Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“That thing is going to gas us,” he says, wiping doughnut crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Stop the smoke machine!” shouts someone with a megaphone.

The camera mounted on a complex system of rails and cranes follows Yanel's movements as he finally gets the door open and comes out dressed in a race car driver's helmet, boots and jumpsuit. He walks up to the nose of the car and sits on it with a certain stiffness. His race car driver jumpsuit and his helmet and his boots are all covered with the corporate logos of the international cigarette brand. At the director's assistant's order, the models with the coats on let them drop simultaneously and enter the scene dressed only in tiny bikinis and high heels. They place themselves on their marks next to Yanel, smile widely and begin caressing his shoulders while looking at the camera. Yanel takes off the helmet, shakes his blond locks in the morning wind and pulls a pack of the sponsor's brand of cigarettes out of one of the pockets of his jumpsuit. He lights a cigarette and exhales a mouthful of smoke that the wind sends treacherously back into his eyes.

“Cut!” shouts the director's assistant.

Iris Gonzalvo drums her fingers on the containing fence that surrounds the location, which the blue, sickly sweet smelling smoke from the dry ice machine is now starting to reach. She takes a drag on her cigarette and watches with a frown as someone runs through the epic-sized field toward the three models and puts their coats over their shoulders. Eric Yanel is laughing now with his perfect teeth, still seated on the nose of the car, and he offers the sponsor's brand of cigarettes to the three models. Iris Gonzalvo wears a plaid Prada coat, a head scarf knotted beneath her chin and dark glasses with enormous and strikingly rectangular frames, in that way that sunglass frames were only strikingly rectangular before 1976. She lifts her chin and moves her head and gazes with a neutral expression at the still-distant object that is approaching on the highway that skirts the epic-sized field. Headed for where the shoot is taking place.

“I thought those things were illegal.”

Iris Gonzalvo points with her cigarette at the group composed of Eric Yanel, who now carries the corporate helmet jauntily beneath his arm, and the three models, whose nude legs are visible below their coats. Even though she is too far away, Iris thinks she can see the goose bumps the cold is making on the three models' skin.

“They are illegal,” says the guy leaning on the containing fence next to Iris Gonzalvo. A middle-aged guy with long silvery hair and a leather jacket. “It's a commercial for the Asian market. They haven't banned cigarette commercials there yet. I don't think they will. Smoking is their favorite thing in Asia.” The guy gazes at the women's nude legs like an atomic scientist would gaze at the reading from a particle accelerator. “Smoking and blond women. And those strange number puzzles.”

Iris Gonzalvo covers her mouth with a handkerchief and looks at something beyond the cigarette commercial location. Something near the highway that skirts the stereotypical epic field. The object that a moment ago was approaching has now become a two-seater Jaguar with a folding convertible hood and personalized hubcaps.

“So you're saying that this commercial won't be shown in Spain? Ever?” she asks, her voice slightly distorted by the handkerchief that covers her nose and mouth. Most of the people on her side of the containing fence are now covering their noses and mouths to protect themselves from the blue carbonic smoke that floats over toward them. Others are waving one hand in front of their faces or simply coughing into their fists. “Or anywhere else in Europe?”

“They'd be more likely to air heroin commercials.” The guy squints to see through the cloud of dry ice. “Given the new European regulations. Your boyfriend's going to be seen by Chinese folks. Koreans. That kind of people.” He looks at Iris Gonzalvo out of the corner of his eye. “Because he is your boyfriend, right?”

The convertible Jaguar parks about a third of a mile from the location where the ad is being shot and after a moment a couple of vaguely human-looking individuals come out of it. Looking like they've suffered some type of hypertrophy over their entire bodies. Between the two of them, they must add up to some six hundred and fifty pounds of fat, atrophied muscle, sweaty faces and expensive Italian suits. With matching Italian loafers. One of them wears a long-haired fur coat that is clearly a woman's coat. The other locks the Jaguar's doors by pushing a button on his infrared key ring and the tune the infrared key ring emits to confirm that they are locked is the chorus to Pink Floyd's “Another Brick in the Wall, Part II.”

“I hope you won't mind me asking if you have an agent.” The silver-haired guy beside Iris Gonzalvo offers her a business card. “Because I'm an agent. I don't know if you do commercials or films. I assume you're an actress. With that face…And with, well, all the rest. I'm sure I've seen you in something. And I know everyone says that.” He smiles beneath his silvery hair. The headband that he uses to keep his long silvery hair off his forehead and away from his face isn't a headband. It's a pair of sunglasses, a classic model from the eighties, recently rereleased as part of the aesthetic fervor for said decade. “As if I was trying to get you into bed. Do you do commercials or films?”

Mr. Bocanegra, Show Business Impresario and owner of the legendary Barcelona nightspot The Dark Side of the Moon, starts walking among the shoot's crew members, looking as if he's searching for someone. With his hands in the pockets of his markedly feminine coat. With a touch of cruelty in his squinted eyes while he scrutinizes the shoot location. His right-hand man, Aníbal Manta, doesn't have his hands in his pockets. It's not clear that they make pockets big enough to contain Aníbal Manta's hands. In the center of the shoot location, the director is looking at a small monochrome screen surrounded by a group of people eating doughnuts and watching in silence. The most common attire of the members of the shooting crew seems to consist of urban sport shoes, combat pants of various hues, and parkas. Many of them use the shooting breaks to breathe steaming mouthfuls of breath into their hands and do that thing with their feet that people do when they have to stand still in the cold. A bit like stomping on invisible grapes.

Mr. Bocanegra and his right-hand man Aníbal Manta are not wearing parkas or combat pants or any sort of urban gear. They are wearing Italian suits and loafers. They have mustaches. Aníbal Manta has a crew cut and a hoop earring that are completely incongruent with the rest of his appearance. They each weigh as much as two members of the shooting crew.

“Both,” says Iris Gonzalvo. “I do commercials and films.”

About six feet away, the three models with the coats laugh at Eric Yanel's comments as they drink coffee from a thermos brought to them by a girl in a parka and combat pants. The guy with the silvery hair takes some prescription glasses out of the pocket of his leather jacket, puts them on with a blink and fixes his gaze on Mr. Bocanegra and Aníbal Manta. Manta has just moved aside one of the containing fences and is now stepping to one side so Bocanegra can pass through, with a gesture that is reminiscent of a doorman in a luxury hotel or a gangster's chauffeur holding a car door open for his boss.

“You can't go through there,” says the guy with the silvery hair. With a sudden frown. “Who are those guys? They look like major players.”

Iris Gonzalvo watches as Eric Yanel's smiling expression turns first to shock and then to horror a second later, when he sees Mr. Bocanegra and Aníbal Manta striding toward him. The former with his hands in the pockets of his markedly feminine coat. The latter with an iron bar that he has just pulled out of some part of his Italian suit.