Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

Bocanegra keeps moving his hands over the plasma ball. Contemplating the different configurations that appear inside it. Like heavenly bodies. Each movement of his hands creates changes in the structure and color system. There are no two identical configurations. Not even when he puts his hands in the same place.

“Do you have a cup of tea?” he says distractedly. Without taking his gaze off the center of the ball.

“That's not how you do it,” says the voice from the other side of the horizontal rectangular opening to the kitchen. Patiently. “You have to say something like: I want a spicy breakfast tea, one that's strong and fruity. That kind of thing. I could also make you a crêpe. To have with your tea. That's my favorite breakfast.” Her face and upper torso appear in the opening. With her silk robe. With a large glass of Macallan in her hand. She brings the glass to her lips and takes a sip. “I can also give you a whiskey, if you want. I'm not saying it's the best thing for you at this time of the morning. But I don't think it's the worst either.”

Bocanegra moves his hands over the glass ball with the circular and vaguely sweeping motions that crystal ball readers use. The kind that usually wear turbans. And have little pointy beards. On the surface of the ball, with a backdrop of colored lightning bolts and otherworldly fog, his own distorted face looks at him severely. In that convex, centripetal way faces are reflected onto round surfaces. The tinkling of ice and glasses is heard from the kitchen. Bocanegra looks at the ball with a frown and moves one hand in a kind of wave. The way you wave at your own reflection. As much as he goes over it in his mind, he can't seem to find any metaphorical implication in the nature or workings of the ball. The plasma ball appears to be an element devoid of any metaphoric possibilities. Not relatable to any other element in the universe. Like its own world. A relatively pretty, boring and meaningless world. There doesn't seem to be any lesson here, thinks Bocanegra with the mental equivalent of a sigh. He crosses his legs and smiles at Marcia, who has just appeared with two large glasses of Macallan and ice.

“I know this may seem strange,” says Bocanegra. He leans the upper half of his body forward without uncrossing his legs to take the glass of Macallan Marcia offers him. Marcia sits in front of him. With a glass in her hand that's identical to her guest's glass except it's missing a couple of large sips of whiskey. Sections of pale, correctly moisturized skin peek out from under Marcia's silk robe. “Since I'm practically a stranger that just showed up without even calling first. I know it's a strange question and all. But tell me, dear. Have you noticed anything strange about Lucas lately? Any change in his behavior? Anything that struck you as strange? Like strange people coming over. Strange people that come at odd hours. People that look like policemen, for example. And forgive me for the strange question. But perhaps you've seen someone prowling around the street. In the little plaza over there. People that look like they're prowling. Pretending to do something else. Like someone reading a newspaper on a corner. Sometimes they wear those little gadgets in one ear. You know.” He raises a large hairy hand to his ear. Bocanegra's ears are small. In marked contrast with the rest of his facial features. “Like those devices nightclub bouncers wear in their ears.”

Marcia Parini looks over the edge of the glass of Macallan she's sipping. Then she places it among the objects cramming the glass table. The lava lamp and the plasma ball and the Chinese checkers board and a Ganesh elephant and something that looks like one of those fountains with a motor inside that generates a supposedly tranquilizing sound.

“I haven't seen anything strange,” she says. “Lucas isn't strange. A lot of people think he is, but I don't. He's a good guy. Maybe he does have a few problems. His mother is a difficult woman. And it seems like his father was, too. I mean a difficult man. But I don't care what they say. I don't care if they say he did things with Valentina. I don't care that they want to fire him from his job. I know the real Lucas. Like do you know he saves all the notebooks he wrote when he was a kid? And he has a secret room at work. He never told me but I figured it out.” She takes a sip of whiskey with her brow furrowed. Then she continues talking with the glass in her hand. “What I mean is that he's a special guy. An interesting person. I used to be in love with him.”

Marcia's body language isn't exactly childlike, or exactly feminine, or even exactly adult. There is something about Marcia Parini that makes Bocanegra not exactly realize that she's almost naked in front of him. Something that seems to contradict the very idea of nakedness. Bocanegra runs a hand along the rocky texture of the upper part of the tranquility fountain on the glass table and gets up from the sofa. With unexpected agility considering his size. He walks with his hands behind his back to a coatrack near the wall and pensively touches a couple of men's coats hanging there. As if the coats reminded him of something he couldn't quite place.

“Those aren't Lucas's,” says Marcia. “They're my boyfriend's. He moved in with me a couple of weeks ago. That's why I'm expecting a blackboard and a dresser and all that. We're planning to get married. Although he hasn't met my daughter yet. He's a good guy.” She takes another sip on her glass of Macallan. This new sip distinguishes itself from the previous ones with a certain nostalgic glint in her gaze. A mere instant where her gaze stops looking at anything in the room. “He's not a good guy in the same way Lucas is a good guy. Let's just say my boyfriend has less clear ideas about what he wants to do with his life and that kind of thing. In spite of his age.” She shrugs. “But I guess that's my fate. To be with men who haven't got it all figured out.” She stops. She stares with a frown into the bottom of her half-full glass of whiskey. As if she had just seen something inside the glass that shouldn't be there. “Listen, you didn't come about some inheritance, did you? I mean, you're not one of those uncles that show up after twenty years in Australia to leave an inheritance, right?”

Bocanegra has stopped thoughtfully touching the coats on the coatrack and is now focused on studying the collection of framed photographs on top of a chest of drawers in Marcia Parini's living room. Photographs that are mostly of Valentina Parini. The way Bocanegra is looking at the photographs is: leaning forward. With the upper half of his body at a right angle to his legs and his palms resting on his knees. After a moment he picks up a photograph in which Valentina Parini appears with Lucas Giraut. Both of them very serious. Sitting in a courtyard. Valentina has a Stephen King novel in her hands. Bocanegra brings the photograph over to the window to see it better under the morning light.

“This is the girl they say Lucas is screwing?” he says. Examining the photograph with a calculating expression. “They seem to be quite close.” Then he looks in Marcia's direction. “Where's the girl now? Wasn't she in some kind of hospital?”

Marcia doesn't answer. On the reflective surface of the framed photographs on the chest of drawers, Bocanegra can see that Marcia is looking into her glass of whiskey with an indecipherable expression.

On the other side of the window, holding the city's broom idly in one hand, the headphone-less member of the cleaning crew no longer pretends he's sweeping the sidewalk. Now he has his head slightly tilted to one side and a finger on his ear device and seems to be talking to himself while staring intently at the handle of his broom.