I drove a yellow taxi in New York long before Uber, Lyft, Juno and so forth made the whole thing so app based. You had to hustle out there and know where to find passengers on your own. Also, there was no GPS to help you navigate. I had a map unfolded on the front seat and other maps in my bag.
Our fleet was mostly Checkers, but we had one Chevrolet Impala as an experiment. It supposedly had capacity for only four passengers, not five like the Checker with its weird jump seats. Passengers and drivers would often ignore the capacity limits. I suppose the insurance company would give us grief if there was a serious accident and people got injured.
Oops, we only cover five people, not eight.
I liked the Impala anyway, even if didn't have the great visibility of Checker cars.
On a mild Wednesday evening in October, 1978, I had the Impala and had taken someone from Manhattan to Jacobi Hospital in The Bronx. I usually cruised back on local streets looking for a fare. There was no point in driving back to Manhattan empty.
I was headed west on Lydig Avenue, a narrow crosstown shopping street. At Wallace Avenue, a dark-haired woman hailed me and she got in the back. She said, "I'm going to 79th and Amsterdam eventually, but first I'd like to be driven around for a while. It relaxes me and helps clear my head."
That was the first time I had gotten that kind of request.
"Any particular place you'd like for that?"
"Start off with the Bronx River Parkway, go southbound. Don't worry about the meter, just let it run up."
I had gotten a brief look at her while she was in the street, and now I tried to glance at her in the mirror as I put the car back into gear. The Impala didn't have the huge interior space of a Checker, so she was pretty close to me.
She was dressed simply but neatly with business attire of a blazer, white blouse and a light-gray skirt. Perhaps the most notable item was her dark gray, brimmed hat. I looked at her face in the mirror again. She had a strong, New York-girl face with a prominent nose. It wasn't at all dainty or "cute." Her skin had a nice olive complexion. There was a certain intensity in her that I noticed over the course of the evening. I also would detect something else, a kind of sadness or anger that I think she was trying to hide.
We had just reached the first light at White Plains Road when she said, "By the way, do you like my hat? It's new; this is the first time I've worn it."
By this time I'd learned to always praise a lady's hat or purse or anything else if asked for an opinion, "Yes, it really looks good on you."
"Why, thank you." Then she said, "How about my shoes? I have these nice strappy new sandals tonight." She put one leg up on the back of my seat. The partition was slid back; I was often careless about that so I could hear what people were saying. I had only to glance over to see her black sandal right next to me. Otherwise her foot was bare - she had no stockings of any kind.
I called them "very cool." I didn't think cab drivers threw the word "chic" around very often. Then she leaned forward to look at the right side of the dash where there was a holder and a light for my hack license.
"So you're Paul. I'm Minerva."
"Nice to meet you." She sat back and I noted an odd smile, more like a smirk. I had never known a Minerva and I wondered what her last name was. I imagined it being one that made for an awkward combination, something like Schumacher or Grobdruck. I had even known a kid in high school from the unfortunate House of Slutsky.
We had a few blocks to the Parkway entrance. "I guess it's a bit lonely driving a cab, isn't it?"
I wasn't that good with cabbie small talk, "Sort of. You meet a lot of people briefly and then you hardly remember them in a week."
"It must be hard if you have a wife or girlfriend, I mean with the long hours and all. If you don't mind me asking, do you have a wife or girl out there?"
I had also learned that, when meeting a new female, one should be cautious about revealing one's past or present romantic status. I did know that few if any women got involved with taxi drivers they met on a ride or elsewhere. It was not like Travis Bickle and Betsy the campaign worker. I decided to say, "It's sort of unsettled right now."
She laughed at that, "Okay, unsettled, I get it. I suppose I'm kind of unsettled myself at the moment."
Just to be conversational I said, "Really, how so?"
"Well I used to be married, but I'm separated now."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
Again I heard that clever little laugh, "Don't be sorry. He's the one who's going to be sorry, you can be sure of that."
At this point I was circling up the entrance ramp to the southbound Parkway; for the next mile or so we'd be passing the Bronx Zoo. I was managing my first impressions of this Minerva. Already I was wary of her, and I let her have the next line. I was guessing she was in her late twenties or even about thirty. I was twenty-three at the time.
"So Paul, do you get women who try to pick you up or do you try to get them yourself? I mean for more than a cab ride, of course."
I had to improvise something. Already I knew that the low status of cab drivers didn't make them desirable pick-up material. Probably the only women they ever banged in their cars were streetwalkers.
"Actually Minerva, it's not an exciting job in that particular way. Maybe it happens sometimes, but it hasn't for me."
Now we were going over a soaring trestle above some subway yards; we could see the Midtown skyline to the south. We were near the first major junction point, the one with the Cross-Bronx Expressway. I said, "Do you want to take this?"
She interrupted, "No, just keep going south."
Then she said, "I get it how this job is not exactly a pick-up paradise." She seemed to be insinuating something about social class there, but I was hardly surprised by that.
She had more to say, "However, I bet there are times when girls do tease you."
"Why would they do that?"
"Oh, just for the fun of it. You're up there and they're back here. You can look all you want but you can't touch. You know, a little power game, for some kicks."
I was getting unnerved by this the game but I was surprised at how fast Minerva made her next move. She said, "Like this," and she put her feet up on her seat cushion, pulled her skirt up and spread her legs.
We were at the next junction - the Bruckner Expressway - and I had stopped at a traffic signal. I looked back, and there was enough light from the streetlamps for me to see up her legs and notice her bare bush. She had no stockings and no underpants. Like her face, her body was also not dainty. There was a certain solidity in her bare limbs that caught my attention.
She said, "Turn on the dome light."
"Somebody might see you."
"Fuck them. We're going to be zipping down the road anyway. If they see me, they can jerk off about it later."
I did turn on the dome, and as the signal changed I accelerated into the southbound Bruckner.
"So Paul, notice anything unusual?"
I looked back again, "Yeah Minerva, you're not wearing any panties." I sounded surprisingly churlish. "Why is that?"
"I guess it just makes me feel so damn sexy. I'm such a hot woman that I have to express it however I can." Now she leaned forward on the back of my seat and said quietly, "But I do have a back-up pair in my purse. I girl should always have a spare, just in case."
