Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

After a taxi ride and an hour of violent sex, Hannah Linus is lying in the bed in her apartment beside Saudade's sweaty tattooed body. Overcome by postcoital sloth. The layout of their horizontal bodies on the king-size bed of Hannah Linus's apartment is the following: He is faceup, with his hands interlocked beneath the nape of his neck. With his legs extended and his feet slightly sticking out over the bottom end of the bed. Whistling some optimistic postcoital song. She is at a semi-fetal angle, with her body curled and facing away from Saudade's, massaging her temples with the fingers of one hand. Victim to that wave of postcoital pessimism, and waiting for the Minimum Acceptable Time to pass so she can kick her sexual partner out of her bed and her apartment. The colossal tedium of having to share the moments after orgasm. The uncontrollable urges of freedom. Saudade springs from the bed, still whistling, and leaves the bedroom. Hannah Linus takes advantage of the moment alone to put on her underwear and a skirt.

“Don't make plans for this summer,” says Saudade. The distance and the specific degree of echo to his voice indicate to Hannah Linus that he has entered the kitchen. That he's probably holding the door of the refrigerator open and examining its contents. “I'm gonna take you to Thailand. To one of those hotels on the beach that have absolutely everything. Where they do everything for you. You know what I mean. You're gonna love it.” Hannah Linus thinks she can hear the noise of pantry doors opening and closing. “Even though you're not into chicks. The chicks there touch you in a way that makes you forget about everything. Forget about those snooty places you go to. With the little bubbles and all that. There are no massages here like the ones they give you there, darling.”

Hannah Linus notices a strange smell. She sits up with her vaguely sore limbs and puts on a shirt. Saudade's voice now sounds slightly occluded and distant, as if he were eating something and had moved to the living room. Hannah Linus puts on a shoe and limps out of the bedroom with the other shoe in her hand. Saudade is seated on the sofa with the television remote control in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. He looks at Hannah Linus with a smile.

“I'll pay for everything, of course,” he says. “I'm gonna be loaded. Very soon.”

Hannah Linus throws her shoe with all her might toward Saudade's smiling head. He has no problem avoiding the projectile with a lateral head movement. Still maintaining his optimistic expression. The heel of the shoe leaves a nick in the wall's plaster in the shape of a heel of a shoe.

A ten-foot-long Venezuelan crocodile hangs, suspended from a half dozen cables, from the ceiling of the main room of the Atomic restaurant in Barcelona's Ensanche. Above and to the right of the slightly lateral table where Iris Gonzalvo and Lucas Giraut are seated. At dinner hour. In the main room, which is packed on a Monday dinner hour. The restaurant's walls are decorated with framed reproductions of photographs related to nuclear radiation and genetic mutations. In the entryway, right above the reservation desk where an employee dressed in an aseptic-looking red kimono checked Iris and Giraut's reservation, an enormous black-and-white photograph shows a human silhouette stamped into a wall in Hiroshima by radiation. It's similar to a shadow in negative. The effects of instantaneous disintegration. The employees with aseptic red kimonos come and go through the various sections of the restaurant, looking like characters in one of those science-fiction films where humankind has evolved to the point where human emotions have been systematically eradicated.

“Miss Gonzalvo,” Lucas Giraut starts to say.

“Iris,” she interrupts.

“Miss Iris.” Lucas Giraut contemplates the contents of his plate with a vaguely devastated expression. Something that appears to be a bone-colored cube surrounded by a garland of herbs, with no apparent relationship to its designation on the menu. “What I'm trying to say is that I'm willing to help you. In the terms that you yourself suggested. It is true that there is an opening. I've been looking into it. Mr. Yanel has not only stopped showing up for work meetings. He doesn't answer his cell phone, either. One could say he's disappeared without a trace. And that has made the people he works with a bit nervous, naturally. And I want it to be clear that I'm not saying that you have anything to do with what's happened.” Giraut looks at his companion's plate. The soup on Iris Gonzalvo's plate is the same color as the employees' uniforms. In it float shavings of something unidentifiable. He clears his throat. “In spite of the fact that you showed up at my house practically the same day as the disappearance occurred. In any case, I can help you to get that job. It doesn't have anything to do with a film. I've already told you about Mr. Bocanegra. And the sort of work he does. Bocanegra is the man Mr. Yanel worked for. And my partner in the project we're in the middle of now. I could create a spot for you. However, there is something I want to ask you for. Something that you could do for me. That is, if it's okay with you.”

Lucas Giraut buries his spoon into the bone-colored cube. The texture of which looks like the texture of flan or of a soft pudding. The suit he is wearing that night is a tobacco-colored suit with dark pinstripes. From Lino Rossi's new line.

“You want me to fuck you,” says Iris.

She tries a spoonful of aseptic red-colored soup. In that blank way that one takes medicine or tastes something tasteless.

“Listen.” Lucas Giraut makes an annoyed face. Or his version of an annoyed face. A simple fleeting nuance of worry mixed with an element of impatience. “I'm not explaining myself well here. I know this is going to sound ridiculous to you. Like the typical story pulled from a movie or some novel, some thriller. It's still hard for me to come to terms with sometimes, I assure you. But Mr. Bocanegra has a gang. Like a gang of gangsters. That steal very valuable paintings and all that. And then there's another gang. The boss of that other gang is named Koldo Cruz. Most of its members are Russian, from what I understand. And I think that these two gangs are at war. Wait.” He lifts a hand to keep Iris Gonzalvo's reaction in check. She has begun to have the trace of a vaguely mocking smile. “I know that this all seems silly. But I have a theory. My theory is that in the beginning there was only one gang. A long time ago. Thirty years. They called themselves the Down With The Sun Society. And there were three of them, that's the most important part. There was Mr. Bocanegra and Koldo Cruz, and my father, too. Who was something like the brains of the gang. And then something happened, I don't know exactly how, but it must have been something terrible. Someone betrayed my father. He went to jail. He was never the same again. You could say I never knew him. You have to understand. This is very important for me. I'm talking about my father.”

Iris Gonzalvo blinks. Her soup-eating style consists of bringing the spoon to her mouth with the precise amount of soup and introducing it into her mouth with only a slight separation of her lips and with nothing even remotely resembling a slurp or that unpleasant pursing of the mouth that some people do when eating soup. Without that gaze off into the distance or into oblivion that some people have when eating that makes one think of people's animal origins.

“Miss Iris.” Giraut lowers his voice. “I want to take revenge on the people that betrayed my father. I have some idea who they were. That is my project. And I'd like for you to help me. If you don't mind, of course.”