I was just more than a year too young to get a taxi driver license, but in emergencies, like when my uncle was “under the weather,” I took over for him. The call came in a little before eight, and I picked up the fare at a hotel on the strip. The address she gave me was on the other side of town, a good twenty minute ride. She was young, maybe not much older than me, and she was startlingly pretty, wild ringlets of copper hair and penetrating green eyes.

“I’m kind of late,” she said. “Maybe if you could...”

I said I’d do my best.

When she sat back her pleated skirt rode up. Her blouse was soft white, some simple but exotic fabric of a kind beyond anything I knew. We made a couple of lights, one on the yellow and the next one just on the red, and when I glanced back in the rear-view, she smiled at me, those penetrating green eyes.

A block later I glanced again and her eyes were still locked on mine, but more serious, and her hands were in her lap. I wanted to say something to her, to start some kind of conversation, but words failed me. I just drove.

I tried to resist the mirror, but when I heard a faint purring sound, maybe a soft sort of moan, I had to look. Her eyes were closed. Her hands were beneath her skirt. She had smallish breasts, but I could tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her eyes flickered and I looked back at the road. Her sounds shifted, more of a mewling, a catch between each utterance. We were getting closer, almost there.

The address she’d given was a bridal shop. I slowed. “Keep going,” she urged.

I kept going. Around the block. Then again. I heard her gasp, then a warbled sigh.

I parked and dared turn back to look at her. Her cheeks were flushed red.

“My boyfriend will be out with the—” she started to say.

“That’s okay, my treat,” I said.

“You’re sweet,” she said. Her finger touched my lips. The scent and taste almost made me swoon.

I pulled forward and parked, thinking I’d wait for her, in case she needed a ride back, but ten minutes later another call came in, an address I couldn’t decline.

The rest of the night I concocted useless strategies. Like returning to the bridal shop the next day and telling them I’d had a fare the other night who left something in the cab, and maybe they could ... But my nerve and my imagination failed.