here and pick me up. Then we’ll go
get the car. The shop is about a mile up the road. When’s your dad getting
here?”
“He said half an hour.”
“Can you get him to drive you to the shop—it’s called Joe’s—to
get your luggage? We might be longer than half an hour.”
She nodded. “I’ll wait.” She bit her nail, realized what she
was doing, and shoved her hand back in her lap. “I’m wondering…um…maybe we
could hook up on my way back through Newark? Is that crazy?”
“It’s not crazy. Will you have any time?”
“Well, my friend Rita lives in Manhattan. Maybe I’ll just
tell the parents I wanted to meet with her before my flight. Not that I need my
parents’ permission, but explaining that I was going to see a cabby I just
slept with…well, that would cause unneeded worry.”
Jake grinned. “I can certainly see your point of view there.”
He left and Christine once again found herself fantasizing
about their time in the back of the cab. She greeted her dad when he arrived
and tried to put it out of her mind. Then she saw Jake again at the garage and
felt really weird with her dad there. She should just forget the whole thing.
Jake slipped her a card with his number on it. “In case you have time,” he
said, but Christine was already thinking it was a bad idea. Being around her
dad seemed to ground some sense back into her. But all weekend, long after she’d
gotten home and done the holiday thing, she remembered Jake spanking her and
talking about tying her up, and she couldn’t get out of her head the fantasy of
taking that further. The closer she got to her return trip, the more she
relived the memory of touching Jake and feeling him inside her. She decided to
take a bus back to Newark, then call Jake. Maybe he’d changed his mind.
“Can you come into Manhattan, then? I can pick you up at
Port Authority.”
“What about your son?”
“He’s staying at a friend’s for the day.”
“Okay.”
Another bus and more time to think she was totally crazy to
be doing this. When she got to Port Authority, she realized it was a much
bigger place than she’d thought. Most likely Jake would have his cab out front
with the rest of the cabs, so she headed there. Like twenty cabs were in front
of the building, all looking much the same. She stood there biting her nail and
wondering how to narrow it down as pedestrians on the sidewalk buffered around
her. A horn honked and a man got out of one of the cabs.
“Christine!”
Oh thank God. She rushed in Jake’s direction, suitcase in
tow. He came around the cab and helped her with the suitcase. Then she wondered
whether to sit in the front because she knew him or in the back, traditional
with cabbies. These were the sort of things that drove her nuts, little worries
that she had no control over.
“Sit up front. What time’s your flight?”
“Nine forty.”
“We’ll have to leave enough time to get through the tunnel.”
“Yeah, missing my flight would not be good.”
“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”
“Um, how can you tell?”
He chuckled. “You’re biting your nail and fidgeting.”
“Sorry. This isn’t usually like me.”
“The nervousness or going off with a guy you just met?”
“The latter.”
“My apartment’s a real hole in the wall.”
“That’s okay.”
The place was on the Upper West Side and had a buzzer system
to keep out strangers. The exterior of the building was white brick with a
freshly painted interior. He was on the sixth floor.
“Here it is. It’s considered a two bedroom, but my son’s
room is more like a closet by non-New York standards.” He gestured at the
closed door on the right as they passed the kitchen, barely big enough to stand
in, on the left. The living room had a couch, a beanbag, a flat screen TV and a
little desk area near the pass-through. “My bedroom’s over there.” That door
was open a crack but she couldn’t see inside it. “Would you like something