Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“Lucas told me you might need a little help,” he says. With a radiant smile, the kind you see in commercials.

Iris goes around and gets in on the passenger side. Beneath the vaguely alarmed stares of the families and school groups in the parking lot.

Mr. Bocanegra pushes the bell of the former ducal palace the tourist guides refer to as the Palau de la Mar Fosca. With a hand behind his back. With a bouquet of flowers in that hand. Hiding a bouquet of flowers behind his back the way people hide something they're about to present as a surprise gift. He combs his scant hair with the fingers of a large, hairy hand and smiles. There is something intrinsically ferocious in his smile. A certain element related to the fact that his teeth are unrealistically large and too shiny to be a real person's teeth. Like teeth painted on with an airbrush. His stance is the one children usually employ when waiting in front of a door, with his legs slightly crossed and his hands behind his back.

A funny-looking municipal cleaning vehicle seems to have colonized most of the passable area of the street this early Monday morning. Equipped with an enormous hose that looks alive and is connected to something underground. The cleaning crew sweeps the paving stones. They move their heads rhythmically to the music on their headphones and, every once in a while, shout something at each other, the way people shout when they're wearing headphones. Except for one. One of the members of the cleaning crew doesn't seem to be listening to music or shouting at the others. He's not wearing headphones, either. The cleaner who is not like the others is sweeping a corner of the street from which he has a completely clear view of the doorway of the palace known as the Palau de la Mar Fosca. Without looking up. What he's wearing instead of headphones is one of those little ear devices halfway between a hearing aid and a microphone headset. Like those things nightclub bouncers wear. Bocanegra clears his throat with a fist in front of his mouth. The small door inside the two larger ones opens and Marcia Parini appears in the threshold. Wearing a pearly robe. With Bugs Bunny slippers. Although she doesn't have curlers in her hair or a cigarette hanging from her lips, her pale morning face with sheet marks still on it makes you think she should be wearing curlers in her hair and have a cigarette hanging lazily from her lips.

“You don't look like the furniture delivery man.” Marcia looks at Bocanegra with a frown. The suit Bocanegra is wearing this Monday winter morning is cream colored and has the meticulously triangular point of a red handkerchief sticking out of the breast pocket. Under a fur coat that seems to have been designed to be worn exclusively by a woman. Marcia hugs herself in a gesture that suggests she's cold. Both her and her visitor's breath materialize in the shape of little clouds of steam. Marcia's little clouds of steam seem smaller and somehow less dynamic than the little clouds of steam coming from the corpulent, mustachioed man standing in front of her door. “Unless you've got my blackboard and man's dresser and all the rest behind your back.”

Bocanegra stares at the bouquet of flowers in his hand with a theatrical expression of surprise. With that overly surprised expression for surprise gifts you've been hiding behind your back while waiting for the recipient to open the door. Like a clichéd joke. The bouquet is wrapped in some sort of shiny paper that crunches when you grab it. Marcia grabs the bouquet by the crunchy lower part and stares at it without any particular expression.

“How stupid of me, you must forgive me.” Bocanegra combs his scant hair with his hairy hand again in a gesture that somehow manages to not be at all flirtatious. His strangely feminine coat is simply draped over his cream-colored shoulders. “I should have called. But the truth is I didn't have your phone number. And I'm only in town for one day. You must be my nephew's girlfriend. Who, by the way, has very good taste. My nephew. As they say. I'm his uncle Oscar. Lucas's uncle. Although we haven't seen each other in many years. I'm kind of a wayward uncle. That's why we've never met. But I've been meaning to call for some time. And suddenly I said to myself: why don't you pay good old Lucas a visit? Since I'm passing through the city and all. For old times' sake.” His eyes half close as he studies Marcia Parini's slightly swollen eyes. Marcia has the kind of brown eyes that are completely dull and devoid of any idiosyncratic elements. Like standard-issue eyes. As if there wasn't time or money to come up with some real eyes. “The truth is I'm not exactly his uncle,” continues Bocanegra. “You could say that Lucas and I are more like distant cousins. Very distant. Uncle Oscar is what he calls me. Because of the age difference, I guess. It's a joke. You know. Like Uncle Oscar from the Oscar awards and all that. It's one of those family jokes people make. What can I say.” He shrugs his shoulders. Both his smile and his half-closed eyes now contain clear hints of ferociousness. “Family is the most important thing there is.”

Marcia Parini hugs herself in a gesture that suggests intense cold as well as unexpected conversations with strangers early in the morning in insufficient attire. From under the lower edge of her pearly robe the skin on her legs seems covered in a uniform eruption of little bumps brought on by the cold, which lends her a certain helpless charm. Helpless charm is probably Marcia's strong suit. Her robe is one of those thin silk robes that are no help at all against the cold. The street cleaner who isn't moving his head rhythmically or shouting keeps sweeping in a way that suggests he isn't really paying attention to what he's sweeping, nor is he really committed to cleaning the sidewalk. His head is leaning to one side at a pronounced angle. As if he were surreptitiously listening to something happening on the other side of a door.

Marcia moves her feet in a vaguely impatient gesture.

“I'm not Lucas's girlfriend,” she says. The sheet marks are mostly on one side of her face. “My mother and his mother were best friends, before they each got married. He lives in the apartment upstairs. I live in the downstairs apartment. We visit each other a lot. Sometimes it's all a bit confusing. Or at least it was, until two weeks ago.” Marcia Parini's pale little clouds of steam lend her a certain helpless charm. The way she hugs herself over her silk robe gives her a helpless charm. Her helpless charm now emanates in waves toward Bocanegra. “Right now Lucas isn't home. But I could invite you in for a cup of tea. We have a wide selection of teas.”

Five minutes later Mr. Bocanegra is sitting on a leather sofa, with his fingertips resting on the surface of one of those plasma balls filled with gas whose capacitor emits colored electrical charges when you touch it. Like small, fantastically colored lightning bolts that come out from the middle of the ball toward the hands that touch it. On the glass coffee table in Marcia Parini's living room, besides the plasma ball, there are other objects like a lava lamp, a tranquility fountain and a Chinese checkers board. Without any marbles. Even though Marcia Parini's living room isn't small, the excess of objects makes it a bit claustrophobic. There are also sticks of incense in varying states of consumption on a nearby chest of drawers. Bocanegra moves his hands over the surface of the plasma ball. Changing the form produced by the electricity making the gas inside the ball glow. Without taking his eyes off the electric form. The temperature in the living room is also stifling. Like the house had been overheated all night.

“Did I mention we have a wide selection of teas?” Marcia's voice comes from some invisible place located on the other side of the rectangular horizontal opening that connects the tiny kitchen with the living room. The opening has a varnished wood ledge covered with more little bottles of spices and herbs than Bocanegra has ever seen in one place in his life. Even something that looks like very small logs of firewood. Marcia's voice is mixed with the vaguely metallic sound of a transistor radio or maybe a CD player in the attached kitchen. “I've been a big tea fan for a while now. You can have any kind you want. I think I have them all. I can also make blends. Sometimes I think I have too wide a selection of teas. If you know what I mean. I mean that if they gave me a euro for every euro I've spent on tea I'd probably be rich. This is all to say, ask for a cup. Don't be afraid. You won't catch me off guard.”