I shrug. “From what I hear, the goods are odd, but the odds are good.”
Leigh throws back her head and chortles before slipping an arm around my shoulder and giving me a wet kiss on the cheek. “That’s my girl!”
Standing alone with two massive suitcases at the baggage claim area of the Sitka Airport, I have no idea how to get everything to the curb outside until a friendly porter offers me a beat-up luggage trolley. Grateful for any assistance at all, I load up my baggage, add my laptop bag and carry-on, and pull the thousand-pound cart out the airport doors.
Since sitkacab.com took me to a website populated with the latest in dildos—no, I’m not kidding—and the second cab company I found on-line was called “Cummins,” I decided to “wing it” when I landed and see if there were taxis available at the airport. But between “winging” my pitch yesterday morning and my ground transportation tonight, I’m quickly learning that I’m an F-student at “winging” things.
“No more winging it!” I mutter to myself, looking around the empty curbside as I zip up my jacket. Damn, but it’s cold.
I turn right and then left, scanning the semi-empty, very dark parking lot before gazing back at the terminal. There was an Avis Rental Car booth inside, but the light was off and no one was there.
“Unbelievable,” I grouse, fishing my phone out of my purse. I hope I have a strong enough signal to find a cab company over the internet, and when I do, I hope it doesn’t try to sell me a dildo.
Was I wrong to think there’d be a taxi stand here like every other airport in the United States? I mean, based on my very last-minute research last night after Leigh left my place and this morning after I’d finished packing, Sitka is the fourth largest city in Alaska after Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau. You’d think they’d have a goddamned taxi stand for—
“You need help?”
I turn around to find the gentleman who offered me the baggage cart inside.
“I thought there would be taxis.”
“First time in Sitka?” he asks, grinning at me as he pulls a cellphone from hi
s pocket, presses a button and presses it to his ear.
“First time in Alaska,” I answer.
“Jack? It’s Toby down at the airport. Yeah. Uh-huh. Last night? Huh. I missed it. Ha ha ha. Oh, yeah. You got it, Jack.”
I’m staring at him, starting to wonder if his call has anything to do with me, as I originally thought. Maybe I should just assume that cab companies in Sitka double as sex shops and just go ahead and—
“Jack, I gotta girl down here. Yeah. Just flew in. Yep. Lower 48. Ha ha. She’s looking for a cab. Yep. Bye.”
He snaps the clamshell phone shut and looks up at me. “Jack’ll be here in a jiffy.”
“Jack?”
“Of Jack’s Cab.”
“You mean ‘Cabs’?”
“Well, technically yes. But it was just Jack and his cab for so long, he never changed the name. Jack’s Cab. Good outfit. No need to worry.”
“What was all the laughing about?” I ask, wondering if it’s smart to take a ride in the middle of the night from Jack of Jack’s Cab on the recommendation of—of—Toby-from-the-airport.
“Folks coming in from the Lower 48 don’t always know what to expect here.” Toby takes a cigarette pack out of his breast pocket, offers me one, which I decline, then takes one for himself. “Sitka’s the smallest city you’ll ever meet.”
Whatever that means.
Damn, but it was in the 70s when I left Seattle in flip-flops, but now I realize I should have dressed more warmly. I shift from foot to foot, trying to keep warm.
“Whereabouts you from?” asks Toby, blowing smoke rings into the sky.
I follow them, marveling at the number of bright, twinkling stars in the inky black cosmos above. Perfect night for stargazing if it wasn’t so cold.
“Originally from a little town in Delaware,” I hear myself say. “Now Seattle.”
“Your people still in Delaware?”