Call Me A Cab

by Donald E. Westlake

After that she settled back in the seat at last, obviously thinking things over, and I concentrated on the traffic until she herself picked up the conversation, out past the cemeteries, telling me, “I just have a decision to make, that’s all.” So I gave her my philosophy, in a nutshell. “Don’t do it.” “Don’t do what?” “Don’t make decisions. They can only cause trouble.”

“Oh! You’ve got onion rings!” “I bought em in the McDonald’s there.” “I love onion rings. It didn’t even occur to me. I tell you what,” she said. “I’ll trade you, a couple onion rings for a couple french fries.” “I’ll go get you some onion rings,” I offered. “No, no, don’t do that. We’ll just trade a couple, okay?” Then I understood that this was an important moment. If I was standoffish and strict, if I insisted on going back into the stand and buying another package of onion rings, we would be formal with one another the whole trip, whereas what she really wanted was company.

“Oh! My face? No, he always says my face is one of the few times God did better work than he could.” “A very fancy man with a compliment.” It was amazing how much I didn’t like Barry.

I understood that at a level below consciousness I’d been in competition with Barry—an attractive woman creates male competition simply by existing—and now I saw that in any competition at any level Barry would have to come in first. He’d probably even spell better than me. Worst of all, if I ever met him, as I most likely would at the other end of this trip, I’d undoubtedly like him.

So we stood there side by side at the counter, dewy, spongy, pliant (her) and priapic (me), and pretended there was nothing going on, while the desk clerk endlessly did things with registration forms and Ms. Scott’s credit card and a pair of keys.

Difficult for women to move around in the world, with everybody trying to shove them down behind the nearest man. A lot of men would not have been able to resist the impulse to ‘help’ her tonight, with the desk clerk or the headwaiter; especially the headwaiter. Fortunately, I’m quiescent by nature.

I don’t have a head for photography. You hand me an Instamatic and I stand directly in front of something and go snap, and the picture is this simple dull factual statement. ‘Flower,’ it says, or ‘Two people on a front lawn.’

“Indecision is the key to flexibility.”

The officers didn’t make an awful lot of trouble, once they understood the situation, though one of them couldn’t resist pulling the sort of cheapshot remark so beloved of cops: “Is that the way you drive in New York?”

climbed up on a massive stool and told the bartender-silhouette I’d like a beer. He mentioned two or three brands, and I mentioned back the one I hadn’t immediately forgotten, and he brought me a small bottle, with a glass, and only charged a thousand dollars. Well, not quite that much.

While Katharine said something else about the urgency of the situation—she was letting off irritation, and had every right —I glanced back toward the bed, where Sue Ann was grinning foxily at me. Women love to see a man nagged by another woman.

“Okay, fella. And just what in holy hell are you doing here?” “Passing through.” “Then keep passing,” he said, with a jerking motion of his thumb. “And don’t let me see you here again.” What is it that makes cops so insecure? “I won’t,” I assured him, and drove on.

Kansas became Colorado at a town unhappily called Kanorado. This is a fairly common thing for state-line towns to do, cobble up a name from both state names, and the result is rarely euphonious to either the ear or the eye. There’s Mexhoma and Texhoma and Texico; Laark and Arkana and Texarkana; Florala, Monida, and Virgilina; Tennemo and Arkoma and Uvada; Marydel and Delmar. Mexicali and Calexico are across the border from one another. The towns that simply call themselves State Line are a lot better off.

“You know what they reminded me of?” “What?” “William Powell and Myrna Loy in The Thin Man.” Then she shook her head, saying, “No, that’s not exactly it. All his pretending his wife is this crazed wanton, this nymphomaniac or something, that was more like Thorne Smith. I’m not making any sense, am I?” “Not that I can tell.” “It’s a strategy for dealing with intimacy,” she said. “Do you see what I mean? At the time they started out together, the Chasens, back in the twenties and thirties, that was one of the role models you could follow for a relationship. You just stayed on the surface together, being amusing, appreciating one another’s wit and not taking anything seriously. Because marriage, or any real intimacy between people, it can be very frightening.” “As you well know,” I said. “As I well know,” she agreed. “Ten years ago, the popular strategy was to stay stoned together, laid back, cool. People are always trying to find the right strategy.”

His good humor lasted even into the question of payment, when it turned out he recognized no known credit card but would take my personal check on a New York City bank. I stared at him: “You will?” “Anybody who crosses America in a Checker cab is too dumb to be a thief,” he said. “Make it out to Smith’s Svce.” So I did.

The worst thing about a fight is the difficulty in backing out of it. I would have liked to chat with Katharine about this place, comparing it with our usual Holiday Inn, and I suppose she would have liked to discuss it with me as well, but we couldn’t talk about anything pleasant because we weren’t talking to one another at all; having talked a bit too much at one another when we were angry. Nobody wants to be the first to extend the olive branch, in case the other guy is still in a chainsaw mood.

Mrs. Hilyerd, a woman as rangy and bony as her husband, was the sort of cook who believes food should taste like itself.