New Orleans

New Orleans

I used to drive United Cab 170 around New Orleans with the expectation that somehow there would be some money involved that I would actually get to keep at the end of the week. I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I loved it - sort of the way lesbians are about buying nail polish.

I swear to you this story is true.

I was driving my cab around the CBD trying to hook a call out of Emeril’s or one of the Baptists over at the Morial Convention Center and I get a call from my pal Luke…

“Whatcha doin’?” He asks.

“Workin.’” I says.

“I need you to come down Chartres and get me at the Maison…I’ve got money.”

I have heard these words arranged in this order from Luke’s mouth before. Every other time I’ve heard them I awoke the next afternoon with hair on my tongue, injuries I could not explain and a profound soreness that I promise you does not come from putting in an honest day of hard work.

“Naw, Luke. I gotta work. I owe Jimmy rent on the cab.”

“Seriously, come get me…I got money.”

I can’t go get him. I make decent money driving hack, but I buy a tank of gas every night, pay three-fifty rent on the car every week and I like to drink, which doesn’t cost me anything but time I could be out driving and making a living - so there isn’t enough money, ever.

“Brother,” he says, “It’s a goddamned emergency and I need for you to come down Chartres, park the cab and come into the Maison and get me.”

“All right,” I says, “gimmee a minute – reckon you know our first stop is going to be an ATM…?”

“Just come on…hard.” He says.

So I do.

You ever notice how Sandra Dee or Debra Kerr or Marilyn Monroe come screaming around a corner in some sporty little convertible; they’re on their way to an important rendezvous with a marvelously handsome lantern-jawed man and they screech to a stop - parking beautifully and efficiently mere steps away from the front door of the U.N. Building or the Empire State Building or the counting room at the treasury building or the American embassy in Mogadishu - some place all the rest of us would spend an hour driving around before we gave up and spent the twenty dollars an hour to park in an underground garage? I call this Sandra Dee parking. An open parking place next to the handicapped spots at Wal-Mart? Sandra Dee parking. An open meter on the same block as the court house I am compelled to appear in through no fault of my own? Sandra Dee parking. So this was like that. I needed an open spot around the three hundred block of Chartres that I could both get into and then get out of and I found one.

Inside, the place was long and narrow and dark. Luke was sitting at the far end of the bar nursing something brown and wet and watching an unenthusiastic stripper waddle in a narrowing circle around a brass pole.

“Sit. Sit. Sit.” He says.

“Motherfucker.” I say.

“Seriously, man. Just sit down and shut up and all will be revealed in due course.”

“Gimme a hunnerd bucks,” I say. And he does. Suddenly, I’m considering the possibility of maybe taking him sort of seriously.

“What’s the deal, Luke?”

“Watch this…” He says, and he calls out to the stripper, “Hey! Honey! What color are your panties?”

Her eyes narrow. She thinks. Her forehead starts to wrinkle up. Finally, she surrenders, reaches down and hefts a roll of fat the size of a big pork tenderloin up far enough that she can see the fabric of her panties.

“They’re white. And…uh…sparkly. Gimme a buck.”

And he did.

“I’m calling bullshit and I gotta go back to work. Fuck you Luke.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait. Sit. Sit. It gets better.” He says this with a ferret-like intensity that would be painful to look at on a less attractive man. His smile never faltered. His eyes never left the str…uh…dancer.

He calls out to her, “Take it off, Honey…take it ALL off!”

She’s wearing precious little at this point and New Orleans is no place to take your panties off. For one moment I was bewildered.

She shrugged and started fooling with her garters. A phone was ringing down the bar. Sweat stood out on her lip and forehead and breasts. Suddenly, her whole leg sprang free in her hand. She stumbled, regained purchase on the stage and with one hand on the brass pole liberally subsidizing her balance, casually tossed the prosthesis underhanded behind the bar.

Luke chortled gleefully.

“Gimme twenny bucks.” She said.

And he did.

Later, in the cab, Luke turned to me and said, “Was it worth it, Brother?”

“No, Luke. It was demeaning and creepy and wrong and…hell, I’m just kidding. Of course it was worth it. Now gimme twenny bucks.”

And…astonishingly…he did.

For the most part, this really is a true story.