Javier Calvo: Wonderful World

Lorenzo Giraut frowns and listens. There is definitely a noise approaching that is not the noise of the thunderclaps or the shouts of the tourists beneath the first large drops of rain. Giraut still hasn't realized that the new sound is the sound of police sirens. Something in the nature of the scene starts to show signs of being a dramatically crucial scene. He comes out of his shelter on all fours and serves himself a second glass of Macallan with three ice cubes.

“This can't be happening,” he says, as he serves the ice with a shaky hand. “My partners would never leave me in the lurch. My partners are like my brothers. We've been together forever. We're the Down With The Sun Society. That's the name we gave ourselves. To give you an idea,” he says.

He takes a sip from the glass. He looks at the American Liaison. The American Liaison has opened one of the sash windows of the living room of the suite and is climbing out. Onto the building's fire escape. Lorenzo Giraut shudders.

The Night That Ends Lorenzo Giraut's Life As He Knows It is undoubtedly one of those nights that can be defined as dramatically crucial. The American Liaison's face as he tries to escape through the window, lit by the lightning of Camber Sands, seems to have transformed into a grimace of panic and rage. The scene has little in common with a mad scientist's laboratory on a night of creations that defy divine will. And nonetheless, there is something in the fine plaster dust that falls from the ceiling and in the scene lit by lightning that is powerfully reminiscent of a mad scientist's laboratory. The police car sirens can now be heard perfectly from the hotel suite. Lorenzo Giraut, sixty-five years of age, the same Lorenzo Giraut that founded LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., ten years earlier using capital of shady origin, can't go to the window. It's something that happens to him often with windows. The same Lorenzo Giraut who became, with the help of his two partners and in just one decade, the most important antiques dealer in Spain. The same Giraut that will restart his business after getting out of jail but who will never be the same again. Because nothing is ever the same after nights like this night in Camber Sands. Lorenzo Giraut knows that. He understands everything perfectly as soon as he hears the sirens and sees the spotlights sweeping through the inside of the hotel suite. When he hears the shouts of the policeman ordering the American Liaison to stay right where he is.

The Hotel in the Sands will close its doors forever in 1982 and will be demolished six years later. In the mall that will be erected on the same site there will be black-and-white photographs of the Hotel in the Sands.

Lorenzo Giraut will always suspect what really happened on The Night That Ended Lorenzo Giraut's Life As He Knew It, although he'll never want to admit it.

“I know what this looks like,” he says to himself in the living room of the suite. Where the wind has now come in and is brutally shaking the curtains and dragging the rain inside. Wetting his face. “But it can't be what it looks like.”

More shouts are heard, from the policemen ordering the man who is climbing down the fire escape to stop. Someone shoots into the air. The half dozen police cars are stopped in front of the Hotel in the Sands in semicircular police position. With the lights flashing and the spotlights sweeping the façade of the hotel. Which isn't exactly a hotel. Giraut smells one underarm and then the other and shrugs his shoulders. He runs his fingers through his long, straight hair. He adjusts the knot in his tie. When they find him, he wants to look the way he always wanted to look if he was found in the circumstances in which they are going to find him tonight. Circumspect. Dignified. Seemingly unconcerned. A police spotlight sweeps over his face. For a moment, a moment too brief to attach much importance to, Giraut has a strange feeling. The feeling that there is something more on the other side of the window. Something that isn't the police or the storm. Something that floats in the air. Like a series of figures that float in the air. Searching for something. The word “Captors” comes to his mind for some reason he fails to understand.

And a moment later, it's gone.

“Twenty-three days till the world release of Stephen King's new novel,” says twelve-year-old Valentina Parini, lying in her hammock in the courtyard of the former ducal palace in Barcelona's Old Quarter, a building the tour guides call the Palau de la Mar Fosca, the Palace of the Stormy Sea. With a plaid blanket over her legs. She is holding up the promotional brochure for Stephen King's new novel so that Lucas Giraut can see it. “Or, to be more precise, twenty-three days and six hours.”

Rays of late-afternoon sun fall on the balconies of the Old Quarter like the remains of a space shuttle that has disintegrated in the stratosphere. Valentina Parini, a troubled student in the seventh grade at Barcelona's Italian Academy and self-proclaimed Top European Expert on the Work of Stephen King, sways in her hammock with a pensive expression on her face. For a couple of weeks now, every time she looks at something, one of her eyes seems to stray slightly toward the edge of her visual field. Giraut takes the promotional brochure for Stephen King's new novel without getting up from his white plastic garden chair. The skyline from the edge of the yard shows one tower of the cathedral covered in scaffolding and a flock of seagulls that soar in voracious circles around some invisible prey.

Valentina Parini lives with her mother in an apartment on the first floor of the former ducal place. Lucas Giraut lives in the apartment on the second floor. The courtyard, the marble staircase and the parking area on the lower level are common space for all residents.

“My school psychologist told me I'm not allowed to read Stephen King's new novel,” continues Valentina Parini. Her skinny preteen body, with its excessively long arms and legs, contrasts with her round face and tiny features that make you think of tropical tree-dwelling monkeys. Her nose is so small that the fact that it can sustain her child-sized eyeglasses, with their green plastic frames, strikes Giraut as a true gravitational feat. “Says that reading it could be very negative for me. She sent a note to my teacher and to my mom.” The lips of her tiny mouth purse in a disgusted expression. “She even told my basketball coach. What a huge bitch.”

Seated on his garden chair, Lucas Giraut, thirty-three years of age, pulls a cigarette out of the silver case embossed with the initials LG that he always carries in the inside pocket of his suit. His suit today is a charcoal gray Lino Rossi with red pinstripes. As he lights the cigarette he furrows his vaguely namby-pamby eyes and his pale, thin eyebrows. Valentina Parini's school psychologist is one of the most frequent topics of conversation at the afternoon meetings Valentina and Giraut hold in the backyard of the ducal palace. Valentina's clinical relationship with the school psychologist dates back to the episode known at her school as the Spanish Class Mishap.

“It's called Wonderful World,” says Valentina. Pointing with her head at the promotional brochure for Stephen King's new novel that Giraut has in his hands. “It's the story of a man that wakes up one day and discovers that everything around him has turned perfect. The neighbors that used to hate him now give him baseball tickets. His coworkers are friendly to him. His ex-wife, too. Everything has turned perfect. The world starts functioning flawlessly. Wars end. Politicians turn smart. Which means something's going on.” She's not trying to sound mysterious or showing any traces of preteen excitement. She's just using the natural, confident tone of someone who knows she's the Top European Expert on the Work of Stephen King. “Something alien. Something that is controlling people's minds.”