Imagine yourself in
in the
North Beach
district of San Francisco,
in
Specs Museum & Bar,
12 William Saroyan Place,
and imagine that you are eavesdropping as Specs talks to the person
sitting beside you at the bar.
What follows is a piece of fiction, never actually spoken by Specs.
But I hope that it gives the general flavor of his monologues.
The characters mentioned are purely fictional and are not meant
to suggest any actual individual living in San Francisco or elsewhere.
You know Roy Chambers, don't you? Tall black guy in his forties,
very talkative, usually comes in here early in the week, drinks
brandy. Sometimes very quick to zero in on good looking young
women, especially white ones.
Usually they don't mind, because he knows how to really turn on
the charm when he wants to.
(Besides, young women tend to have the idea that guys
as old as Roy are not a threat --
a fact I've been known to take advantage of
from time to time myself.)
Years ago he used to shack up
with Simone,
before she was packed off to the nuthouse for the first time. Roy
used to play trombone with Arnie Hill's group back then.
Anyway, Roy's driving a cab now, since about two or three years
or so. Usually works in the daytime, and sometimes in the evenings at the
end of the week if he's short on cash.
Cruises the downtown area, maybe south of Market
or even in the Mission if it's not too late.
So one night last week he picks up a businessman downtown and
takes the guy way out in the Avenues. 35th and Moraga or 40th
and Quintara, whatever. Part of town I never go near myself. So
he drops off his fare and now he's out in the deep Sunset, and of
course I'm sure there was fog, 'cause there's always fog out in
the Sunset. And this is already close to midnight, and he
figures he could head over to Portola and to upper Market, I'd guess,
then if he doesn't pick up a fare cruising down Market he'll head
down into Soma or downtown or up here to North Beach,
where he'll have to deal
with all the traffic and the crazy drunks, but that way
he'll probably pick up at least two more fares for sure.
OLD AGE & TREACHERY will always win out against YOUTH & SKILL
But the thing of it is, this businessman gave him a $5 tip, so
Roy figures that this might be a sign that he's done enough for
the night, so he might as well just head on home, which for him
anymore is over by the Glenn Park BART station.
So there he is cruising down Monterey Blvd with his dome light
already turned off, and he sees this woman out in the street
waving him down. She's right out there in the street, cars
swerving around her, and she's holding onto the hand of a young
kid.
So Roy figures he'd better pick her up before somebody runs her
down. She gets into the cab, and the kid -- a little
girl -- is a bit dazed, like she's just woken up
and isn't sure what's going on. About seven or eight years old,
Roy guesses, wearing a cute little-girl party dress. Taffeta, or
whatever they make those little-girl dresses from. And the
mother is fairly young, twenties, lower thirties at the outside,
wearing a dress that hugs her body, heels, make-up, the whole
nine yards, dressed for a party except by now it's all starting to
come just a little unglued. And she's upset, Roy can see that
right away.
Neither of them were wearing coats, so Roy knew they were
tourists even before she asked to be taken to the
Union Square Hyatt.
So Roy starts asking her how she likes San Francisco, talking
about the weather, giving her a taste of the old Roy charm. He
wanted to help her calm down, he says, help her forget whatever
had happened back there. Except that, knowing Roy, he probably
also had the thought that maybe there was a chance of setting
something up. If she'd just been dumped by some guy, maybe she'd
like to have some other guy, like Roy for instance,
keep her company for
the rest of her time in San Francisco.
But Roy's charm was not doing its usual trick, and after a while
she just flat out tells him, ``Look, if you don't mind I really
don't want to have a conversation right now.'' Roy says that
just her tone of
voice would have been enough to tell him he'd better shut up.
No problem, so she'd had a bad night and was in a bad mood. Except,
I know Roy, he's never all that good at accepting rebuffs
from women. So I imagine the atmosphere got pretty chilly
as the cab headed down upper Market Street
to the Castro and towards downtown.
And the little girl maybe more asleep than awake.
So they get down to downtown, and Roy stops at a red light,
still on Market Street, just past Van Ness. And there are a
couple of whores on the sidewalk there, and one of them
walks out to the car stopped in front of Roy's cab, makes her
proposition and gets in.
The little girl in the cab was obviously awake by then,
because a few minutes later
she asks her mother what the bit with the whore
and the car ahead of them had been all about.
And the mother says, ``Oh, the woman was just asking that driver
for directions. The driver's going to take her where she's going.''
And Roy, being the guy he is,
can't just let this pass by unchallenged.
He turns around and says to her, ``Lady, kids have to
grow up sometime. They need to know what the world is really
like. Tell your daughter the truth.''
And the mother snaps back at him that she'll be the
one to decide how to raise her daughter. I mean if you can
imagine it. This young woman has already had god knows what
happen to her earlier in the evening, then
she winds up in a cab
driven by this middle-aged black guy who starts hitting on her,
and then has
her daughter witness the seamy side of life in the Tenderloin.
She wouldn't be exactly in the mood to explain to the little girl
the ins and outs of prostitution. So to speak.
So they get to the hotel, the fare is
$12.75, and the woman pulls out two fives and three ones. Which by
now was what Roy had expected, but he still came around to her
side of the cab and opened her door for her and the little girl,
because Roy always does right by his customers whether they tip
him or not.
And now the woman is already out of the cab,
standing on the sidewalk holding on
to the open cab door, with the little girl standing beside her,
and Roy is waiting for them to walk off.
And the mother says, ``You know cabbie, you were right back
there, I apologize. My daughter needs to know what the world is
really like.''
And she leans down to the little girl and says, ``Honey, that
woman who got into the car back there was a prostitute. She
asked that man for money, and they're going to go somewhere and
have sex.'' Then she makes her voice a little louder.
``And nine months from now, that woman will have a baby.''
Then she raises her body back upright. She's still turned towards
the little girl, but as she says this last bit, really loud,
she's looking sideways at Roy.
``And that little baby,'' she says, ``will grow up to be a cab driver.''
Then she turns to Roy with her hand out and the palm up, and it
takes him a minute to realize that she's waiting for her quarter
change.
February 12, 1997