Never Too Rich by Judith Gould Page B

impatience. Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh
Street was thronged with Christmas shoppers and there wasn’t an
empty cab in sight. She glanced back at Hallelujah. “If I hadn’t
dragged you out of there, we would still be wandering around on the
sixth floor.”
    “ Well, I was dying for the Victor
Costa stuff,” Hallelujah admitted. “I am in a totally acquisitive
mood. Didn’t you think that green number would look great on
me?”
    “ First of all, it’s intended for
someone a little bit older than you,” Edwina said, once again
craning her neck for a cab, “and second, I wouldn’t think something
that conservative was your . . . ah . . . style.”
    “ It would be, with torn lace
stockings and a pair of shocking-pink leather gloves . . . or maybe
they should be zebra print? I mean, can’t you just see
it?”
    With a quick glance at her daughter Edwina said,
“Quite truthfully, I can’t.”
    “ Ma!” Hallelujah cried, pointing.
“A cab!”
    Edwina’s head swiveled back around and she spied the
cab sailing toward the curb. Goodwill toward her fellowman was the
farthest thing from her mind as she also spied three different cab
thieves jumping forward to grab it out from under her. “Oh, no, you
don’t!” she snarled, and with the battlefield tactics of the
native-born New Yorker, she shouldered them aside and grabbed hold
of the opening back door and stood there, her booted feet planted
aggressively apart, her eyes flashing their menacing “dare-me”
message. It was a fighting stance, one she had learned long ago.
The mean city streets were no place for Greer Garson manners.
    Daunted by her ruthlessness, the cab thieves backed
off.
    “ Way to go, Ma!” Hallelujah said
admiringly.
    “ It’s Darwinism, kid,” Edwina said
in her best Humphrey Bogart voice.
    Hallelujah laughed, and just then a boy her age with
short brown hair and Coke-bottle-thick horn-rims jumped out of the
cab, nearly knocking the shopping bags out of her hand.
    “ Way to go, spaz!” Hallelujah
yelled.
    “ Sorry,” the boy murmured, blushing
and looking away while he waited for the second passenger to settle
the fare and get out.
    Half a minute passed, and when the passenger still
remained in the cab, Edwina tapped her foot impatiently. “How long
does it take to pay a cabbie, anyway?” she demanded of the air just
as a rich Bostonian baritone reverberated from inside the
vehicle.
    “ Goddammit to hell, man, what do
you mean, you don’t have change for a twenty? I’m certainly not
going to give you twenty dollars for a two-forty fare. What
do you take me for? Some out-of-town hick?” Snapping fingers
clicked five times. “Come on, cough up the change.”
    “ I already told you, I ain’t got
change, mister!” the cabbie shouted. “ ‘Sides, you blind? See that
decal on the door? The one that says ‘Driver not required to change
bills over ten dollars’?”
    “ Oh, Christ,” Edwina growled
from between clenched teeth. “Just what I need! I get the only
available cab in Manhattan, and then what happens?”
    “ Hey, Les,” the man called out from
inside the cab. “Got any change on you?”
    The kid with the horn-rims beside Hallelujah shook
his head. “Just the twenty you gave me this morning, Dad,” he
squeaked.
    “ Damn.”
    But Edwina had already unslung her shoulder bag and
was digging furiously into it. “I’ve got change!” she called out
quickly, holding up four fives.
    The passenger ducked out, fished the bills from
between her fingers, and handed her the twenty with a flourish.
“You’re a lady and a scholar,” he said warmly. A rakish grin
electrified his face, saving it from being criminally handsome and
giving him a vaguely piratical air. Then his head disappeared back
inside the cab, only to slowly reappear, eyelids blinking. “My
God,” he said softly under his breath, looking up at Edwina. And
then he said louder and more forcefully, “Eds? Eds Robinson? I don’t believe it!”
    Edwina