Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“That chick,” corrects Matilde, “is your aunt.”

The teenagers are now passing the joints among themselves and taking nervous drags on them while they nod to the rhythm of the music and raise their thumbs to indicate urban subcultural satisfaction.

“She also told me that if I want pizza,” continues Cristian, “I should ask my mother or my pig of a father for money and go buy some pizza. But nobody ever gives me money.”

Saudade looks at his wife with a triumphant expression.

“You see?” he says, now almost shouting to make himself heard over the music from the portable sound system. “The kid wants to come home. You're wrecking a home with these things you imagine.” He looks at his son and puts a patriarchal hand on his shoulder. “You want your mother to let you come home, right?”

Eight-year-old Cristian Saudade looks alternately at his father and at his mother.

“No,” he says. “I don't know.”

The joints seem to have stimulated the dancing skills of the group of Latin American teenagers, some of whom have put on gloves and have started to rehearse break-dance movements on the ground. The others clap rhythmically and some imitate the sound of rhythm boxes with their mouths. A couple of them now look out of the corner of their eyes at the strange family group seated on the bench in front of them with a child in the middle who is covering his ears with his hands. Juan de la Cruz Saudade puts out his cigarette and spits on the ground between the legs of his powder blue and white sweatpants. One of the Latin American teenagers shyly approaches and offers the Saudades the joint he's smoking. The gesture seems rich in connotations of subcultural sociability and universal chemical brotherhood. Saudade stares at him with an incredulous expression.

“You want me to break your legs, asshole?” he shouts at the teenager who is offering him the joint. “Take that shit away from my son!”

Half a minute later the group of teenagers, with their jungle dances and their portable sound system, have disappeared without leaving a trace beyond a vague rhythmic pulsating of the park's cement. A couple of irritated-looking pigeons alight on the area surrounding the Saudades' bench. Flapping their wings irritably and shooting hateful looks.

“I'll give you one last chance.” Matilde scratches her head nervously. “You can come home, but with certain conditions. You have to follow some rules. First of all, no seeing that bitch. Second, no other bitches neither.” She thinks for a moment. As if she had forgotten the rest of the rules and was searching for them in her memory. “And that's it. Two rules.”

Cristian Saudade turns his head slowly toward his father, without taking his hands off his ears, and watches him in silence. Matilde looks at her husband with rhythmic gestures of surprise in her face. With something similar to expectation. With her hands in the side pockets of her knockoff sweatshirt. The situation is generally one of family expectation. With two pairs of eyes observing the patriarch of the family unit. One of those moments that seem crucial to the future evolution of the bloodline. Saudade pulls his back up against the back of the bench. He lifts his feet and clears his throat in acknowledgment of the special relevance of the present family moment.

“Baby,” his tone is simultaneously contrite and obsequious, the standard universal tone of Husbands Returning to the Fold, “I know I did terrible things a long time ago. But it's those guys I work with, you know. Aníbal and Bob Marley and the rest. Bob Marley is that Russian I told you about. I think they're a bad influence on me.” He pauses and looks at his wife, who is rolling her eyes while at the same time convulsively wrinkling her forehead. “They're always trying to make me be like them. You know what I mean. I'm almost positive they've put stuff in my drinks plenty of times. Ecstasy and shit like that.”

Matilde Saudade hugs herself against the cold. The new year has just started and at a few minutes to noon the park seems to be empty except for the Saudades. Matilde Saudade makes a gesture with her hand toward the pack of Fortunas that her husband has in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Saudade snorts impatiently and offers his wife a cigarette.

“Are you completely sure we've never met this girl before?” Mr. Bocanegra takes a pensive drag on his cigar. Pursing his mouth and mustache in the shape of descending curves. His gesture is closer to suspicious than perplexed. “Because I think I've seen her before. Her face, her tits.” He shrugs. “Those things I think I could forget. Even her ass. But not those legs. I am almost positive I've seen those legs before. I recognize them even in this light. I don't think anybody could forget those legs.”

Lucas Giraut and Aníbal Manta follow Mr. Bocanegra's gaze past the bar of the Eclipse Room at The Dark Side of the Moon. Beyond the groups of customers drinking at the bar and toward the vicinity of the darts area. Where Iris Gonzalvo is playing darts in the company of half a dozen men. And leading the game in points, judging by the scores written on the chalkboard beside the dartboard. Winning the game in progress by a spectacular margin. A margin that any experienced dart player would undoubtedly deem humiliating. Although none of Iris Gonzalvo's rivals seem particularly humiliated. Most of them surround Iris Gonzalvo with sycophantic expressions and are lighting her cigarettes or bringing her glass after glass of Finlandia and tonic and clapping and cheering each one of her throws. The way Iris Gonzalvo throws the darts isn't that vaguely comical way that many women throw darts: she doesn't stick the tip of her tongue between her lips or let out nervous giggles or roll her eyes in self-parody every time one of her throws misses the board. The way she throws darts is self-assured and elegant. Bending her arm at the precise angle and with no more motion in her body than a slight swaying of the hips that reveals a triangular section of very pale and slender thigh through the side slit in her skirt.

Mr. Bocanegra, Lucas Giraut and Aníbal Manta are watching Iris Gonzalvo with contemplative faces.

“Where did you say she came from?” Mr. Bocanegra exhales a mouthful of cigar smoke that rises up between the bar lights of the Eclipse Room. In the shape of incandescent spirals.

The Eclipse Room is the most popular and most crowded area of The Dark Side of the Moon. Seven thousand and five hundred square feet of carpeted floor and velvet sofas and mirror balls and quality wood panels and statues. The statues, according to Mr. Bocanegra, are the element that sets The Dark Side of the Moon apart from just any old place. That gives it a different atmosphere from other adult entertainment spots. Because the statues, according to Bocanegra, transport you to other worlds, fantastical worlds. Like those gardens filled with statues that you see in movies. Or like those psychedelic gardens on the covers of British rock records from the seventies. If you want to create a special place, says Mr. Bocanegra, put in all the statues you can.

“She's an old friend of mine,” says Lucas Giraut. He takes a cigarette out of his embossed case and taps it against the palm of his hand softly before putting it between his lips. “She's an actress. Maybe you've seen her in a commercial on TV.”

Aníbal Manta looks at Iris Gonzalvo with his brow furrowed. The bar stool he's sitting on is too small for him, just like the bar itself. Producing the strange sensation that he is the only adult seated at a child-sized replica of a bar in an amusement park for kids.

“She looks familiar to me, too,” he says. “Almost like I know her from here. Like she'd been one of our girls.”