Somebody Owes Me Money

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I bet none of it would have happened if I wasn’t so eloquent. That’s always been my problem, eloquence, though some might claim my problem was something else again. But life’s a gamble, is what I say, and not all the eloquent people in this world are in Congress.

Where I am is in a cab in New York City. Fares frequently ask me how it is somebody as eloquent as me is driving a cab, and I usually give them a brief friendly answer which doesn’t really cover the territory. The truth is, my eloquence comes from reading rather than formal higher education, which limits the kind of job open to me. Besides, driving a cab gives me a chance to pick my own hours. Day shift when the track is closed, night shift when it’s open. If there’s a game somewhere I’m particularly interested in, I skip a night and nobody cares. And if I’m broke, I can work as many hours as I want till I make it up.

Also, driving a cab is a lot more pleasant than you might think. You’re dealing with the public all day long, but only as individuals, one or two at a time. People are best one or two at a time. Also, economics being what they are, you’re generally dealing with a better class of customer. You get to talk with lawyers, businessmen, actors, tourists from Europe, all sorts of that kind of people. You get to look at a certain number of pretty girls, too, and sometimes have nice friendly conversations with them, and on rare occasions make a date with one. Like the girl I went with last year, Rita, the one where it looked serious for a while, until the Big A opened and it turned out she didn’t want to go to the track with me. She was down on gambling, is what it was, and the funny thing was she worked for a stockbroker. She kept wanting me to put money in the stock market.

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