“Where to, lady?”
I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!
I can only process two rational thoughts. (1) I want more stale Oreos from that Korean grocery, and (2) I don’t want some stupid f**king guy to be the reason I stop liking Where’s Fluffy. I need to erase the memory of my favorite Fluffy song, their g*y rights anthem “Lesbian Lap Dance,” from being my last memory of the band, the song they were performing when genius girl decided to take Nick by the hand for some lap-dance action of our own. I need to get back to that f**king club.
“Back to Ludlow,” I tell the driver.
Did I go too far with Nick, or not far enough? Or is it that I’m just plain unattractive? I never should have deleted all those spam e-mails advertising the vitamin supplements for fuller, firmer br**sts. I’m more stacked than Caroline and Tris but mine go off in the wrong directions—over and out instead of up and in. It’s probably time for me to wake up and accept the fact that I may be in need of a makeover.
The driver sighs, shakes his head, then pulls an illegal U-turn across four lanes of traffic from where we’ve been idling at the curb. He turns up the radio volume, perhaps hoping he will not hear me if I should change my mind again. How a former second-string player on the Kazakhstan soccer team came to be driving a graveyard-shift taxi in Manhattan and listening to Z100 instead of the standard 1010 WINS (all news, all depressing, all the time), which I had always assumed to be the one cardinal rule of taxicab radio etiquette, I don’t know. Everyone has their story.
Vintage Britney sings from the pop radio station; she knows about toxic. Nick must think I’m toxic, marauding him in a closet at a Fluffy show. He didn’t try to stop me when I left that room, or when I left him to get into this taxi. He didn’t even wave good-bye.
The cab is careening down Bowery, whizzing by the club where earlier tonight Nick asked if I would be his girlfriend for five minutes, then made me like him, then looked right at me and made a public declaration with those magic words—“FUCK-SHIT-COCK”—that left me no choice but to make a play for him. I remember seeing Crazy Lou at the Where’s Fluffy show, long after those five minutes had expired. Lou would only leave his club for someone else to close up shop if…
“STOP!” I shout at the driver over the music. I’m already where I’m supposed to be.
The driver slams the brakes so hard I toss my cookies—truly. The jolt sends my bag of Oreos to the floor. The taxi halted, the Kazakh poster king turns around and from the other side of the plastic divide yells back at me, “WHAT YOU WANT ANYWAY, LADY? WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?”
Tal is across the street, ushering the remaining club inhabitants from the establishment, closing up his uncle’s place for the night. His post-show usual, Tal’s shirt is off and he’s sweeping the sidewalk. I remember Tal’s chest, all lean muscle, too scrawny, too vegan. I remember my hands on Nick’s chest. I liked touching Nick. He had something to grab on to. I want more touch.
I don’t know what’s the matter with me, driver. But if I am destined to a life of loneliness and celibacy, isn’t there some side rule that entitles me to go out in one last blaze of glory? One last booty call?
Three times I start to get out of the cab to pursue that last rite. I reach for the door handle and count the money in my wallet. Three times I stop and sit still again.
“What’ll it be? Are you getting in or getting out?” the driver asks.
Over the tail end of Britney’s song, I can hear The Clash wailing in my head, Should I stay or should I go?
I can’t think with all these voices! I snap at the driver, “Lighten Up, Motherfucker.” I bet Where’s Fluffy are playing that conservative backlash song this very moment. Sucks that I am missing it. Nick’s fault.
In a flash, the driver turns around to face me. “You want to sit in this cab and decide where to go, I don’t care. It’s your money.” He points to the meter, still running. Time is always f**king me over. “But I’ll tell you what I tell my five daughters when they get fresh. This is a gentleman you’re talking to, not a casting director for The Sopranos. Watch your mouth or get out of the cab.”
“Okay,” I say. “Sorry.” I bet he’s a really nice dad. I bet his daughters make his favorite foods from Kazakhstan for him and nag him about getting his prostate checked regularly. “But could you at least change the station?”
“Deal,” he says. The next station is playing “I Fall to Pieces” by Patsy Cline. I have no choice but to cry. The driver hands me a box of Kleenex from the front. “Want to tell me about it?”
“Boys are idiots,” I tell him, sniffling. If I’m a horrid bitch from the planet Schizophrenia, it’s because boys make me one. “I hope you don’t let your five daughters date them.”
“I try not to,” he laughs. “I try.”
I ask the driver to turn his headlights off while we idle at yet another curb. I want to think before I decide whether or not to talk to Tal, and I don’t want Tal to notice me in this cab before I’ve had time to figure this out.
The last time I saw Tal was also at Lou’s club, before Tal took off for the kibbutz, just after he dropped out of Columbia. We were in the back hallway after a show, the club room empty and darkened, smelling of beer and piss and cigarettes, littered with bottles and cups and shirts and the accumulated, spent energy of that night’s mosh. Tal stood over me—too tall Tal, he’s almost 6-foot-4—and had to crouch down to meet my lips. His kiss was wet, sloppy. I used to suspect this was true, but before, I didn’t have much comparison. “Norah,” Tal whispered, and it was the Israeli half of his inflection I heard, whereas the other tired word in his English vocabulary—“baby”—usually came out with the American side of his accent. When I was sixteen his Israeli accent saying “Norah” did sound hot to me, exciting, but at eighteen I heard it differently: it was grating, ugly, like phlegm choking up from the back of his throat instead of a wanton call.