Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

Panakian leans his crutches against the wall and puts on some latex gloves. He opens a briefcase and takes out an instrument similar to the adjustable lens of a professional camera. Lucas Giraut follows his movements attentively, as he sips on his bottle of Moët et Chandon and pretends he's not paying attention. Even Bocanegra's minions are paying attention. More or less. Each of them according to their possibilities.

Finally Raymond Panakian places the instrument that looks like a camera lens up to his eye and leans forward to examine the St. Kieran Panels. Which have been extracted from their special carrying bags and placed on individual easels. The entire process takes a couple of minutes. Finally Raymond Panakian stands up straight, making pained gestures and expressions that seem to be focused on his lower back. He puts the instrument away in his briefcase. He closes it and turns toward Bocanegra. He nods his head.

A clamor of clinking bottles and shouts of joy fills the warehouse of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. A couple of streamers fly through the air. Saudade is emptying a bottle of Moët et Chandon Grand Reserve over his head. After a moment, Bocanegra lifts a hand, asking for silence. And, of course, there is silence.

“This is a happy moment,” says Mr. Bocanegra. With that deliberate slowness he reserves for moments in which he has a captive audience. An audience that can't avoid being the recipients of his wisdom. “Happy for all of you because you are going to have money to keep having fun and getting yourselves in trouble, although this time the money is going to last you longer than usual. This time you can build yourselves a swimming pool and fill it with money, if you feel like it.” He pauses to receive the cheers that obediently arrive from his minions. Saudade has finished emptying the Grand Reserve over his head and he now gleefully throws the empty bottle against the wall. The bottle bursts with a noise similar to a groan. “And yet, it is also a particularly happy day for me. Not only because it is our most lucrative job to date. A job that will let us all buy luxury homes and pools to store the money in. But because I did this job with Lucas Giraut. The only son of my best friend ever. And someone who I consider my own son. Someone almost of my blood. Much more than just a nephew,” he says, and raises the half-drunk bottle of Moët et Chandon in a toast. There is a burst of slightly less enthusiastic applause from the minions. The clapping dies down after a moment. “And that is why, since today is a really special day for everyone, I've decided to make an announcement.” New pause. Someone shuffles their feet nervously. Aníbal Manta tries to put on a sycophantically intrigued face. “It is something I have been planning for months. A project for the rest of my life. To fill me up here inside.” He raises a fist to his heart. “A reason to live. I've already found the land. And I've got the work permit. Now all I have to do is build it with the money from the sale of these little paintings. Which already have a buyer. Thanks to my contacts and to Mr. Giraut's privileged brain. And that's what I want to show you all today. On this very special day.”

Mr. Bocanegra makes a half turn and grabs something that's leaning against a wall. It is some sort of thick paper rolled into a cylinder. He puts it on a table and unrolls it. The others come closer to have a look. The paper shows some sort of rural villa. With gardens. With enormous windows that look out on a rural landscape. And with statues. Dozens of statues everywhere. In the garden. In the greenhouse. At the entrance for cars. All of it in the middle of a landscape with all the idyllic elements rural landscapes are meant to have. Herds of cows. Wild horses frolicking. Barns shaped like giant mushrooms. Lucas Giraut draws his face closer to examine the page in detail. It isn't a photograph. It is one of those computer-generated landscapes. A simulation.

And on top of it all, dominating the image of the house and the statues and the computer-simulated rural landscape, written in enormous, optimistic letters, it reads:

THE ARNOLD LAYNE CHILDREN'S CENTER AND FOUNDATION

Everyone present looks at the sheet of paper for a moment. Someone clears his throat.

“It's…nice,” says Aníbal Manta cautiously.

“But, what is it?” says Saudade, who has somehow managed to get himself another bottle of Moët et Chandon on his way to the table and is now looking at the sheet of paper as he takes sips on the bottle.

“All my life I've wanted something like this,” says Mr. Bocanegra. His cruel features give way to those slightly trembling and slightly moist elements that indicate an Emotionally Intense Moment is approaching. His enormous bald head trembles. His mustache trembles. The long luxurious fur of his unmistakably feminine coat trembles a tiny bit, too. “All my life. There is nothing my heart loves more than children. Like an uncle. The truth is I feel like an uncle to every child. My heart has enough room. Because I don't have any children of my own. And I'm getting old. It's the loneliness of a childless man.” He takes a deep, melancholy drag on his cigar. “That's why I decided to set this up. A home. For children without parents. Or for the ones that have shitty parents who beat them. You know. I'll run it myself. I'll be like an uncle to each one of those kids. Once it's built, of course.” He claps his enormous hands one time. One of those claps that serve as a signal to return from a fantasy back to the surrounding reality. “Meanwhile, you all should know that everything you're doing, all our work, will help give a home to all those poor little kids.”

There is a moment of solemn silence. In some part of the warehouse a commotion is heard, like furniture being violently moved around.

“My father beat us,” says Aníbal Manta with a pensive face. “But it never occurred to me to think about that stuff about loneliness.”

The sound of furniture being moved violently is followed by an abrupt, muffled din. Like something heavy falling from a certain height. Mr. Bocanegra frowns.

“What's over there?”

He points with a big, hairy, ring-filled finger in the direction the noises are coming from. It is one of the unused wings of the warehouse, connected to the main part by a metal door that is now ajar.

Lucas Giraut shrugs his shoulders.

“It's a storage room,” he says. “For tools. Old furniture. Things like that.”

Noises continue to come from the door, now weaker. Like muffled echoes.

“Has anyone seen Yanel?” says Aníbal Manta.

Everyone looks around. In the warehouse lit by little multicolored blinking Christmas lights there are only five men. Saudade is polishing off his third bottle. Raymond Panakian seems to be talking to himself in whatever language it is he speaks while he fills his mouth with pieces of cake. But there is no trace of Eric Yanel. He seems to have disappeared in a moment of distraction.

Mr. Bocanegra starts to walk toward the half-open metal door. Followed closely by Lucas Giraut and Aníbal Manta.

The storage room on the other side of the door is dark and smells damp and like it hasn't been opened for months. The spiderwebs that hang from the ceiling get tangled in their hair and faces, forcing them to walk through the room swatting. Eric Yanel is hanging from the ceiling, too, from the lamp fixture in the middle. With the belt from his pants around his neck. With his face blue and kicking the air frenetically the way people do when they're choking. It's never very clear if the kicking means the person has changed their mind right in the middle of hanging themselves or if they are just experiencing the intrinsic emotional pain of the hanging. At his feet there are several dozen objects and pieces of furniture knocked over by the kicking.