I woke up at 4:30 AM. I mean, I actually woke up around 3 AM and watched the clock for an hour and a half, and then crawled out of bed. I called Retro Cab to tell them to send me a cab, because I’d put in a timed order for one and I knew they’d ignore it. Juanet answered on the twenty-third ring, “Thank you for calling Retro Taxi where Good Ol’ Fashioned Taxi Service is New Taxi Solutions for the Future?”

     “Juanet. It’s Fang. Where’s my cab, Juanet?”

     “Whaaat…?” she said, like she didn’t even know what a cab was. Her technique was admirable.

     “I need a cab at my house now, Juanet. 1134 Quidproquonset, Ann Arbor. To take me to DTW.”

     “Whaaat…?” she said, again, brilliantly.

     “Juanet. Let me talk to Skeetch.”

     “I would? But he’s asleep?”

     “Wake him up, for just a moment.”

     There was a noisy pause while Juanet roused Skeetch out of his postalcoholic stupor by pouring a little cold coffee into his ear, “Bleeaaarghhh! What the fut! What the fut!” he yelled into the phone.

     “Skeetch. I need a cab to my house, now, like the order says. Handwich is going to be really pissed with you guys if you blow me off like one of our customers and I miss my plane like our customers always do.”

     “Jesus motherfucking A. Chill out, Fang, I’ll have Mincely over there in four minutes. You lucked out- he’s just dropping off up the street from you now. So… have a lot of fun on your vacation.” There was a low tone of resentment in Skeech’s voice, and I knew he was thinking about smoking stinky cigars and drinking beers while eating deep fried pig maws on a grimy motel bed, switching the TV giddily back and forth between Pro Football and “HOT WET LAWYERETTES.”

     “It’s not a vacation, Skeetch. It’s a valuable business networking opportunity.”

     “Whatever, dude, we’ll be thinking of you baskin’ in the sun in Florida while we slave away here in the cold ‘n’ frozen.”

     “Skeetch, slaves have to work for a living. You need to find a different metaphor.”

     Amazingly, “Meat” Mincely did in fact pull up in a smoking Retro Cab at the Quonset’s front door just fifteen minutes later. I’d be running very late by now, except that I’d already planned for all these delays. If only all of Retro Cab’s customers would plan an extra hour to hour-and-a-half into their trips, they’d be much happier with the quality of service. I ran into the bedroom and kissed my three sleeping honeys goodbye as Mincely blew his horn repeatedly outside. I was weeping like a jilted teenager, and I put my sunglasses on so Mincely wouldn’t mock me for my weakness.

     “Meat” Mincely was a grizzled old drunk who hated me for my youth and vigor. He’d worked for General Motors, installing some widget in a frammitz shaft 432 times a day for twenty-seven years, then he was laid off six years before retirement age, and had to start driving cab to supplement his partial pension and support his really large wife and family. I was 20 years younger than him, and he looked 56 years older than me. “Meat’s” face hung thinly on the front of his skull like a wrinkled grey washcloth. His hands were enormous and knotty on the steering wheel, his scrawny torso bulged in the middle like he’d had his daily quarter-keg installed. It rankled him to no end that a stripling like myself was his immediate supervisor, and he blamed me directly for Handwiches’ abhorrent staff policies and low pay.

     “Where ya goin’….Boss,” he sneered.

     “To Metro Airport, Mincely. I’ve got to meet Handwich there and catch a flight,”

     “Thass what Skeetch said. You pay us drivers fucking less and less and blow our money on Airline Flights to exotic locations where you smoke stinky cigars and drink beers while eating deep fried pig maws on a grimy motel bed, switching the TV giddily back and forth between Pro Football and “HOT WET LAWYERETTES.” We do all the work, and you go and fucking wank it all away.”

     I paused for a moment to admire his complete lack of restraint, “Yeah, Mincely,” I said slowly, “you’ve figured it all out. Jesus.”

   “Meat” Mincely squealed away from the curb, spouting a nonstop freeform stream of accusations, invective and lists of injustices. It drowned out the antics of the Wacky Kooky Mornin’ Zoo Crew on the radio, so that was nice, anyway.

     He blamed the UAW and the UN for a lot of his personal problems, but I had notable mention on his list of predatory villains. He was right, so it was difficult to get to worked up about it. I mean, from my perspective I could clearly see that Handwich really was getting fabulously wealthy whereas I was just barely able to pay the bills. But from “Meat’s” perspective, I was actually able to pay the bills whereas he was about four years behind on the rent at the trailer park, and his whole family lived on bags of Monkey Chow that he stole from the dock at the Animal Research Facility at the University of Michigan Hospital.

     Mincely drove quickly to the Airport, but took the longest route he could contrive to take, so it took a long time. I signed off on the usurious meter charge and added a 5% tip, which was as much as Handwich would allow. He tipped waitresses like that, too, so you never wanted to go to restaurants with Handwich where he’d been previously, unless you desired spit in your entrée. I tossed Mincely another ten bucks from my own pocket, because I really had enjoyed the thirty-seven minutes of insults and thinly-veiled proletariat threats. He sneered at me again, said “I hope the terrorists get you, you son-of-a-bitch,” and peeled away from the curb, leaving a fat cloud of black smoke that clung to my shirt in oily floating threads as I shoved through the door of the airport terminal.