Call Me A Cab

by Donald E. Westlake

“Don’t make decisions. They can only cause trouble.”

You worry about a problem, and worry and worry, until finally you do something, it doesn’t matter what, right or wrong, sensible or stupid, and the relief that comes from action is so great you just relax right down into sleep.

it’s impossible to describe a person to another person; the best you can do is a caricature approximation.

you have to grow up, you can’t be a thirty-year-old man with a temporary job.” “A lot of thirty-year-old men have temporary jobs. The difference is, I know it.”

Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off till next week is the best approach to life I know of.”

“Indecision is the key to flexibility.”

You make immaturity sound very good, Tom, you argue the case beautifully, but the fact is, if you’re going to get anywhere in life you have to make decisions.”

The human body is a wonderful thing, so long as everything that’s inside stays inside. Once the inside stuff starts coming out, what you’ve got is a mess.

A cabby I know had it happen to him, a woman giving birth in the back of the cab, and not only did it cost him an arm and a leg to get the cab cleaned it also took two days to air the thing out before he could use it again. Two days out of business. Romance is romance, but real life is real life, and believe me, Katharine, you do not want to travel to Los Angeles in a cab in which somebody has just given birth.”

“But that could be beautiful along there, with a lot of time and patience.” “And money.” “The sad thing is,” she said, “God did it right the first time, and didn’t charge a cent.”

“You’re still recommending inaction, aren’t you?” “Nothing is usually the best thing to do.”

It’s so hard to find reasonably competent people these days.” “That’s why competent supervision is so important,”

does. A woman has to be much tougher than a man if she’s going to be taken seriously.”

So we can stop looking at men out of bitterness and grievance, and we can see they have some good qualities as well. They’re very good at building things. Some of them are fairly useful at fixing things. They have an eagerness for life which has helped them deal with too much responsibility, and which in repose can be rather lovable. They are capable of being excellent companions, and to be practical there is no acceptable substitute in bed. The best man is not, as some have suggested, a dead man, but a retired man, all responsibility finished. A putterer, a permanent boy.

“Getting together is easy,” she said. “Biology takes care of that. It’s the staying together that’s tough. A couple begins in love and happiness, and then they spiral down through bad experiences and misunderstandings and mutual cruelties until they either split or they find an accommodation in which they live together without having anything to do with one another.

In every life, however reluctantly, you move at last beyond adventure.