The Black Minutes by Martín Solares Page B

walking out, leaning on Fatwolf. Cabrera saw him say something to one of the new guys, giving him instructions, and the kid got into a patrol car, staring at Cabrera the whole time. I can’t believe it, he said to himself. What has this fuckin’ world come to when other officers are following me?
    “Thanks, sweetheart. You should go get some rest, too. Your work here is done.” He hugged the girl and said good-bye.
    Just walking caused sharp, shooting pains, but he couldn’t stop; the youngster had already started his car. We’ll see if you get me, you son of a bitch.
    Instead of getting into his car, he took a bus downtown. Disconcerted, the kid followed the bus at a prudent distance. At the third stop, Cabrera got off and the kid slammed on the brakes. OK, he said to himself, we’re going to find out how smart you are. He grabbed a taxi headed in the opposite direction and watched the kid struggle to complete a U-turn in the middle of the avenue. This was fun and games for Cabrera. He asked the taxi driver to take him to the Rosales Supermarket.
    “But it’s right over there.”

    “Exactly.”
    The driver groaned and turned and the kid did, too. Cabrera got out of the taxi and limped into the main entrance; then he walked out the back door and walked back to headquarters. The patrol car was caught in the thicket of señoras in the cars looking for parking spaces. Too bad, he said to himself, he’s got a lot to learn. He walked around the block and said hello to everyone there before getting into his car.
    “Good afternoon!”
    Chávez was so angry he was red in the face, and Cabrera was dying of laughter.
Pobres pendejos
, he thought, missing the mark can be really frustrating; I hope they won’t build up a lot of negative energy on my behalf. He was saying this to himself as he drove down the street; accelerating hurt a lot, but he would be able to make it home on empty roads. When he got to the intersection with the avenue, it was a red light. His leg was throbbing. A movement as simple as depressing the accelerator caused shooting pains. As he waited for the green, a pickup with blacked-out windows that had pulled up on his left side suddenly went in reverse. He didn’t pay much attention because the pain in his leg was killing him. That’s weird, he thought, going in reverse in the middle of the street; at least there aren’t many cars. If there were, he could cause an accident. Then the guy in the pickup slammed on the accelerator and ran right into the driver’s side of his car.
    Cabrera’s head went right through the window, breaking it into a million pieces. Of the chaos that followed, he only remembered leaning out the window of the car and repeatedly reading the words on the side mirror: OBJECTS ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR .
    As he asked himself who he was and why he was there, he saw the pickup pulling into reverse again, this time all the way back to the end of the block; he was going to ram right into him again.

    Cabrera couldn’t move. For a second, he was under the impression that there was an argument going on in his head, but then he looked in the rearview mirror and saw that no, he wasn’t the one arguing, it was two girls sitting in the backseat: a dark-skinned girl and a redhead. The first girl, the
morena
, was saying, Here comes the pickup, we gotta move. The redhead was really distracted, or maybe just in shock like he was because of the accident: Move? Why should we move? We’re fine right here! Meanwhile, Cabrera watched the pickup coming closer and heard a Rigo Tovar song on the radio:
Oh! It’s so good to see you again! / To say hello and know you’re happy. / Oh! It’s so good to see you again. / So pretty, so beautiful, and so happy
. When he asked himself why he could hear it so clearly, he realized it was none other than Rigo Tovar himself in the backseat. The best singer of
música tropical
on the planet was there, right next to the girls, behind the driver’s seat!