Dan Fante - Spitting Off Tall Buildings

The big man leaned back in his chair but avoided eye contact with either me or Flash. He glanced back around the desk at the broken equipment, then he took his time lighting a cigarette. ‘Don-tay?’ he said finally, addressing me, as if it were a question.

‘Yeah?’ I said.

Murphy opened the center drawer of his desk and removed the company’s check book; a long, black payroll ledgertype deal.

‘Spell it. Is it D-o, or D-a?’

‘D-a,’ I said.

‘First name again?’

‘B-r-u-n-o.’

‘Right. B-r-u-n-o.’

He began filling in a check; my name, the date. ‘Okay, Flash,’ he said, tapping his pen against the desk, ‘what’s the man’s count? How many panes?’

Flash shot me a look, then winked. Reaching into his jacket pocket, he located a small spiral note pad, found the right page, then read out my daily totals. When he was done he double checked by adding again. ‘Ninety-seven,’ he said.

Murphy repeated the number. ‘Ninety-seven.’

Flash had increased my count by twenty-five windows.

‘Three dollars a glass?’ the boss asked.

‘Right,’ Flash said. ‘Three bucks.’

‘But let’s not forget there was a thirty-dollar advance, correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘Less another twenty dollars for the broken bucket. Less fourteen-ninety-five for a new squeegee…’

‘Less my dick! Less nothin’!’ Flash shouted. ‘How could the fuckin’ breakage be the man’s fault?’

Murphy sucked his teeth. ‘There’s damage, that’s all I know. Less twenty then. We split the difference.’

Flash sneered. ‘Twenty ain’t fuckin’ half of thirty-four ninety-five, Johnny Murphy! Seventeen-fifty is fuckin’ half.’

The boss smirked. ‘Have it your way.’

When Murphy had finished filling in my check he signed it, tore it out of the book, then handed it across the desk.

I folded the paper and slipped it into my jacket.

He rocked back again in his over-burdened boss’s chair, his fat oozing through the slats on the side. ‘You know, Dante,’ he began, ‘out west in Colorado or Montana, places like that where they still have cowboys and rodeos – not L.A. – out west; what do you think a cowboy does when he gets thrown off his horse? What does he do, Dante?’

It was a dumb question. ‘We’re talking here about a seventy-six-story horse,’ I said. ‘You asshole!’

There was an old Blarney Stone saloon across the street on the north side of Eighty-sixth, two doors from the Loew’s movie. They cashed Red Ball’s payroll checks. The place had a steam table and a pretty girl behind the food counter. Asian; Korean maybe, or Chinese. Red lipstick and lots of eye make-up.

I cashed my check. Me and Flash started with shooters, beer back. We talked. Mostly I talked, and watched the girl serving food. I put two twenties up on the bar. Flash put his own twenty up and we kept going.

GETTING A HACK license and becoming a taxi driver in New York City is not difficult. In fact it’s not even necessary to know the city in order to get the license.

You take the subway downtown to Center Street to the Hack Bureau, fill out an application, pay a fee, then pick up a stack of photocopied sheets they give you that list the questions and answers that will appear on the hack exam; two hundred names and locations of hotels, hospitals, airports, and other prominent places. You study the material on your own time, then you come back to take a two-hour exam. The test is given every other week. You are permitted to repeat taking it until you come up with a grade of 60 percent or more. I was desperate to earn money so I memorized everything and got a passing grade my first time out.

Rodney Transportation was located near the docks in Hell’s Kitchen, Fifty-fifth Street between Eleventh and Twelfth Avenue. The garage was a ten-minute walk from my rooming house at Fifty-first and Eighth. The boss/day dispatcher was a bad-tempered black guy, a mean little runt-prick named Shorty Smith.

Cabbies start early. Before dawn. My first day hacking I walked into the freezing garage where two hundred yellow cabs were parked. I waited in the long line until I got to the dispatcher’s cage. Shorty assigned me cab number 7912, yelled that I should have the ‘muthafucka’ back by no later than 4 p.m., punched my trip card in the clocking machine, then roared, ‘Next.’

It took five minutes to locate the cab buried deep in the yellow sea, then move half a dozen others to maneuver it out. 7912 had a full tank of gas but the inside was filthy, garbage on the floor, cigarette butts everywhere, gum wrappers, a half-empty, leaking take-out Chinese food container.

In order to get all four car doors open I had to back out onto the street. I let the motor continue running so the heater would take the chill from the passenger compartment. There was an oil-stained shirt in the trunk that I used as a rag to clean the floorboards. With wet and dry newspaper I did the windows, inside and out. I asked. Another driver said newspaper works better than anything. Ten minutes later I was ready to work.

I started out rounding the block on Twelfth Avenue, then heading east on Fifty-sixth Street. The cab’s odometer showed over 130,000 miles. It was a late-model Dodge, less than two years old. I found out that most fleet taxis in New York run seven days a week, twenty hours a day.

The car’s front shocks were completely gone. The front bumper, the dash, and everything else rattled. There was a moderate shimmy at twenty miles an hour. I tested the brakes. They pulled to the right.

My first fare hailed me from the corner of Eleventh Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. A guy going to the Bronx. Tremont Avenue. I’d learned the subways well enough. I’d driven the airport shuttle van back and forth from Kennedy and La Guardia to Manhattan a hundred times but I had little practical knowledge of how to get around the streets by car, so I said, ‘I’m new. Can you direct me?’ The guy said, ‘Sure, turn left here.’ Three months later I was an expert.

I started out working the day shift, ten-hour days, Monday and Tuesday off. I liked the job from the first. Liked having a steady income. I didn’t have to talk to people and I was my own boss except for Shorty Smith.

If you want to make decent money hacking in New York, the first important information you learn is that you have to be behind the wheel driving 100 percent of the time. Moving. No lunch breaks. Eat what you want but eat it while you drive. No wasting time hanging around hotel cab lines hoping to get an expensive airport trip. You grind it out. One fare at a time. Forty to sixty fares a day. When you have to piss you use a milk carton or an empty coffee container and you pull over or piss while you drive.

Because of the job my drinking stayed under control. I had beers after work and on my days off but I managed to keep away from wine and the hard stuff. The depressions kept on but I managed okay. I was alone a lot but for me being alone was good.

Things changed. I liked driving, the freedom, the routine of going to work every day. But in time, off the sauce, I began to notice things; behavior that I didn’t seem to have any control over.

I was in my second month of hacking when a thing happened: I had to stop and break my work rhythm that day by calling the Rodney administration office at the taxi garage. The payroll people had me down for one dependant only and were taking too much withholding from my pay. Another cabbie who had experience in these matters advised me that I was not claiming enough dependants, that they would take less money out if I claimed twelve to fifteen dependants, so I was calling in to alter my tax status.

Between Thirty-fourth Street and Eighty-sixth Street on Third Avenue there are pay phones every two blocks. They are mounted on poles next to each other and separated by a metal partition for privacy.