16. Pickup lines
Typical Wednesday morning queue on the airport rank – about a hundred people shivering in the winter chill waiting for a cab. Mondays when Parliament was sitting, you’d get two or three times as many. Passengers, when they finally got a cab, would complain about the nation’s capital being unable to organise a decent taxi service.
What passengers didn’t see was the flip side of the long queues – the hours that cabbies put in idling on deserted ranks, including at the airport. There would often be a hundred cabs waiting, two lines winding through the boomgates, through the cabyard, and spilling out onto Nomad Drive.
“I had to wait twenty minutes for a taxi!” a passenger would complain, not knowing that his driver had spent an hour or more waiting for a passenger.
This passenger was a first for Harley. “The ASIO building site,” he said to Harley, adding, “Do you know it? It’s on Constitution Avenue.”
He got into the front seat and two companions sat in the back. No luggage – just briefcases or small backpacks.
Engineers, thought Harley. He’d seen plenty when the new National Portrait Gallery was under construction. They’d be employed by one of the major contractors, and they’d spend their lives flying between several projects scattered around Australia, doing day trips to Canberra, overnights in Perth or Darwin, back to Melbourne or Sydney for the weekend, repeating the process the next week.
Mostly young – in their late twenties or early thirties – and full of the energy and enthusiasm they would lose within five years. But for the moment, they were nation-builders.
They talked amongst themselves of basements and heating plants. The hole in the ground for the main building wasn’t more than an outline on the muddy grass yet, but it had to be excavated just right.
Harley let them out at the site offices. The Portrait Gallery had been an open site, with taxis able to drive in, but here there was a sliding metal gate and a guard checking documents.
They paid with a corporate credit card, but that was par for the course – daytime work rarely involved cash. Some cabbies got so desperate that they pretended the card terminal was broken. They needed actual money for gas. Or a meal. They couldn’t wait seven days for the bank to make a deposit – they needed it immediately.
Harley wasn’t up for such shenanigans. Well, not unless he was desperate. Which he wasn’t at the moment.
He had the price of a coffee and a rock cake in his pocket, the Campbell shops were close at hand and it must be morning tea time, the Statistics page on the despatch screen showing vacant cab numbers rising everywhere as the morning rush dropped away.
The ASIO site would be a good source of work. Those engineers he’d dropped off would be looking for a ride back to the airport in the afternoon. Or maybe a hotel. There would be others, day after day, week after week. Public servants, consultants, visitors, all needing cabs there and back.
Heartbake’s barista with the film star looks must have taken some time off. He had been replaced by a young woman. Skinny, short black hair, big smile for Harley, about fifteen years old by the look of her.
The world was being run by children. Or at least the important bits.
“Flat white, please. Family size!”
She smiled as his hands outlined a coffee cup about the size of the America’s Cup. Harley liked making people smile, and this one had a smile that would melt any man’s heart.
“Sugar?”
“Two. And one of your happiest rock cakes, please.”
Her smile could have floodlit Telstra Tower for a night. That was one of the benefits of being a cabbie. You could use the same jokes over and over.
Too cold this morning for a place outside. Harley took his coffee and cake to a table beside Ann’s Official BookCrossing Zone shelf. His previous book was now out in the wild, released at the airport rank this morning, Who knew where in the world it would go?
This was fun. He’d signed up as Bookcabbie, not a brilliant name, but the best he could come up with when confronted by a sign-up screen and a blinking cursor. Nobody had found the books he’d read and released, but it was early days yet.
The BookCrossing shelf was looking sadly depleted. He’d have to hunt up a new batch from Ann. Or add some himself. He had any number of old books gathering dust at home. He’d never read them again, so why not pass them on to others, and maybe see if they had some adventures?
The website indicated that labels and stickers could be bought online, though obviously it would take a few days to airmail them from the USA. In the meantime, there were free labels to download and print out at home.
Harley finished his coffee, wrapped the uneaten half of his rockcake away in a napkin for future consumption, nodded to the barista – received another dazzling smile for a pudgy cabbie rapidly running into middle age – and went to Ounce Books.
Closed.
He checked the opening hours, on a discreet sign beside the door, and though Ann kept long hours, Wednesday morning wasn’t among them.
Hmmm. Perhaps she visited her elderly mother on Wednesdays. Perhaps she did her banking and other chores during these few business hours. Perhaps she had a lover, and they spent the mornings rolling around in sweaty lust and heavy breathing.
Harley liked that last thought, inserting himself into the fantasy, kissing Ann between her bookshelves, embracing her in the romance section, leading her into the backroom where they disrobed amongst boxes of unsorted books…
He caught himself, smiling. Sharkey was right. He had sex on the brain.
How long had it been? Too bloody long. Cabbies might brag about lady passengers paying in kind, but it had never happened to him. Just a kiss on the cheek now and then from passengers happy with his line of chat. And twice now a male passenger, coming home alone late at night, had laid a hand on his thigh. He’d gently brushed them aside, saying he didn’t swing that way, but took no offence.
Maybe he should follow up on that fantasy. He’d not seen any significant rings on Ann’s fingers, not that meant much nowadays. Perhaps a little innocent internet stalking. The shop’s website, Facebook.
“Make Google your friend, Harl!” he thought, smiling at his lonely reflection in the shop window.
Copyright © 2009 Peter Mackay