Free Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole

homeless, and had no idea when our first paychecks might arrive, we were handling the situation beautifully. This, I’m sure, is exactly why we were hired.
    I happily helped Georgia load several gigantic bags onto a Smarte Carte while our classmates waved good-bye from the Marriott hotel courtesy van. Georgia and I felt bad for them. Their first night in one of the most exciting cities in the world and they would spend it ordering overpriced room service at a chain hotel across the street from an airport.
    Everyone had cleared out of baggage claim except for us and a family of four who seemed to be missing something like a car seat or a stroller—or maybe even a kid, based on the way they were frantically searching the premises. A group of men huddled together at the bottom of the stairs leading down to baggage claim. Dressed in black suits and holding little white signs, they leered at Georgia while they awaited passengers on incoming flights who had yet to recognize their names. We found a pay phone, and I dialed a number given to us by one of the attendants on our flight. I’d asked her about the cheapest way to get to Queens without taking a bus. The phone rang twice.
    “Kew Gardens!” barked a raspy voice.
    I told the man my name, where we were, and where we wanted to go.
    “Fifteen minutes! Last set of doors upstairs!” he snapped and immediately hung up.
    Georgia slowly pushed the rolling metal cart stacked so high with luggage she could barely see over the top, while I pulled two enormous suitcases on wheels, a smaller crew bag balancing across the top of one. Another group of men wearing jeans and bulky winter coats stood near the passenger arrivals exit. Their eyes lit up as soon as they spotted Georgia teetering along in high-heel boots.
    “Need a ride!” they yelled across the room—a statement, not a question, that was repeated several times.
    “No, thank you,” we repeated, a dozen times, at least.
    Normally I would have been freaked out by this aggressive behavior from a group of strange men at the airport, but we were in New York City. This was just how they did things. I knew this because my mother had made it her mission in life to warn me about all the things to avoid in New York. Gypsy cab drivers were one thing. After my mother had found out where I was going to be based, she bought a guide to the city and soon became the expert on all things New York, although she had yet to visit the city herself.
    “Always take a yellow cab,” she had told me out of the blue on several different occasions. “Make sure to look for a medallion,” she’d insist, as if my life depended on it. (Of course, it took ending up in an empty parking lot in Harlem instead of at a theater on Broadway a few months later to actually learn this lesson so that I can in turn share it with you. Listen to my mother.)
    Once Georgia and I had finally dragged our thousand pounds of luggage to the passenger arrival drop-off point, we found the area deserted. We stood there all alone, and cold, in the dark. LaGuardia Airport at night was creepy. Nervously I looked around, wondering if maybe we should go inside and wait. Instead, I put on a pair of black knit gloves. Georgia dug around inside of one of her smaller bags and pulled out a fluffy white muff. I’d never seen one before in real life, only in fairy tales.
    “Ya think it’s safe out here?” she asked.
    “Sure,” I lied. No need for both of us to freak out.
    Just then, what looked like an old beat-up police sedan sped up to the curb, the horn honking nonstop, and came to a screeching halt in front of us. I took a step back. An old man wearing wire-rim glasses and a newsboy cap got out of the sedan and squinted at our bags.
    “You’re kidding, right?” he said.
    “Are you with Kew Gardens Car Service?” I asked, hopeful that he was not, although KEW GARDENS was clearly printed in red-and-white cursive across the back window, the numbers 909 written below