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New Black Suit Worn Twice
(to the memory of Tarik)

Kirk Alex

    Cost me $117 at Zachary All in the Miracle Mile (in 1981), when I thought I’d try to get hired on as limo driver at the Century Plaza Hotel. But they weren’t hiring just then, or at least I wasn’t their type (I can thank the gods for small favors—on account it’s the limo drivers who had to deal with the biggest spoiled assholes in Rock & Roll and Hollywood, not to mention the obnoxious offspring of said garbage, not to mention having to be subservient to various self-important/self-absorbed corporate honchos and CEOs), so the suit sat in the closet for a year or so until I attended a cabbie friend’s funeral in Westwood.
    Tarik was a soft-spoken, friendly, gentle fellow from Iran. Had only recently married his German girlfriend. They’d been living with his mother in order to save up until he graduated with his degree in engineering. He never knew a thing about my background, where I was from. Back then I still had that chip on my shoulder. I’d just split with my girl and was teetering on the precipice. Tarik was a healing sort to be around. It helped to spend time with people like this. He was due to get his degree shortly; it was within his grasp, a matter of weeks. He would finally be able to make a decent wage, free himself of the cab, do more for his family, perhaps start thinking about starting his own.

    This particular night while sitting on the Beverly Hilton taxi stand we were discussing the LAPD flyer the drivers had been handed on a black guy who had a nasty habit of slashing the throats of cab drivers with a Bowie knife. He would phone for a cab, usually at night, usually late at night, usually from a poorly lit side street, from a poorly lit apartment complex. The unsuspecting driver would drive up, leave his cab in search of the apartment, return to his cab without success, only to discover his fare, this silhouette of a man sitting in the back seat, in the dark, directly in back of his head. The slasher would then have the driver take a circuitous route deep into the winding hill roads of Glendale or Pasadena, where he would slash the driver’s throat with the dagger and rob him and leave him to bleed to death.

    Back in those days I walked around with bloodshot eyes, not so much from all the brews I consumed during the days I was off (and more than once while on duty) but from the pain of trying to live without my girl—but these things happen. I didn’t associate with and/or talk to too many people during that time, seldom said two words to my fares. The ways of the madman. I was sinking/lost/truly wished for an encounter with the brother with the sharp dagger. My death-wish phase lasted from ’80 on through ’86—not that the rest of the decade had been any less painful—but at least the burning hot ball of wax that seemed embedded inside my chest did let up toward decade’s end.
    And Tarik and I spoke often, mostly about how one day we both hoped to deliver ourselves from the nowhere cab business, and about life in general. This particular night a rookie cabbie appeared and walked up to us briefly, got wind of what we were saying about the slasher who had cut the throats of eight cab drivers by then (someone had failed to give the rookie a flyer), and we saw him hurry back to his cab and drive off the stand empty-handed and quit that night. I recall chuckling.
    Fear death?
    What?
    Welcome it.
    Fear nothing. Fear anything and that’s when it comes knocking on your door. Ask me about it. That’s how I got through Vietnam alive: I feared shit. Zip. Once I got wise to it. I never “John Wayned” it, didn’t act the macho tough guy—those who did paid a heavy price—but inside my attitude was: Come get me, suckers. I’m not running from your bullets. There was a trick to it, you blocked things out—and you became like stone.
    Of course, some who knew me before I went over will tell you I was never the same afterwards. You’ll get no argument from me there. None.
    Fear draws that which you fear. I had feared I’d picked a man-hater to fall in love with—and was right. I feared she couldn’t go the distance—was right there, too. I feared she would walk one day—and, you guessed it, it happened.
    That which you fear will come snapping at your scared ass every time. Fear you’ll end up alone—GUARANTEED IT HAPPENS. Fear you’ll fail (at anything) and you will fail (at everything you attempt).
    Fuck fear!

    A moment later a red flashing light buzzed above our heads and Tarik drove his cab to the lobby to load up. That was the last time I saw him alive.
    Days later I was standing in the front yard of a Westwood funeral home. I wore that black suit bought for the limo job I never got. Hundreds of cabbies were present. Two cycle cops assigned to the detail were chuckling about something in the driveway. I wasn’t sore at the cops, this was routine for them. What was another dead cabbie? It happened practically every week in LA. They didn’t know him; he meant nothing to them, but I remember choking on something in my throat and fighting hard not to lose the battle. I wore the tinted sunglasses I seldom took off to mask the goddamn bucket of tears I shed night and day at having lost my lady—and now, at the funeral, the tears were for another reason entirely: a life taken, a good man killed, a sweet human being snuffed for no good reason. Life had a way of sneaking up on you like a merciless beast with razor sharp claws and an unquenchable thirst for blood, your blood.

    We followed the long procession out to West Imperial Terminal, where the coffin was loaded onto a waiting jet to be flown back to Tarik’s homeland for burial.
    The mother and widow were there. I did not make the attempt to get close to them as I had never met them, in fact, did not know them. I kept my distance, held back in the rear with some of the other cabbies, spoke to no one. I noticed one of the Persian drivers giving me the once-over, taking in the suit I had on and letting a type of twisted grin appear on his unshaven face. A grin? Now? What was the bozo grinning about? What was there to be amused about? The fact I’d shown enough decency to wear a suit?
    He noticed me glaring back with a look that said all that and more and his grin faded. The son-of-a-bitch hadn’t even had enough class to change out of his work clothes. And he wasn’t the only one: most of the cabbies present were in their everyday clothes, casually dressed, some downright unkempt. Forget trying to understand it.

    I hung around for a few minutes after the coffin had been loaded onto the jet, and feeling lost and uncomfortable, not knowing anyone there, I finally climbed into my cab and drove off. Tears rolled down as I drove to my room on Burnside. I got out of the suit, hung it in the closet. That was the second and last time I ever wore it, not that it would ever fit these days, but you get the point.

    P.S.,
    Tarik, for what it’s worth: They busted the bastard in front of the Greyhound depot downtown days after he took your life. Caught him with the dagger and a roll of bills in his pocket. Blood money.

    (September 9, 1996 Century City. On taxi stand.)

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