"THE GIRL WHO TALKED TOO MUCH"
A pretty mid-20s girl is squished between me and a tall, rangy ruggedly handsome guy with a cast on his right arm from knuckles to elbow. The girl is drunk and won’t shut up while the matinee idol beside her is grim and silent as a clam. In the back seat, another girl sits between a well-dressed man with a $75 haircut who is directly behind me and a younger fellow in a beanie who can’t keep his hands off the girl, who is too drunk to fend him off. The man behind me keeps tapping my shoulder.
“Don’t take money from anybody else, dude,” he repeats once more.
It’s very late, 2 in the morning after a wild Saturday night, and I picked them all up at Mothers, the hottest downtown gin mill in San Luis Obispo, and all I want to do is get rid of them and go home, for I’ve been at it since 3 in the afternoon. Meanwhile, as we speed along the freeway (Highway 101) headed for Avila Beach, the girl is telling me her troubles.
“I’ve been crying nonstop for a month,” she explains.
“That’s a lotta crying. Over what?”
“My sorority sister was killed in a car accident. She was my best friend. I loved her so. I cried and cried. I still can’t stop crying.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She was living in Denver, but we still talked every day.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nobody else is saying anything; they are all too drunk and exhausted, but not this girl. “I’ve been sick all winter. First, it was a cold. Then I got the flu. And then I got this goddam yeast infection, and it wouldn’t go away…and I hate being sick, I’m NEVER SICK, but I’ve been sick all year…” She glances at me and I nod. “I like keeping busy. I’ve got a good job, I love my job, and I missed so much work…and then Debbie died, and then my best friend broke her hip skiing, she’s bed-ridden…”
“But at least you got your job, right?”
“I’ve got my job, yes, but…”
The guy behind me with the perfect hair taps my shoulder. “I’m payin’,” he reminds me. “Their money’s no good.”
“If you didn’t have your job,” I tell the girl. “Things could be worse.”
“Well, I know, but…”
“And you’ve got a roof over your head. You’re not homeless, are you?”
“Oh God no. I live with Frank, in the back seat, in Avila Beach, in a townhouse he just bought with cash, so I don’t really NEED to work, I mean, you know, to survive and all, but I want to work, I need to be doing something. I’ve always been that way, you know, I was a very hyper kid and they put me on ritalin and I’m still hyper and I have a lotta stuff going on…”
Her cell phone startles me with a merry jingle. She’s on it. She uh-huhs a little, and then goes on a verbal rampage about the night she’s just endured, with the bar being so crowded and wild and Rick and Megan fighting and she was bored and hot and “sweetie could you please come over for a nightcap?” But the person cannot and she feels so bad, almost like she’s going to start crying again, and she insists, implores, “please, please, PLEASE come over, I SO need to talk to you, I love you, I miss you so, we’re such good friends, we’re best friends, yes, I know you love me, and I love you, too, why don’t you come over and Frank and Rick and Megan and you can me can have a nightcap…”
I’m tapped on the shoulder. “Don’t let anybody else pay, pal.”
“I promise not to.”
“I’ll make it worth your while, pal.”
We’re nearing the Avila Beach off ramp. Their townhouse is not situated in the once funky part of town that has been razed and transformed into a high-end tourist mecca with 4 star luxury hotels, but in a gated community adjoining a golf course and country club. They are all so young; possibly 26, 27, and I wonder where they made the money to buy homes that start out at well over half a million bucks.
She is off the phone. “Mr. Cabby, can I change the music on your radio, please please
please?”
I have soothing jazz on, but I nod, and she goes through a bunch of stations and settles on some sort of jangled hip-hop, turning it up full blast, and I let it go, what the hell, there’s only a mile or so to go, who cares about what I want?
“Here here here!” exclaims the girl, pointing frantically. “This is where we get off!”
The guy in back is tapping again. “Here, here, yeh, here, chief…”
“I know where I’m going.” I hit the off ramp. “I know where Avila Beach is. I’ve lived and hacked around here for years. It’s not like I’m an idiot.”
The girl grabs my arm. “I’m sooo sorry.” The music is so loud I can hardly think. “I’m really really sorry. Please don’t be upset.”
I can’t look at her. “I’m not upset.”
“You’re upset. I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m NOT mad at you.”
“You don’t like me, I know you don’t like me.”
“For God’s Sake, kid, I don’t dislike you! Relax. I’m just trying to drive my cab.”
“Oh God, you hate me….I know you do.”
“I don’t HATE you. You’re a nice girl. Just a little drunk.”
She starts to cry. “I know I talk too much…I know I get on people’s nerves. I know I make people mad. I apologize…”
“Stop apologizing. Look, I LIKE you.” I glance at her. “You’re a sweetie, a dear, an angel. Now just sit still and don’t say anything, we’re almost home, just calm down, please, calm down…”
She sniffles into a handkerchief and squeezes my forearm, her nails like the desperate talons of a captive peregrine. “I’m just too sensitive. You are really a doll. You so are. You remind me of my uncle Jerry who’s dying of cancer. Just a sweetheart. It’s just that, oh, I’ve had such a bad night, such a bad year!”
I pull up to the closed gate. The gatekeeper in the gatehouse is snoozing. A heavy set Latino with Laker cap. We always discuss the Lakers when I come through. Kobe Bryant’s the man! I give him a quick honk. He blinks, sits up, pushes a button, waves me on as the gate lifts, and as I drive through I say “Go Lakers” and flash him the V for victory sign, and he returns it, eyes still at half mast.
The gal beside me is finally silent. The Adonis beside her is rocking back and forth, gritting his teeth, scowling horribly. The sex maniac in back is draped all over the girl in the middle, and it looks like he’s groping her bosom while he plants a passionate wet one on her lips. She’s not fighting him.
Following directions from the guy behind me, I pull up to a townhouse in a tight grid of identical townhouses. There’s a BMW ragtop and a BMW SUV in the driveway. He hands me a hundred dollar bill for a $21.40 fare.
“You keep the change, cabby,” he says. “On one condition—you take this asshole in the backseat as far away from here as possible.”
Everybody piles out. The guy who paid me goes over to a little garden amid slabs of stone and plaster and urinates on a rose bush. While he urinates, the strapping stud with the cast is on the verge of clouting the sex maniac, his cast raised menacingly as he moves toward him. The guy who paid me ceases peeing in mid-stream and hurries over and gets between them as the girls scream and try to pull the attacker back, the girl who was sitting beside me in a state of hysteria.
“Asshole!” shouts the NFL tight end look-alike. “He jumps in the fucking backseat unfucking invited and tries to fuck my girl friend! I’m killing you you fucking piss-ant!”
The girl from the backseat who was being sexually mauled shouts at me. “Rick’s an ultimate fighter! He’ll kill him and go to jail forever! He’s not supposed to fight. His fists are deadly weapons.”
The sex maniac, believe it or not, is still trying to get his hands on the girl he’s been mauling and I grab him and turn him around and take him by the scruff of the neck and begin marching him toward the cab, while the other three people try to restrain the beast with the cast. The back door is open and I throw the jackass in and slam the door as the ultimate fighter lurches toward the door, prepared to open it and beat the sex maniac to death, most likely.
“He’s a pantywaist,” I plead. “Don’t hurt him, guy, go in and have a drink.”
“The fuckin’ scum-bag punk, he’s been hittin’ on her all night, he knows she’s with me, Goddammit, he fucking jumps in the car…”
I run around and jump in the cab and lock the buttons and tear away, leaving four disgruntled figures huddled in the drive-way in a sort of love-in designed to mollify the fighting creature. I take a deep breath. I come to the gate, where the keeper is back a-slumber, and it opens automatically. Back on the road I turn my jazz back on and begin to wind down, but now the punk in the back is breathing down my neck, wanting to discuss the situation.
“That big dude, he ain’t givin’ his bitch no play,” he maintains. “He’s a miserable asshole, man. His bitch wanted me. Man, I know when a bitch wants me. She was comin’ on to me in Mothers, man. I was dancin’ with her, and we were dry-humpin’, she was hot to trot…”
“Okay, fine, I don’t wanna hear about it. I’m tired.”
“Man, I know when a bitch wants me. Know how many women I’ve fucked? 42, and I’m only 25. How many women did you have when you were 24, man?”
“I have no idea. Not enough to count.”
“Well, I’ve had 42 different bitches, so I know what I’m talkin’ about when I say a bitch wants some dick, bro’.” He’s momentarily silent. Then: “Bro’, can yah turn it up to that hip-hop station. That shit you got on depresses me.”
“No.”
Silence. Then” “Hey bro’, my man, like, when we get back in town, let’s cruise Higuera and see if we can score.”
“It’s 2:45. Nobody’s on the streets.”
“So, we’ll cruise, bro’. That rich dude gave you a fat tip, so you can cruise, and I can score some pussy.”
“I’m not gonna cruise kid. Forget it.”
“Shit, man, come on!”
“Where do you live in San Luis?”
“Don’t sweat where I live. I need to score right now. That bitch got me primed. Besides, you owe me.”
“Listen, son, I kept that ultimate fighting beast from pulverizing you, so don’t push it. You’re getting into dangerous territory.”
“Hey dude, mellow out. You’re all up tight, all stressed out, we’ll cruise, man.”
I’m beginning to feel like Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s CRIME & PUNISHMENT before he ax-murdered his landlady. In a little over 10 minutes this kid has compromised my already limited reservoir of tolerance, humanity and, most vital, my sense of humor.
“You gotta shut up, kid,” I say. “Or I’m gonna hafta throw your ass out-a this cab.”
“Hey, the dude PAID you to drive me, man!” He’s suddenly snotty.
I pull off the freeway onto Marsh St. and soon find Higuera. A squad car slowly cruises past me. I take a deep breath and pull over. I turn to the kid. “Do you have a mother?” I ask softly.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You do have a mother, I presume.”
“Yeh, so the fuck what.”
“Does she have any idea how you talk about women? That you’re a sexual predator and count your pussy? Does she have any idea that you hop into back seats with women who belong to other men, and especially men who want to kill you?”
“What the fuck, dude?”
“Get out of this cab,” I say evenly. “Go home to your mother. And learn to appreciate your dry spells.”
“Man, yer an asshole,” he snarls, getting out, walking down Higuera. I drive past him and he flips me the finger. I laugh. I drive past Mothers, where the bartenders, bouncers and cocktail waitresses are out front schmoozing after closing up. They all wave and I bump my horn.
*******
A couple weeks later I’m sitting in my cab in front of Mother’s on a Saturday night and there’s a block-long line to get in; those in line who know each other converse, their body language animated, as if anticipating good things to happen in a happening place. Others are engaged in cell phone conversations. I spot the sex maniac in his beanie. He’s by himself, but not on a cell phone. He looks slouchy and forlorn, like a man about to get a root canal.
“Don’t take money from anybody else, dude,” he repeats once more.
It’s very late, 2 in the morning after a wild Saturday night, and I picked them all up at Mothers, the hottest downtown gin mill in San Luis Obispo, and all I want to do is get rid of them and go home, for I’ve been at it since 3 in the afternoon. Meanwhile, as we speed along the freeway (Highway 101) headed for Avila Beach, the girl is telling me her troubles.
“I’ve been crying nonstop for a month,” she explains.
“That’s a lotta crying. Over what?”
“My sorority sister was killed in a car accident. She was my best friend. I loved her so. I cried and cried. I still can’t stop crying.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She was living in Denver, but we still talked every day.”
“Uh-huh.”
Nobody else is saying anything; they are all too drunk and exhausted, but not this girl. “I’ve been sick all winter. First, it was a cold. Then I got the flu. And then I got this goddam yeast infection, and it wouldn’t go away…and I hate being sick, I’m NEVER SICK, but I’ve been sick all year…” She glances at me and I nod. “I like keeping busy. I’ve got a good job, I love my job, and I missed so much work…and then Debbie died, and then my best friend broke her hip skiing, she’s bed-ridden…”
“But at least you got your job, right?”
“I’ve got my job, yes, but…”
The guy behind me with the perfect hair taps my shoulder. “I’m payin’,” he reminds me. “Their money’s no good.”
“If you didn’t have your job,” I tell the girl. “Things could be worse.”
“Well, I know, but…”
“And you’ve got a roof over your head. You’re not homeless, are you?”
“Oh God no. I live with Frank, in the back seat, in Avila Beach, in a townhouse he just bought with cash, so I don’t really NEED to work, I mean, you know, to survive and all, but I want to work, I need to be doing something. I’ve always been that way, you know, I was a very hyper kid and they put me on ritalin and I’m still hyper and I have a lotta stuff going on…”
Her cell phone startles me with a merry jingle. She’s on it. She uh-huhs a little, and then goes on a verbal rampage about the night she’s just endured, with the bar being so crowded and wild and Rick and Megan fighting and she was bored and hot and “sweetie could you please come over for a nightcap?” But the person cannot and she feels so bad, almost like she’s going to start crying again, and she insists, implores, “please, please, PLEASE come over, I SO need to talk to you, I love you, I miss you so, we’re such good friends, we’re best friends, yes, I know you love me, and I love you, too, why don’t you come over and Frank and Rick and Megan and you can me can have a nightcap…”
I’m tapped on the shoulder. “Don’t let anybody else pay, pal.”
“I promise not to.”
“I’ll make it worth your while, pal.”
We’re nearing the Avila Beach off ramp. Their townhouse is not situated in the once funky part of town that has been razed and transformed into a high-end tourist mecca with 4 star luxury hotels, but in a gated community adjoining a golf course and country club. They are all so young; possibly 26, 27, and I wonder where they made the money to buy homes that start out at well over half a million bucks.
She is off the phone. “Mr. Cabby, can I change the music on your radio, please please
please?”
I have soothing jazz on, but I nod, and she goes through a bunch of stations and settles on some sort of jangled hip-hop, turning it up full blast, and I let it go, what the hell, there’s only a mile or so to go, who cares about what I want?
“Here here here!” exclaims the girl, pointing frantically. “This is where we get off!”
The guy in back is tapping again. “Here, here, yeh, here, chief…”
“I know where I’m going.” I hit the off ramp. “I know where Avila Beach is. I’ve lived and hacked around here for years. It’s not like I’m an idiot.”
The girl grabs my arm. “I’m sooo sorry.” The music is so loud I can hardly think. “I’m really really sorry. Please don’t be upset.”
I can’t look at her. “I’m not upset.”
“You’re upset. I’m so sorry. Please don’t be mad at me.”
“I’m NOT mad at you.”
“You don’t like me, I know you don’t like me.”
“For God’s Sake, kid, I don’t dislike you! Relax. I’m just trying to drive my cab.”
“Oh God, you hate me….I know you do.”
“I don’t HATE you. You’re a nice girl. Just a little drunk.”
She starts to cry. “I know I talk too much…I know I get on people’s nerves. I know I make people mad. I apologize…”
“Stop apologizing. Look, I LIKE you.” I glance at her. “You’re a sweetie, a dear, an angel. Now just sit still and don’t say anything, we’re almost home, just calm down, please, calm down…”
She sniffles into a handkerchief and squeezes my forearm, her nails like the desperate talons of a captive peregrine. “I’m just too sensitive. You are really a doll. You so are. You remind me of my uncle Jerry who’s dying of cancer. Just a sweetheart. It’s just that, oh, I’ve had such a bad night, such a bad year!”
I pull up to the closed gate. The gatekeeper in the gatehouse is snoozing. A heavy set Latino with Laker cap. We always discuss the Lakers when I come through. Kobe Bryant’s the man! I give him a quick honk. He blinks, sits up, pushes a button, waves me on as the gate lifts, and as I drive through I say “Go Lakers” and flash him the V for victory sign, and he returns it, eyes still at half mast.
The gal beside me is finally silent. The Adonis beside her is rocking back and forth, gritting his teeth, scowling horribly. The sex maniac in back is draped all over the girl in the middle, and it looks like he’s groping her bosom while he plants a passionate wet one on her lips. She’s not fighting him.
Following directions from the guy behind me, I pull up to a townhouse in a tight grid of identical townhouses. There’s a BMW ragtop and a BMW SUV in the driveway. He hands me a hundred dollar bill for a $21.40 fare.
“You keep the change, cabby,” he says. “On one condition—you take this asshole in the backseat as far away from here as possible.”
Everybody piles out. The guy who paid me goes over to a little garden amid slabs of stone and plaster and urinates on a rose bush. While he urinates, the strapping stud with the cast is on the verge of clouting the sex maniac, his cast raised menacingly as he moves toward him. The guy who paid me ceases peeing in mid-stream and hurries over and gets between them as the girls scream and try to pull the attacker back, the girl who was sitting beside me in a state of hysteria.
“Asshole!” shouts the NFL tight end look-alike. “He jumps in the fucking backseat unfucking invited and tries to fuck my girl friend! I’m killing you you fucking piss-ant!”
The girl from the backseat who was being sexually mauled shouts at me. “Rick’s an ultimate fighter! He’ll kill him and go to jail forever! He’s not supposed to fight. His fists are deadly weapons.”
The sex maniac, believe it or not, is still trying to get his hands on the girl he’s been mauling and I grab him and turn him around and take him by the scruff of the neck and begin marching him toward the cab, while the other three people try to restrain the beast with the cast. The back door is open and I throw the jackass in and slam the door as the ultimate fighter lurches toward the door, prepared to open it and beat the sex maniac to death, most likely.
“He’s a pantywaist,” I plead. “Don’t hurt him, guy, go in and have a drink.”
“The fuckin’ scum-bag punk, he’s been hittin’ on her all night, he knows she’s with me, Goddammit, he fucking jumps in the car…”
I run around and jump in the cab and lock the buttons and tear away, leaving four disgruntled figures huddled in the drive-way in a sort of love-in designed to mollify the fighting creature. I take a deep breath. I come to the gate, where the keeper is back a-slumber, and it opens automatically. Back on the road I turn my jazz back on and begin to wind down, but now the punk in the back is breathing down my neck, wanting to discuss the situation.
“That big dude, he ain’t givin’ his bitch no play,” he maintains. “He’s a miserable asshole, man. His bitch wanted me. Man, I know when a bitch wants me. She was comin’ on to me in Mothers, man. I was dancin’ with her, and we were dry-humpin’, she was hot to trot…”
“Okay, fine, I don’t wanna hear about it. I’m tired.”
“Man, I know when a bitch wants me. Know how many women I’ve fucked? 42, and I’m only 25. How many women did you have when you were 24, man?”
“I have no idea. Not enough to count.”
“Well, I’ve had 42 different bitches, so I know what I’m talkin’ about when I say a bitch wants some dick, bro’.” He’s momentarily silent. Then: “Bro’, can yah turn it up to that hip-hop station. That shit you got on depresses me.”
“No.”
Silence. Then” “Hey bro’, my man, like, when we get back in town, let’s cruise Higuera and see if we can score.”
“It’s 2:45. Nobody’s on the streets.”
“So, we’ll cruise, bro’. That rich dude gave you a fat tip, so you can cruise, and I can score some pussy.”
“I’m not gonna cruise kid. Forget it.”
“Shit, man, come on!”
“Where do you live in San Luis?”
“Don’t sweat where I live. I need to score right now. That bitch got me primed. Besides, you owe me.”
“Listen, son, I kept that ultimate fighting beast from pulverizing you, so don’t push it. You’re getting into dangerous territory.”
“Hey dude, mellow out. You’re all up tight, all stressed out, we’ll cruise, man.”
I’m beginning to feel like Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s CRIME & PUNISHMENT before he ax-murdered his landlady. In a little over 10 minutes this kid has compromised my already limited reservoir of tolerance, humanity and, most vital, my sense of humor.
“You gotta shut up, kid,” I say. “Or I’m gonna hafta throw your ass out-a this cab.”
“Hey, the dude PAID you to drive me, man!” He’s suddenly snotty.
I pull off the freeway onto Marsh St. and soon find Higuera. A squad car slowly cruises past me. I take a deep breath and pull over. I turn to the kid. “Do you have a mother?” I ask softly.
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“You do have a mother, I presume.”
“Yeh, so the fuck what.”
“Does she have any idea how you talk about women? That you’re a sexual predator and count your pussy? Does she have any idea that you hop into back seats with women who belong to other men, and especially men who want to kill you?”
“What the fuck, dude?”
“Get out of this cab,” I say evenly. “Go home to your mother. And learn to appreciate your dry spells.”
“Man, yer an asshole,” he snarls, getting out, walking down Higuera. I drive past him and he flips me the finger. I laugh. I drive past Mothers, where the bartenders, bouncers and cocktail waitresses are out front schmoozing after closing up. They all wave and I bump my horn.
*******
A couple weeks later I’m sitting in my cab in front of Mother’s on a Saturday night and there’s a block-long line to get in; those in line who know each other converse, their body language animated, as if anticipating good things to happen in a happening place. Others are engaged in cell phone conversations. I spot the sex maniac in his beanie. He’s by himself, but not on a cell phone. He looks slouchy and forlorn, like a man about to get a root canal.
