A Taxi Ride from Town
.. . . .. help . … . . helllp . . . . I’m stuck way down here in a deep groove.
This morning is cloudless and the sea is as flat as a pane of glass.
I didn’t even turn on my computer yesterday. So little to do – so much to do.
Three more crew have shown up, but over the next two days three will leave.
Yesterday morning I walked into town along the road to Shamrock then the rest of the way along the sidewalk. I loaded up on produce and cash and got my phone issues sorted out at Digicell. I walked over to the Cambio parking lot and spotted a route taxi with a ‘Negril-Lucea’ sign on the door. There was a woman sitting in the back. I got in the front. We took off. When we got to the roundabout instead of heading down the beach road, the guy went around it and exited on the Sav road. I said, “I thought you were going out the beach road.”
“Yah, mon,” he replied, “me jus’ ‘ave to drop dis lady dere.” He pointed vaguely ahead.
He went up to Winner’s Plaza and turned in. The lady in the back got out, two more ladies got in. We headed back towards the circle. Approaching the circle the driver’s cell, which was in the open ashtray, went off. He picked it up and started talking. We entered the traffic circle. Again, we passed the beach road, went around the circle and exited on the Sav road. The driver put his cell back in the ashtray. “Me ‘ave to pick up a lady,” he announced. This time he pulled into White Swan plaza, not so far. He jockeyed the cab around the cars, people and bikes in the parking lot and got us parked facing back towards town. We waited for the lady.
I saw two pretty, young, tall, slim Jamaican women approaching the cab from ahead. They were wearing tight clothing with cleavage revealing tops. The girls were very slim, but there was a lot of jiggle and bounce going on. (They were coming straight into my field of view, so don’t start snickering about ‘dirty old man’ – I wasn’t going to cover my eyes). The driver noticed them approaching, saw me watching them and made a comment something like, “you like de young women?” I shrugged. One of the women in the back laughed.
When the girls got to the front bumper I recognized one of them. It was Jody, the bar-girl at the Cozy Bar. Bea and I had spoken to her often when we visited the bar or passed by. She always sat out front when she didn’t have customers. She recognized me at about the same moment. She smiled, stopped at the window and bent over. “Hey, mon,” she said. She put her hand in the window and I took it. “I’ll come up and see you,” I said. “Okay,” she said, and walked on.
The two women in the back laughed and twittered. The driver laughed, put up his fist and said, “Respect, mon!”
Shortly after, the woman we’d been waiting for showed up and jumped in the back. We took off, went around the circle for the third time and headed out the beach road. The Jody encounter had given me cred with the taxi driver so he’d started a conversation and was talking about dis-an-dat.
We were approaching the traffic-light crossing that was recently erected at the Grand Pineapple. I looked ahead and saw that the light was red. The crossing guard was there with his STOP sign in his hand, raised to the oncoming traffic. The driver never slowed down at all, he just blew right on through the red light.
Bounty Killer is coming to Negril Feb 19th. I am definitely going to that concert.
