from the police

We talked a bit outside about the poor in Brazil, about a nine year-old sleeping in a doorway and the American response: “this happened in the States, well, there’d be a revolution!” It happens in the States but out of sight. A police officer pulled up behind my friend’s car to begin issuing parking meter tickets; my friend and I walked inside the cafe still laughing talking and as we got in he walked upstairs and I sat at my table with a book out. I glanced up once to see him leave through the back door. I watched the cop examine his car my friend’s car, give it a ticket; Illinois temp tags months, years out of date and most likely forged anyway; a child’s carseat (a carseat!) and the windows are open and the doors are unlocked and the stereo plays French hip hop and the quarterpanel is scuffed and it can jump up to 110 on the freeway in seconds. The cop wrote out more tickets and disappeared down the block, and I waited reading drinking coffee, hand on my phone. I waited. The cop waited. The cop drove away. As I opened my phone I saw my friend run over from across the street “I watched from the other alley had to run a bit; the car is reported missing you know” and he drove off to collect his son and I went to work.