Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

He has only one panel left on page five when the doorbell rings, twice, two long and incredibly high-pitched rings in the silence of the apartment. Manta takes off his reading glasses and stands up stealthily. He looks at the alarm clock. It's already past midnight. He walks barefoot toward the hall closet and takes out a three-foot-long iron bar with his initials written in permanent marker on one side. He tiptoes toward the door while two more nervous rings buzz.

“Whoever you are,” says Manta through his teeth, trying to see into the door's peephole, “you're gonna get it.”

Manta unlocks the lock and opens the door with the iron bar ready in his other hand. It takes him a second to recognize the messed-up individual who is standing on the other side of the door. His face is familiar. In spite of the dried blood and bruises. And the hair that falls in bloody dangling bits. The hair is definitely familiar. Manta frowns. The individual brings together two crudely bandaged hands in front of his bloodstained sweater in the universal sign for begging.

“You gots to help me,” says Pavel, his pleading hands together at his chest. “I'm in really serious trouble,” he says, but he has to stop talking to lift his arms and protect his head from the iron bar coming toward him. “Wait.”

Manta chases Pavel on the landing, hitting him on the arms and back.

* * *

The eighth season of Friends is a terribly complex amalgam of implied psycho-emotional references, relationships tainted by traces of lust and the complex forms of reproduction associated with heterodox sexualities. Iris Gonzalvo leans forward to snort a line of cocaine and uses the FAST FORWARD button on her remote to skip the parts that are less relevant to her grasp of the show's psycho-emotional drama. At the end of the seventh season, Monica and Chandler had finally managed to consecrate their love at the altar. After the fleeting intrigue triggered by Chandler's disappearance the night before the wedding. While still far from consolidating his relationship with Rachel, Ross had finally managed to establish a fairly satisfactory rapport with his son, Ben, whose mother, Carol, had divorced Ross in one of the early seasons after discovering that she was a lesbian. In a last unexpected twist, Phoebe and Rachel find out that one of the show's female characters is pregnant. Iris thinks she hears knocking on the door of the walk-in closet coming from inside, but she can't be sure because there are firecrackers going off in the street. The eighth season, as is customary in Friends, begins right where the previous one left off. In this case, minutes after Monica and Chandler's wedding. In which the best man was Joey dressed in a World War I uniform for an upcoming role. As the first few episodes play out, the cliffhangers from the previous season are resolved. Rachel turns out to be the one who's pregnant and Ross, after maintaining the suspense for a while, admits that he is the father. Yet not even the child they are about to have can bring them together. Instead they both continue going out with other people and Ross hooks up with a girl named Mona that Iris doesn't like at all. As the season progresses and the lines of cocaine disappear from the tray, things get complicated because stupid old Joey falls in love with Rachel. Iris isn't sure if she likes this new plot twist. Friends provokes complex networks of identification and repulsion in Iris. Of the three female leads, she doesn't think she has much in common with Monica, although she finds her the best-looking by far and the one she would sleep with if she were to have a lesbian relationship within the world of the show. Rachel is pretty stuck up and not very cute, although Iris admits that they share certain traits, while Phoebe is clearly just too histrionic. She has fucked the three male leads many times in her imagination, together and separately, although Joey is the one that she finds most sexually attractive and he would be her favorite if only he wasn't such a pinhead. In general, Iris considers herself a compendium of the virtues of the three female leads, without any of their snotty, stuck-up nonsense. It's true that the girls in Friends seem to live better than her, but that's because Iris hasn't yet achieved Fame and Success in Life. After half a dozen episodes, she doesn't hear firecrackers in the street anymore. The lines of cocaine have vanished and been replaced. The Finlandia with tonic on the tray is the fourth Finlandia with tonic. Iris isn't sure if she likes that Joey is going out with Rachel. The whole point of Friends is that Rachel ends up married to Ross. Iris has no doubt that she's going to achieve Fame and Success in Life very shortly. In fact, she's completely sure that the coming year will be the year she achieves Fame and Success in Life. Iris doesn't know exactly how she knows these things, but she knows she knows them, and that's good enough for her. Iris isn't like other people, thinks Iris. The eighth season of Friends is known for the appearance of a good handful of Hollywood stars as supporting characters in the series. Brad Pitt appears in the eighth season of Friends. So do Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn, both as guys Phoebe is dating, something Iris finds pretty unrealistic. It is completely silent now on the streets of Barcelona as Iris continues using the PLAY and FAST FORWARD buttons to watch her favorite show. A sound similar to a moo comes out of the walk-in closet where Eric Yanel seems to be unconscious inside the laundry basket.

* * *

Juan de la Cruz Saudade frowns as he examines the covers of a dozen DVDs from his lavish porn collection, lying in the bed of the bedroom he shares with his wife. He always ends up in the same dilemma when choosing a porn movie: big asses or little asses. The decision becomes even more complex given the size of his collection and its extraordinary range. The tits have to be big, that is the second most important rule. The pubic area has to be shaved. That is the first and most sacred of the rules. The absence of a shaved pubis is reason enough not to fuck his wife, currently absent from their household. Saudade sighs. Often the ass question mires him in a state of indecision that threatens to hinder the very process of porn watching. The visual and tactile sensations aroused by a small ass are radically different from those produced by a big ass. And yet, it can't be flatly said that one category is intrinsically better than the other. The pros and cons of both types of asses are fighting a fierce battle in his mind when he hears a series of timid little knocks on the bolted door of the bedroom.

“Daddy?” says the voice of his eight-year-old son. From the other side of the bolted door. “Can you open up for a second, please?”

Saudade clicks his tongue. He gathers up all the DVDs spread out on the bed and sticks them underneath the comforter. He sits on the bed, lights the stub of the joint he has in the ashtray on the bedside table and takes two drags as his son's knocking continues. He opens the window and waves his arms to get rid of the smoke like certain teenagers do after secretly smoking joints in the bathrooms of their parents' houses. Finally he opens the door and looks at his son with a defiant face. His son looks at him with a frown. Dressed in footsie pajamas that are too small for him and visibly squeeze his neck and shoulder area.

“What?” asks Saudade.

“Why is the window open when it's so cold out?” asks the boy with a frown. “And what is that bulge under the covers?”

Saudade puts his hands on his hips.

“Do you mind going back to your room?” he says. “It's Christmas Eve, for the love of God.”

Cristian Saudade, eight years old, only child of the civil marriage between Juan de la Cruz and Matilde Saudade, lowers his eyes. The multicolored patterns on his too-small footsie pajamas depict the four main characters in Los Lunis, a kids' show on TV that's like a poor man's Muppets. His father remains motionless at the door to his room wearing only briefs and a promotional T-shirt of a heavy metal group that peaked in the eighties.