bright… What time was it? He looked at his jumbo watch. It was 10:45! He had been asleep for three hours… stretched out in the Land of the Sandman with the engine running and the air conditioner chundering out electro-breeze.
He retrieved his cell phone from the bucket seat and sighed… Whatever messages its innards contained, they would be toxic. Yet once again he couldn’t resist. He punched up the new-messages display. There was one after another after another… until one made him do a double take. The number jumped up at him—a text from Manena!
“coming to yeya party c u later”
He stared at the thing. He tried to detect a sign of love in there… any at all… seven words. He couldn’t. Nevertheless, he texted back: “my manena dying to c u”
His spirits turned manic. It would be at least four hours before the party started, but he was going home… now. ::::::I’ll just ignore you Camagüey guajiros, Papa and Yeya and Yeyo. I’ll make damn sure I’m right there when Manena arrives.::::::
By now, 11:00 a.m., the streets of Hialeah were walls of parked cars. He had to park the Camaro more than a block away. Halfway down his own block, a couple of casitas ahead, Señor Ramos was walking out of his front door. From behind his big cop shades Nestor could see Señor Ramos staring at him. The next thing he knew, Señor Ramos was turning toward his front door and snapping his fingers in an exaggerated display of having forgotten something—shoooop—he’s back inside his casita. Señor Ramos is nothing but a baggage handler at Miami Airport. A baggage handler! A little speck of humanity! But this morning, on these streets, he doesn’t want to exchange so much as a buenos días with Officer Nestor Camacho. But so what? Magdalena is coming.
Wouldn’t you know it? From four or five casitas away he can hear his own casita… the power spray exacting friction from hot Hialeah concrete. Oh, yeah. There’s Mami, wearing a pair of long baggy shorts, a baggier too-big white T-shirt, and flip-flops… taming the concrete wilderness for the whateverteenth time this morning… and… Oh, yeah… he gets his first whiff of the pig, which has been roasting for a few hours probably… tended by those two macho masters of the big things in life, I, Camilo, and El Pepe Yeyo…
As soon as she sees her son coming, Mami turns off the hose and cries out, “Nestorcito! Where did you go? We were worried!”
Nestor wanted to say ::::::Worried? Why? I thought “we” would be happy for me to disappear.:::::: But he never spoke sarcastically to his parents and couldn’t make himself start now. After all, Magdalena was coming.
“I went out to get breakfast—”
“We had food here, Nestorcito!”
“—to get breakfast, and I ran into some friends from Hialeah High.”
“Who?”
“Cristy, Nicky, and Vicky.”
“I don’t remember them… Where?”
“At Ricky’s.”
Nestor could see the rhymes rickycheting, as it were, in his mother’s brain, but she either didn’t get it or didn’t care to be distracted by it.
“So early in the morning…” his mother said. Then she dropped that subject. “I have some good news for you, Nestor. Magdalena is coming.” She gave him the sort of look that gets down on its knees and begs for an animated reaction.
He tried, he tried… He arched his eyebrows and dropped his jaw for a couple of beats before saying, “How do you know?”
“I called her and invited her, and she’s coming!” said his mother. “I told her to be sure to come before you had to leave for your shift.” She hesitated. “I thought she might lift your spirits a little.”
“You think they need a lift?” said Nestor. “Well, you’re right. When I was out, I could tell… everybody in Hialeah thinks about me the same way as Dad and Yeya and Yeyo. What did I do, Mami? There was an emergency, and I was ordered to put an end to it without anybody getting hurt, and that’s what I did!” He realized his voice was rising, but he couldn’t stop himself. “At the Police Academy they kept talking about ‘the uncritical willingness to face danger.’ That means you’re willing to do dangerous things without stopping to analyze everything and decide whether you approve of the risk they want you to take. You can’t sit around having a debate. That’s what ‘uncritical’ means. You can’t sit around arguing about everything and… and, I mean, you know—”
He forced himself to slow down and lower his