Partners In Fiction (All That Cleavage)

My passenger wore about her neck the ghastly remains of a fox.
"Mind if I smoke," she inquired, and not giving me a chance to reply,
she affixed to a cigarette of unusual length,
a cigarette of equal size.

A bullet proof window separates a taxi driver from the passenger behind.
The density of the pane did not isolate me
from the scent of the lady's liquored breath
nor of the smoke she belched like an East German factory.

I brusquely told the lady, to roll down the windows. She asked me my name.
I told her to read it on the permit. "Klondike Ramirez? An interesting name,"
and with that the passenger broke into New Yorican,
New Yorican is a dialect of Puerto Rican and Bronx,

New Yorkrican, believe me, is a pain in the ear to one who grew up
speaking cultured Spanish before learning gutter English.
She talked a mile a minute as we headed to La Marketa
through Third Avenue's water logged streets.

We arrive in one piece, and the broad bids me to wait on her.
I says, "You'll have to pay me what the meter's reading.
Says she in an Upper Manhattan accent,
"What, you think I'm gonna scam you?"

I was really in a doubt if this passenger might return
from her jaunt to La Marketa, seeing the way she was dressed,
all that cleavage showing and derriere a rumbling,
I informs her, she'll have to advance me the wait time.


To be continued