Arizona

The plane landed at 1:56am. The monster-hunting accountant got off before I did, and was gone by the time I got down the ramp. When I got out to the curbside, I found that the taxis were also gone, and the hotel shuttles had stopped running. ; the night was dark and quiet. I shouldered my backpack and started walking. The night was quiet, the desert air clear. A little while later pickup pulled onto the shoulder in front of me. It was a Chevy, almost as old as I am, in a two-tone color scheme, white and primer. The driver is a cute Mexican lady named Pickles, maybe early forties. There's also her nephew, a pale blonde Finn named Frans, in his early twenties, and two little girls, Lulu and Lila, maybe eight and six. Names, ages and relationships are conjectural--Pickles rattled off Spanish at machinegun speed, and I don't speak Spanish anyway. Frans spoke a language I didn't recognize, and the girls burbled nonsense talk quite happily.