Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

One of the dancers having sex onstage with two other dancers looks up, removes her hand from one of her sexual partners and stares at the door. Momentarily abandoning the sexual task she was in the middle of. She's just frozen, on her knees up onstage, looking at the door. With her brow furrowed. Other dancers onstage begin to stop as well. After a second, the politician dancing on the table with a napkin tied around his head, who has now also dropped his pants to thigh height and is festively shaking his rump, abruptly stops his dancing. He stares at the people coming in through the door for just a fraction of a second, and then pulls his pants up hurriedly.

The commotion spreads to the waitresses at the bar. To the customers farthest from the door. One of the waitresses at the bar, who has her back turned to the door, continues shaking a cocktail shaker with brio while all the others have stopped what they are doing and are now just looking at the door. Her shaking makes her bare breasts move awkwardly.

And finally the commotion reaches Bocanegra. As some of the customers have already gotten up from their tables and are literally running. Running between the tables. Jumping over toppled chairs and customers that have fallen to the floor in the midst of the confusion. Bocanegra turns his stool toward the place everyone suddenly seems to be fleeing from and looks. With his drink garnished with a tiny umbrella in one hand and his cigar in the other.

Commissioner Farina is walking toward the bar. With his hands in the pockets of his coat. Around him, about fifty uniformed policemen are intercepting customers trying to flee and in some cases taking them out of action with their official billy clubs. Some customers have climbed up onto the stage and are now trying to escape through the door to the dressing rooms behind the heavy velvet curtains. As usually happens in this kind of situation, the dancers that just a moment ago were practicing various modalities of sexual relations are now modestly covering their genitals and breasts with their hands. A couple of uniformed cops try to separate a middle-aged customer from a voluptuous statue of kneeling Aphrodite that he refuses to stop embracing.

Meanwhile, the mirror ball keeps turning in the middle of the room. Projecting its myriad shapes and colors on the walls and tables and terrified faces of the customers and the arms of the policemen, raised high as they bring down the more stubborn customers.

Commissioner Farina sits on the stool next to Bocanegra's. Bocanegra stares at him as he takes a pensive drag on his cigar.

“I'm guessing this is a joke,” he says. Releasing a mouthful of cigar smoke in the general direction of Farina's face.

“Of course.” Farina nods. Watching his lackeys work with something similar to paternal pride. Or perhaps with something similar to the amused pride of someone who has just made an effectively impressive entrance. “This is fun. I won't deny it. I'm having fun. Can we talk here?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Or are you going to invite me up to that famous private club upstairs?”

Onstage, the naked dancers watch the uniformed cops giving chase to the customers, from the same place where they were having sex. Bewildered and modestly covering their breasts and genitals. Some of them use the velvet curtains to cover themselves. There are customers in business suits lying facedown between the tables with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. There are customers with their heads bowed, talking to uniformed cops that are jotting down everything they say in their notebooks. The music is still playing. Somehow, the fact that the music is still playing is the most disconcerting element in the entire scene. The politician is on all fours, trying to escape behind the bar without being seen.

“Give the commissioner a drink.” Bocanegra signals to a terrified waitress.

Farina looks around him. Clapping. Some of the uniformed cops make theatrical curtsies.

“I don't understand how you can stand to be around all these girls all day.” He scratches his chin in a calculating gesture. “I would have arrested myself by now. I want the same thing you're having,” he adds. “It looks good, with that umbrella. Elegant. Kind of like this place. It's got the Bocanegra style, I'd say.”

One of the cops is posing with two of The Dark Side of the Moon's naked dancers while another takes a photograph with his cell phone. The posing cop takes the cap of his uniform off for a moment to run a hand through his hair and then smiles.

The terrified waitress gives Farina his drink, and he looks at it for a moment with an expression that blends sarcasm with genuine admiration.

“This is the message.” Farina grabs the tiny umbrella in his drink with his fingertips and uses it to stir the contents of the glass in an absent gesture. The cocktail is a yellow color with hints of green that makes you think of nuclear waste and those spectrographic images they make of stars and heavenly bodies. “Before you get impatient. We've been talking to your friend Bob Marley. I'm not saying that it wasn't a bit of work to get him talking. But in the end we solve these things with psychology.” He shrugs his shoulders. He looks around him. The Dark Side of the Moon customers that were putting up a fight are now lined up against a wall covered in fine wood paneling and erotic Indian engravings from the Mughal period. “The truth is that at first I had trouble putting things together. Your friend Bob Marley isn't very smart. A nice guy, sure. But I wouldn't give him any prizes for cleverness.”

The multicolored reflection of the stage's spotlights on the rotating facets of the mirror ball illuminates, for a fraction of a second, the terrified face of a middle-aged man in a business suit that has just been discovered by the cops. Hidden behind a statue of Jupiter erotically chasing the mortal Alcmene. The multicolored light projects for a second onto his tense face and wide-open mouth and then continues its rotation. Bocanegra takes a drag on his cigar. A longer drag than any Farina has ever seen taken on any cigar ever.

“In general terms, you could say I know everything.” Farina uses the toothpick stem of the umbrella to fish for a maraschino cherry in his radioactive cocktail. He spears the cherry and brings it to his mouth. He chews on it with an expression of someone chewing on something that wasn't really meant to be eaten. “I know the whole story. About the paintings you switched in the gallery that you're gonna sell to that English guy next week.” He smiles happily. “Actually I've made some appearances throughout the story. But discreetly. I suppose you already know that I picked up Bob Marley at your friend Cruz's house. Ex-friend. I'll admit that intrigued me. It was like I was seeing the details of something big, but I was missing the link between them. And then that name came up. Giraut. But Giraut was pushing up daisies. Then it hit me.” He punches the palm of his hand the way some people do to show they've discovered something they hadn't been able to see up until that moment, due to paradoxical questions of proximity. “It was his son. When his father died you adopted the son. Not literally, of course. Is that who I think it is?” Farina points with his cocktail toward something crawling on the floor, followed by several uniformed cops.

Bocanegra looks toward where Farina is pointing. Things in The Dark Side of the Moon take place in a way very similar to the way things appear reflected in a mirror ball. Occupying the center of the scene both simultaneously and at the same time successively. In a way that makes it hard to concentrate on them. Bocanegra squints. To see better under the strobe lights that ricochet off the facets of the mirror ball. The city government official crawls between tables at the back of the room. Chased by several uniformed cops. Swerving to avoid people's legs. With a napkin still tied around his head. One of the cops throws himself to the ground and manages to grab him by a leg. A struggle ensues. The city official pulls the tablecloth off a nearby table and covers his face with it. Bocanegra looks away. The simultaneous and successive way that things are happening in The Dark Side of the Moon makes it hard to pay attention to them for more than a second.