E-mail Joshua Greene at: jgreene@freetimes.com

At the Big Little Store on Warrensville Center Road heading into Bedford, it's Bozo the gay-serial-killer clown and a girl who don't speak no English at the counter. I need a little break from the road and ask if they have rolling tobacco 'cause I'd like to roll a cigarette. The woman at the counter doesn't understand. She shows me things you can smoke, and rolling papers. After several frustrating minutes, Bozo comes out to tell me they don't have what I want.

Shouldn't smoke anyway. Got a buddy spent his Christmas getting his heart worked on cause his 40-year, pack-a-day habit is killing him.

So I get back in the cab and pick up some guy in Bedford who's been waiting for hours. He's at the hospital — overdosed on a little cocaine. He comes out like a bull, tells me he's mad, and he's going to walk home instead. I call him a “prick” and he storms off and I stand around commiserating with the security guys. Cokehead walks to the edge of the parking lot, looks into the distance and comes back and humbly gets in the cab.

Now he thinks we're buddies. He wants to give me a hug. A $3 ride with a coke head.

There's another order in the area so I swing by but they've waited so long they decided not to go anywhere.

And there's a dead dog on Woodland Avenue by the Food Terminal. Looks like it was shot a few times: white fur, red holes.

The nurse I pick up from Lakewood Hospital is heading downtown for a drink. She calls her mom.

“I'm mad at you,” she says on her cell phone. “You done forgot your own daughter's birthday.”

There's a pause and some polite, friendly noise and then she says, “Those people at work upset me.” A patient, admitted in the middle of the night, was left for the morning crew to figure out, she says. “None of the basics done,” she says. “They didn't know anything about what was wrong with her.”

So she comes to work and finds this unresponsive patient clutching a box.

“She had a knife and scissors in her pocket and we open this box and it has an envelope with $2,846 in it. I guess she was going to protect her money with the knife,” she says. “I could have been stabbed.”

She adds, “I'm mad at you.”

And the man who lives way out on the edge of the world, on E.188th Street off of Miles Avenue, takes a long while walking out to the street and gives me a dollar 'cause they don't need a cab after all.

So it's back downtown. And the Rock Hall is wrapping up for the day and the guy going home says, “It's fabulous.”

He's staying at the Best Hotel on E. 36th Street and Euclid. I take him to an ATM and then a gas station to buy smokes. He says he was brave the night before and set out on foot to explore Cleveland. He survived but it was a one-of-a-kind experience.

He tells me gang bangers hang out in the lobby of the hotel.

“They don't mess with me,” he says.

At the gas station there's no attendant behind the bullet-proof glass and my fare suggests we steal the pastries on our side of the glass. I don't see the wisdom in it. Ten years in prison with my new friend as a cellmate is enough to dissuade me. Not to mention the cameras.

The meter's running and these smokes are going to cost $10 a pack. Finally, the attendant comes in, but so does a homeless guy complaining how he hates the warm weather blowing in for the night. He's dressed to keep from freezing to death, but now he's sweating.

My rider is making rude comments to the cashier about how long we waited and how he was just about to steal everything. And he thinks he's funny. The homeless guy asks for a quarter.

“Get a job,” my fare
tells him.

“I've worked a lot of jobs, mister,” the vagabond says. “I've worked every kind of job.”

“Well you should try keeping a job,” my fare says, looking to me for backup, but I give the guy some coins.

The bum goes to the window and orders a Magnum 40.

I'm escorting my fare out the door while he's saying “see,” pointing it out to me. What did I think he was going to do, invest it?

When we get back to the hotel, my fare is nervous. All the gang-bangers are in. He asks me to make out a receipt for more than he gives me and I don't really have a problem with that.