Taxi, taxi! Bastard! Taxi!


    I swam through the crowd outside LAX like a drowning goat.


    When I finally got inside, I saw the same man working the service desk as before, so I high-tailed it to the baggage claim instead.


    In a carpeted rest area, I threw myself into a chair. Bev Gimble was leaning face-forward against a vending machine across the hall. She appeared to be threatening it.


    I slid out of the chair and followed a loose crowd. By the time she finally squeezed a bottle out of the poor machine, I was almost entirely obscured by the throng.


    Through a gap between two businessmen, I saw Bev sit down almost exactly where I had sat, and pull a cigarette out of her shirt pocket. A moment later, a man with a large badge sidled up to her and said a few words out the corner of his mouth.


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    For a moment I lost sight of her. I had to wait for another gap in the crowd.


    Bev glared at the man with the badge and mashed her cigarette into the arm of her chair. The man took it gingerly and walked off, tossing it into the nearest bin without looking.


    It had not yet been lit.


    I leaned against the wall for a moment. Then I dragged my bags all the way outside.


    “Taxi!” I tried. “Bastard,” I tried.


    I moved with the current, but there were, simply, not enough taxis for girls with soft voices.


    Instead of going hoarse, I went back in the air conditioning and opened my new duffel. It had barely fit in the locker back at the train station.


    Inside were four hundred-dollar bills in a standard envelope.


    I took a one-hundred-dollar bill and bought a newspaper and a novel from the airport gift shop. With the change, I bought a large mountain dew and a bag of chips. I put the rest of the bills back in my envelope. Then I found an empty lounge and read my book while rush hour crawled past.


    All the ice melted.


    I never got my bags.