Six a.m. I‘m standing by my airport shuttle van in the driveway of a new McMansion near Sacramento waiting for a tardy passenger. The van company is a shared ride service, and this delay will make me late for the next stop. I’m getting antsy.
"She’ll be out in five minutes,” the passenger’s boyfriend says. He’s standing beside the van in his bathrobe. He looks likes he just awakened from a sleep that began in 1973; Brillo pad red hair, droopy mustache. Disco Van Winkle. I could see him wrapped in a polyester leisure suit with white vinyl boots and a matching belt.
I clear my throat. “I have to pick up one more passenger, and I’m running late now,” I say. “Could you see if she’s ready?”
He nods but doesn’t make move toward the house. Instead, he fishes a $50 dollar bill from his bathrobe pocket and hands it to me. “Just five more minutes, I swear,” he says. I tell him the tip is included in the prepaid fare, and anyway, $50 is way too much.
“Take it. It’s for your trouble,” he says.
I can take a hint. I pocket the fifty, then I hear the front door of the house open closely followed by the rattle of luggage wheels on cement. The passenger is 21 or 22, wearing sprayed on jeans, a nothing halter top, sandals and navel a ring. She’s also slugging down a bottle of Wicked Ale.
“Hiiiiiiiii, Mr. Van Driver!” she gushes, all boozy cheer. “Here I am!” I take her suitcase, then politely but firmly suggest that she sit in front, where she’s less likely to throw up from motion sickness on the curving hillside roads we'll be taking, and where I can get a Hefty bag to her in a hurry in case she throws up anyway.
“Guess I better not take this, huh?” she says, finishing the bottle and handing the empty to the boyfriend. “I’ll call you when I get there,” she tells him. “Think he’ll let me smoke in his van?”
They look at me. “I’d like to say yes, but state law and my next passenger say I can’t. And we’re running late. We better go. Now.”
She throws me a wobbly, mock salute. “Yessir!” she says, and pulls herself into the front passenger seat. She blows a kiss to her squeeze: “Bye bye. I’ll call when I get there. Will you miss me? Say yes!”
“Go. You’ll miss your flight,” the boyfriend says. She pouts. I climb in and we’re on our way.
“You sure I can’t smoke in your van?” she asks.
“I’m sure.”
“Are we making any stops?”
“We’re picking up a church lady.” I mentioned the church connection on purpose. I thought it might make my tipsy passenger more circumspect. Silly me.
“For real? We’re picking up Dana Carvey? That is soooooo cool! Should I ask for his autograph? I love Dana Carvey!
“We’re not picking up Dana Carvey. We’re picking up a real church lady. A Presbyterian.”
My dispatcher warned me about her the night before: "Watch your fucking language. The old bitch calls corporate and complains about the drivers swearing and shit."
The elderly Presbyterian church lady is in tears when we arrive, thinking she's going to be late for her flight. I assure her that she will be at the airport in plenty of time to have her luggage looted by airline baggage handlers, be humiliated while spread-eagled by an obese TSA minority hire, then jammed into a cement airline seat and nibbling on blanched rodent turds the airlines claims are peanuts. I don't put it that way of course, but that's how I've come to think about airline travel since federal deregulation too effect in the 80s.
The stripper tries to help. "Hiiiii!," she gushes again, exhaling an invisible cloud of ale breath. The church lady's mouth puckers up like a barnacle.
"My name is Tawny," the stripper says. "I'm going to Vegas. Are you going to Vegas too?"
The church lady's barnacle pucker gets even more puckered. "No," she says with a rimless glasses glare. The stripper is too full of ale and God knows what else to take the hint. She presses on in a cheerfully boozy way: "Well, where are you going?"
"Shhh," the church lady hisses, trying to shut the stripper up.
Not a chance. Never try to quiet an aggressively happy drunk. It will have the opposite effect. Tawny proceeded to prove my point.
"Gosh, I'm just trying to get your mind off missing your flight. I mean, wow, you were like crying your butt off a minute ago. But it will be okay. Like, even if you miss your flight, you can come to Vegas with me. Do you have any daughters? Hey, do you mind if I smoke? I'll give you $20 if you let me smoke."
"Shhh," the church lady hisses.
The rebuff hurt the stripper's feelings. "Fuck! I'm just trying to be friendly! Just because she's gonna miss her fucking flight, it isn't my fucking fault! Gosh! Shit!"
Actually, the delay is her fault. But I don't say that. Instead, I say, "No one will miss any flights.” I gesture toward the windshield. We are on US 50 in light traffic, passing through an industrial area. "Look, there's hardly any traffic and we'll be at the airport in plenty of time."
"There's my club!" Tawny shouts. She waves an arm in front of my eyes and points to a cinder block building the Presbyterians on the zoning board wanted as far away from a residential area as possible. "Hi Marci! Hi Twila! Hi Amy! I'm going to Vaaaaaaaaaygas! Ha ha!"
"Shhh," the church lady hisses.
I intervene: "Miss, better settle down or Southwest Airlines won't let you on the airplane."
That seems to work. Her posture stiffens in drunken dignity and she clams up. A dense climate of silence settles over the van for the rest of the ride. We arrive on time and the church lady bolts from the van, snatches her carry-ons with a blue-veined claw and scuttles full throttle to the terminal entrance.
The stripper gets out before I can open her for door for her and takes a deep breath. She appears momentarily sober, her eyes clear despite the alcohol. I unload her luggage from the back.
"You've been patient with me," she says. She opens her suitcase, extracts a $20, and stuffs the bill in my shirt pocket. I start to say the tip is included in the fare and her friend had already been more than generous. She wouldn't hear it.
"Hush. I know what it's like to work for tips," she says, and tamps the twenty down.
Back on the road, I reflect on which of those two women had the more Christian nature set forth in the Sermon On The Mount; the angry Pharisee or the sweet drunkard who strips for a living?
My money is on the latter.
-oOo-
