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.
Chapter Sixteen
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 myheight, 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?’
‘What?’
‘That…human.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, skewering my check on the paper spike by the register, ‘Claire quit. Moved to Fort Lee. Better schools for her kids. That’s Betty.’
‘Okay, but why…why did you hire…that?’
‘That’s name is Betty.’
I leaned toward him to speak confidentially. The thing was traversing the counter a dozen or so feet away, grunting and snorting, refilling a customer’s coffee cup, raising and lowering its eighty-pound arm to reveal a huge dark circle of sweat. Beads of moistness coated its massive cheeks and hog snout. ‘Milt,’ I said, ‘Your Betty is the fattest fucking bloateddistended pile of living waste I have ever seen.
‘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.
Chapter Sixteen
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 myheight, 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?’
‘What?’
‘That…human.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, skewering my check on the paper spike by the register, ‘Claire quit. Moved to Fort Lee. Better schools for her kids. That’s Betty.’
‘Okay, but why…why did you hire…that?’
‘That’s name is Betty.’
I leaned toward him to speak confidentially. The thing was traversing the counter a dozen or so feet away, grunting and snorting, refilling a customer’s coffee cup, raising and lowering its eighty-pound arm to reveal a huge dark circle of sweat. Beads of moistness coated its massive cheeks and hog snout. ‘Milt,’ I said, ‘Your Betty is the fattest fucking bloateddistended pile of living waste I have ever seen.
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