Meteor showers occur when the Earth’s orbit intersects with the orbit of a comet . . . The debris then race through the Earth’s atmosphere, creating friction with air particles and generating vast amounts of heat. This heat vaporizes and illuminates the debris as they fall, creating lights in the sky, popularly known as shooting stars.
—Meteor Showers 101, National Geographic
Elisa hailed a cab, her arm held high as if trying to halt traffic altogether. It was three in the morning. Dinner with her sister had dragged on far longer than she’d hoped. They’d talked about their mother’s imminent old age, about the tremors in her hands and feet that would soon force her to stop working, which would be their cue to step up. If they hired a caretaker, their mother, over 70 now, might get worse, stricken at the sight of herself in a stranger’s hands. Otherwise, the sisters would have no choice but to visit every day, carrying on conversations no one wants to have: Who are you, what are you doing in my house? And: When will I have to start brushing your hair in the morning and roll up your skirt when you perch on the edge of the toilet bowl that we, the sisters, bought together in installments?
Elisa’s sister was older and didn’t easily succumb to visions of the future. That very night, in fact, she drank a liter of beer in the wood-paneled, gold-trimmed restaurant downtown, even laughing at her fate. Elisa checked the time at 2:47 and decided to pay. She was nervous. That’s what everyone diagnosed her with: nerves. Hair loss, excess anxiety, sweaty palms, a sudden thinness at the first skipped meal, a pale complexion, overly profound remarks about insignificant details no one else even noticed, real tears shed in response to ads or movies on cable TV, muscular weakness, low blood pressure (though it could trend high when she ate too much deli meat). Elisa had the air of a stranded little girl in a shopping cart. And this helplessness flattered instead of defeating her.
The driver gave her a glance in the rearview mirror. “Where you headed?” Outside, there were storefronts with their lights still on; couples walked with their arms around each other; young men started asking more urgently for change. Elisa recited her address. The man didn’t recognize it, stared out the window. The wind embraced her as they drove deeper into the shadowy streets. Stopping at a red light, the driver and Elisa could hear, with utter clarity, an argument between a man and a woman in the middle of the road. The woman clutched the man’s shirt as he spoke very close to her ear, right at the base of her neck. The driver said something lighthearted to Elisa about the couple, but she didn’t answer, looked down at her feet. No conflict, hers or anyone else’s, could get a smile out of her.
The car started up again. Elisa glanced at her phone, reread her last conversations with a friend, with her mother, with the choir at the cultural center. On the phone’s wallpaper, her dog, Layo, bared a long, droopy tongue, which conveyed a kind of sadness, though it actually meant the opposite. Layo was always there, on the other side of the door, willing to wait for his owner at any hour, day or night. Nothing about waiting made him a victim.
The driver cranked up the volume on an old radio, embedded in the control panel of the car: De nuevo tú, te cuelas en mis huesos, dejándome en el pecho, roto el corazón. The Spanish-language cover of the Robbie Williams song made Elisa’s stomach churn. She didn’t know why. It isn’t easy to identify the visceral effects of songs or smells. She was still holding her phone when she asked the driver to change the station. He refused. He said he liked the song because he understood it; he knew there was an English version, but he was partial to this one. The lyrics were worthy of his emotion, and he wanted to hear it through to the end.
Elisa scratched her arm until the skin reddened, an act worthy of her nervous system. The driver sang Me sacas de las malas, rachas de dolor. Porque tú eres, tu ru rú, el ángel que quiero yo and glanced at the nocturnal girl in the mirror again. He was genuinely moved. Elisa felt strange.
Now they were making their way down a street even darker than the last, and the driver was barely stopping at the red lights. “Why are you in such a hurry?” Elisa asked. The man replied that he wasn’t—quite the contrary—but it helped him sleep at night to know he’d satisfied his passengers.
Elisa furtively read the taxi information card. It was odd to sit there knowing that the rearview mirror allowed this man a panoramic if not total view of what happened absolutely everywhere around him: both in the back seat and in other cars passing his. The man was in control. Elisa read: “Luis Serbio, Argentina, 09-14-1954.” She observed him: bald on top with long remnants of hair below, near the neck. A length of white plastic string pulled it into a ponytail as slender as death itself. Luis Serbio was on the pale side, too, but he had the look of someone with high blood pressure. Maybe it was his gestures, the force of his arms against the steering wheel, the veins protruding on both sides of his face, at his temples.
Now the radio was playing the instrumental part of the translated song and Elisa’s stomach kept roiling. She couldn’t tell if it was because of the speed of the car or the strange lyrics about an angel, who could have been a dead girl or just someone very nice. De nuevo tú te cuelas en mis huesos.
“That’s right, my name is Luis.” Elisa jumped. The driver looked at her in the mirror and she scratched her arms again. “No need to read that. You can just ask me whatever you want to know.” Elisa gave him a dutiful smile. “Want me to take the main road or should we keep straight on this one?” “Main road,” Elisa said quietly, but Luis paid her no mind.
Elisa took out her phone and called her sister, who lived a few blocks from the gold and wood-paneled restaurant where they’d had dinner. This infuriated Elisa, who was always meeting other people in their areas. What defines a person’s area? Having a place of their own?
Now Luis lowered the volume and took another look at Elisa in the mirror. “Are you young or not really? I can’t tell from here.” She offered another obliging smile. She wouldn’t answer this poorly formulated question. She gripped the car door, her jaw tensed. “You look pale,” Luis said, and she touched her face. “Are you feeling all right?” Things had taken a personal turn. Conversational topics are usually more universal in taxis, Elisa thought. “I’m naturally pale,” she said. “Come on, don’t lie,” he said.
Now Elisa had no idea where they were. It was past 3:30 in the morning and her sister wasn’t picking up. “Where are we?” she asked. Luis didn’t answer, just raised the volume on the radio again. A tired reporter’s voice recited the winning lottery numbers.
The car drove on and on, as if the city were infinite, and it was. Elisa couldn’t have guessed how far they were from her apartment. She called every possible number on her cell, but no one answered. She had just half a line of battery left. She didn’t want to show any signs of distress—she was capable of keeping it to herself, like a gifted turtle. “Luis, please, I need to go home.” He assessed her in the mirror. “Know how I decided to get this tattoo?” he asked, and gestured to an indecipherable drawing just below his left shoulder. Elisa didn’t want to look. Luis lit a cigarette, preparing to tell his tale. Now the car took a main road that opened out onto a central thoroughfare. Luis went on and on and Elisa felt dizzy. She thought about her mother, about her sister’s ring clinking against the frigid glass of beer, about the heat, about her heart pumping crazily along inside her, surrounded by flesh-colored things. Elisa lurched forward, pressed her hands to her forehead, and vomited beer onto the mat. “You okay, dear?” Elisa couldn’t answer. Malted saliva sealed her lips. The car didn’t stop at any point.
They drove through the summer night for around 20 minutes on a nearly deserted highway. The air smelled of vomit. Now Luis regarded Elisa in the rearview mirror and smiled. The stench didn’t seem to bother him. Elisa tried to take deep breaths. It was strange: The landscape calmed her, but she couldn’t forget that she was being forcibly driven around by a long-haired balding man who smelled of cigarettes and was surely about to do something bad to her. But what?
Her phone had shut off two tollbooths ago, and the sun began to shine in the distance. “There’s good old Mr. Phoebus,” Luis said. Elisa was done answering. She was going to let him talk. Her arms were completely scratched up and her heart raced as if running a marathon for unfit bodies. “You’re getting your color back,” Luis said, and he smiled, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. “I’m glad to see that.”
Elisa closed her eyes, though she couldn’t say for how long. When she opened them, it was broad daylight and there were fields, fields, fields on the side of the road. She saw a scattering of cows in the distance, billboards for yerba mate brands that were supposed to make you lose weight and for heavily discounted car insurance policies. On the seat beside her was a cold bottle of water. Elisa took a long drink, wondering if Luis had stopped to buy it. He kept driving as earnestly as ever, as if searching for his passenger’s destination. As if he were doing his job.
When the sun hit hard, the car turned onto a dirt road. “We’re not far from the capital,” Luis said. “Don’t be scared.”
The road was very narrow now. It was flanked by dry grass and a few houses with the curtains drawn, just-awakened children sitting on benches, drinking water from plastic bottles or milk from mugs with superheroes on them. Elisa saw skinny dogs and fat cats. She also heard a cricket, or some other kind of insect, chirping on the windshield. There were no adults in sight.
Luis stopped in front of one of those houses. Elisa was still dizzy. She felt that she’d been sitting immobilized for hours, swaying endlessly inside the car. It was very hot—the same heat she had tried to evade the night before by eating dinner in an air-conditioned restaurant, forcing her sister to choose one with that very characteristic. The car listed to the side a bit as Luis got out. It’s hard to guess a taxi driver’s height. Now was Elisa’s chance. Luis opened the passenger door, invited her to get out. Bewildered, she obeyed. Her heart wasn’t racing anymore; her blood pressure had dropped too low. She needed sugar. “You’re all washed-out again,” he told her. She thought back to another drive on the highway some years back. Elisa thought about this often, especially when she felt feverish. She was in the back seat and her mother chain-smoked as she drove. They listened to the radio. A well-known song was on, one of the latest hits, and in an instant the collision was right before their eyes: one car embedded in another, as if they’d been magnetized, as if they matched. An enormous quantity of smoke poured out and a wheel that had been ejected from one vehicle spun around by itself, because that’s what wheels do, they spin, they have no choice. Neither Elisa nor her mother had ever learned who was inside.
They sped up and drove 10 more kilometers on the same road. They didn’t speak. They let the images do their work.
Luis helped Elisa walk. They stepped into a small but pleasant house, with cool air and fizzy water in the fridge. He guided her into a wooden chair and went for a glass. Elisa took in her surroundings: Sports magazines flooded the kitchen table and made a mountain of an armchair, a paper presence. A wall clock had come to a halt at five in the afternoon or morning. Sepia light filtered in through the large window over the stove, like in your grandparents’ house, or the living room of some great-aunt with a heart irregularity. The house was subsumed in total silence, disrupted only by the noise of a lawn mower or a too-green fly. Luis pushed a glass of seltzer across the table. Elisa’s tear ducts filled with liquid as she drank. The front door was still open. “Is there an outlet?” Luis motioned to one and Elisa plugged in her cellphone. She heard the clanking of kitchen objects. It was Luis, cooking a serious breakfast. Elisa watched him go about his business and paused again on the tattoo he had on his arm. She could see it clearly now: the infinity sign. Like a trip that never ends, she thought.
There was a spell of silence, except for the to-and-fro of the refrigerator door, the rattle of pans, the snipping sound when Luis cut open a Tetra Pak of milk, the rumble of a coffee maker, the click of a toaster oven. Across the room, hung up with Scotch tape and holding her gaze, a famous soccer player adorned the wall over Luis’s bed. Another person in the house.
“Could I make a phone call?” Luis said yes and handed her the phone. Elisa dialed her mother’s number. It rang three times until the voice, somehow both sharp and hoarse, sounded on the other end of the line, in this world and some other: “Who is it?” Elisa heard her breathing. She looked at Luis, who was serving three pieces of toast with ham and cheese and a glass bowl of scrambled eggs. “Elisa, is that you?” Elisa hung up. She didn’t know what to say, what to do. The future was blurrier now.
After breakfast, Luis invited Elisa to sit on the front stoop. The sun was lacerating. “Don’t worry, we’re not too far from the capital,” he repeated. “Don’t be scared.” Elisa dared to look him in the eye for the first time. Luis Serbio, disproportionate, brimmed over, was a man divided between desire and action. Spit thronged at the corners of his mouth, and his arched eyebrows gave him a childish look, a preadolescent whimsy.
Behind his house, Luis told Elisa, lived a pack of dogs that barked at night. It was a frightening sound at first, but then you got used to it. He said puppies often came around in search of food and he did what he could to feed them all. He imagined the pack would populate the entire area someday, and it would be all his fault. Nobody could ever know he was the one responsible for all those dogs that ran around and bit and conquered.
Sitting in worn-out recliners, they both looked up at the sky. “There could always be a higher power up there,” Luis said, chuckling, and he rolled his eyes. Elisa mimicked him. They fell asleep. Before they got back into the car, they took a walk around the lake. It was noon and mosquitos ate them alive. They wet their feet, their shoes. The taxi driver’s tattoo gleamed in the sun. The sketch of an infinite car. Neither said a word.
Elisa settled into the passenger seat as they drove back to the city. Luis threw back his head and cackled when he saw that the meter had been running the whole time. “This was the most expensive ride in history.” Elisa barely smiled. Alongside them, once again, were the fields, the living cows. Then the billboards for special weight-loss yerba mate, the first tollbooths, the imposition of the first tiny apartment blocks all linked together. By sunset, the highway was packed with cars. It was almost nightfall when the vast city thoroughfare rose up before them, with all its hunched passersby and their silent but distinguishable problems. Luis Serbio dropped Elisa off at her doorstep. “Bye now,” he said, and the car dissolved into the lights of the road. Elisa didn’t say anything. That night, or maybe some other night, she dreamed of a string of car accidents, one after another, ceaseless, like in a police video. She dreamed a sampling of calamities on a news channel. For example: A man drives a car at top speed on a highway at night in a foreign country. Five police cars chase him until he changes his mind—of course there’s no way out—and lurches out of the car with his hands in the air. He sprints away, dodging the cars that brake hard to keep from hitting him. He begs for mercy. The men in blue uniforms don’t deliver it. They run until they catch him. They throw him to the ground. They handcuff him. They reduce him. They suffocate him. They finish him off.
Camila Fabbri is a writer, director, and actress. Her debut film, Clara se pierde en el bosque, premiered at the 2023 San Sebastián International Film Festival. Her novel Dancing Queen and short story collection Estamos a salvo are forthcoming from Seven Stories Press in Robin Myers’s translation. She lives in Buenos Aires.
Robin Myers is a poet and translator. She won the 2025 National Book Award in Translated Literature for We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, and was shortlisted for the 2025 National Translation Award in Poetry with The Brush by Eliana Hernández-Pachón. Her poetry collection Centro is forthcoming from Coffee House Press.
Illustration: David O
