Taxicab Tales – A Woman Scorned

In the past, I have shared a series of stories from my days publishing small town newspapers, from a job I had selling cars, about my time in the Army, and some tales of the offbeat adventures and misadventures I’ve gotten into in a series called Nick Happens. Now, I thought I would tell you some stories about a period in my life many years ago when I drove a taxicab in Tucson, Arizona. Oh, some of the things I witnessed back then! I’ve told more than one prospective author that if they really want to learn about human nature, they need to become a cop, a nurse, or a cab driver. You will see the best and worst of people in any of those jobs.

Marital problems are never easy, but sometimes they can be downright funny. In 1697’s Mourning Bride, playwright William Congreve wrote “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” I saw some examples of the lengths women who were wronged would take to seek revenge while I was a cabbie.

I got a call to pick up a woman at a house in an upscale neighborhood in the Catalina Foothills, and when I arrived my fare was a very attractive woman who appeared to be in her late 30s. She was well dressed, and she asked if she could put something in my trunk. I said sure and got out to load the trunk with two heavily loaded large black trash bags.

Once they were in the trunk, and the woman was in the back seat, she gave me an address near the University of Arizona. I noticed that she seemed very upset or sad, and her eyes were red, like she had been crying. We rode in silence for a few minutes, then she asked me if I was married.
“Divorced,” I told her.
She asked how long I had been married, and I told her fourteen years,
“May I asked what happened?”
“She found somebody else she wanted to be with more than me,” I said.
She was quiet for a while, then asked, “Why do people do that?”
“I wish I knew,” I told her.
“Do you ever ask yourself what you did wrong, or what you could have done differently?”
I told her that I had for a long time, but then I realized that all I was doing was torturing myself and I stopped, because it wasn’t going to change anything.
“Life goes on,” I told her, and my motto is ‘Living well is the best revenge.’”
She sat back in her seat and seemed to be deep in thought for a long time. Finally, she said, “You know, you’re right. It doesn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, it’s not going to change anything.”

By then we were pulling up to our destination, a very nice townhouse. I opened the cab’s door for her and got the bags out of the trunk.
“I won’t be long, wait for me,” she said, as she picked up the two bags.
“Those are pretty heavy. Do you need some help?” I asked her.
“No, thank you, but you might want watch this.”
She muscled the bags to the front door of the townhome and rang the bell. A moment later it was opened by a very pretty, very sexy looking young woman whom I judged to be about 20 or 21 at most. Typical of so many of the college students who attended the U of A.
“Are you Tracy?” my passenger asked, and the younger woman said yes.
“I’m Linda. Dave’s wife,” my fare said, as she stepped inside the door, dragging her heavy bags with her. “And since you’re screwing my husband, and taking his money to pay for this place, I thought I’d give you all of the trash that goes with him.”
With that, she opened the bags and proceeded to dump a big pile of coffee grounds, broken eggshells, and other garbage all over the immaculate white carpet of the townhome’s hallway. Some of the goo landed on Tracy’s legs and she jumped backward  in shock and stood there while Linda shook the last of the wet, nasty garbage out.
Then she took off her wedding ring, handed it to Tracy, and said, “You can give Dave this, too, when he gets here.”

She walked back to my cab without a backward glance and asked me to drive her back home. She never said a word until we were back at her house. She paid me, then sat there another minute, and said, “This really isn’t my style, but would you like to come in?”

I’d love to tell you I’m an honorable man and would not take advantage of a woman as vulnerable as Linda was at that moment, but the truth is, my dispatcher called me just then for another fare. Linda shook her head, smiled, and said, “It’s probably just as well.”
“Yeah, probably.” I told her.
She leaned across the seat, kissed my cheek, and said “Living well is the best revenge. I like that.”

I never saw Linda again, but I hope she’s still living well.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – It’s not always rejection. Sometimes it’s redirection.