Returns

First job of the day. The pickup point was shown on the despatch screen as “Outside Woolworths shops” in Dickson. The cab rank is maybe fifty metres from Woolworths, and there are taxis going past all the time. Like as not, my passenger would hail one down, and the driver would gleefully steal my fare and drive away chortling. I’d have to find a non-existent parking space, risk the prowling parking inspectors from Parking Inspector Headquarters just across the road, and wait for five minutes, trying to make eye contact with every granny wheeling a shopping trolley, clutching a book of taxi discount vouchers, and jingling with twenty cent pieces to pay the fare.

Worse, the destination was given as “Downer”. That’s the next suburb, beginning a hundred metres away. I could see myself (if I actually found my passenger after waiting five minutes) driving two blocks for a five dollar fare, counting a sock full of coins, ferrying plastic bags of groceries to the front door, and topping it off by filling out the voucher slip.

But wonders never cease. My passenger was waiting out front, a skinny black kid in a hoodie, and he just about climbed in while I was still moving, he was that eager to see me. And me him.

“Gungahlin...” he said, and I smiled. That’s a solid fare. Admittedly, it would be taking me away from the afternoon action, but it’s good money.

“...and come back here,” he continued. “I’ve got to pick something up at the Gungahlin shops.”

My smile widened. Double the money, and the job would leave me where I’d find another passenger easily. Maybe lift one from outside the shops.

It’s an easy run to Gungahlin. Up the Federal Highway, turn off at the light industrial suburb of Mitchell (deserted after dark apart from a strip club and two brothels), and then a long road through rapidly developing suburbs to the town centre. The pace of building here is insane. Every week there is a whole new street of houses springing up, and my GPS navigator is hopeless in finding a way through the maze of dusty intersections and construction sites.

As we neared the shops, I pondered the mechanics of the situation. I’d have to find a place to park while my passenger went inside to pick up whatever it was, and then spend some time waiting for him to return for the ride back. Parking here is tight, and while there’s a taxi rank, it’s usually hijacked by private cars. Maybe I’d have to “hover” in the narrow street.

Hmmmm. Would my passenger return? He’d disappear into the shopping centre, and I’d wait unpaid out the front. Maybe this was a scam, and I’d be waiting fretfully and fruitlessly for my fare, owing half the meter amount to the cab owner, going backwards before my shift was properly begun. And then have to drive a long way back empty to the afternoon peak in the city.

I looked at the figure in the passenger seat. I usually prefer customers from the high end of town. Solid types in suits and expensive houses, leather briefcases and Business Class luggage stickers. They might be corporate robbers and public service fat cats, but they pay their taxi fares and know a thing or two about jazz.

Young men, unshaven in jeans and sports outerwear tend to be more colourful but risky.

Oh well. I regard it as the height of rudeness to ask for money up front. Even if the passengers tick all the high-risk boxes for fare evasion, I still take them the distance, play the music they like, smile at their jokes, get them home in comfort and security. Over the two years I’ve been driving cabs, the number of “runners” I’ve had wouldn’t overflow a hand’s fingers.

Here we were at the shops, and my passenger livened up.

“There,” he pointed. “That’s the cafe I need to get to. And there’s my mate. Just pull up outside, will you? Blow the horn.”

For a wonder, there was a parking space available. I pulled in, giving a quick toot, and my passenger wound down the window and waved to a waiter.

The two young men spoke briefly, and the upshot was that the waiter was getting off in a few minutes and would drive my passenger back. He looked at the meter, handed me thirty dollars for a twenty-two dollar fare, saying “Driver, keep the change. It’s karma.”

I beamed at him. My shift had a solid, happy start. “I’ll pass it on to someone,” I assured him.

It turned out to be a slow old evening. The tail end of winter, and though the days are gradually getting longer, it was cold and breezy and by two in the morning the main cab rank was looking pretty bleak. Passengers were mostly tucked up in bed, and the only activity was five plumes of steam rising from five cabs, with five cabbies inside, wishing they were tucked up as well. I had my iPhone running through the soppy romantic songs, the slide show running through Paris, San Francisco, Guernsey. I drive to get money for my next overseas trip, and in empty moments I fill my mind with thoughts of the places I’ve been, and those I’ve yet to get to. I might take people to Gungahlin and Tuggeranong, Mawson and Dickson, but I’m really driving myself to Charleston and Kyoto, Frankfurt and Hamburg.

I was third cab on the rank, contemplating an early end to my shift. At the current rate of passengers, I’d be lucky to get another fare, and even luckier if it was in the right direction. I could pack it in, gas up the cab, scrape the ice off the windows of my own car, and drive home, where a warm bed was waiting for me.

But wait, there’s movement on the rank. Up ahead a figure walked up to the first cab, opened the passenger door, and began talking to the cabbie. And then moved on to the next cab. And then headed for me.

Bad sign. If a passenger gets rejected by two cabbies on a slow night, he’s trouble. And he was.

“Look,” he began, in a voice ruffled by alcohol, “I’ve got six bucks in my savings account. Will that get me to Latham?”

Latham, a good thirty dollar fare at this time of night.

“That’s a very big ask,” I told him.

“It’s all I’ve got. I get a hundred dollars next week. I can pay you then.”

There were two cabs behind me, and if I rejected him, he’d ask those cabbies the same question. Likely they’d knock him back too, and he’d be faced with a long walk home in freezing cold. It would be hours. Or he’d maybe find a scrap of shelter out of the wind and wait hours and more hours until the buses began running again. Or maybe one of the two cabbies waiting behind me would take him out of generosity, but most other cabbies are working the long hours to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

“Hop in,” I said.

It wasn’t just the booze making his voice drag. He was a little slow in his mind as well. “I’ll pay you back,” he insisted as we headed west towards Belconnen. “I get suicidal if I don’t pay my debts.”

I wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. If I didn’t eventually get paid, I’d always wonder whether he’d killed himself for a taxi ride.

A song came up on my playlist. “Thank You” by Dido. I love Dido. So did my passenger. “I love this song! Can we turn it up?”

“We can do better than that!”

I flicked the touchscreen controls to the music video playlist, finger scrolling the titles past while my passenger watched in awe. I’ve got two music videos by Dido, and I played them both for my passenger as we went along. He was entranced. So was I.

There was just enough time to squeeze in one more song. Feist, singing “1234”, a bouncy song of lost love, with a colourful and complex dance routine. We smiled at each other as the singer twirled and swirled in a crowd of young dancers in green, blue, red and yellow costumes.

“Here we are,” he pointed to a driveway. I pulled in, clicked off the meter. He pulled out his debit card, but I waved it away. If he only had six dollars in there, and the bank took out eleven percent as a processing fee, it just wasn’t worth my while for a few bucks.

“Hand me one of those cards, will you?” I pointed at the card holder on his side of the dashboard, a stack of business cards with the Silver Service logo and number for passengers to take if they wanted a repeat ride.

I wrote down my name, taxi number and the fare amount on the card. Maybe I’d get paid, maybe I wouldn’t. I didn’t really mind. Either way, I was overflowing with karma.

Coming up and out

Friday night, after midnight, city centre. It’s a whole different world to the daytime city of commuters, shoppers and public servants. The only people over twenty-five are taxidrivers. And not too many of those, neither - most of my fellow drivers are half my age.

Groups of young men and women cruise between nightclubs, crossing the streets all but heedless of the cruising cabs. The women are dressed in scant or tight clothing, ignoring the midnight chill. They have put a lot of effort into makeup, hairdo, and accessories. They are gorgeous, and I cannot help but compare them to the young men in pursuit, who usually seem to be dressed for a lazy day at home watching television rather than a night out on the town.

Maybe it’s my outlook - I prefer looking at young women in skimpy clothing to young men in same - but still, I have to wonder what it is about young men that makes young women put up with their generally poor behaviour. Especially when drunk.

“Mating rituals,” I tell my older passengers, when conversation turns to the way that Civic changes after dark. About ten at night, the older generation - my generation - finish their restaurant dinners, movie showings and windowshopping to head off home to bed. Just as the younger generation are flooding in.

I’ll often pick them up from the suburbs mid-evening. A group of four to fill a cab, usually with a few drinks inside, just to get them started. Four young folk in a taxi isn’t much more expensive than bus fare in, but far quicker and comfortable. “Front seat rule” applies, and when I pull up outside their chosen nightclub, the front seat passenger pays the fare, usually to a chorus of promises from the back seat that they will pay for the first round of drinks.

A few hours later, I’m transporting the same people back. Sometimes a group has remained intact through the night, and they’ll share a cab home, singing, cracking silly jokes, discussing the events of the night and bewailing lost mobile phones. Often they split up for one reason or another. Sometimes a reveller has found a friend, and there are whispers and intimate sounds from the dark of the rear seat. Sometimes it’s an individual, lucked down and lonely.

He was my final fare for the night, it turned out. About half past one, he hopped into my cab. I try to establish a rapport with the customers in those first few seconds. A smile and a friendly greeting goes a long way, and I can get an appreciation of my customers from the way they act in return.

I liked this chap from the start. He was handsome in his black tousled hair, soulful eyes, a lovely smile, and he’d taken a lot of care with his clothes. I knew I’d have no trouble with him. He named a suburb a long way out and we set off, my Dire Straits video playing.

Whoops! Without any warning at all, a few minutes into the ride he threw up. I pulled over immediately, and handed him the packet of tissues I keep for emergencies.

And I turned the meter off. I’d much rather have a drunk empty himself out completely and clean up as best he can, rather than do a half-assed job to save a few cents while the meter ticks on.

He looked at me, sick all down the front of his expensive jacket and soaking into his trousers. “Do you want me to get out?”

I almost kicked him out. But the initial eruption had been entirely contained by his clothing, he hadn’t gotten any on the floor or the seats, and it was a long walk home for him. I could have left him on the side of the road, and been entirely within my rights.

If he’d been more copious, I would have. And I’d have insisted on the fifty dollar “soiling” fee. Believe me, fifty dollars doesn’t even begin to cover the cost of taking a cab off the road for the hours it takes to clean up properly from a vomit incident. I had some youngsters sick up in my cab during my first days as a cabbie, and I had to take out the seats, wash the seat covers, hose down the rubber floor mats, and vacuum out the interior thoroughly. It took a day before the car could be put back on the road, and even then passengers would wrinkle up their noses on entry.

I reached into the back seat pocket for a sick bag and handed it to him. I’ve got a collection of airsick bags, scrounged from my travels, and there’s always one or two in the cab within easy grasp. Like the brace position, a sick bag is something you’ve got to have ready instantly.

“Just give me a bit of warning, will you? And you’ll get to see just how fast a cabbie can stop.”

We had to stop suddenly a few times more. Once for a classic, down on all fours, heaving the heart out session. After a good weekend, the roadsides of Canberra’s roads are pungent with used pizza and soiled tissues, and this chap was adding far more than his fair share.

But, so long as none of it comes back into the cab, it’s no skin off my nose. Better out than in, I always say, there’s a backup box of tissues in the boot, and two or three cleaning rags available.

He apologised profusely. Highly embarrassed, but I reassured him that, “these things happen. It’s okay. Let’s get you home safely. And if you feel we need to stop again, just let me know, okay?”

There was a twist. He looked at me with those big dark eyes, confessing, “I just decided that I was gay, and this was my first night, you know, trying it out.”

Obviously he’d been trying it out in the wrong places, because if he’d found the right place, he wouldn’t be telling his story to a cabbie. He’d have been snapped up in record time.

But isn’t it a wonderful thing that someone concludes they are gay, and instead of bottling it up for fifty years, hiding their feelings away from the common gaze, they go out and celebrate? Sharing it with the world and random cabbies. Sweet.

That’s part of the job I enjoy the most. The diversity in my passengers. Every night is different, and it’s the people that keep me interested.

I swapped a few cabbie yarns with him. There was the pair of professional partygoers, who had worked out a good routine for taxi chucking. One would open the door, lean out and have a good old yawn, well clear of the taxi, while his mate held firmly onto him from behind. They were so good that if it hadn’t been for the danger of blowback, I wouldn’t have felt I had to stop the car.

And there was the underage drinkers who got into the back seat, one on each side. An older and more experienced minder sat in the middle with a bucket and a bottle of water. Every few minutes she’d offer one or the other to her charges: “Bucket?” “Bottle?” I could hear the gurgling sounds from behind, but when we arrived at the end of the ride, there wasn’t a drop had found its way onto the seats or floor.

I guess I was trying to reassure him. These things happen, cabbies aren’t easily shocked, play by the rules and it will all work out. The fact that I was laughing, rather than swearing at him probably helped.

Still, he felt that he had to apologise about a hundred times. He would have hit the thousand pardons, but we arrived at his home before he could get them out.

There was thirty four dollars on the meter, but he handed me a fifty, with those words every cabbie loves to hear, “Keep the change.”

There was an hour left in my shift, but I found an all-night service station and gave the car a thorough inspection and clean. I couldn’t find anything, but I figured that there would be a bit of smell left over, and I’d be asking for trouble if I went back for another load. Instead I bought the servo attendant a cup of coffee and we yakked for half an hour, watching the night people come and go.