Locating the AirTrain at JFK Airport looked easy at first. But it wasn’t, and neither was finding the hotel shuttle. Near baggage claim, a fast talking American Airlines agent, a Puerto Rican woman buttoned into a bright red suit jacket, said to go up to the second floor and she pointed a well-manicured fingernail toward the escalators. After Kim looked at the back lit board listing all kinds of info about the subway and hotel shuttles, she called the Hilton Garden Inn in Queens. When she returned, Kim said the hotel told her to get on the AirTrain and get off at the first stop. Because her call took so long, I forgot what the American Airlines agent told me about how to get to the AirTrain. I asked another red-jacketed agent and she explained it all the same. My brain was woozy from that five hour flight.
So we set off, me with a black backpack cinched to my back and pulling a beat up wheelie suitcase, and Kim with her caramel brown Samsonite and a kaleidoscope-patterned overnight bag. We took the escalator up one floor. Then saw an AirTrain sign pointing to the right. But the sign was next to an elevator. Oh that must be for the elevator to the AirTrain on the next level I said to myself. I don’t want to wait for an elevator. So then we went up another escalator and walked outside and it was warm and it smelled of diesel exhaust and I saw the AirTrain on elevated tracks above idling buses and taxis but I still didn't know how we could get there so Kim asked a security guy wearing a pair of navy blue pants, a light jacket, and his policeman's hat standing just outside the sliding doors to the terminal and he said to go back inside the terminal, pointing over his shoulder with a thumb, and take the escalator down one level and I said oh yeah the first agent said to go to the second floor not up two escalators, which is what we had done.
So we set off again, wheelies clattering onto the escalator and this time we got into the flow of other passengers moving like lemmings towards the AirTrain terminal. We arrived on a platform surrounded by signs, metal benches, glass walls, and a train rolled in towards the sliding doors. They whooshed open. Quickly, we asked another agent, this one in a blue zip up jacket, an MTA officer. Is this the way to the hotel shuttles? She nods. Go one stop. So we hopped on. More like elbowed our way on. The doors whooshed shut. An Asian man and his wife and daughter had five or six ginormous suitcases standing up on their tiny wheels and one fell – clunk – like a corpse, its wheels twirling helplessly as the train careened down the tracks and the family wobbled to and fro, somehow grinning and grimacing at the same time. Their pile of suitcases crowded the doorway when the doors swished open. A woman behind the man helped him to right the fallen suitcase and we maneuvered past the cluster. Finally off the AirTrain, I descended another two sets of escalators. We walked outside and it was still warm. NYC was 65. I didn't need the jacket I was carrying and I didn't need the sweater I was wearing.
At the curb, Kim looked for a phone to call the hotel. None there. I went back inside the first floor of the station and there was a bank of phones. Three handsets. I picked the first one. Dialed 72 as instructed. No answer. Just ring ring ring ring ring ring. Tried a second handset. Still no answer. Then the last handset! Third time lucky and before I could finish telling the front desk receptionist that I was at the Federal Circle Station, she said a shuttle was on the way and I was to wait by the curb. I trudged back outside, sighing. Three businessmen smoked in the waiting area, and as they smoked, the wind carried their smoky byproducts toward me, irritating my sinuses.
We waited and we waited. Finally I walked over to a booth that said BUS DISPATCHER and inside the booth was a large black man much too big to be squeezed into this tiny booth. I asked him about the Hilton shuttle and he said that the Hilton and the Sheraton were ghetto. Huh? They were in the ghetto? I asked with a worried voice. No – “together” – he said laughing, “I said together not ghetto. They are both nice hotels.” I laughed too. “My bad,” I said. “They take awhile but they will be here,” he said. “Thanks,” I said. “Have a good day sir.” I smiled as I walked back to Kim and told her we were staying in the ghetto!
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