Dan Fante - Spitting Off Tall Buildings

I pulled my cab over, double parked, pushed in the taxi’s flasher signal, then clinked out some change in quarters and dimes from my change maker.

The first pay telephone I tried was out of order. I lost my coin. The phone next to the first one was broken too. I remember slamming that one down.

Back in my cab I drove the two blocks to the next phone stand, double parked and got out. The first paybox worked; I dialed my cab company’s number and someone answered. I could hear the person I was speaking to, the receptionist, but she could not hear me. She kept saying, ‘Hello, hello,’ and finally hung up.

The phone on the stand next to the one with the bad connection felt light. The receiver part was missing components. I unscrewed the mouthpiece section to check. The interior metal voice gadget had been removed. Vandalized. I got back in my cab and moved on.

After arriving at Fortieth Street on Third Avenue, seven-in-a-row non-working units later, I located an instrument that appeared functional – the hearing and listening parts were both okay. But it turned out that the push-button dialing mechanism didn’t work. Press any number other than zero and nothing happened. When I hit the zero by itself the operator came on and made the call for me.

Rodney’s office answered. But the person in the payroll department that I had needed to speak with twenty minutes before was unavailable, gone on a coffee break. The company receptionist twat hissed, ‘Call back later,’ then clicked off.

It was then that I yanked the hand piece with the cord completely out of the phone, flung it into a street garbage can and walked off.

Back sitting behind the wheel of cab number 7912, about to drive off, I remember having the thought: I hate the motherfucking fucking phone company!

Snapping on my taxi’s OFF-DUTY switch, I returned to the paybox I’d just disabled. On the front of the phone I located the unit’s stenciled pay phone number. I copied the number down.

As I found out, there are more than thirty pay phones between Forty-second and Eighty-sixth Street on Third Avenue. The main cross-town two-way streets, like Fifty-seventh and Seventy-second and Seventy-ninth and Eighty-sixth, have several units installed on each corner, not just two. I decided to report all the ones that didn’t work.

Because I was in the middle of the busiest part of midtown New York, it wasn’t that easy to stop, double park my cab, make my way to the phone stands, check each unit, then copy down the number along with a description of why each one of the damaged and vandalized cocksuckers was nonfunctioning. It took time. Over two hours. People would hail me, occasionally even try to get in when I’d be delayed at a red light. But I had my doors locked. I ignored all distractions.

When I got past Eighty-seventh Street on Third I considered the job done. The busy part of midtown technically ends at Eighty-sixth Street. I tallied the phone numbers I had written down then counted the torn-out handsets on the floorboard of my cab. The numbers corresponded. Eighteen.

I pulled over one final time, double parked at the next paybox stand. The unit was working okay. I punched zero. The operator answered, ‘Operator.’

‘There are eighteen non-working pay phones on Third Avenue in midtown,’ I announced. ‘I’ve copied the telephone numbers down and I want to report them.’

There was a funny interval of dead air but I could hear breathing on the other end. Finally I said, ‘Are you there? Hello?’

‘…Sir…I’m here. Go ahead.’

‘I’m trying to give you the numbers and information on out-of-order pay telephones on Third Avenue. Pay telephones that belong to your company. This is AT &T isn’t it? Are you with me here?’

Another pause, then, ‘Go ahead, sir.’

‘Should I be speaking to a supervisor or a repair person?’

‘…I’m okay…Report ‘em to me…How many you say?’

‘Eighteen. Are you ready?’

‘Go ahead, sir…I just say go ahead.’

‘Okay,’ I began, ‘at Forty-first and Third on the southeast corner is where your first non-operational piece of phone crap is located. I lifted the receiver off the hook and nothing happened. No tone. Dead air. Zip. The number on that piece-of-junk unit is 212-473-4407. Okay?’

Again dead air.

‘You there, operator?’

‘…Sir, go ahead.’

‘I didn’t know if you were still there. You should say something. That way I know you’re still there and I’m speaking to a living, alert homo sapien.’

‘…Next, sir.’

‘Next is number two. Number two follows number one and is also located at Forty-first and Third on the southeast corner. That paybox number is 212-473-4887. Somebody’d ripped off both the earpiece and the mouthpiece on that malfunctioning piece of dog crap. Okay?’

‘Sir, I just need the numbers…you gonna give up the numbers?’

‘That’s what I’m doing. But I’m also reporting the existing problem with the unit, and the location.’

‘Just give up the number.’

I kept going after that, without pausing, listing only the telephone numbers on the broken boxes. When I was done I said, ‘That’s it. That’s all eighteen.’

No response.

‘Operator,’ I said, ‘that’s it. That’s the last one. I’m done…Hello?’

‘…Okay, you done?’

‘Yes. I just said that was the last one. Did you get all of them? All the numbers?’

There was no reply. She’d hung up.

AFTER THE DEAL with the pay phones things went back to normal for a few weeks. But within me, more and more, I was becoming aware that I was crazy. My mind, my thoughts, attacked me constantly. Old incidents and humiliations from years before got re-viewed like the newsreel footage of rotting concentration camp bodies. My insatiable sexual behavior, my blackouts and drunkenness; all of it. I would be driving the streets in my cab and the pictures would come back again and again. Sometimes I’d have to pull over, pound the steering wheel, curse myself and scream out loud until the noise stopped.

An entire week was spent in my mind reenacting the five-minute occasion of my firing from the Night Manager gig at the East End Hotel. The embarrassment of being caught out by the ass-licking Shi, being talked down to by Mistofsky. Every remark was gone over, every phrase, every glance analyzed and replayed again and again. I became unable to focus on anything else.

My sleep got down to an hour or two a night again. I went back on the booze. Often it took a fifth to two fifths of Ten High at night after work to shut the noise off.

At the diner on Twelfth Avenue where I got my coffee every morning and where many of the cabbies from the Rodney garage ate, they had a new waitress, Betty. She was my height, five-five or five-six, but she easily weighed four hundred pounds. So fat, I noticed, that she was unable to fit properly behind her side of the counter. She had to scooch sideways like a huge crab in order to serve her customers. The vastness of the lard clinging to her caused her to huff and wheeze and snort as she oozed along.

After seeing her there for two mornings in a row my mind could not leave the shock of her fat alone. I found myself unable to stop staring at Betty. Studying her. Why, I said to myself, why in fucking punctured Jesus would Milt, the owner, hire such an odious, absurd, pig-faced amalgam of dog shit? Did he think that his cab driver clientele would put up with a sweaty-chested, belching, rhinoceros-butted blimp, dripping perspiration and body smell, serving their meatloaf and tuna salad sandwiches? What the possible fuck could his reasoning be for having her around?

I was paying Milt for my coffee and buttered bagel at the register and eyeballing the aberrant monstrosity when my mind went ‘external’ before I could stop it. ‘Milt,’ I blurted, pointing, slamming my dollar and change down to pay, ‘is that new?’