I can admit to being something of a nervous passenger. Not always, not even most of the time, but I definitely have my twitchy, bossy, direction-shouting, oh-shit-handle-grabbing moments, particularly when in the company of certain friends. They're not all bad drivers. But they all share the same static air of perpetual distraction, a tendency to constantly shift and re-focus their attention with the suddenness of a methed-out hummingbird. They may well be paying attention to the road, for all I know, but it doesn't look like it, and that's what makes me squirmy; I'd rather be driven by a blind man who at least appears to be trying.The professionals, however, never bother me. I'll ride in anything that's built to seat less than a dozen people, and which is piloted by a stranger that some other stranger deemed capable. Weird, but true. Like Seinfeld said two decades ago, it's like everything happening beyond the windshield is a movie. I've ridden in countless taxis in several countries, and — other than that guy in Miami last fall who drove me from the north side of downtown to the southwest corner of Coconut Grove before letting me know it was his first night and he'd never heard of Little Havana — there's never been a problem. And not once have I feared for my safety.
Until today.
I should've taken the hint when the cabbie came knocking at the front door of our house, which opens on always-busy Fifth Avenue North. He'd simply left his clean yellow hack idling in one of the two eastbound lanes; lunchtime traffic was funneling into the other at 45 mph in order to avoid it. He seemed like a nice guy, though, sinewy and leathery in that distinctly Pinellas County way that says "I know I look like I drink all day and sleep on the beach, but actually, I don't." I just figured he'd gotten mugged in an alley just like mine once, or something.
So I got into the car and we started jawing about the difference between the summer rains here and the ones in New Orleans. (Apparently, in New Orleans, it's twice each afternoon — once early and once not long before sunset.) Up ahead, just past a traffic light, a bus was stopped, swapping passengers with the curb. The cab's driver started a last-minute lane change, only to be rebuffed by the sedan that happened to be passing us at speed. He was forced to stop in the intersection, blocking the minivan in the turning lane facing us. The face of the minivan's driver went red at about the same time as the traffic light above us, and she advanced on the cab, mouthing obscenities.
It wasn't the minivan that got the cabbie going, though. It was the turning front wheels of the Mercedes between us and the bus, telegraphing a break in our other lane's traffic. Without looking, he goosed the taxi forward, cutting off the Mercedes and muttering about the stupid bus. Brakes squealed behind us.
Where eastbound Fifth Avenue forks (two lanes right, one lane straight) underneath I-275, we careened serenely across the white warning stripes painted on the asphalt. The curb we just barely missed, while the driver casually told me that several thousand issues of yesterday's Tampa Tribune erroneously reported that the Lightning lost the Stanley Cup. I laughed weakly, willing him to notice the red light at 16th Street.
Now, here, at the corner of Fifth and MLK Street, he's turning right on red, and I'm going to die, because he doesn't see or doesn't care about the gunmetal gray Isuzu Trooper barreling toward us on MLK. The Trooper is doing easily 20 mph over the speed limit, maybe 60 feet from where the taxi eases into its way. I'm already wincing, and sitting up on the front edge of the backseat, because that'll help, right?
The cabbie mentions something about not seeing as many Lightning stickers and flags as he thought he would, but the end of it is lost to a massive horn blast. I chance a look back. The Trooper cannot possibly be as close to the cab's bumper as it appears, and not be touching it. Some optical allusion suggests that the SUV has actually eaten a portion of the car's stern. I do not look up through the Trooper's windshield.
"Well, your horn works," says the cabbie laconically into his rearview. "Why don't you see if your brakes work, too?"
I'm thinking that there are more than 25 taxicab companies listed in the new St. Petersburg edition of the Yellow Pages. I'm thinking that that translates into hundreds of cab drivers. I'm thinking that my presence in this cab, behind this lethally unobservant chauffeur, cannot be coincidence. I have somehow knocked the cosmic scales out of true, and this agent has been sent to restore balance.
As he cuts a swath across a few lanes of MLK — again cutting off the Trooper and catalyzing another round of horn play — the driver turns to face me. I'm expecting the classic eyeless sockets. The skin peeling like mildewed bathroom wallpaper. The frozen, wormy grin. The dirt-choked voice asking if I happened to remember those cabbies I stiffed, bailing and running with my howling friends, as a teenager back in Spain. Because they remember me ….
But it's just that weathered, friendly face under the trucker's cap.
"You said First Avenue North?"
"South! I … I said south."
Two minutes later, he's blocking a lane on First while I run into the bank to use the ATM. I come back out, pay and thank him, and go back inside.
When I exit again eight or 10 minutes later, he's still sitting in the same spot. I cross First on foot and continue along Third Street, craning my neck to look back at the cab. I'm not watching where I'm going, so I very nearly walk out into the traffic on Central Avenue.
And nearly get hit by another cab.
Contact Scott Harrell at 813-739-4856, or scott.harrell@weeklylpanet.com.
This article appears in Jun 17-23, 2004.