That gave her a laugh. “What happens if we split up? What happens to the kid then? Oh shit, I’m out of cigarettes. Do you have any?” She knew he didn’t.
He shook his head, standing again, though he hardly remembered getting up. “It’s unreasonable to predicate everything on the worst happening. Why should we split up?”
She shrugged, blew the hair out of her eyes. “You know.”
He did and he didn’t.
“Lois …”
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m not going to have it.” She was up and past him. “I’m going out for cigarettes because I can’t depend on you to …”
He grabbed her arm as she went by. “You know I love you,” he said.
A faint smile, sad-eyed. “It doesn’t make any difference, Peter. We don’t have any money — not enough — and we can’t take any more from my parents, not after what you said to my mother. You could at least have apologized, but you wouldn’t, would you?” She glared at him, goading her irritation into anger: ‘For God’s sake,” she said, “don’t make me say everything.”
What could he say without making things worse; he had a knack for stepping over the weeds and trampling the roses. “I’ll call your mother and apologize.” It hurt him to say it. He added for his self-respect, “but she won’t accept an apology from me. Do you think she will? Do you want me to call? I’ll call if you want me to.”
“That’s not the only thing, Peter-rat. There are other reasons.” In a great hurry, she got her coat from the closet.
He only watched. “What other reasons?” he said.
“Oh …” She threw her arms up in a gesture of helplessness, her glance coy, knowing. “I’ll tell you when I get back. Don’t crowd me, Peter. Please!” Her hand on the door.
He turned away, turned back. The door was swinging shut. “Fuck you,” he muttered to himself. He didn’t care if she had heard, though a few minutes later, when she still hadn’t returned, he began to worry about her absence, blaming his rage, regretting it. He stewed and worried, wandering the room, cursing himself, calling Herbie, who said, What do you need her for? He could depend on Herbie for the right question. Just when he had given her up, she came back. It was always like that.
Peter started work the next day, through Herbie’s influence, at the Sun-Spot cab company. His photograph (his mug shot) managed to look like all the photos he had ever seen from the back seats of other cabs, which permitted him, in a limited way, a sense of belonging. While he was trying on his chauffeur’s cap, a wizened, white-haired little man who resembled his paternal grandfather gave him some friendly advice. “Kiddo,” he introduced himself, “you want some friendly advice? Listen to old Barker.” He cocked his head as he talked. “I’ll tell you something. These other drivers”—he made a deprecating face, an all-inclusive gesture — “if you was a blind man, they wouldn’t give you honest change. They’d steal from you on your deathbed. That’s the honest-to-God truth. If you want to get along, boychick — listen to me — you gotta screw ‘em first.” He made the appropriate gesture with his finger. “You got to stick it to ‘em before they stick it to you.” He glanced around the locker room to see if anyone was listening; when he turned back he winked. “Trust nothing and no one,” he said.
“Don’t believe a word Barker says,” a voice warned from the other side of the lockers. “He’s a dirty old man who plays with his clutch.”
“What’s a matter, Sclaratti,” the old man shrilled, nudging Peter with his elbow, “pee your pants again, boychick?” To Peter: “When he gets excited Sclaratti pees his pants. Dope!”
A grunt from the other side. “Keep it up, Barker, and I’ll call the zoo and have them take you away.” He snorted and stuck his head out — bald, squat, fiftyish, his face pocked, gentle under the scars, a man who would kill you only if it was absolutely necessary. He shook hands with Peter. “Watch out for Barker, he’ll steal your hub caps if you let him.”
Barker turned his head, nodding ironically, contemptuous of slander. “I’m a crook, huh? Sure. What then? And you’re a member of the Mafia. Yah! If I was one-third the thief you are, I’d turn myself in for the reward.”
Sclaratti snorted, poked Peter. “Do you hear that? In the old country, a man talked to you like that was as good as dead. It’s a lucky thing for Barker I’m civilized. Hey, Barker, drop dead.” He laughed. “Look at him. You ever see anyone uglier in your life?”
They were still at it when Peter left. Depressed, nostalgic, he remembered, as a kid, listening to arguments just like this one — the love and hate almost indistinguishable — where Herbie and his father raged at each other, at the world in general, a running battle for weeks on end. Just like home. Who needed it? He was continually being brought back to things he wanted to forget, which was a dirty trick, but whom could he complain of and whom to?
He cruised around the city for a while, getting the feel of the cab, reticent about picking up someone he’d never met before, a total stranger. What would they talk about?
Finally, tired of fleeing from passengers, he stopped for a middle-aged, tweedy woman on Broadway and Ninety-seventh Street, a woman with a sympathetic face, who looked to be in a hurry to get somewhere.
“Twenty-six Sutton Place,” she said in an imperious whisper, “and take the shortest route. I was supposed to be home ten minutes ago. You people are never around when you’re needed.”
Unsure of the address, he asked her to repeat it, embarrassed at having let it slide out of memory. She whispered it again, slowly this time, with the martyred patience of a woman who was used to talking to imbeciles. “And hurry, please.”
He got caught by the first light, and could hear his passenger muttering to herself — he knew the feeling — but after that he made pretty good time, made only one wrong turn. Trying to cut his way diagonally through Central Park, watching the scenery (a lovely day), he got lost and came out again on the West Side. Abashed, he glanced in the rear-view mirror, awaiting reproof, but the lady didn’t seem to have noticed. Her eyes closed, her face whitish, she looked to be dozing. Or was she sick? Whatever it was, he worried; she was his passenger, his first, a personal responsibility. To make up for getting lost, he gunned the cab across the park at Seventy-second Street, passing a Cadillac on the way — a score for his side. At the next light he glanced in the mirror again.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded impatiently, her eyes opening, closing, a crease of pain across her forehead.
“Are you sure?” Another taxi cut in front of him and he was forced to slam on the brakes. She fell forward, nearly off the seat. “If you feel sick,” he said, “I can stop at a drug store. Do you want me to stop?”
“No, no, go on, please. Please. And look where you’re going.”
He hurried, the lights against him, glancing nervously at his passenger in the rear-view mirror, her mouth trembling, fretful — his responsibility. Waiting impatiently for a light to change, he saw the lady, as in a movie he had once seen, turn old before his eyes, wither in a flash of time into dust. It was just his luck. What could he do with the remains, heaped like ashes in the back seat of his cab? Though he knew he was hallucinating, he turned around to get a look at his passenger without the intercession of reflection. She seemed all right, her eyes meeting his, staring as if she knew him, as if she expected something from him. A horn honked. He drove off in a rush.