THE INNER WORKINGS...

my chauffeur, the robber

It's a weird thing to ride in a taxi cab in the United States. I did it all the time in Argentina... mostly when I was running late for staff meeting and didn't have time to pedal over to the sede on my bike. Which probably didn't happen too often. Unless any people are reading this that attended those meetings. If that's the case, then it might have happened semi-frequently. Or frequently.

But that's not the point. The point is, that outside of Manhattan, I think it's kind of weird to ride in a taxi in the States. Take, for example, Mr. Nashville himself... our friendly chauffeur Clay.

Mom and Dad and I are currently on a cross-country journey from the great state of Oooooklahoma (yes, you're allowed to sing along) to my new home in North Carolina. After passing through Arkansas (what a thrill!), we've spent most of our day in the somewhat long, rectangular State of Tennessee. Today, being Sunday - the Lord's day - we started off as all church-folk should, at Beale Street in downtown Memphis in B.B. King's blues bar. It was fantastic. Seriously. That alone would be worth another trip to Memphis.

But this story is about Nashville, so let's get to the point.

Because we're hauling an enormous trailer that could house an entire marching band behind my Dad's manly and burly truck, parking in downtown Nashville was going to be a problem. So we decided to take a cab. Which brings us back to the topic at hand.

First of all, the cab wasn't yellow. It was silver. Neither was it an exaggerated sedan. Nope: we were riding in style in a 15-passenger van. And we had it all to ourselves. But, the best part of the ride was our driver, Clay.

We drove about twenty feet from the entrance of the hotel when my Dad asked Clay to stop because neither of them could fasten their seat-belts. (Mine was pretty straight-forward, since I was privileged enough to have the front seat, next to Clay.) He stopped the van, looked confused, and didn't really offer to help. But, because there were about 14 free seats in the van, Mom and Dad moved a row further back and buckled up just fine. I quickly realized the root of Clay's lack of concern with seat-belts: he wasn't wearing his either. Clearly his Mom never told him the fib when he was a child that the car wouldn't start until he was buckled up. I, on the other hand, bought it until I was sixteen and in the driver's seat myself.

So, now that Mom and Dad had moved back to the nosebleed section, it was just Clay and I up front. As I was wondering what sort of topics to delve into for the obligatory small talk, his phone rang. And, like any professional cabbie would do... he answered it. What ensued may or may not have involved me as an accomplice to a crime.

"Hey, man... what'cha doin'?" Clay asked, in his Tennessee drawl. Since the only reasonable choice I had was to eavesdrop (it was that or sing B.B. King blues to myself), I gathered that whoever was on the other end of the line... let's call him Tennessee Johnny Doe... had just picked up balloons for his daughter's birthday party the next day. While memories of pastel colors and giant My Little Pony characters passed through my mind,  Clay took the conversation in a different direction. "Hey man," he said to Johnny D., "an alarm has to go off tonight." Pause. "Yeah, that's what I said. A store alarm has to go off tonight."

Pardon me? Come again?

He continued: "I'm on duty until 5 AM. But I could just tell 'em I'm takin' a break or somthin'." Mr. Clay then proceeded to convince Johnny D. to ditch the family, ditch the balloons, and rendezvous with the 15-passenger van in the wee small hours of the morning. "No man, you're not on speaker phone. I'm the only one that can hear you." Clay reassured his friend. Knowing the Courtney, the CIA-trained eavesdropper, was not able to listen in, Johnny D. then must have felt the freedom to let his guard down. That's when Clay started waxing philosophical.

"Man, you always have a choice. You can choose to come out and have a good time, or you can choose to have other things to do. It's not that difficult." I quietly started humming the seventh-grade song  "All you've got to say is 'no'" to myself, hoping that Johnny D. would pick up on my subliminal, peer-pressure fighting message.

Because I'm sure they were on to me and my life-long dream of making a citizen's arrest, the phone call was cut short without having fixed a time or a place for the rendezvous, but just with a promise to communicate later. And not to forget the black ski mask. Or maybe just a coat. Something like that.

Now "Mr. I'm-going-to-rob-a-store-tonight" turned to me to start the small-talk. "Where y'all from?" Ironically enough, that's a particularly difficult question for my family to answer, and inevitably we claimed no less than three States and one foreign country. When I told Clay where I had spent the last seven years, his response was: "Argentina?!? The country Argentina?"

No, the other one.

He dropped us off to fend for ourselves looking for a good restaurant with some authentic live country music, since Clay himself had never gotten out of his cab in downtown Nashville. He passed me his card and said, "When y'all are headin' back to the hotel, call this number and ask for me personally."

Will do, Clay. And I'll make sure I'm wiretapped next time.

posted by Courtney @ 2:17 AM