Something wild happened to me today

Chapter 19

Wednesday, March 28th, 2007, 8:16 PM

No arguments

At home again. Jack Johnson’s latest CD, In Between Dreams, is playing on the computer. I normally listen to it when I get home tired. I only need a few songs and a beer to feel like new.

I left work a little early today. I couldn’t finish the layout of the magazine I’m working on, but I have until noon tomorrow to turn it in. I hope I make it on time.

At six in the evening—plus the customary ten minutes added on—Rafa met up with me at Menta Negra. He seemed a bit more upbeat.

We ordered two beers and some fries and I stared at him, waiting for him to start telling me his version of the facts and to repeat about thirty times how stupid he was and that he didn’t deserve someone like Marta. That’s right, he didn’t. In my opinion, he deserved someone much better.

But this time, Rafa surprised me. He smiled a little, apologized, and told me he didn’t want to talk about her. Never. That today, we would talk about me, and everything that had been happening to me lately.

It was as if an enormous weight, of several tons, had been lifted from me.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

Straight to the point. It wouldn’t be him if he beat around the bush. That question meant that he was getting better quickly; maybe it was true that he had ended it forever with Marta, although I’m still not convinced.

I answered him with an, “I’m doing all right”, and then I told him what had happened since Thursday. I told him about Sara, too.

He was happy for me, in spite of what he was going through. Rafa is much stronger than he looks.

After an intensive interrogation about Sara, three Voll-Damms later we went back to the “subject”: 

“Well, I saw what you did to those security guards. I was there. But even so, what you think could be powers could be caused by something less…” he brought the bottle to his lips which searching his mind for the right words. “Less fantastic,” he added, leaving it on the table, as if that gesture reaffirmed his declaration.        

“Like what?”

“Like an adrenaline rush.”

I knew he was going to come at me with that. And I thought it, too. When a human being undergoes extreme situations, they’re capable of segregating large amounts of adrenaline that allow them to perform superhuman feats. For example, there are cases of someone lifting a car with their bare hands for a few seconds to get someone out from underneath. There are a lot of similar cases, and they have been scientifically verified. 

“And what do you say about my wounds from a fight healing in just two days, without leaving any mark?” 

“I’ve got you now,” I remember thinking.

But you shouldn’t underestimate Rafa. He’s got arguments and ways out for everything. It’s a shame he can’t apply them to himself. He would have saved himself from four years of eating shit. 

“I wasn’t there and I don’t know how serious those wounds were. Maybe they were nothing more than bumps. You yourself said you don’t have a clue what happened in there. The shock may have made you exaggerate things a little. Or the hemorrhages and migraines you say you’re having a lot for the past week. I’m sorry, but we can’t use that as proof for now. I think you should go to the…” 

“And what do you want me to do? Throw myself on the train tracks to see what happens?” I interrupted, a little upset.

He had left me without arguments. I didn’t even want to think that he could be right. And much less so, I didn’t want him to throw out the idea that I could stand out from the rest. To make a difference.

He observed me for a few minutes in silence, while I finished off my beer. I didn’t have anything to say, either.

When we left the bar, we looked like a couple that had just had a fight. I was going to say goodbye just like that, when he said, with that half-smile of his, enigmatic, that means the idea we needed had occurred to him:

“I’ll call Xavier.”