AUDIOBOOK

I'm working on an audiobook of This Moment Is My Home, read by me.  It's fun.  I'll be posting it chapter by chapter FOR FREE here and on my facebook page:  www.facebook.com/ThisMomentIsMyHome

 

I want as many people as possible to experience my book.  I like to be read to, don't you?

 

 

                                                                  

                               TRUE TALES OF A NYC CAB DRIVER #5

                                                    Encounter at Jilly’s

You may have heard of Jilly's in Manhattan.  A famous hangout for Frank Sinatra.  It used to be on West 52nd Street.  I once picked up a fare there.  I didn't intend to, I was just a punk kid driving a cab, I didn’t mess around with places frequented by Frank Sinatra and the well-connected on both sides of the law. But one winter night in 1974 I happened to be stopped at a red light around the corner from the place. 

 

I was in the middle of five lanes of traffic facing uptown, waiting for the light to change. Out of nowhere an extremely large man opened the door to my cab and leaped in. When I say large, I don’t mean obese. This guy was almost too tall to fit in the cab, with shoulders like a door frame, dressed in the flashy uniform of a doorman, long heavy coat and hat like a general. Without preamble he barked a command. “Pull out and make a quick right. Now, before the light changes!”
I’ve been around plenty of rough men, so I don’t exactly impress easily. But this brute was like a force of nature. And he was on a mission. I protested, saying I was in the wrong lane to make a turn.” He said, “Don’t talk. Do it.” It was a command from the kind of character you don’t want to disappoint, a real old-time thug, whose gravitic aura could only have been earned through an illustrious past of mythic proportions. Anyway, he impressed me, and it wouldn’t have been the first or fortieth time I had gone through a red light.

So I pulled out and crossed in front of the other cars and made an illegal turn through a red light. “Good,” he grunted, high praise indeed. He told me to drive up and stop in front of a place up ahead, mentioning I’d get a nice tip. The place was the famed Jilly’s, with a fancy marquis all lit up. He hopped out, all 300 pounds of him, and ushered a middle aged couple into my cab. His parting words to me: “Take these people where they wanna go.” I almost saluted. Honest to god, it made me feel good to obey him, like I had passed an important test of character. But he was wrong about the tip. I got a meager 15 percent.