Big Red

A heavy-set man in a dusty uni­form tapped me on the shoul­der. “Where’s the rest of you?”

I looked down to see if I was miss­ing my skirt, but no; it was still there. It dawned on me that he was the shut­tle dri­ver, and he meant where was my luggage?

“Oh, it didn’t arrive,” I said. “They think it may be in Philadelphia, but no one really knows.”

“Well all right then,” he said. “Get on in.”

There was a note of bel­liger­ence in his voice: some­thing crazed and pos­si­bly homi­cidal. I got in.

Then he began dri­ving in cir­cles around lax, too fast.

“I gotta go round a cou­pla times,” he announced from his seat: fuzzy dinosaurs dan­gling above his head, crum­pled take-out cof­fee cups on the tray beside him and oth­ers crushed under­foot, Styrofoam clamshell con­tain­ers, smeared nap­kins and a walkie-talkie, an antique-looking cell phone.

 He slowed when he approached a pick-up point, but the ticket agent shook her head and waved him on. He cursed and accel­er­ated away.

“I gotta get one more fare,” he shouted. “At least. Otherwise. You think you’re smart.”

I tried to protest that I didn’t, par­tic­u­larly, but he con­tin­ued. “Do some math for me. If you give me four­teen dol­lars and they take seven, and I gotta pay seven for gas — how much I got left? Huh?”

He took the cor­ner in a wide arc, ignor­ing the lane mark­ings. Horns blared.

“Uh,” I said. “Zero?”

“Zero is right!” He whacked his palm on the dash­board. “That’s why I gotta keep going round. You feel me?”

“I feel you,” I said, feel­ing slightly nau­se­ated. “I don’t mind.”

As a dis­trac­tion I turned my thoughts to my suit­case, which had been mis­placed (not lost, I hoped). I had not put any essen­tial sup­plies in my carry-on, an omis­sion that had clearly tempted the lug­gage gods. Every vital thing in a checked bag from Toronto with a con­nect­ing flight through a north­east­ern U.S. city in the depth of winter …

“What you think I get her a pot,” the dri­ver barked.

“What’s that now?”

“For Valentine’s Day.”

“Oh, Valentine’s Day. I’d for­got­ten about that.”

“It’s today,” he said. “I guess you’re not expect­ing anything.”

His tone was accusatory, as though this were my fault, but I let it slide. It was prob­a­bly true anyway.

“A pot,” he repeated. “That’s a good gift right.”

“You mean like a pot­ted plant, do you?  Instead of flowers?”

“No!” he screamed, blud­geon­ing the steer­ing wheel as he slowed and then careened away from another empty pick-up point. “A big red pot—with a chicken in it.”

“A chicken?”

“How often have you said to your­self, I need a good big red” — he spread his arms out over the steer­ing wheel, pre­sum­ably to show the dimen­sions of this ves­sel — “pot? You cook, right?”

“Kind of.”

He glared.

“That is to say not really, no, in the tech­ni­cal sense, I’d say not much.”

He slammed the steer­ing wheel again. “Well that’s why you’ve never thought of it.”

He braked sharply and pounded on the horn. Another pick-up point. No one.

“But still, you think it’s a good idea.” Pause. “Well?”

“Uh,” I said. “That depends. You say there’s a chicken in it?”

“Surely!”

“A cooked chicken?”

“Not a cooked chicken. A frozen chicken. It’s a nice … big … frozen … chicken!”

“Um … in that case I don’t know.” The shut­tle lurched and I gripped my stom­ach. “She’s sup­posed to cook it for you, is that the subtext?”

“Hey — lady. Anyone would be happy with that. It’s a big, red — ”

“Pot, yes,” I said des­per­ately, as we braked and rock­eted away from another stop. The face of the ticket agent blurred past.

I braced myself in my seat. A glit­ter­ing orange sun was set­tling between the palm trees and the park­ing garages, and we were cir­cling, again.