“Poor Peter,” she said, “stuck with me.”
The room seemed airless, unbearably hot. “Is it all right if I open a window?” he asked, anticipating her answer.
“It’s freezing in here,” she said, extricating her hand to embrace herself. He was sweating from the heat.
While Lois typed — the tremors of her back marking her progress — Peter remained on the bed, sweating, trying to think of something to say that might ease the tension between them. Before long, as a matter of course, he was asleep. He lurched from the curb, the cab under him, starting in a rush, swerving, slamming to an abrupt stop, people flooding the streets, blocking his way. Impatient, he knocked over an old man and a boy who had crossed against the light. No one noticed except his passenger, who said, “What are you going to make of yourself, boob?”
They were always asking him that or some other unanswerable question. “Never ask an author about his own work,” he said, pleased with the answer. Why hadn’t he thought of it before?
“Move over,” she said. “You’re hogging the bed.”
It didn’t make any sense, but since it was a policy of the company that the passenger was generally right, he moved under protest, an inaudible grumble.
“You sleep more than you’re awake,” she said.
“It’s a tiring job,” he said, and went back to work.
| 5 |
“This is the kind of job,” Herbie had advised him, “where you can make as much money as you want. A hundred, a hundred fifty a week with no sweat.”
Peter made forty dollars his first week.
“I swear to God,” Herbie was saying, “in my whole life I’ve never met anyone who was as incompetent at everything. I worry about you.”
They were in Herbie’s apartment, Peter’s cab parked in a one-hour zone down the street. Nostalgic about Gloria, Peter had drifted into the habit of visiting his brother in the morning. A coffee break — one of the benefits of industrial enlightenment — it broke up the day, though actually he rarely started work now until after his visit with Herbie.
“Next week I’ll make a hundred fifty,” Peter boasted — a matter of pride.
“Yeah?” Herbie said. “Do it! Then I’ll believe you. I tell you what: I’ll give you twenty to fifteen you don’t make over a hundred ten. What do you say?”
“It’s a bet,” Peter said, lumbering off the Goodwill sofa which, broken-springed, helped him along. “I’d better get going,” he said, putting on his cap with professional grace. The hat, two sizes too large, had a way of descending over his ears.
“What’s your rush?” Herbie complained. “Have another cup of coffee, for God’s sake. You don’t make any money anyway.”
“I’ve had three cups of coffee already,” he said, lethargic after his initial burst of energy. “And I’ll get a ticket if I don’t move the cab. You don’t want me to lose my bet, do you?”
“So who’s keeping you?” Herbie said. “Sucker, if I lose that bet, I’ll give up gambling.”
Peter was halfway out the door when Herbie called him back. “Did you call the doctor’s number I gave you?” he said, pointing a finger of accusation.
“I don’t have time to talk now,” Peter said. “Can’t make any money standing around talking, can I?”
“Good-bye,” Herbie barked. “See you some time. Jerk! You need a kid now like you need a second dick. Listen to me. Call Dr. Henderson. Where are you running to? You’re always running off somewhere.”
Going down the stairs in a hurry, he ran into Gloria coming up, a look of fierce determination on her face. She passed him, brushing against his shoulder, with barely a nod.
“Gloria …”
“Peter?” She came back down the stairs. “You look different for some reason.”
“How have you been?” he wanted to know.
She looked over her shoulder, impatient to be off, squeezed his arm, smiled wanly, and was off. “Can’t talk. See ya.”
He waved to the shadows of her moving form, her ass the last to leave the bedroom of his vision. Her heavy perfume lingered, her touch on his arm fanned the full-blown bellows of his desire, an erection for his troubles. He hoped no one was watching.
It struck him as he started up the cab that as far as he understood his own desires, he was at the moment infatuated with three women. And horny, ascetic, deprived, your workaday cab driver with a map of the city in his back pocket, and expectant which is to say hopelessly (hopefully) anxious, which was the worst of it.
After a while, as Peter became more or less adept at his job, rarely getting lost any more, he began to wonder if it was worth it. Working four full days and two nights, all day Saturday, he hardly saw his wife (and the implications of his child). And worst of all, Lois acted as if she didn’t mind, seemed actually to like the idea of his being away. Had Lois missed him more, or appeared to miss him more, he could have afforded to miss her less. An economist’s paradox: he was almost never around, yet in greater supply than demand. He tried not to worry about it, which was a joke on himself. It was not in him not to worry. Ever since his long day in bed with Gloria, his secretive (innocent?) meetings with Delilah, he had become morbidly suspicious of Lois. He knew, on the evidence of his instincts, that she had a lover. One, maybe two. At the same time he knew of course that his suspicions were madness, but though he refused to believe in them, they preyed on him, took advantage of his good nature. On occasion, driving through midtown Manhattan, he actually saw, thought he saw, in the shadowy windows of a fashionable restaurant, Lois and a man (older, fairer, richer) having cocktails together, though of course there were many girls with long black hair in New York having drinks with other men — Peter being tied down to his cab. Ahhh! A recurrent preoccupation, an inspired obsession, it helped pass the time.
So, among other things, over all things, he worried about Lois. He also longed, lusted, to see Gloria again, which he sublimated in erotic fantasies. The cab driver-lover! It helped pass the time. And he did see Delilah. Every day in fact (except Friday, his day off) he saw Delilah, a business arrangement which offered more guilt than pleasure. He would pick her up in front of the High School of Performing Arts at about two-thirty, and circuitously, sometimes touring Central Park at her request, drive her home, parking around the corner from her house, the transaction apparently a secret between them. And she paid for the ride, including a 25-cent tip, which somehow continued to surprise him. His sense of loss the measure of his feelings, he discovered himself in love with Delilah the one day she didn’t show up for their appointment. He had waited an hour, cruising around the block, searching other faces for signs of her before he gave up. And leaving without her, he was heavy-hearted, convinced that he would never see her again — all his losses in the mourning of possibility, it seemed, one endless loss. The next day, of course, she was there as before.
“Where were you yesterday?” she asked as soon as they had taken off.
“Where was I? Where were you?”
“Don’t try to worm your way out of it,” she said, heckling him with her solemnity. “The undeniable fact remains that you didn’t pick me up yesterday.”
“Okay,” he said, concentrating on ignoring her. He had to slam on his brakes to keep from hitting two women who were crossing against the light.
“Well, where were you?” she said.
He maneuvered his way brilliantly through the narrow space between two sedentary trucks which, in the moment of his triumph, like crocodiles posing as logs suddenly came to life, flanking him. Caught helplessly in the middle, Peter waited for the trucks to ease past him, sweating his fear, honking his horn in frustrated protest.