Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“I don't know,” Saudade finally says. “These are good paintings, but in general I like the paintings that are in more out-of-the-way places better. In discreet places where no one can see them.”

Hannah Linus nods.

“I think I have what you want.”

Twenty minutes later, Hannah Linus is crawling on the floor of the gallery's storeroom, picking up articles of her clothes one by one. All the light in the storeroom comes from some energy-efficient fluorescent tubes that give the space a sad and vaguely dangerous look. Like in a movie set in a spaceship where a nonhuman intruder decimates the crew one by one. After searching the entire room, she finds what's left of her panties behind a radiator. She holds them up and stares at them with a vaguely melancholy face. The largest piece could still be identified as panties by someone with good investigative skills. Then she wrinkles her nose like someone who has just noticed an odor someplace it shouldn't be.

“You can't smoke in here,” she says to Saudade, who is lying contentedly on top of a pile of cardboard and bubble wrap. “Smoke destroys paintings. And you're going to set off the alarms.”

Saudade lets the ash from his cigarette fall into his cupped palm and takes another long drag with that powerfully insulting half smile that seems to be his default expression. The natural arrangement of his features. His posture as he lies on the cardboard pile gives Hannah Linus the strange sensation that his penis is watching her. Saudade's penis, as she sees it now, is like a curled-up animal resting after the sexual act while still keeping an eye on her. Hannah Linus often gets that same feeling from the penises of men she has just had sex with. She can't say it's a feeling she particularly likes. Saudade's penis isn't exactly the same color as the rest of his body. Saudade's skin is a toasted color reminiscent of dark bread and fishermen under the sun, while his penis is a sickly color that makes one think of skinless animals slithering out of their shell.

Hannah Linus begins to dress. Turning her back to Saudade. Her naked body provides the perfect complement to her dressed body. Not a gram of fat. Muscular without becoming masculine. With strong legs and a thin waist and breasts belligerently projected aloft. It's the essentially pointy nature of her breasts and their upward orientation that give them their ballistic air. An atavistic piece of weaponry.

“That was stupid,” she says, putting on the skirt of her business suit. “A very unfortunate episode. I'd appreciate you leaving through the fire exit and never coming back to this gallery. I don't want my employees losing respect for me. If you want to buy a painting, do it by telephone.” She stretches out her arms to close her bra hooks behind her back. Then she shrugs her shoulders. “Although frankly, perhaps you should spend your money on something else.”

His silence makes her turn her head toward the place where he's lying on his cardboard bed. There is something strange about his cardboard bed. Something not so much ridiculous or grotesque as genuinely disturbing. Something that makes her think of naked saints and martyrological images. Saudade's penis stretches idly and stands to look at her face-to-face. Hannah Linus halts in the middle of putting on her blouse. In some part of the storeroom the click of an automatic device is heard. Hannah Linus surprises herself by taking a couple of hesitant steps toward Saudade. His penis watches her, amused. She kneels down slowly. Above her head a fine rain falls from the fire alarm's sprinkler system.

WONDERFUL WORLD

By Stephen King

CHAPTER 17

Chuck Kimball opened the door to the kitchen, stuck his head out cautiously and finally went into the backyard. He closed the door behind him and went across the yard toward the shed, trying to act naturally.

Underneath his Red Sox cap he wore a double layer of asbestos. He had folded the layers of asbestos from the blinds and the false ceiling and now, as he walked through the yard trying to keep his nerves from betraying him, a part of the inner lining of his cap stuck out through the back. He was lucky that They didn't always see so well. But the asbestos couldn't protect him forever.

He made it to the door of the shed. He tried not to look over his shoulder as he put the key into the lock and unbolted the door. He opened the screen door covered in asbestos and then removed the steel bar that blocked the inside lock. The assholes could smell his fear, he told himself. And just as he reminded himself he regretted having thought it, because a shiver ran down his back, from his neck to his tailbone.

Once he was inside the shed, he took a look around him. Everything was just as he had left it a few hours earlier, he told himself as a way to keep calm. The computer was carefully unplugged and covered with strips of asbestos, just like the radio station. After what happened the week before, he was perfectly aware that They could somehow get into computers and make them work even though they weren't connected to the Internet or even plugged in. They probably already had control of the entire network, just like the television channels and all the rest.

He walked up to the calendar and tore off the January 10 page. It had been exactly six days and ten hours since his last, terrifying phone call with his son. How much time did he have left? The minivan was almost ready to make the trip south. The entire top had been lined with a layer of asbestos and then upholstered. The false bottom beneath the seats was almost finished and included a compartment for provisions, a tank for potable water and a hiding place for weapons and ammunition. The satellite positioning system, even though it would probably be useful given the circumstances, had been taken out due to the risks it involved.

He checked his watch. Two hours until nightfall. It would be best to leave once it got dark. A few final touches and everything would be ready. On the outside, the car looked like a regular family minivan. With the Red Sox' mascot hanging above the glove compartment and swinging its bat in its hands. The back of the minivan was still missing a little paint where it had hit Clarissa's car.

He had planned to make the trip without stops of any kind. That could be a problem, since he had had another sleepless night working on getting the car ready. And that morning he had barely been able to get to sleep as he hugged his shotgun tightly under the twisted sheets. He still had several tablets of Adderall and a whole box of Ritalin from his raid on the pharmacy but, at the rate he was going, the Dexedrine wasn't going to last him more than a couple of days. It was funny that, in spite of everything, his gradual relapse into the worst habits of his Black Year was now the least of his problems.

He opened the door of the minivan and sat in the driver's seat. He lit a cigarette, and as he exhaled a cloud of smoke with his eyes half closed he took the stereo equipment out of the glove compartment. He cut the cables with wire cutters and then, using a bowie knife, he began to take out the part that was built into the dashboard. Even though he had no intention of turning it on throughout the whole trip, the radio was too big of a risk.

He hadn't thought of an explanation to give the police if they stopped him on the highway. That was another one of the trip's dangers. The very idea of talking to the police was terrifying, since Chuck wasn't entirely sure whether They could read his mind or not. The way They acted seemed to suggest that all of their minds were interconnected, but there was no way of knowing if They also had access to the thoughts of those who were apparently immune, like him.

He threw the remains of the car stereo into the barrel and sprinkled them with gasoline. He was about to toss his cigarette butt in, too, when a noise stopped him short. At first he couldn't identify it. It was an intermittent, insistent buzzing. Hard to pinpoint because of the asbestos lining on the shed that acted as soundproofing. Suddenly he froze. What else could that be except the doorbell? The bell to his house! For a moment that seemed to stretch into an eternity, he remained still in front of the barrel with the cigarette butt in his hand. He couldn't move at all. Meanwhile, the bell kept ringing with terrifying insistence. He had no idea how long it had been ringing when he finally approached the window of the shed with trembling legs.