Let Me Drive
(continued)
By Chris Martinez

He looked at me for the longest, most painful five seconds of my life. "Dinner," he finally said, still standing between me and my way out, "I want to have dinner with you."

The sub shop had become silent, all three customers looking back from their fiberglass booths. I had suddenly, against my will, become an actress in a tiny downtown play. "I don't have time, I'm busy the rest of the week," I said, looking down at my sweat pants instead of at Jack and his gray tweed blazer.

"Okay, how about right now then, huh? You have a second to eat that nasty sub, don't you? You're too beautiful for that sub. Isn't this a beautiful woman here, even though she tries not to be?" he asked the sub shop. Rizzo himself nodded, arms crossed over his oily apron. "You need a disgusting old bum like me to sit with you, to justify that greasy sub," Jack added with mock seriousness.

His words were utterly bizarre, flat-out weird, but I couldn't help but crack a smile, in spite of the fact that this was the ugliest, most un-smooth, most unfashionable man I'd ever exchanged words with. That he was wearing the exact same outfit as last week was oddly comforting.

"Dinner? Right now?" I said, feeling my audience silently approve of my line.

"Yeah, right now. Let's just take a minute and have dinner, you and me," said Jack, stretching himself tall again, chin high, pulling on the lapels of his blazer with faux formality.

We sat there, the two of us, on a date in Rizzo's Hot Subs. I hadn't had a date in a dump like that since my undergraduate days at Temple. Every guy I'd seen in the last six years had taken me to swanky places, or at least places that had waiters. But this, this was just plain crummy. I secretly loved it.

Jack didn't lavish me with lines, or stories of his greatness, or blatant fabrications of his past. He told jokes, made fun of the salt and pepper shakers, saying they were like a rich married couple, just standing there side by side all day and night, never exchanging a word. He talked to the people at the other tables, asking them how their subs were, and if they were all "as greasy and nasty" as mine. He asked me where I worked, and when I told him, he said "that magazine sucks," and that I was "too talented for that trash." I told him that driving a taxi wasn't exactly glorious work, either. He said at least he was his own boss, and he got to meet lots of interesting folk - like me, for instance.

"So what exactly do you do at Glamour, anyway? Wait, don't tell me - Do you work in photography? Because I think I'd make a fa-bu-lous male model," he said, standing up, clutching fistfuls of his gut as he gave me a sideways "puppy dog" look. "Like the picture of the stud laying in bed with a girl, above a caption that reads '12 WAYS TO UNTAP HIS BEDTIME BEAST.' Then right after the photo shoot the guy tells the girl in a lisp that he thinks a black teddy would go better with her Mediterranean complexion and brown eyes."

I giggled, a shameful sound I hadn't made in a long time. "Well, if you'd give me a chance to speak, I'd tell you that I, in fact, write quizzes."

I immediately thought of the last quiz I wrote, with him and Brandon in mind. I burst into laughter over the irony of him now sitting before me, asking for my so-called expert opinion. "You don't want to hear how I'd rank you!" I said, still laughing.

"Come on!" he begged. "I wanna take one of your tests!"

"No! You can't! I mean, they're for women only!"

"Oh, who's checking. I'll take the next one I see in Glamour!" he declared. For the first time as a writer, I hoped my editor would butcher my work beyond recognition.

By the time Jack had to get back to work "picking up drunk slobs," I had cramps in my side from laughter. But, I had no sexual attraction toward Jack. He just didn't strike me that way. So, when he got up to leave, I returned his directness and told him I wouldn't sleep with him just like that. He just shrugged his frayed tweed shoulders and said, "Sure sure, that's what they all say at first." I rolled my eyes, told him to get the hell out of here before the owner throws him out for being such an obnoxious bastard. He nodded at the tile floor, then gave me a card with the name and phone number of the cab company he worked for. He said that anytime I "wanted a ride" I could just call. I said that was a cheesy joke. He said he was plainly serious.

Jack left me there, with his business card, leaving behind a subtle smell of musk and gasoline. I never said goodbye, and neither did he. He jumped in his cab with a jaunty hop of his eyebrows and drove off to find drunks who needed a ride home.

I sat there in Rizzo's Hot Subs, reflecting on his raucous humor and equally loud hair. On my way out, I took Jack's business card out from my sweat pants pocket, looking it over. It was basic, laughably rudimentary, with generic drawings of taxis on each of the four corners, the lazy slogan "LET ME DRIVE" at the center. I thought of Jack's idiotic style and cartoonish, carefree impulses. The idea of Jack was beyond any concept of a phone call, a dinner date. He was more of a natural phenomenon than a 9-to-5 man waiting to be summoned or planned for. I studied the card again, and it suddenly struck me as a test - his own sort of magazine quiz question - for me to answer.

I pitched the card in the trash that night, the way he would have wanted me to.

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