Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

“We're not going out,” says Lucas Giraut.

“That's what I said.”

Iris Gonzalvo sits on the bed and leans forward to pick up her underwear. Lucas Giraut's bedroom doesn't look like any bedroom Iris has ever seen. It's very big and has old windows with mullions and even one of those big trunks with rivets like you see in the movies. If it weren't for the television and the walk-in closet separated from the bedroom by a curtain, she would feel like she was in one of those movies, like The Lord of the Rings, where people live in castles and fly on the backs of dragons. There is also a painting depicting a half-naked guy tied to a post with a ton of arrows sticking out all over his body. The guy with the arrows is looking up toward the heavens and looks like he's crying and his long upturned face somehow makes you think of Britney Spears's face. In Iris's opinion. The light from the streetlights of the Old City that enters the windows is halogen yellow colored and a little like a scary movie. Iris puts on a very small pair of panties and walks up to some sort of enormous antique throne made of painted wood that has a circular hole in the middle of the seat. A bag of golf clubs sticks out of the hole. She takes the golf clubs out and sits down. She puts her slender arms on the arms of the throne and looks at Giraut.

“Is this what I think it is? Must be worth a lot of money.”

“It comes from Croatia.” Giraut takes a drag on the cigarette with his gaze fixed on the floating beams of the ducal ceiling. “It's worth about five thousand euros. Depending on who you sell it to. It's from the seventeenth century. A unique piece. Only members of the high aristocracy could have one of those, of course.” He pauses. “I've been thinking.” He wipes off a bit of ash that has fallen onto his pale, almost completely hairless chest. “About Valentina. I want to get her out of that clinic. Although I don't know how to do it yet. I've been sending her chapters of her favorite novel. Sewn into other books. They won't let her read Stephen King. They don't let her read anything she likes. I've been talking to her doctors. I think they think that the things she likes are what's hurting her.”

Lucas Giraut's wardrobe extends along an entire wall and has many dozen Lino Rossi suits hanging in it. Of different colors. All from the most recent season. There are also those kinds of hanging canvas drawers that people use to store shoes. Iris Gonzalvo takes one of the golf clubs out of the bag and pretends she is making a swing with both arms. Still sitting on the seventeenth-century toilet. Her body is slender and her pubis smooth and soft and Lucas Giraut doesn't remember ever seeing a more sexually attractive woman in his life.

“I've never much liked old things,” she says. “I don't understand why they're interesting. At home the oldest thing we had was the television listings from the week before. Anyway it was impossible to keep anything for more than a week because Eric used to sell it all. He sold almost all my things. They just disappeared. That's something drug addicts do. It's a miracle he never sold our TV.” She puts her feet up on the seat of the Croatian toilet made of antique polychrome wood and hugs her knees. “Not even Eric would dare sell the TV. In the end all we had was a mattress and the lamps and the TV. Although it's more than I have now. I don't know where I'm going to live. I've been staying at my friend's house for ten days and I haven't got any money.”

Lucas Giraut keeps focusing on the architectural details of the second-floor ceiling of the ducal palace. The truth is he has no memories of his parents' separation. The only thing he seems to remember from his early childhood is blurry impressions of golden flashes from cocktail cabinets and the violent throwing of objects. Glimmers of his father's terrified face at the window of the Fishing Trophy Room. Seen through binoculars from a window of the North Wing. The guests seated among the taxidermied fish and black-and-white photographs of people wearing vests with many pockets. The already treelike face of Fonseca seen from that child's perspective. More or less waist height. Neglected material in the abandoned corners of his mind. One of the possible reasons why Lucas Giraut doesn't remember his parents' separation is that it took place during the Years of Physical Impossibility, in which his parents were never in the same room at the same time. In some unclear period that Giraut situates near the deaths of Rock Hudson and the Ayatollah Khomeini.

“You can come live here.” Giraut sits up and feels around for a pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. It has gotten dark very quickly and now the bedroom is lit only by the halogen yellow and vaguely scary light of the Gothic Neighborhood's streetlights, which comes in through the windows with mullions. “I don't mean living with me like we were boyfriend and girlfriend or living together as a couple. But there's a lot of room in this apartment. You can stay in one of the bedrooms. It could even be good for our mission.” He turns to look at Iris, who is still sitting hugging her knees on the seventeenth-century toilet. “We can prepare your visits to Mr. Travers together. I can give you some private classes in the history of art. To perfect your role and all that. At least until he decides to buy the paintings.”

Iris Gonzalvo looks at Lucas Giraut with a face not entirely devoid of sympathy. Her body has tattoos and piercings in places where Giraut had no idea you could get tattoos and piercings. In places that don't show even when you're wearing summer clothes.

“There's something that doesn't fit in this whole story.” Iris extends her arm as far as she can to take the lit cigarette Giraut is offering her from the bed. “I don't understand what a guy like you is doing working with a guy like Bocanegra. It's really weird. And I think it has something to do with your father. With what happened to your father. And with you wanting to get revenge on whoever sent him to jail.” She releases a mouthful of smoke and gives the cigarette back to Giraut through the space between the bed and the antique toilet. “I think you're hiding something. That you have plans you're not telling anyone. I don't know exactly what kind of plans. But I think you're planning to do something incredibly stupid. Like stabbing Bocanegra in the back. Stealing his money, or the paintings.” She shrugs her shoulders. “Or both.”

Lucas Giraut doesn't say anything. Through the floorboards you can hear the vibration of the music Marcia Parini is listening to in the apartment downstairs.

“Do you have any idea what someone like Bocanegra would do to you if he found out what you're planning?” Iris looks at Giraut with a frown. “Why do you think Bocanegra knows people like Travers, or that guy that forged the paintings? Because he's powerful. And I don't just mean rich. I mean that you can't steal anything from these people and then hide. Excuse me, but you don't know anything about criminals. I know a few things.”

“A few months ago I found one of my father's accounting ledgers.” Giraut gives the cigarette back to Iris again. “My father had it hidden in a secret place. In Apartment Thirteen. I still can't believe that no one found it before I did. It was his secret accounting. That didn't even show up in the company's private ledgers. You can't even imagine the amount of money my father was dealing with. I'm not surprised that the ledger was so well hidden. When I read it, I discovered something. I found the answer I was looking for.” He sits up to lean his head on one arm so he can look at Iris while he talks. “My father had stopped doing business with Bocanegra three or four months before he was betrayed. All his dealings were with a guy named Koldo Cruz. They had shut Bocanegra out. They may have been doing business behind his back. And then my father was handed over to the police and sent to jail. And guess what else. A year later someone put a bomb in Koldo Cruz's house. And very nearly killed him. You understand?”