Taxi girl

Tania’s doorbell rang at 12:21 a.m. She pressed the talk button on her intercom.

​     “Who is it?” she asked.

     ​“It’s Billy Miller; can I come up?”

     ​Tania buzzed him in and scrambled to locate her green-plaid youth-size second-hand flannel bathrobe. Billy knocked on her front door; she opened it.

     ​“I like your robe; I used to have one just like it when I was a kid,” he said.

     ​Maybe it’s yours, thought Tania. 

     ​“Got any coffee?”

     “No. Isn’t it kind of late for coffee?”

     ​“It’s never too late for coffee . . . a million solutions in every cup. Let’s get some.”

     ​Tania stuffed her bathrobe into a pair of denim overalls, wrapped a scarf around her neck and put on her peacoat.

​

Tania and Billy Miller walked to North Avenue.

     ​“I picked up a guy at LaSalle and Division this morning; he wanted to masturbate to the sound of my voice.”

     ​“What did you do?” asked Billy.

     ​“I told him about us, and he jumped out of the cab.”

The pair headed toward a hanging red neon sign that read HAMBURGER.

     ​“My independent activity was making ambrosia, so I whipped cream in a blender I brought from home,” said Tania.

     ​They walked under the sign and into Sonny’s counter-only diner. A blast of fluorescent light greeted them. 

     ​“The damn pitcher was stuck to the base, and Enright told Tommy not to help me.” The couple sat down on green vinyl stools. “I took off my sweater, wrapped it around the pitcher, gave it a twist and—” Tania threw her hands in the air. “Voilà!”

     Billy ordered black coffee, then turned to Tania.

     ​“Do you like kids?”

     ​“Do I like kids?”

     ​“Yeah, cuz I wanna make you an offer.”

     ​“I thought you couldn’t have any more kids.”

     ​“I want to make you a job offer.”

     He took a sip of coffee.

“When they hired me at City Theater, part of the deal was that I would do something for the neighborhood in addition to staging plays, something educational. The board is after me to hold up my end of the bargain. Personally, except for Celine, I’m not that crazy about kids, and I certainly don’t want to work with them, but you’d be great at it.”

     “Me? I don’t know anything about kids.”

     “It would be a couple of hours on Saturdays, and you’d have to keep your sweater on.”

​     The next morning, Billy was asleep in Tania’s bed when she left for the cab barn at 7:17. 

On Saturday, the 2nd of February, at 9:59 a.m., Tania stepped out of the auditorium at City Theater and into the lobby. Eight children between the ages of eight and eleven, along with their parents, were waiting for her. She pulled open the auditorium door, ushered the kids into the performance space and addressed the parents.

     ​“See you in an hour.”

Tania told the kids to sit in a circle on the thrust stage; she joined them.

     ​“Do what I do,” she said. She patted her thighs twice, clapped her hands twice and snapped the fingers of her left hand and then her right. Next, she paired the actions with words.

     “Pat, pat, clap, clap, snap, snap.” She repeated the pattern until everyone had it.​

     ​“Now, let’s go around the circle and say our names on the snaps. I’ll start.” She raised her hands above her thighs.

     “Pat, pat, clap, clap, Tan-ia.”

     She turned to the girl on her left.

     ​“Pat, pat, clap, clap, Su-sie.”

     ​“Pat, pat, clap, clap, this sucks,” said the next boy in line.

     ​“Is that your name?” asked Tania.

     ​“No,” answered the boy. “My name is Seymour Buttz.”
    ​The other kids snickered. Tania gave the STOP hand.

     “Okay, just say your name when I point to you.” She extended her index finger in the direction of the girl to her right. 

     ​“Mommy says it’s rude to point,” responded the girl.

     ​“Well, you can tell Mommy . . .” Tania stopped herself. “Just tell me your name, dear.”

     ​“It’s . . . it’s Mandy.”

     ​“Hello, Mandy,” said Tania. “Who’s next to Mandy?” 

     ​“I am; my name’s Alex.”

     ​“Hello, Alex. Who’s next to Alex?”
    ​The interchanges continued until all the kids had given their names.

     ​“We’ve got Susie, Seymour, Mandy, Alex, Brian, Meg, Peter and Daphne,” said Tania.

     ​Seymour raised his hand.

     “My name’s not Seymour Buttz.”

     ​“Oh really,” said Tania.

     ​“It’s Ben Dover.”

     ​The kids roared. Tania glanced at her watch.

     It’s only 10:08.  She looked up.

     “Where are you going?” she called out to Brian, who was headed for the door.

     ​“This is boring; I wanna go home and watch Shazam!” he answered.

     ​“Me too,” chimed in the others. “Shazam! Shazam! Shazam!”

     ​Tania stepped down from the stage, reached into a shopping bag and pulled out a package of Oreos.

     “That’s too bad; if you leave now, you’ll miss snack time.” She opened the package, pulled out a cookie and bit into it. 

     ​Brian rejoined the group. The kids sat on the stairs leading up to the stage, and Tania passed out the cookies. Then she checked her watch again.

     “Take your time and chew each bite thirty times; I don’t want any of you getting a stomachache.”

     “My mom gets a stomachache when Aunt Flo comes to town on her cotton pony,” interjected Daphne. 

     “That must be quite a sight,” said Tania.

     “She comes once a month, but I never see her.”

     Tania put the package of Oreos back in the shopping bag and pulled out a stack of onionskin paper. She handed two sheets to each girl.

     “Follow me; we’re butterflies flying around a forest.” Tania held a piece of paper in each hand, flapped her arms, ran around the stage and sang:

     “Flutter-ing our wings, we fly a-round.

     Flutter-ing our wings, we fly a-round.

     Flutter-ing our wings, we fly a-round,

     And ha-ppy all are we.” 

     The girls joined in. After three rounds of the song, Tania stopped singing and flapping; she cupped her ear.

     “I hear motorcycles.” She gestured to Brian, Peter, Alex and Ben Dover.

     “Boys, come up here and let me hear you rev your engines.”

     “I don’t want to rev my engine; I wanna be a butterfly,” said Alex.

     Meg handed him her two sheets of onionskin paper.

     “I wanna rev my engine,” she said.

     “Me too,” said Mandy.

     “I wanna be a mummy,” said Ben Dover.

     This is not working, thought Tania. She stared at the floorboards and tapped her thigh three times with the fingers of her right hand.

     “Everybody sit down and think of what you wanna be cuz next week, that’s what you’re gonna be.”

     She passed out pencils, crayons and drawing paper. The kids wrote down their choices and drew pictures of themselves in imagined costumes. Tania collected the papers, and the kids finished off the bag of Oreos. She checked the time; it was eleven o’clock.

     ​Tania and the kids walked out of the auditorium and into the lobby. Ben Dover made a beeline for his dad.

     ​“Bye, Ben,” called out Tania. 

     ​The dad came over to her.

     “Did he tell you his name was Ben Dover?” 

     ​“It’s not?”​

     “No, and it’s not Pat Myaz, Buck Nekkid, Seymour Buttz or I.P. Freely. It’s James De Minure.”

     “Oh,” said Tania.

After the kids left, Tania went into the auditorium and gathered her belongings. Billy Miller walked in.

     ​“How did it go?” he asked.

     ​“I don’t care if I ever see another kid . . . ever.”

     ​“That bad, eh?”

     ​“Every minute felt like an hour.”

     ​“Well, they’re all coming back next week. Are you?”

     ​“Yes, but right now . . .” Tania closed her eyes and massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “It’s so nice to have them not here.”

     Billy Miller kneaded the muscles above her shoulders with his hands.

     “Nobody’s here but you and me.”

     ​Tania opened her eyes.

     “Good, let’s have sex on the spot where Seymour Buttz was sitting.”

     ​“Seymour Buttz?”

     ​“Yeah, Seymour Buttz and his alter ego, Ben Dover.” Tania kissed Billy on the mouth.

     “You know what my name is?” she asked. “It’s Betty Cocker; what’s yours?”

     ​Billy pressed his body against hers.

     “Mine’s Haywood Jablomi.”

On Sunday afternoon, Tania made a list of what the kids wanted to be.

     ​James De Minure, a.k.a. Ben Dover, wants to be a mummy. Susie, a fashion model; Brian, an explorer; Meg, a cowgirl; Peter, a werewolf; Mandy, an imaginary friend; Alex, a flight attendant; and Daphne, a princess.

On Monday, after the morning rush, Tania pulled her taxi into a parking spot on Dearborn just north of Oak; she logged in the time and location on her trips envelope. 

     “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said aloud to no one, “at this next performance, the cab driver and the fare will be played by Tania Wildman.”

     She lowered the flag on her taximeter, drove to Musselman’s Hardware, recorded the time and location on her trips envelope and put cash to cover the fare inside. She went into the hardware store and bought three thirty-by-sixty-inch brown corrugated cardboard sheets and a couple of rolls of masking tape. She put the sheets in the back seat of her taxi and dropped them off at City Theater. She entered the ride from the hardware store to the theater on her trips log and tossed the money to pay for it into the envelope.

On Tuesday, Tania went to the theater and taped the corrugated sheets together to form a triptych. She painted pyramids, desert sands and a couple of camels on one side; she sprayed the other gold. 

By Friday, the script was written. Tania made a run to Vintage Values for aprons and a boy’s blazer. Then she stopped at Woolworths for cardboard, rope, gauze and a cowboy hat. Gregg, the house manager, combed City Theater’s costume shop and came up with a man’s wig, a feather boa and a pith helmet. Tania contributed the handset from her rotary phone.

Tania got to the theater at 9 a.m. on Saturday. She set the triptych on the stage with the pyramids facing the audience. She labeled each kid’s costume and laid it on a theater seat—a pith helmet for Brian the explorer, gauze for James the mummy, a wig for Peter the werewolf, a feather boa for Susie the fashion model, aprons to be worn as capes for Princess Daphne and her imaginary friend, Mandy, a cowboy hat for Meg and a navy-blue blazer for Alex, the flight attendant.

At 9:59 a.m., Tania opened the door to the auditorium and ushered the kids inside. She addressed the parents.

     ​“See you in an hour.” She closed the door and told the kids to put on their costumes. Then she stood in front of the triptych and read the script.

     “Egypt, land of mystery, home of the pharaohs. Ancient pyramids guard secrets hidden deep beneath the sands of time. At an isolated campsite near the Valley of the Kings, Sir Brian, an explorer, struggles to decipher hieroglyphic directions to the tomb of TutankahaJames. Suddenly, all the pieces fall into place, and Sir Brian plots a course to the mummy’s crypt.” Tania turned the triptych to the gold side and stood motionless in front of it with her arms crossed over her chest. 

     She exclaimed, “‘Oh, my goodness!’ says Sir Brian. ‘There it is—a sight unseen by human eyes for four thousand years.’” Tania continued reading.

     “As an awestruck Sir Brian gazes upon TutankahaJames, a mysterious perfume fills the air and causes him to fall to the ground in a stupor. When he awakens, the door to the crypt is open, and the mummy is gone! A few nights later, in a Transylvanian forest, Peter the werewolf is howling at the moon when TutankahaJames taps him on the shoulder and frightens him out of his wits. Two days after that, fashion model Susie San Lauran shakes like a leaf when TutankahaJames walks toward her on a Paris runway. That same week, Princess Daphne and her imaginary friend, Mandy, are scared stiff when the mummy joins them for tea on a veranda in London. Five days later, in Austin, Texas, cowgirl Meg Rodgers is practicing rope tricks when TutankahaJames moseys into her corral. Meg points at the sky; the mummy looks up, and she lassos him with her lariat. Then she phones her neighbor, Alex, a flight attendant. He comes right over, calls his airline and books two seats on the next plane to Egypt.” Tania rolled out Billy Miller’s black leather office chair with identical drawings of an airplane attached to its sides.

     “Alex and TutankahaJames fly from Austin to Luxor.” Tania sat on the converted office chair and rolled it across the stage with her feet.

     “When their plane lands at the airport, Sir Brian is waiting, and the trio treks across the desert to TutankahaJames’ tomb. When they get there, the mummy wipes the sweat from his brow with his gauze-covered hand, yawns bigly and stretches out his arms. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he says. ‘East or West, home is the best.’ Then the fashion model, the wolfman, the cowgirl, the princess and her imaginary friend appear, and everyone echoes the mummy’s words, ‘Yes, yes, yes, East or West, home is the best.’” Tania paused.

     “The end.”

     The kids cheered.