Free Due Justice by Diane Capri

he liked his job. Like every cab driver, he was loquacious.
    â€œYes, Ma’am. I retired from First National Bank here in Tampa five years ago and Mr. Worthington was our lawyer. I mentioned to him that I’d like to have part-time work and he put me on the payroll. The only thing I do is keep this car clean and drive people around town and back and forth to the airport. If there was an easier job in the world, I’d be ashamed to get paid for it.”
    â€œSounds good to me,” I told him.
    â€œIt’s the only job in town like it. And I get to drive any kind of 4-door full size car I like. I get a new one every year. This baby’s only three weeks old. What do you think of it?”
    I said I thought the car was very nice and that he did, indeed, have an enviable position.
    The traffic lights on Florida Avenue are timed, but we hit all the red ones, getting in more quality time together.
    â€œWhat kind of car did you have before this one?” I asked.
    â€œOh, man, a beautiful Cadillac de Ville. Black. Prettiest car I’ve ever had the pleasure to drive. I was sorry to see that one go. I wanted to keep it, but the boss, he said Mrs. Worthington’s car was getting old, and she wanted that one. So I gave it to her and got me this one instead.”
    He dropped me right next to my Mercedes CLK 320 Convertible I called Greta, and I thanked him for the ride.
    On the way home, my reverie was about the reasons I was no longer working for a firm like Able, Bennett & Worthington.
    About a year before George and I moved to Tampa to get off the “up and coming” merry-go-round. I looked around me and saw the partners in my firm and George’s corporate superiors living the life George and I would be living in ten years, and I didn’t like it. One of the senior officers at the bank owned five homes, each mortgaged to the point that his $350,000 annual salary fell far short of his payments and his private school tuition obligations for three children. The year he asked one of the bank’s secretaries to drive him back and forth to work because his lease car was over the mileage allowance and he couldn’t pay the ten cents a mile surcharge, I realized just how precarious his position was. His salary easily exceeded hers by fifteen times, yet she could afford to buy a car, and he couldn’t afford to rent one.
    Another bank officer divorced his wife of twenty-five years to marry a service clerk thirty years younger than he. To say the divorce was costly is putting it mildly. His ex-wife was not just bitter, she was vicious. On any given day, he could be seen eating his $2 lunch of hot dogs and cottage cheese in the cafeteria, while telling anyone who sat down next to him just how many more alimony payments he had to make before he’d be able to afford hamburger. When his new bride promptly had twins and quit her job, he stopped eating lunch all together.
    The stories were so typical, after a while they weren’t even interesting. There was the junior associate in my firm whose husband was in business school. Not only couldn’t they make it on his $75,000 salary, they lived on credit card debt that would feed an entire third world country for a year. When they wanted to take a vacation, they counted up their available credit balances to see if they could drive somewhere. A mid level partner, living in a three-story Victorian home in Indian Village couldn’t afford a car and had to take the bus to work; another mid level partner had to borrow money to pay the deductible on his health insurance for his newest baby; a third, more senior partner took a loan to pay for more equity in the firm.
    All around me, people were working harder, earning more and having less. They were required to work a staggering number of hours just to earn salaries that (while in the top 1% of all salaries in the country) didn’t buy even a modicum of time and peace of mind. So I got off