Call Me a Cab

6

The trouble is, there hadn’t been any sexual problem between Ms. Scott and me. You very early learn in this business that a cabdriver is not a man; at least, not to a good-looking woman. Women who wouldn’t dream of having a casual chat with a strange man on the sidewalk or in Bloomingdale’s will have long relaxed talks with cabdrivers, because they know there’s no possibility of misunderstanding. And the cabby knows it, too. (The exceptions don’t last long.) Women in my cab have told me about their love lives, their operations, their troubles with their mothers, their difficulty with the next-door peeping tom and I don’t know what all; if the same women had said the same things at a party, I would have assumed we were in the opening skirmishes of a flirtation. But not in a cab; that’s neutral territory, and everybody knows it. It’s like a cop not drinking on duty, or a clerk not taking personal calls at the office. You don’t even think about it.

But then the man with the unstoppable bed entered our lives, and all at once that morgue-cold Holiday Inn lobby was absolutely tropical with sex. Somewhere in my mind that rampant bed vibrated, while on it, sweat-gleaming and softly butting, writhed — well, all bodies are anonymous once you get to bed, but one of those bodies was very similar in shape to Ms. Scott, standing here beside me at the Holiday Inn counter, demurely filling out her registration form.

Ms. Scott wore no bra, which was nothing out of the ordinary. Many women in New York go braless in summer, and have for several years; the sight of nipple-bump through cloth has long since ceased to astound. I’d been aware of Ms. Scott’s breasts from the time she first got into the cab, and — no, from before, when she heaved her two suitcases into the cab ahead of herself. I’d been fully aware then of her breasts, her legs, the slender curve of her hip, the excellent good features of her face — I mean, I’m not blind. But nor am I a crazed billygoat; seeing one attractive and fully clothed woman on the street in the sunshine doesn’t exactly make me paw the ground.

So it was a surprise to feel this sudden rising heat. What had happened, that goddam man with his goddam vibrating bed and his goddam sexual nervousness had thrust the idea of sex between Ms. Scott and me, and all at once the sexual content of the moment overcame everything else. We were traveling together, unknown by the people around us. We were in a motel together. Somewhere a bed vibrated, and the world filled with men and women having sex together, murmuring and moaning, thrusting and grasping, rolling and tumbling. A great insistent pulsebeat occupied all of life, with Ms. Scott and me at the hot throbbing humid center of it. All at once, I was not the easygoing cabby anymore, I was — I don’t know what I was, but it made my hands shake as I tried to write the cab’s license plate number on the registration form.

And when I pushed forward my completed registration card, coincidentally at the same moment as Ms. Scott’s, so that the edges of our hands accidentally touched, and she started like a fawn, yanking her hand away and staring straight ahead, lips slightly parted, an added touch of color in her cheek, I suddenly realized that she was feeling it, too.

But it was only our bodies. Our minds and emotions were engaged only at levels of embarrassment and cover-up. Arousal is only to the point when the mind and emotions agree with the body, which in this case they did not. So we stood there side by side at the counter, dewy, spongy, pliant (her) and priapic (me), and pretended there was nothing going on, while the desk clerk endlessly did things with registration forms and Ms. Scott’s credit card and a pair of keys. At last he gave me directions where to drive and park the cab, and Ms. Scott and I thanked him and turned away and went outside.

By then the first heat had faded, we were both dealing in a civilized way with the problem, and she even risked a quick sidelong glance at me as I held the cab door for her. What she saw must have been to some extent reassuring; a faint smile touched her lips as she said, “Thank you.”

We were almost conspirators; almost, but not quite. Neither of us could acknowledge to the other what was going on. I got behind the wheel, drove around to the side of the building, parked where the desk clerk had said, and carried my bag and one of Ms. Scott’s as we both went up the outside stairs, into the building, and down the long tubular hall to our rooms, which were opposite one another.

Uncertain just how reassured she’d become, I didn’t offer to carry her bag inside, and she did seem relieved when I put it down in the doorway. “See you later,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said again, but when I saw that this time her smile was nervous I stopped hanging around the hall, unlocked my way into my room, threw my bag on the bed — it wasn’t vibrating — stripped off my clothing, and took a long cold shower.