I drove a cab in New York for 31 years. Started in 67. Quit in 98 when my knees went. 31 years. You see everything. You hear everything. People get in the back of a cab and they forget you’re there. or they remember you’re there and they talk to you anyway because you’re going somewhere together and you’re never going to see each other again and that makes it safe. I had regulars.
Everybody had regulars. You work a neighborhood long enough. Mine was the Chelsea Hotel area, 23rd Street, the Village, sometimes up to Midtown after shows. That was my territory basically. She started getting in my cab sometime in the spring of 69. I don’t remember the exact first time. With regulars, it’s always like that.
You can’t remember the first time because at the time it was just another fair. You only know it was the first time later when there’s been enough times after it that you can look back. She’d come out of the Chelsea and she’d get in and she’d say an address. That’s it. An address. Most people say, “Hi, how are you? It’s cold.” Whatever.
She just said an address, which honestly I appreciate it. Now, I want to be straight with you about something. I didn’t know who she was. Not at first. Not for a while. I knew she was somebody. You develop a sense for that driving a cab in New York. There’s regular people and there’s people who carry something around them, some kind of weight or some kind of energy.
You can feel it from the front seat. She had it. But I didn’t know the name. I didn’t follow rock music. I was a jazz man. Still am. And she wasn’t jazz. So for the first month, maybe six weeks, she was just the woman with the wild hair and the feather thing who came out of the Chelsea and knew exactly where she was going and tipped like she meant it. That last part mattered.
I’m being honest with you. In this business, you remember the people who tip like they mean it. Not because of the money. Exactly. Because of what it says. It says, “I see you. I know this is work. I respect work.” She respected work. The routine was like this. It was usually late, 10:00, 11, sometimes after midnight, after shows sometimes, or just I don’t know where she’d been.
The Chelsea had that quality. People came in and out of there at all hours, and you couldn’t always tell what they’d been doing or where they were going. She’d get in, give the address, I’d drive. Sometimes she talked, sometimes she didn’t. When she didn’t, I didn’t push it. That’s rule one in this job. Read the fair.
Some people need to talk, some people need to not talk. You learn to tell the difference in about 30 seconds and you adjust. When she didn’t talk, she looked out the window. Not like someone killing time, like someone watching something. Like the city was a movie and she was trying to catch every frame.
I’d watch her in the mirror sometimes. Not in a weird way, just professional curiosity. I guess some fairs who drive them long enough, you start to understand them a little, even without words. She understood New York the way you understand a place that you love and that doesn’t entirely love you back. The first time she talked, really talked, was maybe six weeks in.
It was late raining. One of those New York nights where the rain comes sideways off the river and the city sounds different, quieter, like it’s thinking about something. She got in, said the address, and then about two blocks in, she said, “You ever wonder if you’re in the right place?” I said, “What do you mean the right place?” She said, “Like the right city, the right life, like somewhere you made a turn and ended up here, and you don’t know if you’d have been better off if you turned the other way.
” I thought about it because I don’t answer questions I haven’t thought about. I said, “I think the turn you already made is the only turn there is. The other one doesn’t exist anymore.” She was quiet for a minute. Then she said, “That’s either very wise or very depressing.” I said, “Probably both.” She laughed. It was a real laugh, the kind that starts somewhere in the chest before it gets to the mouth. After that, she talked more.
Over the next few months, I learned things about her the way you learn things in a cab, in pieces, out of order, without context. I learned she was from Texas, some small town. She didn’t say it like it was a good thing or a bad thing, just a fact. I learned she’d been in San Francisco before New York.
That San Francisco was she said it was where she figured out what she was. I learned she was a singer. This one I actually already knew by then because my wife had heard something on the radio and said, “Isn’t that the woman you drive sometimes?” And I’d listened and I thought, “Yeah, I think that is.” I never brought it up with her.
That felt wrong somehow, like it would change the thing between us. In the cab, I was just the driver and she was just the fair. And we talked because we talked. I didn’t want to make it into something else. She never asked my name. I never asked hers. After a while, I knew it anyway, but it didn’t matter. In the cab, we were just two people going somewhere.
One night, this was the fall 69, maybe October. She got in and she was quiet in a different way. Not the looking out the window quiet, a heavier quiet, like something was sitting on her. I drove for a while without saying anything because that’s what you do. Then she said very quiet, “Do you ever get tired?” I said, “Tired? How?” She said, “Just tired of doing the thing, whatever your thing is.
Tired of giving it.” I said, “Sure, some shifts.” She said, “What do you do when that happens?” I thought about it. I said, “I drive the next fair.” She said, “Just like that.” I said, “What else are you going to do? The shift isn’t over. You drive the next fair.” She was quiet for a long time after that.
When we got to where she was going, she sat there for a moment before she got out. Then she said, “That’s the thing I keep forgetting. The shift isn’t over.” She got out. She tipped like she meant it. I drove the next fair sometime in late ‘ 69, early 70, she stopped coming. That happens with regulars. People move. People change their schedules. People find another cab.
You notice the absence and then you stop noticing it. And then you only remember it when something reminds you. I figured she’d left New York, gone back to California, which is where people like her went, San Francisco or Los Angeles. She’d mentioned Los Angeles a couple of times, recording something, I think.
I didn’t think much about it until October 4th, 1970. I was parked on 8th Avenue waiting for a fair. The radio was on. I always had the radio on. The news came through. Janice Joplain, Los Angeles, 27 years old. I sat there for a while. I didn’t cry. I’m not going to tell you I cried. That’s not the kind of man I am.
And she wasn’t the kind of person who would have wanted that. But I sat there. I thought about the rain night. The turn you already made is the only turn there is. I thought about the shift isn’t over. I thought hers was. Then I picked up the next fair because what else are you going to do? I never talked about this to anybody.
My wife knew I’d driven her some. But the conversations, the things she said, I kept those. Not because they were secrets, because they were private. Because they happened in a cab at midnight. And some things that happen in a cab at midnight are just for the cab. 55 years. I still drive past the Chelsea sometimes. Not in a cab.
I retired like I said, but I live in the neighborhood more or less. I end up on 23rd Street. I always look at the building. I always think about the woman who came out of there and got in my cab and sat in a dress and never asked my name. People want to know what she was like. I can only tell you what she was like in the back of a cab at midnight.
She was tired sometimes, the way anybody is tired. She was funny when she wanted to be. She asked real questions and she listened to real answers. She tipped like she meant it. She understood that some conversations are just for the cab. And one rainy night she said, “Do you ever wonder if you’re in the right place?” And I said, “The turn you already made is the only turn there is.
” And she said, “That’s either very wise or very depressing.” And I said, “Probably both.” And she laughed. I’d give a lot to hear that laugh one more time. But the shift’s over and there’s nothing to do about that. So that’s what I got.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
