Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“With the permission of the court, Your Honor,” he says. There are no foreign inflections in his voice. “I believe there are enough indications to suspect that the witness's written statements were signed under duress.”

The facially top-heavy judge stares at the witness from behind his glasses and asks him if he signed any statement under any sort of duress. He reminds him that he is under oath. Part of the public's attention, which was diverted toward the back of the room, now returns to the front. The witness rubs his eyes with the back of his hand and smiles sycophantically and looks at Aníbal Manta. Who is sitting in the front row of the audience. With a T-shirt of the classic formation of the X-Men under his suit jacket. The witness shrugs his shoulders.

There is a crooked lady cop's uniform strewn on the floor of the Private Room of the upper level of The Dark Side of the Moon, the kind that is used every year for the Crooked Lady Cops' Party. About six feet from where Aníbal Manta is having sex with the young owner of the uniform, who is currently naked. The uniform is made up of six pieces of clothing: a police hat, a short-sleeve button-down shirt, a leather miniskirt, a pair of stiletto heels and a white cotton G-string. The way Manta and the owner of the uniform are having sex on one of the sofas is as follows: Manta seated with his pants at his ankles and his arms extended along the back of the sofa, and the young woman sitting on top of him with her legs on either side of his body and her arms resting on his shoulders. The muffled but constant beat of dance music comes from the floor downstairs.

“Mr. Manta?” says a woman's voice from the other side of the locked door of the Private Room of The Dark Side of the Moon. There is a hint in her voice that could convey some sort of fear or perhaps general awkwardness. “Sorry to bother you. But we may have a problem downstairs.”

The signs of physical fatigue in the young woman having sex with Aníbal Manta are starting to show. Manta doesn't understand why it is practically impossible for him to get good erections even when his sexual partners are attractive young women from Eastern Europe like the dancers at The Dark Side of the Moon. Even when he doesn't have other men in front of him whose sexual vigor and genital size give him that familiar sensation of emotional stress. Manta turns his head to one side and checks his watch. It's obvious that what he's feeling during sex isn't what he should be feeling. The mere fact that the young dancer is trying with all her might to make him climax annoys him and makes him feel uncomfortable. Even though she's an exceptionally attractive nineteen-year-old. Even though he can't deny she's skilled and has considerable sexual stamina. In that sense, Mr. Bocanegra has always been in favor of paying more money for better dancers. It's as if the dancer's stamina and effort give Manta a feeling of psychological pressure and emotional tension that paradoxically keep him from achieving that level of satisfaction that his sexual partner expects of him.

“Mr. Manta?” repeats the voice from the other side of the locked door. “We have a guard down. I think his nose is broken. It's hard to tell with so much blood.”

The dancer's movements on top of Aníbal Manta have become slower and less frequent throughout the almost forty minutes they have been having intercourse. Now Manta slaps her on the ass and grabs her with his enormous hands and picks her up off his lap like a little child. The dancer collapses onto the sofa with trembling legs. Manta lights a cigarette and expels a mouthful of smoke with his gaze fixed on the door. It is true that acts of violence are much more satisfying to him, in every sense, than sex. Which is something that his psychologist seems to not only find interesting in and of itself, but also indicative of many other things that Manta doesn't like to think about. In general, Manta finds it tedious and a bit annoying when his psychologist starts going on at length about the issue. The person on the other side of the locked door knocks hesitantly on it.

“Here you go, sweetheart.” He tosses a wad of rolled bills at the trembling dancer. “Remind me to buy you a drink later downstairs. Or two.”

The dancer drags herself over to one of the small glass tables and sniffs a line of coke. She lifts her nose and inhales sharply and stretches her neck in every direction like people do when they have a stiff neck. Manta keeps smoking with his pants at his ankles. All signs of any kind of erection he may have had in the last forty minutes are now gone. The dancer picks up her G-string from the carpet and puts it on one leg at a time and goes to open the door. Manta walks to the door of the Private Room with those short strides people take when they have their pants down at their ankles. Those penguin steps. In general, he doesn't understand why the hell people knock on the door and bug him when he has made it very clear that no one should come knocking on the goddamn door.

“I hope you have a good explanation,” says Manta to the waitress on the other side of the door to the Private Room. The waitress isn't wearing a corrupt policewoman uniform. The waitress is wearing white minishorts and is chewing gum and has her hands on her hips. “I'm waiting.”

The waitress makes a gesture with her hands that could convey something like impotence.

“It's Saudade. He climbed up one of the towers,” says the waitress. “With a bat. We don't know how to get him down. One of the guards is down for the count. The other took a few hits, but looks like he'll recover. The girls are putting ice on him. And I think one of the male dancers has a broken arm. I think we have a problem. There are a couple of tables broken, and some chairs and the glass on the bar,” she says. She stops to watch as the dancer finishes picking up her uniform from the floor and leaves. “Our problem showed up pretty wasted about an hour ago and kept drinking. Then he grabbed one of the girls by the hair and dragged her and tried to stick the…” She shrugs her shoulders. “Well, it doesn't matter. That's when the male dancer tried to stop him and got his arm broken.” She furrows her brow. “No, wait. That was later, when he threw the chair over the bar.”

Manta continues smoking in silence. With his shrunken, slightly bruised penis visible between his enormous hairy legs. Somehow, he thinks, fate could be offering him a wonderful opportunity. Something that he's been trying to do for years and which has probably turned into what his psychologist would probably consider some sort of repressed inner torment. Brought on by something he should have done a long time ago and never did. In the end, you shouldn't underestimate the healing power of certain acts of violence. The waitress still hasn't mentioned the fact that Mr. Bocanegra is about to arrive any minute now to preside over the Crooked Lady Cops' Party. One of the most popular parties at The Dark Side of the Moon. Visitors from all over the country are expected, and others that made reservations from France and Italy. A large group of passengers from a cruise ship docked in Barcelona is expected. They set up a backdrop with a prison theme and two elevated platforms with searchlights on top, imitating the shape of prison observation towers. So the girls can dance on top of them. Bocanegra came up with the idea after seeing a performance in Amsterdam where the girls danced holding spotlights in their hands.

“Mr. Bocanegra could arrive at any minute,” says the waitress. She blows a bubble with her gum and pops it almost immediately. “If we didn't have enough problems already.”

Aníbal Manta sighs and pulls up his pants. Two minutes later and two floors below, the private elevator for staff and management of The Dark Side of the Moon drops Manta off inside the circular bar of the Eclipse Room. A dozen girls dressed in crooked cop uniforms are taking cover behind the bar with the waitresses and the inert body of one of the club's security guards. At hip height, the crooked lady cops wear a belt with a loop designed to carry their billy clubs. In the billy club loops, the crooked lady cops carry long latex double-sided dildos. The security guard who's down for the count has a face full of blood and a gap where his upper incisors should be. Manta picks a piece of chair up off the carpet and looks at it thoughtfully.