TAXI GIRL
Chapter Fourteen
Tania set her wine glass on the kitchen counter.
“HUH . . . HUH . . . HUH,” she gasped.
“Are you okay?” asked Dan.
“HUH . . . HUH.” She nodded her head.
Dan handed her a cup of water; she took a sip and then another.
“What did you say?” asked Tania.
“I said I thought it would be a good idea for us to live together.”
“That’s what I thought you said. Where would we do that?”
“Here.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, here. If we’re gonna do the yogurt cart, I don’t know if we can afford two places.”
“Well, I don’t know if I can handle half a bed, a couple of drawers and someone around me all the time.”
“We’re together all the time as it is.”
“Yeah, but that’s because I want to be with you, not because I have to.” Tania sniffed the air and glanced at the stove.
“Fuck, I burned the sausage.”
Dan looked inside the pan.
“It’s okay; that’s how I like ’em.”
“You’re just saying that.” Tania picked the pan up off the burner and carried it to the garbage can.
“Don’t throw them out,” said Dan.
“Don’t tell me what to do.” She flipped the pan; the sausages tumbled onto the trash.
Dan picked the blood sausages out of the garbage and rinsed them under the kitchen faucet. He grabbed a plate from the dish dryer, set the sausages on it and carried the plate to Tania’s gateleg table. He went back to the kitchen for a knife, a fork and his glass of wine. Then he sat down and cut into a sausage.
“Mmmm . . . delicious. Want some?”
“Fuck you. I’m not hungry.”
Dan turned on Tania’s radio and tuned in WFMT.
“Classical music, eh? Are you trying to calm me down?”
“No, I like classical music. I happen to play the tuba.” He pointed to an empty space between the living room and the kitchen.
“I thought I’d keep it right there.”
“Are you shittin’ me?”
“Yes.”
“FUCK YOU.”
Tania went into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. She leaned over the side of the bathtub to lower the trip lever for the drain and turned on the hot water. The diverter valve on the wall-mounted spout was raised; water drenched her from the shower head.
“Goddammit.” She pressed down the diverter, dried her head with a towel, filled the tub and soaked for twenty-five minutes.
When Tania came out of the bathroom, Dan was gone. She phoned his room at the Lincoln Park Hotel; there was no answer.
Maybe he’s at the garage?
She tucked a men’s white sleeveless undershirt into her denim overalls and slipped on a pair of straw, velvet-thonged zori sandals. She put on her shoulder bag and headed out the door; it was 8:10 p.m.
Tania walked north on Sedgwick to Armitage, took Armitage west and turned left onto Burling.
What if he’s not here?
A stranger in a white ribbed tank undershirt walked toward her.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” said Tania.
The man passed her on the left. Then Tania felt her body jerk backward as he grabbed her shoulder bag. She held onto the strap.
“STOP! STOP!” she yelled.
The man dragged her backward down the sidewalk. She let go of the strap and fell to the ground; the stranger ran toward Armitage clutching her bag. Tania jumped up and ran after him screaming.
“HELP, POLICE! HELP ME! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”
Dan raced from the rented garage onto a gangway leading to the sidewalk on Burling. Tania stood screaming at the north end of the block.
“What happened? Are you okay?” He wrapped his arms around her; she bawled into his chest.
“Some guy took my bag.” Then she snorted. “All he got was fifty cents and four tampons.”
“Was the fifty cents in your wallet?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your house keys.”
“They were in the bag too.”
“You’re gonna have to change the lock on your apartment.”
“I’m not going to my apartment; what if he’s there waiting for me?”
Dan looked at the ground.
“You’re bleeding. The heels of your feet are bleeding. Where are your shoes?”
“They came off when he dragged me down the sidewalk.”
“Let me get my bike; it’s in the garage.”
“Don’t leave me.”
Dan followed a trail of blood drops to Tania’s sandals and brought them to her. Then he lifted Tania up and carried her to the garage. She got on the crossbar of Dan’s bike, holding the toe thongs of her zories on her index finger, and they rode to the emergency room at St. Augustine Hospital.
Tania lay on a bed in a curtained cubicle in the emergency room. Dan stood by her side. A doctor entered.
“I’m fine,” said Tania. “Really, I’m fine.”
“I’ll tell you if you’re fine,” said the MD.
An hour later, Tania was released from the hospital; she was given home-care instructions and a pamphlet from a neighborhood mental health center. She and Dan got on his bicycle, and he peddled toward the Lincoln Park Hotel.
“I’m starving,” said Tania. “Can we go to Sonny’s?”
Dan made a U-turn.
The couple entered the diner and were greeted by a blast of fluorescent light. Dan parked the bike inside the front door, and they sat down on two green vinyl stools at the far-left end of the counter; a guy was sitting on the last stool to the right.
Dan stood up.
“I’ve got to pee,” he said.
Tania eyed the guy at the other end of the counter and got up.
“I’ll go with you.”
The counterman came toward them carrying two water-filled, cloudy-looking, scratched plastic drinking glasses.
“Are you folks leaving?” he asked.
“No, I’m just going to the bathroom with him.”
The counterman set down the glasses. Tania followed Dan to the men’s room.
“I’ll wait outside, but I’ll hold the door open a little so I can hear you and know you’re there,” she said.
Tania and Dan returned to the counter and ordered grilled-cheese sandwiches. Tania stood up.
“I’ve got to pee.”
“Okay,” said Dan.
“Can you come with me?” she asked.
Dan got up and followed her to the ladies’ room.
“Will you go inside and make sure nobody’s in there?”
“Tania, there’s no one in there.”
“How do you know?” She turned to the counterman and the other customer.
“I need him to go into the ladies’ room and make sure nobody’s in there because I just got mugged, and I’m a little freaked out,” announced Tania.
“Okay,” said the counterman.
The customer nodded in agreement.
Tania and Dan ate their sandwiches, finished their french fries and rode Dan’s bike to the Lincoln Park Hotel. They took the elevator to the eighth floor. Dan opened the door to his room and walked his bike inside. Tania stayed in the hallway.
“I’ll wait here until you check that nobody’s in the john or under the bed.”
On Wednesday morning, Dan got up from bed to pee. When he came out of the bathroom, Tania was standing outside the door holding her crotch.
“I’ve got to pee, and I still need to not be alone,” she said.
Tania and Dan ate breakfast in the hotel coffee shop.
“Before we go, I’m gonna have to take a leak,” said Dan.
“Me too,” said Tania.
She picked up her fork from the table and a can of Right Guard from the pocket of her denim overalls.
“I’ll hold on to these while you’re gone and bring ’em with me when I go.”
“Is that my Right Guard?” asked Dan.
“Do you mind?” asked Tania.
“No.”
The pair rode the bike to their rented garage and went inside. Tania held the wooden dowels for the canopy in place while Dan bolted them into the four corners of the cart. Then she hand-sewed the red cotton tassel fringe to the print canopy material, and Dan applied glossy yellow paint over the primer on the cart.
“I feel ashamed,” said Tania. “I feel ashamed that I got mugged. It makes me feel dirty.”
“I feel the same way about my father going to jail. It’s so fucked up. We’re not the criminals.”
Tania sewed her last stitch and cut the thread.
“I want to go to the scene of the crime,” she said.
Tania and Dan walked from the garage to the sidewalk on Burling. Tania pointed to the ground.
“This is where it happened. There’s my blood on the pavement.”
“If it ever happens again, just give ’em the purse,” said Dan.
At 10 a.m. on Thursday, Tania and Dan met with the manager of her apartment building.
“Since the mugger got my wallet and keys, I need to change the lock on my front door,” said Tania. She thought for a moment.
“Maybe it would be better if I just moved.”
“You’d be breaking your lease,” said the manager.
“Maybe it would be better if I just moved to another apartment in this building.”
“I’d have to ask Mr. Hensler; he’s the owner.”
“Mr. Hensler from the German deli?” asked Dan.
“Yes.”
“Could you ask him if we could move into a one-bedroom?” said Tania.
Dan turned his head and made eye contact with her.
“That would be good; that would be really good,” he said.
That Saturday, the couple moved Tania’s stuff from her studio up to a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor. Then they went to Dan’s room at the Lincoln Park Hotel. They packed his belongings into suitcases and boxes; Tania rode with them in a cab from the hotel to their new place while Dan followed on his bike.
Later that day, the pair went to Vintage Values and picked out a chest of drawers. They paid the clerk.
“I’ll be right back; are you gonna be okay waiting here?”
I’m tired of being scared, thought Tania.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
She pulled Dan’s can of Right Guard out of the pocket of her denim overalls and handed it to him.
“I don’t need this anymore.”
Twenty minutes later, Dan returned with a dolly and bungee cords. The couple tied the chest to the hand truck and took turns pushing it down Lincoln Avenue, across Armitage onto Sedgwick. A stranger in a white tank T-shirt walked toward them.
“If he wants the chest of drawers, just give it to him,” said Tania.
