Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

Five minutes later, Iris Gonzalvo is dressed in a bathrobe and seated in the production company owner's office. Stroking her recently washed and still wet hair with an absent gesture. With her face clean. Taking pensive drags on a cigarette.

The owner of the production company making the low-budget film Iris was just fired from sniffs two lines of cocaine from the inner reflective glass surface of some sort of cigarette box. He lifts his face from the table and inhales sharply. He's a muscular guy with a shirt that's too small for him and waxed eyebrows. His eyebrows are waxed in that way that used to be associated with homosexuality before male cosmetic treatments became commonplace. The owner of the production company massages one wing of his nose with his fingertip.

“I don't know if I can keep giving you work,” he says. With the concerned expression of someone who holds all the power. “People say that you cause problems. And honestly, I think so, too. What do you expect? That some Hollywood producer is going to see one of your films and discover your enormous talent and hire you? If you're very lucky I can get you an audition to do a porn film, but honestly…” He looks her up and down. A clear note of skepticism seems to have been added to the mix of concern and absolute power. “I don't think you're that hot.”

Iris Gonzalvo looks up, scandalized.

“Of course I'm hot,” she says. “I'm incredibly hot.”

“Not hot enough. And you're old. You must be twenty-five years old.”

“I'm nineteen.”

There is a moment of tense silence. The boss's office at the production company for hotel cable movies is one of those corporate offices where everything conveys the idea of impermanence. The only furniture is a table and two chairs. The computer on top of the table is a laptop. There is no decoration of any kind. The light comes from bulbs without lamp fixtures. The walls haven't been plastered since the last occupant left, so you can still see holes and marks where the wall was drilled to hold up furniture that is no longer there. The precise term in the jargon of that specialized market that refers to the type of films prepared and filmed in the industrial space where Iris is sitting in a robe smoking is not “low-budget film.” The precise term is “ultra-low-budget film.” Of which ideally two or three are shot a day. To reduce costs in rental equipment.

“Listen,” says the head of production. He makes a weary face designed to show that he is willing to be patient and agreeable beyond the requirements of his position. “It's fine to be ambitious, and if you feel young, that's great. That means you are on the inside. But you have to be realistic. We both know why you're here. You're here because your boyfriend hooks me up with coke and does a little job for me once in a while. Even though it's not nice to say that.” He shrugs his shoulders in a self-exonerating gesture. “So okay. If I see some change in your attitude, I don't see why we can't stay in touch. In spite of the fact that your boyfriend hasn't answered my calls this week and owes me money. But you and I are another story. The only thing I ask is a small gesture on your part.” He separates his thumb and index finger a little to make the universal sign of things small in size. Then he looks at his wristwatch. “I think we have one of the sets downstairs free.”

There is a moment of silence.

“After all, no one's going to know,” adds the head of production. “I mean it's like nothing ever happened.”

Iris Gonzalvo stands up purposefully. She leans forward a bit, above the low-budget table comprised of two sawhorses and an unvarnished top, and before the boss has time to say anything she puts out her cigarette on his cheek. With a skillful wrist movement that is both energetic and vaguely circular.

The head of production's scream echoes through the entire industrial building.

The same day that Aníbal Manta and Saudade arrive in Rome, Lucas Giraut waits for closing time at the offices of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. He waits for all the workers to leave the building. Then he takes off the jacket of his cobalt blue Lino Rossi suit and loosens his tie and begins unscrewing one by one all the lightbulbs in his office on the mezzanine. The only lamp that he leaves on is the one right above the Italian Louis XV — style cartonnier that he uses as a desk. He puts the lightbulbs away in a cardboard box and puts the box in one of the not-secret drawers of the cartonnier. All the employees have gone and the security gates that look like bars on a medieval castle have been lowered, giving the building its ferociously protected off-hours look. The alarms are turned on. The lights are turned off except for the pilot lights connected to an independent generator and the sole lightbulb that Lucas Giraut has left on in his office. The circumstances, decides Lucas Giraut as he sticks a flashlight into his pants pocket, are propitious to begin his Filial Investigation of Apartment 13.

Lucas Giraut goes up the stairs that lead from the mezzanine to the upper floor of the headquarters of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. A bulge in the shape of a flashlight can be seen in his pocket. During the last twenty years barely anything has been changed in this part of the building. The doors have been repainted several dozen times. The walls have been replastered and have changed color. The technological advances in terms of alarms are visible in the increasingly weaponlike look of the alarm box models. Increasingly more alarming. The locks on the metal doors have been replaced by numerical code readers with tiny little red and green lights to signal, respectively, the introduction of erroneous or correct codes.

Giraut arrives at the top of the stairs and the hallway lights up automatically in response to a movement sensor. He looks up and makes a distracted gesture with his hand toward the camera that's filming his movements from the roof. The hallway of the upper floor is one of those hallways you find in industrial warehouses. With concrete walls and floor. With numbered metal doors on both sides and with bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The last door of the concrete hallway, around the last bend, is the door to Apartment 13. Vague images of endless hallways and rooms crossed by fleeting silhouettes come to Giraut's mind. Memories of childhood notebooks filled with sketches of movable panels that open onto secret passageways between the walls. Finally he stops in front of the door marked with the number thirteen. He introduces the numerical code and waits for the tiny green light that means that the right code has been entered.

The Filial Investigation Operation has begun.

Lucas Giraut turns on the flashlight and the beam of light runs over the inside of Apartment 13. Dust covers the floor and all the furniture. He closes the door behind him. The apartment consists of a room with a double bed stuck to the wall, a television, a built-in closet, and a couple of dressers. A door at the back of the room leads to a tiny bathroom with a shower that barely has room for one person. There are no windows. None of his father's secret places ever have any windows. Due to an undiagnosed pathology that was referred to within the family as his window problem. The air in the room comes from a few vents by the ceiling that are different from the rest of the building's vents and which vaguely resemble half-open mouths.

Lucas Giraut sits on the bed and runs a hand along the dusty bedspread. Sitting in this space without any natural light or windows somehow comforts him. In a certain way, he has always believed that he understood what was happening to his father. The secret inner mechanics of his difficulty with windows and daylight. What lay hidden behind his so-called window problem. The feeling of calm. That feeling of power you get from locking the world out completely.