Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

There is a moment of silence. Lucas Giraut has never heard of anyone named Commissioner Farina. Not in relation to his father or his father's arrest. The silence that has fallen over the Meeting Room allows the amalgam of female laughter and dance music to filter through from the Main Floor of The Dark Side of the Moon.

“Where's Bob Marley?” asks Aníbal Manta finally, his enormous arms crossed over the front of his suit and his eyes a bit squinted. In that way that Aníbal Manta squints his eyes and gathers his features together slightly when he is dealing with matters that challenge his ability to obtain a good perspective on what is going on around him. “Did they really nab him?”

Mr. Bocanegra stares at Aníbal Manta with an expression that seems to suggest that he's trying to decide if Manta's question meets the requirements he has just put forward.

“It seems,” he says, “that Bob Marley has had a small streak of bad luck. And it's quite possible that he's going to have another streak of bad luck when I catch up with him. Then he may join our mission. If there's anything left of him, of course. More questions?”

Saudade raises his hand. Bocanegra's face reflects a certain degree of surprise.

“I don't mind working with Russians,” says Saudade with a frown, and crosses his arms in a way that perhaps unconsciously and perhaps not imitates the way Aníbal Manta's arms are crossed. Manta is seated behind and definitely falls outside of his visual field. “Or with any kind of strange people. But I don't like working with Piece of Shit Rich Kids that don't know how to tie their own shoes. I'm talking about Mr. Rich Kid Esquire.” He makes a gesture with his eyebrows raised in Lucas Giraut's direction. “I mean, I don't know who you are, Sir Mr. Rich Kid Esquire, but to tell you the truth, I get the impression that you're a shit-for-brains rich kid who has no fucking idea of how people like us do things. And that you're gonna shit your pants when the going gets rough.” He looks at Aníbal Manta. Aníbal Manta looks away. “You all know what I'm talking about.”

There is a long moment of silence. Bocanegra's expression seems to indicate that Saudade's question definitely does not meet with the previously established requirements of relevance and intelligence.

“My mother embarrasses me,” says Valentina Parini, seated in a genuinely prepubescent posture on the bench of the basketball court of Barcelona's Italian Academy. She isn't seated with her back erect in the modest and elegant carriage of a postpubescent girl. Instead her legs hang down and her body leans slightly forward and she grabs the edge of the bench with her hands. “I mean when she's looking for a boyfriend to marry her. People can't tell, but I can. I can always tell.” She turns to look at Lucas Giraut, who is standing with his hands in his pockets a few steps behind the basketball court bench. Dressed in a burgundy herringbone stitch Lino Rossi suit. In addition to Valentina Parini, there are three other girls sitting on the bench. Alternately paying attention to the game that is taking place on the basketball court and the conversation that Valentina is having with Lucas. “Like the other night. Sometimes she embarrasses me so much it makes me want to punch her.”

Lucas Giraut nods. Marcia Parini's behavior during the last part of Fanny Giraut's Unnumbered Birthday party was pretty much the same as it always is toward the end of every Giraut family party she's ever been invited to. Rubbing rounded parts of her anatomy against the anatomy of various male guests, hanging with both arms from the neck of said guests and speaking into their ears while kissing them on the cheeks.

Giraut watches as the center from the home team, a tall plump girl, throws the ball vigorously against the opposing team's backboard. The ball bounces off the backboard and forces several players on both teams to crouch instinctively and cover their heads with their hands. The referee blows her whistle emphatically and gestures with her arms. The visiting team is a team from downtown made up of racially diverse girls with no uniforms. Some of the prepubescent and postpubescent girls from the downtown team chew gum with cruel expressions on their faces. Many of them have scabs on their knees and wear faded T-shirts of bands for teenage girls. One of the girls from the downtown team wears a faded black T-shirt of a metal band. The girls from the home team, including Valentina Parini, are impeccably dressed in uniforms with green T-shirts that read “ITALIAN ACADEMY BASKETBALL CLUB BARCELONA” on the front, white shorts and red socks that come all the way up to their unbruised knees.

The coach of the home team shouts something from the sidelines of the basketball court, putting her hands along both sides of her mouth and making signs to one of the players on the home team defense to sit on the bench.

“Parini,” says the home team coach, who wears her hair short and seems to have something below her nose that slightly resembles a mustache. “You replace Adelfi.” She looks at Lucas Giraut with clear displeasure, which doesn't seem to be based on Giraut's presence behind the players' bench but rather on the mere fact that people like Lucas Giraut exist in the same cosmos as she and her players do. “If your father doesn't mind, of course.”

There is a second of silence. Some of the players from the downtown team watch the scene with their hands on their hips and spit on the floor of the basketball court.

“He's not her father,” says one of the players seated on the home team bench.

“She has no father,” says another of the home team players. “Her father left.”

The player named Adelfi limps to the sideline of the school basketball court. She grabs the towel held out by one of her teammates and uses it to wipe her forehead and underarms. Someone mists one of her knees with a medicinal spray.

“I'm not her father,” explains Giraut to the mostly hostile faces that watch him from the bench, the playing field and the portable stands located at his back. “I'm a friend of the family's. I live in the apartment upstairs,” he says, and the faces just look at him with neutral expressions.

“He's not my father.” Valentina Parini looks at the coach with a frown behind her green plastic glasses. “And I don't want to go out. I'm the worst player on the team. I'm the worst player on any team. Every time I go out everyone laughs at me. Adelfi can play better than me even if they cut off her leg.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Why don't you kick me off the team?”

The players waiting on the basketball court cross their arms or put their hands on their hips and spit on the ground or bounce the ball while they roll their eyes and look at each other with bored expressions. The basketball players on the female section of the Italian Academy of Barcelona's Basketball Club are tacitly divided into two categories based on whether they have breasts or not. The players with breasts move with a discreet but firm elegance and modesty as of yet unknown to their teammates without breasts. The breasts of the basketball players with breasts move in directions related to the movement of the ball and the game in progress. They sway vertically in parallel to the ball's bouncing on the ground. They are projected forward when a player with breasts throws the ball forward and they go back in toward her thoracic cavity each time she receives a pass. When a player with breasts jumps to slam dunk, her breasts are projected gloriously up toward the heavens.

“I would love to kick you off the team,” says the mustachioed coach. “I dream about it. But your school psychologist says that you're so nutso that if we kicked you off you'd lose it completely.” She makes a sign with her hand to the referee, who is examining the cuticles of one hand without taking the whistle out of her mouth. “So move your rear end and get into your position.”