“Yeah, here.” He threw a city guide into my lap. I thumbed it open to find the airport.

Airplanes go fast. I realize this isn’t a revelation to stun the world, but it was a little distressing to realize how far we’d flown in five minutes, and how long it would take to drive that. “All right, we’re going northwest of the lake.” I remembered seeing its off-colored shadow making a black mark below the plane as we’d left the subdivision behind. “Somewhere in Aurora.”

“Think? That ain’t such a good neighborhood, lady. You sure you wanna go there?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m trying to find somebody who’s in trouble.”

The cabby eyed me in the rearview. “That’s the right place to look.”

I glared at him through my eyebrows. He smiled, a thin I’ve-seen-it-all grin that didn’t really have any humor in it. He had gray eyes under equally gray, bushy eyebrows. He had a thick neck and looked like he’d be at home chewing on a stogie. I asked if he had a cigarette. He turned around and looked at me again.

“Those things’ll kill you, lady.”

His voice was rough and deep like a lifetime smoker’s. Surprise showed on my face and he gave me another soulless smile, reflected in the mirror. “My wife died of emphysema three years ago on our forty-eighth wedding anniversary. You want a smoke, kid, find it somewhere else.”

Sometimes I wonder if I have a big old neon sign stamped on my forehead, flashing Asshole. I retaliated with stunning wit: “I’m not a kid.”

Gray eyes darted to the mirror again, and back to the road. “You’re what, twenty-six?”

Nobody ever guessed my age right. Since I was eleven, people have misguessed my age anywhere from three to seven years in one direction or the other. I felt my jaw drop.

“It’s a gift,” the cabby said. “A totally useless gift. I can tell how old people are.”