Spitting off tall buildings - By Dan Fante Page 0,30

I had to back out onto the street. I let the motor continue running so the heater would take the chill from the passenger compartment. There was an oil-stained shirt in the trunk that I used as a rag to clean the floorboards. With wet and dry newspaper I did the windows, inside and out. I asked. Another driver said newspaper works better than anything. Ten minutes later I was ready to work.

I started out rounding the block on Twelfth Avenue, then heading east on Fifty-sixth Street. The cab’s odometer showed over 130,000 miles. It was a late-model Dodge, less than two years old. I found out that most fleet taxis in New York run seven days a week, twenty hours a day.

The car’s front shocks were completely gone. The front bumper, the dash, and everything else rattled. There was a moderate shimmy at twenty miles an hour. I tested the brakes. They pulled to the right.

My first fare hailed me from the corner of Eleventh Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. A guy going to the Bronx. Tremont Avenue. I’d learned the subways well enough. I’d driven the airport shuttle van back and forth from Kennedy and La Guardia to Manhattan a hundred times but I had little practical knowledge of how to get around the streets by car, so I said, ‘I’m new. Can you direct me?’ The guy said, ‘Sure, turn left here.’ Three months later I was an expert.

I started out working the day shift, ten-hour days, Monday and Tuesday off. I liked the job from the first. Liked having a steady income. I didn’t have to talk to people and I was my own boss except for Shorty Smith.

If you want to make decent money hacking in New York, the first important information you learn is that you have to be behind the wheel driving 100 percent of the time. Moving. No lunch breaks. Eat what you want but eat it while you drive. No wasting time hanging around hotel cab lines hoping to get an expensive airport trip. You grind it out. One fare at a time. Forty to sixty fares a day. When you have to piss you use a milk carton or an empty coffee container and you pull over or piss while you drive.

Because of the job my drinking stayed under control. I had beers after work and on my days off but I managed to keep away from wine and the hard stuff. The depressions kept on but I managed okay. I was alone a lot but for me being alone was good.

Things changed. I liked driving, the freedom, the routine of going to work every day. But in time, off the sauce, I began to notice things; behavior that I didn’t seem to have any control over.

I was in my second month of hacking when a thing happened: I had to stop and break my work rhythm that day by calling the Rodney administration office at the taxi garage. The payroll people had me down for one dependant only and were taking too much withholding from my pay. Another cabbie who had experience in these matters advised me that I was not claiming enough dependants, that they would take less money out if I claimed twelve to fifteen dependants, so I was calling in to alter my tax status.

Between Thirty-fourth Street and Eighty-sixth Street on Third Avenue there are pay phones every two blocks. They are mounted on poles next to each other and separated by a metal partition for privacy.

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