Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“We've been lucky enough to find out some things about Travers from my father's diaries,” says Lucas Giraut. By this point he has moved far enough away from Iris that she's taken her hand off his shoulder. Now he is sitting in his familiarly rigid style on the bar stool. “He's an eccentric. We don't really know what kind of pieces he collects. My father's diaries say that they're extremely rare pieces. We can guess what some of them could be. Things that disappeared from the market, for example. But in general his collection is a mystery. Completely undocumented. And of course, we don't know where it is held. They say that Mr. Travers owns dozens of properties. And there's something else.” He clears his throat. “Mr. Travers is supposedly a well-known occultist. Of course, that adds to his legend.”

Iris Gonzalvo nods. Seated on either side of her, Lucas Giraut and Mr. Bocanegra exchange a glance. A glance too brief to be considered communication by anyone. Anyone but them. Somehow, Giraut understands what Bocanegra is thinking. Based on that single fleeting glance. They both seem to have perceived that certain something Iris Gonzalvo has that makes her strange. Beyond the questions associated with her sex appeal. And Giraut has also noticed the way Bocanegra is now looking at Iris. He isn't perplexed, that's for sure. Mr. Bocanegra's facial and gestural peculiarities don't allow him to express anything even close to perplexity. His features are too anchored in a strong, firm base of cruelty and power. His jaw seems made to destroy things. His mustache only bends into voracious expressions. His bald head is too wide and too shiny not to provoke associations with tyrannical leaders of the ancient world.

No, thinks Lucas Giraut, as the silence and the throat clearing seem to indicate that the conversation is drawing to a close. Bocanegra is not perplexed as he looks at Iris. Or suspicious. He's looking at her with something similar to genuine curiosity. Which is something Giraut has never seen on Bocanegra's face before.

“He's a man.” Iris Gonzalvo shrugs her shoulders. “Men don't scare me. I know how to deal with them. There are some differences, sure. But in general they're all more or less the same. Men are almost never a problem.” Her thin pale fingers hold up the glass of Krug very delicately. Her lips barely brush the edge when she takes a sip. “Women can be a problem, sometimes. It depends.”

Stripped of Iris Gonzalvo, the group playing darts has regained their truly profane nature. Men involved in a competitive activity with no purpose beyond itself. One of the most truly profane rituals of humanity. Without any more peculiar elements than the contrast between Pavel's exaggeratedly tall and pale figure and his Jamaican-inspired hair and clothing.

“I still keep thinking I've seen you somewhere,” growls Mr. Bocanegra. With a slight shaking of the head. With a slight furrowing of the brow. With a small, suspicious system of gestures. “I could almost swear I've seen you dance here. I don't like to be lied to.”

The clientele of The Dark Side of the Moon is the type of clientele that have made the place what it is over the past thirty years. Local politicians. International businessmen. With their ties festively loosened. Industry magnates with loosened ties and shoes kicked under the table. Sitting on velvet sofas with their arms around two young women dressed in G-strings and high heels. Entire armies of women with their corporate uniforms of G-strings and high heels.

“I do very nasty things to people who lie to me,” says Bocanegra. “Even when they're girls like you.”

Iris Gonzalvo smiles. The elevator in the middle of the circular bar opens its doors and a couple of waitresses in G-strings and high heels emerge, each holding high trays filled with drinks.

Koldo Cruz finishes spreading shaving cream on his face, his only eye looking alternately at the mirror and at the portable television on a shelf of the bathroom. In the upper floor of his house. The fact that he only has one eye forces him to make lateral head movements in order to shave and not miss anything on TV. The patch that usually covers his eyeless socket is on the bathroom shelf, next to the television and other personal hygiene objects. The images on television have supposedly been recorded by an amateur videographer on vacation in Indonesia. There are people running in terror. In what could be a coastal tourist complex. Then a gigantic wave appears and drags off all the people that were running in terror.

Cruz picks up his razor and turns on the faucet to wet the blades. Since surviving the bombing he has learned to feel his way through shaving so he doesn't have to look at his face without the eye, or at the steel plate that replaces his right temple. That was before he started lifting up the patch and showing his eyeless socket to satisfy the requests of his friends' nieces and nephews. Beside the television and the patch there are a couple of bongs and a bag with thirty grams of marijuana brought specially from Mexico. On the television, the guy filming the gigantic Indonesian wave realizes that the wave is coming at him faster than he can run and drops his camera. Cruz proceeds to shave his face according to his daily strategy: first the cheeks, then the neck and finally the mustache and chin.

He leaves the bathroom, shaved and with his patch back in place, dressed in a wifebeater and long johns, with his towel over his right shoulder. He greets the two workers that are installing the new electrified steel bars into the upper-floor windows and he reminds them that there are practically limitless supplies of beer available to them in the refrigerator downstairs. A refrigerator that looks more like a cold store. Koldo Cruz likes to show signs of largesse with people who lack his personal fortune. And the genius needed to amass a personal fortune like his. He passes in front of his young Russian fiancée's private bathroom where, like every morning, she's locked inside for at least an hour. Koldo Cruz likes to pretend, to her, that he doesn't know she shoots up heroin in the bathroom each morning. At the same time, he calls her dealer every other day to check up on her consumption levels. Standing in front of his bedroom's full-length mirror, he dresses and ties his tie as the workers sporadically walk around lugging steel structures at the back of the mirror's surface. Koldo Cruz would never admit that he's bored. In his opinion, it's a question of balance. Everything in life is about balance. And it simply happens that sometimes his inner demand for emotional balance leads him to do things that other people would find atrocious. Now he checks his Cartier watch with inlaid diamonds. Three minutes until his daily meeting at the Caipirinha café-bar, located exactly one and a half blocks from the electrified perimeter of his house.

The morning is sunny in a lackluster way. A lazy, lackluster sky floats over Pedralbes. Koldo Cruz buys La Vanguardia from a newspaper stand on the way to the café and folds it meticulously three times along its transversal axis. Forty seconds later, he pushes open the glass door of the Caipirinha café-bar and waits a moment in the doorway for the entire morning staff to greet him. Cruz started buying his own copy of La Vanguardia at the newspaper stand instead of reading the copy the café has available for customers after one morning a customer, who was not a regular, insisted on holding on to it for more than thirty-five minutes. Forcing a heated discussion that ended with threats of physical violence. Since that day, the entire morning staff of the Caipirinha café-bar has treated Cruz with awkward friendliness.

Cruz crosses the café with jovial strides and takes his regular spot at the bar. The waiter puts a Macallan with ice in front of him, meticulously prepared the way Mr. Cruz likes it, with a lot of Macallan and a little ice. Beside the whiskey a small plate of olives appears.