Errata Read Free Page B

granted to Eve, extending her heart a meager few years longer, allowing her wide-eyed expression when flipping through a new book and cradling it lovingly to remain in this world and infect it a few years longer.  I don’t have the generosity of spirit to be Eve, in fact her memory is rebuking, but since I know that she considered purgatory any place without pages, the only act I can perform in her name to pay tribute is live the reader’s life, and with all my wishing facilities, imagine her content in a house of books.

Day 6

    A job search is one of the few situations in which a terribly low percentage is acceptable and satisfying.  Fifty resumes can be sent out and as long as one employer responds and hires you, it’s ended well. I can’t abide by bad odds, though.  It’s the reason I don’t gamble. It makes little sense to throw away money and time or be painfully humbled dealing with the whole job process, even the New Orleans version. Instead, I became a cabbie, a hack, not a particularly commanding position, but a necessity in a tourist town.  This change initially provided the solace of impunity.  I’d been an English and Literature teacher in the public schools, so the idea of setting my own schedule and making enough by putting in a few hours a day sounded pleasing, as well as providing an appropriate balance of experience to the hermit’s path.  I turned 25.  Rent’s cheap.  I have few bills and live simply, so why not?  More time for reading and volunteering with a local tutoring organization.  After being restlessly cooped up in a classroom, the taxi path appealed with a whiff of freedom to it, so I walked around, studied the cabbies, noted where the main cab stands were, tried to listen in on their conversations and dispatch calls, observed which downtown blocks often got fares, measured how often the different companies’ cars passed through, and then came to the following.  If I took my old Ford four-door, printed two large magnets, one for each side, made an official-looking cabbie license, bought a CB and a meter, and went out after dark, varying up my streets, enveloped in the crowd, then I could pull it off, have potential fares (all of them wave-me-down corner jobs) think I’m legitimate.  I’d work limited enough so that the other cabbies wouldn’t pick up on it, especially since I’d occasionally be scooping up their customers ahead of them.  Not out too late, though, since I’m not particularly nocturnal, at least on the early side of night.  If by chance the taxi cab bureau caught up to me, I’d take care of it with a little cash and several half-truths.  It’s easier to have guile when you don’t look like you do.  I’m a serious and prudent-seeming young man and my race makes a difference, sorry to say.  I take fares into my confidence and explain that I’m in the family business, working my way through college, because whether or not they ask outright (Who doesn’t have one’s own concerns to focus on, after all?), it’s apparent that I can set their minds at ease with strong manners and by offering a plausible explanation.  It’s what they want to hear, even if they don’t believe me and conclude that I’m merely superior at being inferior.  Plus, I get better tips.  It bridges them past their immediate concern of why a non-immigrant Caucasian is in this line of work.  You can be a middle-aged white man hack, but the fares see me as what they don’t want their sons to turn to, as if I’m equal parts chauffeur/psychotherapist/tour guide/dealer/pimp/wrangler of drunks/delivery boy, which is partly true.  On the other hand, a waiter, clerk, or bartender are all temporarily acceptable positions for their children, positions that will be fondly looked back upon as the jobs of the salad days, but a cabbie?  No esteem.  No one does a job like this if he’s my age, my background, and sane.  I’m too young to be what they perceive as a hard luck