Member-only story
THE MEMOIRIST IDOL
Taken For A Ride
Arrivals in JFK on a dark night
He turned the steering wheel, we were on the freeway, and then everything was dark, pitch dark, around us. Suddenly I had an acute sense of how the two of us, me and this unknown man, were riding in this capsule together.
He could be driving me anywhere.
This is when he turned around, and passed over a little card to me. I peered at it in the dim light, not even sure what I was looking at.
“It’ll be a hundred dollars,” he said. “You can see the fares printed on the flyer.”
I couldn’t see a thing. “Wow,” I thought. “This town sure is expensive.”
1999. It was my first time in New York.
This was before I’d learned that if you didn’t want to be staffed on a case over New Year’s, you took the holiday. As in, you blocked out your calendar, said you were on vacation, Tahiti, Timbuktu, anywhere but home, so when the call came from a client who had to have their deal done between Christmas and New Year’s, it wasn’t you whom the Staffing Partner called.
You said you were on vacation, Tahiti, Timbuktu, anywhere but home
