[This was inspired by
Lioness Limousine
. However, while that story was about a role-play, the characters in this story are really a passenger and a driver.]
In the spring of 1976, having passed my twenty-first birthday, I got a part-time job driving for a car service called Lioness Limousine. At that time I was a junior at the City College of New York but I wasn't straining myself with the academic load of being a history major. I figured I might as well get a bit ambitious for once and do something with the spare time that accumulated outside of midterm and end term requirements.
In my first couple of months I wound up having a regular customer, a lady named Mrs. Holly Sykes. She was a divorcΓ©e who lived in an apartment building near Gramercy Park in Manhattan. I guessed that she was asking for me each time she called the service although I wasn't explicitly told that.
One sunny weekend in June I went out to the garage in Long Island City and I found out that I again had Mrs. Sykes for an assignment. It was going to be for the entire afternoon, which seemed to be an anomaly because usually she only needed to do a few errands around Manhattan. She had never seemed to book a car for more than two hours at a time. Also, it was a Sunday, a day she had never asked for service before.
I was baffled about why she requested me so often. She was quite taciturn and never seemed to have much to say to me. However, she didn't complain and make my job difficult as a few customers did so I didn't mind driving her around.
On that day I drove a big blue 1975 Buick Electra across the 59th Street Bridge to her neighborhood. I didn't have to wear a uniform but I did have to make some concession to professionalism by wearing a jacket and tie while on duty. When I got to her building around 1:00 PM I parked by a hydrant and stood outside by the passenger side of the car. That happened to be the side facing the curb.
My customer came down at the appointed time and the doorman opened the building door for her. Mrs. Sykes must have been in her late thirties, maybe even forty. To my young eyes she was mature, a lady who could have been one of my professors. She was a fairly tall woman with dark blonde hair that she usually tied back in a bun. Her clothes and make-up always seemed to be impeccable.
That day she was wearing a blue dress with a white floral pattern, a light-gray jacket, a straw summer hat and white heels. Overall I thought she was quite attractive although there was something intimidating about her. Her quietness seemed more like coolness and reserve, not shyness. I had started to think of her as Queen Holly.
When I thought back to her in later years I realized she had a resemblance to the actress Kathleen Turner. Of course in 1976 Turner was still a student at the University of Maryland.
She said nothing as she approached the car and I opened the back door for her.
"Good afternoon, Mrs. Sykes. I'm glad you decided to use Lioness Limo again today."
She replied tersely, "Well, I always use them." I wanted to know why she asked for me so often but I figured it was up to her to let me know the reason for that.
I got in behind the wheel and started the engine. The back seat of the car was rather low and her hem had ridden up when she sat down. As she crossed her legs I noticed that they were bare without stockings. She pulled out a cigarette and asked me to give her the lighter from the dashboard. Then she started giving instructions.
"Paul, I don't have an exact destination, but I want you to take me to a place with some privacy."
I had no idea what she was getting at and I couldn't come up with a response. She sounded a bit impatient as she explained, "I mean some privacy with the car. Not that long, maybe an hour at most."
I took a stab at pleasing her, "You mean you want to look at the harbor or something?"
"No, that's not it. I'll tell you what - you know Bush Terminal out in Brooklyn? That's pretty quiet on a Sunday, isn't it?"
It was odd that that someone like Mrs. Sykes even knew about that particular neighborhood of lofts and warehouses. The only thing I could imagine was that she wanted to meditate or something while I took a walk for a while.
She was the customer, so she would get wanted she wanted. I said, "Okay, Mrs. Sykes, I'll take you across the Brooklyn Bridge and then we can head in that direction." I assumed that she'd like the view from the bridge rather than taking the quicker Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.
I had assumed incorrectly, "No, take the tunnel, it's more direct."
She started talking almost as soon as we turned the corner to head south, "You don't know that I'm divorced, do you?"
"No, Mrs. Sykes, you've never mentioned it."
"My husband, Desmond, he thought he was really clever. That was until I came home unexpectedly one day and I caught him with one of the girls from his office."
She had just started and already I missed the previous reticent version of her I had known. I made some non-committal remark.
She said, "My timing was perfect. I caught them In flagrante delicto. She was on all-fours on our bed and he was taking her anally."
Man, this is too much sharing at this early stage.
I said, "That's really unfortunate."
"Yes, really unfortunate for him I'd say. I really took him to the cleaners, as the expression goes."
I actually felt briefly sorry for poor Desmond. This Holly Sykes was nice-looking but she seemed rather cold. Then she just had to ask about me.
"So Paul, do you have a girlfriend up at City College?"
That was a bit personal.
Why can't she talk about the weather or something?
I tried to be vague about it, "Things are a bit unsettled right now."
"All right, I get it. So what did happen with your last girlfriend then?"
I looked in the mirror and saw that she was smiling. Something about her reminded me of the Phyllis Dietrichson character from
Double Indemnity.
This woman in the back seat didn't seem trustworthy either.
I decided to answer truthfully because I really didn't care what she thought, "Okay, this girl met an older guy who has a good job -- on Wall Street I think."
"Desmond worked in a brokerage too. In fact, he was a managing director. Tell her to be cautious."
"Actually I do talk to her from time to time."
Right now we were passing through Union Square which was still very shabby in those pre-gentrification days. I decided to continue downtown on Broadway.
Holly Sykes had another opinion, "Girls nowadays have no loyalty or even morals. It's changed a lot since my day."
Somehow I didn't believe she had been a perfectly chaste college girl back then. Fortunately she changed topics and went on to politics. She surprised me by supporting the Democrats in that year's election. Or at least she had a grudge against Richard Nixon, whom she called "detestable," and against Gerald Ford for pardoning him.
When we went through the tunnel it was too noisy to hold a conversation. On the other side she said, "Take that street that runs under the highway."
"Okay, it's Third Avenue -- Brooklyn's Third Avenue I mean."
She looked around, "Isn't this place the setting for
Last Exit to Brooklyn