Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

Iris stands up, her eyes squinted to keep the cigarette smoke out, and she pulls her skirt down with a pensive face. Looking at the snowy landscape on the other side of the window. The rural tableaux of livestock stables with snow-covered roofs. Cows completely still under the mist. Cows that look like statues of cows. They sometimes watch the train advance and sometimes don't. There is no trace of French shepherds or any other kind of French people. The train advances at full speed along some point on the route between Limoges and Orléans.

“Are you sure I don't know you from somewhere?” Aníbal Manta doesn't stop to speak as they walk in single file through the aisle between the different compartments of the Talgo. “There's something that doesn't fit.”

Iris leads with her purse over her shoulder. Manta follows her closely with a black briefcase in his hand. The handle of the briefcase has the logo of Arnold Layne Experts. Personally designed by Mr. Bocanegra. Iris contemplates the snowy landscape of the countryside on some point of the route between Limoges and Orléans. While still walking. Through the partially steamed-up window of the aisle between the Talgo's first-class private compartments. Manta seems to have recovered part of his composure and continues his probing.

“What did you say your name was?” he asks. “Penny? I don't buy it. I'm convinced I know you from somewhere.”

Iris keeps walking. In some of the fields the train passes there are fences made out of tree trunks that have doors for animals and openings too small for an animal to get through but big enough for a person to climb through, using a system of steps made out of trunks. During the first period of her romantic relationship with Eric Yanel, they spent three days at a horse farm in the part of France the Yanel family hails from. During one of those rare trips that Yanel took her on. Iris doesn't really have any bucolic memories of her visit to the horse farm. Not even close. Probably the most outstanding detail of said visit was the moment when she found Yanel having sex with the riding instructor. The same instructor that had given them a class that morning. The countryside was also snowy on that trip. In the guestrooms at the farm there were blankets that looked like untanned animal hides. With hair and everything. When Iris found them, the instructor was wearing her complete riding instructor uniform with the white pants around her ankles. The way Yanel was having sex with the instructor was: penetrating her from behind. In the position known as doggy style.

“You never worked at The Dark Side of the Moon?” says Aníbal Manta's voice from behind Iris Gonzalvo's back. With suspicious inflections that make you think of people with hospital robes sticking out from under their street clothes. Or dilettante grannies investigating complex criminal cases on board rural trains. “As a dancer? As a waitress? Or maybe working the private parties? This is ours.”

Iris stops in front of a private compartment that's far from hers. She releases a mouthful of smoke and tosses her cigarette butt through a window. The tinted glass of the compartment only shows two anthropomorphic outlines sitting in facing seats. Iris knocks on the sliding glass door of the compartment and waits for one of the two occupants to open it. The door slides open and Iris is greeted by the identical smiles of Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey. With their blond, freckled and partially bald heads. The one that has just opened the door looks first to one side of the aisle and then the other and finally makes a gesture indicating that Iris can enter.

“Miss DeMink,” says Mr. Fleck, or maybe Mr. Downey, as he shakes her hand and moves aside so she can come into the compartment. “You can't imagine what a pleasure it is for us to see you again.” He points with his head toward Aníbal Manta, who is standing on the other side of the door. “The bodyguard stays outside, as always.”

Iris Gonzalvo sits down and waits for the two men to fill the seat in front of her. The Talgo compartment has opaque, reddish brown curtains. The seats are upholstered with a pattern that imitates tweed. The wall lamps have lampshades shaped like truncated cones. It all makes you think of dilettante old ladies and police detectives with waxed mustaches and an irrepressible fondness for a good meal. Of railway crimes involving numerous suspects and labyrinthine plots of personal betrayals.

“We want to convey our sadness at seeing you in these circumstances,” says one of Mr. Travers's two employees.

“Talking about money is always unpleasant,” says the other.

“If only we could skip this hassle.” The first one makes some sort of helpless gesture with his hands. “But what can we do. It's the nature of business.”

Iris Gonzalvo nods with a half smile and opens her purse. She pushes her hair off of her forehead and pulls out the envelope with the Arnold Layne Experts logo whose contents detail the amount of the financial request. Mr. Downey or Mr. Fleck takes the envelope and starts to tear the edge of it with a concentrated expression. Iris's gaze wanders to a building on the other side of the window that looks like a windmill without those giant blades that windmills have in puzzles and on posters at travel agencies. Something partially red moves through the fog near the windmill and Iris imagines that it is a riding instructor with her little red jacket and her white pants down at her ankles. Then she imagines more horseback-riding instructors with their butts in the air. Hiding from the train behind stables covered with snow and leaping through the fields with difficulty due to the fact that they have their pants down at their ankles. Dozens of riding instructors covering their butts with their hands. Chased by groups of teenagers with desire on their faces. Chased by men with their penises in their hands. Trying to jump over the fences made of tree trunks and falling into the snow because of the pants around their ankles.

A throat clearing brings her back to the reality of the compartment. Mr. Fleck or Mr. Downey takes the document out of the envelope and his gaze slides vertically down it until it reaches the money figure. He makes an expression of theatrical perplexity and passes it to his colleague. The second man reads the figure and looks at the first with an identical perplexed expression. Now that she has them in front of her, Iris Gonzalvo discovers that the similarity to the main character in CSI is less striking than she had previously thought. The freckled redhead that solves all the CSI cases, while not very expressive in general, gives off a powerful virility and self-confidence that these two guys don't at all. In fact, now that she can see them better under the natural light that comes in through the train windows, their skin has a texture that reminds her vaguely of plastic. Finally Mr. Fleck, or maybe Mr. Downey, folds the document again and puts it back in the envelope. Now both men have those stereotypical expressions of shock and perplexity and somewhat amused incredulousness that are part of the universal body language of financial negotiations. One of them lets out a giggle.

“The answer is no, of course,” says the other. He takes a lighter out of his pocket and lights one of the corners of the envelope on fire. While holding it up by the opposite corner. “That, and that we are deeply disappointed. We aren't merchants, Miss DeMink. We don't bargain. We don't talk about money like hawkers on a public street.” He pauses to watch how the envelope burns with a flame that's barely visible under the light coming from the windows. Almost giving the impression that the envelope is spontaneously turning black and being consumed. “Mr. Travers is a very special person, we thought you understood that. A spiritually superior man. In many senses, more than just a man.”