then sat around the pool some more, me semi-immersed in Gritbone woes and Katharine alternately leafing through magazines and snoozing. Neither of us suggested taking a walk; I think we were both afraid we might have an adventure.

Then, a little after two, I was called to the desk for a phone call, and it was Dave Smith: “Well, she’s running, for the moment. Better get here and take her away before she quits. I’m sending George to pick you up.”

And so he did. And it was in the grungy back seat of the Ford, on the way to Smith’s Svce, that Katharine informed me she still wanted to do the detour business we’d talked about yesterday. “It makes just as much sense today as it did then,” she pointed out.

“That’s right,” I said. “And yesterday it made no sense at all.”

“Barry agreed to it.”

“That was before we broke down and lost a day.”

“He agreed,” she insisted. “And you agreed. And I agreed. And I still want a day away from that highway. Just one day, Tom.”

So did I — the memory of Kansas and that afternoon sun was still fresh in my mind — but I felt a certain obligation to our ostensible purpose. “You’ll have to check with Barry,” I said.

She was outraged. “I will not! Tom, that isn’t fair, you’re hiding behind Barry. I talked with him yesterday, and he agreed, and that’s enough.”

I went on arguing until I became aware of George’s amused eyes watching me in the rearview mirror. Plainly, he knew I was beaten and he was wondering when I’d figure it out for myself and lie down. “Oh, very well,” I said, getting grumpy mainly because I felt like an idiot in front of George, which was of course an idiotic reason to feel grumpy, which made me grumpier, “very very well, have it your own way.”

“I intend to.”

“We’ll take an unreliable vehicle that’s already broken down once and we’ll go haring off into the wilderness over a lot of dirt roads and ski trails.”

“That’s right,” she said. The damn woman wouldn’t even fight with me.

Dave Smith was waiting for us out by his gas pumps, wearing a shirt called Al. “Hi, Ace,” he said. “You wearing that shirt on my account?”

“On mine,” she assured him. “I think I look terrific in it.”

“You do.” Turning to me, he said, “Shall we see if my bubble gum repair job still works?”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

He was being laconic, but I could sense that in fact he was quite pleased with himself. Apparently he’d performed some sort of mechanical wizardry with the original starter plus parts from the other one. In any event, we walked together into the garage, where the cab awaited, looking stocky and inappropriately smug, and Dave had me start and stop the engine a dozen times, and it worked fine. His good humor lasted even into the question of payment, when it turned out he recognized no known credit card but would take my personal check on a New York City bank. I stared at him: “You will?”

“Anybody who crosses America in a Checker cab is too dumb to be a thief,” he said. “Make it out to Smith’s Svce.” So I did.

Katharine sat up front with me, and Dave stood smiling in the sunlight, rubbing dirt into his hands from an oily orange rag, as we drove out of the garage. “Good luck,” he called.

“We’ll need it,” I answered. “We’re going cross-country from here.”