Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

And he realizes he's made a mistake. As the signs of anger start to furiously bubble up in the frowning, elephantine and suddenly red face of the guy pointing a gun at him.

Iris Gonzalvo looks up through her Versace sunglasses and observes the upside-down heads of about thirty people, shouting as they rush along at a hundred and forty miles an hour, their heads and hands hanging over the backdrop of the cloudless Mediterranean sky. She takes a drag on her cigarette-shaped plastic mentholated inhaler with a thoughtful face. The tortoiseshell Versace glasses Iris is wearing have aquamarine and blue sapphire chips on the sides. She is also wearing a burgundy Versace dress and black gloves up to her elbows. Now she leans forward to look through one of the telescopes on the scenic lookout and moves it until she can focus on Aníbal Manta, who waves with an enormous hand from the other side of the Palace of Gravity fence. As he eats what looks like a reddish cloud of cotton candy. Iris straightens up and takes another drag on her plastic mentholated cigarette. With a design similar to a spool of wire bent erratically by some spectacular explosion, the Evolution roller coaster is silhouetted against the sky above the wide, low dome of the Palace of Gravity. The screams of its passengers during the upside-down stretches are heard every twenty seconds, exactly.

Iris rests her butt on the railing of the scenic lookout and watches as Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey come through the crowd of families with digital video cameras and school groups. With their blond, partially bald heads. With their identically freckled faces that could be any age between thirty and forty-five. The scenic lookout at Biosphere Park is the place stipulated for the meeting with Mr. Travers's two employees. In front of the entrance to the Palace of Gravity. At the convergence of the paths that lead to the Amazon of the Past and the Amazon of the Future.

Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey stop a few feet from Iris and rest their butts on the same railing where her butt is resting. Without looking directly at her. Without making any sign or addressing her in any way. The lookout's terrace at midday is packed with families with kids and school groups only partially controlled by desperate-looking teachers. Beside Iris, several schoolkids try to destroy one of the telescopes by both hanging off of one end and pulling down. Iris notices that Travers's two men are sucking on plastic mentholated inhalers just like hers.

“This does not look like a safe place to make the exchange, Miss DeMink,” says Mr. Fleck in a smooth tone. Or maybe it's Mr. Downey. He takes a drag on his inhaler and looks at Iris Gonzalvo out of the corner of his eye.

Iris shrugs. The idea of meeting Travers's men at the Biosphere Park scenic lookout on the Costa Dorada initially seems to be based on it being a busy, crowded place. Or at least that's what Iris figured when she got her instructions. The same reason she always figured the exchange of microfilm and hostages in the movies takes place at amusement parks. Now a woman holding a child with each hand stops in front of Iris with a furious face and gestures toward her plastic cigarette and then at a giant sign telling visitors that there is no smoking in the park. The sign shows a drawing of a koala with its eyes popping out of its head, choking in a cloud of smoke. The koala, according to what Iris read in a brochure, answers to the name of Kooky and represents the park's commitment to environmental and scientific education. Everywhere you looked, there was Kooky. On giant billboards where Kooky asks visitors to turn off their cell phones during the educational performances. With a napkin tied around its neck at the entrance to all the fast-food restaurants. There are people walking among the crowd in Kooky disguises handing out coupons for the McDonald's, Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts franchises in the park. Iris puts her menthol inhaler in her pocket.

“Please,” says Mr. Fleck, or maybe Mr. Downey. With that indirect, or more like implicit way of addressing Iris. “Meet us on the other side of the fence.”

Mr. Travers's two employees, followed at a certain distance by Iris, join the river of people moving toward the fences of the Palace of Gravity. The path goes by a bridge that overlooks the grounds of the Amazon of the Past and the Amazon of the Future. To her right, Iris can see the Amazon of the Past's luxuriant forest with its dozens of animal and plant species meticulously locked up behind bars and labeled. To her left, the Amazon of the Future is a black, smoking plateau filled with animal corpses and mutant-looking bushes through which actors playing zombies graze. Next to the Amazon of the Future's exit there's a hut with a medical team to attend to the dozens of kids that have nervous fits from their visit.

Five minutes later, Iris gets to the doors of the Palace of Gravity. Without a doubt, the park's Top Attraction. A postadolescent employee wearing a Biosphere Park uniform and intensely depressed expression reads the bar code on Iris's ticket with a device vaguely similar to a pistol and wishes her a good visit with the tone of voice people usually use to wish someone a horrible slow death. On the other side of the fences, Iris stops beneath the palace's entrance arch. The sign at the entrance says “PALACE OF GRAVITY” in enormous, very rounded letters beside which there's a drawing of Kooky the koala flying through the air, grasping a balloon in one of his front paws. Iris leans her head down to see over her Versace sunglasses and examines the place. A few feet from her is Aníbal Manta, finishing his cotton candy and looking furtively at her over his comic book. A bit farther on, in the line to get in, are Travers's men. Who aren't looking anywhere. Indistinguishable in their identical suits. Sucking on their menthol inhalers. Iris sighs and gets in line.

The inside of the Palace of Gravity is, for some reason, reminiscent of a covered ice-skating rink. Except for the fact that all of the people inside are floating. As the educational panels at the entrance explain, the main rink surrounded by stands replicates the gravitational conditions of space travel. Or of moon landings. The conditions universally known as Zero Gravity. For the price of a ticket plus a small supplement visitors can rent special harnesses tied down with a special nonabrasive cord to the monitoring and security area and float in zero gravity for thirty minutes. For the littlest ones and the less brave there is the option of floating holding on to one of the monitors' hands. Iris walks up to the security railing around the Zero Gravity rink and stares at the groups of people floating. Many of them do pirouettes and prance around in slow motion. Others are doing the zero gravity equivalent of the dead man's float. Some seem disconcerted and only a very few seem to be panicking. One of the floating visitors seems to be chasing his wallet through the air.

Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey lean on the security railing next to Iris. One of them leaves an envelope on top of the railing. Halfway between where they are and where Iris is. Iris takes the envelope and puts it into her purse.

“Locker number fifty-two,” says Mr. Fleck, or Mr. Downey. “At the coat check.”

Iris pretends that she's watching the people floating in the Zero Gravity area while her gaze searches for Aníbal Manta. The public-address system warns visitors that entering the Zero Gravity area without the protective harness is strictly forbidden. Manta is sitting on one of the lower spectator stands. With his superhero comic rolled up in one of his coat pockets. Staring at Iris. Or what looks like Iris. It's hard to tell with all the people in the middle, floating around. Finally Iris looks around in her purse and takes out another envelope. One that looks very much like the first one. She leaves it on the railing. Near Travers's two men.