Free Cruising Attitude by Heather Poole Page A

it.
    The old guy reached into the car through the opened door and grabbed what looked like a CB radio handset. “Nine oh nine.” He looked at us, looked at our bags again, and shook his head. “Nine oh nine.”
    “Is there a problem, sir?” Georgia popped her cinnamon gum.
    “Is there a problem, she asks!” He laughed. “Where you from, sweetheart?”
    She smiled a pageant queen smile. “Louisiana.”
    From inside the car came the scratchy voice of a man who sounded like he’d spent about twenty years chain-smoking in a coal mine: “Nine oh nine.”
    The driver pressed a black button and spoke into the handset. “We got a bit of a problem. It seems that Miss Louisiana here needs the wagon.” Without another word, he got back inside the car, slammed the rickety door shut, and took off.
    “Well, that was rude!” exclaimed Georgia. She glared at the two red taillights disappearing into the distance. “I’m in the right mind to report that guy!”
    Georgia never did end up reporting him, and eventually a station wagon in desperate need of a paint job crawled to the curb. Without exiting the car, a long-haired driver popped the hatch, twirling a cigarette between his stained fingers. Georgia and I struggled to load our bags into the back. They barely fit. Once in the backseat, I sat on what looked like a blue blanket taken from an airplane. On further inspection, it was in fact a blue blanket taken from an airplane. It covered a rip in the leather seat.
    “Where you ladies going?” Irish accent. Beady eyes darting back and forth between us in the rearview mirror.
    “Beverly Road. Near Metro and Lefferts?” Shoot. It sounded more like a question, not the statement I had memorized and rehearsed in the bathroom mirror in the days before graduating from the flight academy in an attempt to sound like a real New Yorker. The driver nodded. Half a second later our heads snapped back and off we went to Kew Gardens.
    Thanks to my mother’s newfound knowledge of all things New York, I already knew that Kew Gardens, also known as Crew Gardens, is a residential area in Queens offering, for the most part, one-family homes in the million-dollar-plus range. There are also several apartment complexes and co-ops located in the area around Metropolitan Avenue and Lefferts Boulevard, a.k.a. Metro and Lefferts, two cross streets that run through the heart of the neighborhood. After World War II, a large population of Jewish refugees from Germany settled in the area, along with many Chinese and Russian immigrants. Dense and ethnically diverse, the neighborhood is popular with airline personnel because of its central location between LaGuardia Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport. Because New York is considered a junior base for most airlines, there are a large number of flight attendants who commute to work. This is why so many crash pads are located in Kew Gardens, and why one can often see uniformed airline personnel at all hours of the day and night dragging luggage down cracked sidewalks past synagogues, nail salons, and Chinese food takeout joints on the way to and from the airport.
    From the backseat of the car I stared out the window as neon signs whizzed by, a few of them in need of new lightbulbs. As we passed Jamaica Hospital, my heart sank. I didn’t want to be anywhere near Jamaica, Queens, thanks to the movie Coming to America starring Eddie Murphy, a movie my sister forced me to rent before going to flight attendant training. Any moment now I expected to see dozens of homeless people warming their hands over burning cans of trash. When we exited the highway, there were gigantic black bags of garbage piled at least four bags high on the curb as far as the eye could see. Right before we turned into a neighborhood with tall, skinny houses sitting practically on top of one another, we passed by what looked like an abandoned bowling alley.
    I couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Ummm . . . excuse me, Mr.