Javier Calvo - Wonderful World

Iris Gonzalvo watches as the building that could be a windmill without giant blades becomes smaller and smaller in the distance. Through the mist. The image of someone mounting a half-naked riding instructor as if the instructor were a horse filters into her mind. Smacking her on the ass with a riding crop. She blinks to make the image disappear. She sighs and pulls a pack of cigarettes from her purse. She stands up. Before the questioning gazes of the two balding men with freckled, vaguely plastic skin.

“My bosses are very busy men.” She brings another cigarette to her lips and carries out the same gesture of asking for a light that makes her breasts compress and project forward while at the same time making her skirt retract toward her waist. Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey simultaneously raise their hands to the inner pockets of their suit jackets in search of their lighters. There is a moment of silence as she lights the cigarette. Then she releases a mouthful of smoke and looks at first one and then the other. “And even though you don't believe it, they aren't interested in hearing stupid stories about spiritual leaders and dark ceremonies. Because we are in business. So go home and explain to Travers why you didn't get his beloved little paintings.”

Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey look at each other with worried faces. Iris Gonzalvo reaches out her hand that isn't holding the cigarette toward the handle of the compartment's tinted glass sliding door. On the other side of which you can see the silhouette of Manta's back. A silhouette larger than many clothes closets. One of the blond men puts his palm against the door. Effectively blocking it from opening. Iris stares at the freckled back of the hand. With her purse over her shoulder. She takes a drag on her cigarette and releases a mouthful of smoke with her gaze fixed on the door and on the hand blocking her way.

“We all know what Arnold Layne really is,” says the man whose hand is resting on the door. He gestures to Iris in the direction of the seat and waits for her to sit back down. Then he shakes his head. “And the kind of limitations it has when selling artistic material. Due to its very nature. That hasn't changed since the sixties.”

“You guys are a band of two-bit thieves,” says the other. “Basically, we're the only possible buyers for your paintings.”

“Barcelona isn't even on the international map,” adds the first.

Iris Gonzalvo takes the cigarette from her lips with a perfectly manicured hand. She feels none of the tension associated with danger that you supposedly feel when you get involved in the international crime world. What she feels has more to do with pieces finally falling into place in the enormous windmill puzzle of the cosmos. Through her mind float images of herself up on a giant stage. A stage much larger than the crappy stages at The Dark Side of the Moon. Filled with that horror movie smoke that looks like fog, the kind rock musicians used in the eighties. Standing on a stage filled with smoke, with an enormous bouquet of flowers in her arms, and offering her hand to a crowd driven wild with desire. A crowd made up of men that undress her with their eyes and clap wildly and throw both men and women's underwear onto the stage. Some seem to have their dicks in their hands. Behind the stage, a giant screen shows giant images of her. Sitting on a blue sofa. The sofa from the living room of Monica's apartment on Friends. Surrounded by the rest of the characters on the show. Discussing issues related to potential pregnancies and unexpected changes of sexual orientation.

“Your bosses don't have the kind of contacts in America or Japan that they'd need to move this kind of material,” says one of Mr. Travers's employees. Sitting down again on the seat in front of Iris in the Talgo compartment. Wiping the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief. “Which means that you're bluffing. Which isn't very smart given the circumstances. I don't even think your bosses would agree with the way you're handling this negotiation.”

Iris shrugs her shoulders. She takes a long drag on her cigarette with her brow furrowed and stands up again. She opens the heavy sliding door and steps out lightly before the questioning and vaguely alarmed face of Aníbal Manta.

Manta catches up with her at the end of the aisle. He grabs her by the arm.

“What's going on?” he says to her. The pressure he's putting on Iris's arm causes her to stare at him with an expression of hate and pain. “Where do you think you're going?”

A voice makes them both turn. Coming from the compartment's still-open sliding door. Through which sticks out a vaguely blond and partially bald face.

“Miss DeMink.” The face traces a worried smile. “I think we can discuss your price. Although only as a provisional hypothesis. Without any firm commitment.”

Iris looks at Manta with a defiant smile. Manta lets go of her arm.

In the middle of the third hearing of his trial, sitting in the District Court's witness area, leaning slightly over the railing that separates his area from the rest of the room, Lucas Giraut confirms that something seems to have disappeared from the internal dynamics of his trial. Something almost impossible to identify. Something that has nothing to do with the trial's tension or any uncertainty about its outcome. Of course it has nothing to do with the sickly-looking lawyer's fervent attempts to change the course of that dynamic. On the other side of the railing, Carlos Chicote is sitting with his back curved. Rabidly chewing his nicotine-stained cuticles. Like some sort of accidental shipwreck survivor of the real questions that are being settled around him. Clinging to his scared smile. Which is like a facial floating plank of wood. The last stronghold of his businessman's identity.

“So then you are saying,” says Giraut's lawyer of Hindustani or possibly Arab origin to Giraut. Talking into his microphone. Leaning indolently on the railing of the area reserved for the defense. With an indolence that somehow seems related to that indefinable something that Giraut's trial has been gradually losing over the three sessions. “You are saying that you met Mr. Chicote for the first time approximately a year and three months ago. At a birthday party for your mother. An event entirely unrelated to company business. That in fact you never worked with Mr. Chicote. That in fact Mr. Chicote has never worked in the building that houses LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., in Barcelona. That you have never worked in the same workplace. What you are saying before this court, in other words,” he says. With his tie indolently loose around the collar of his shirt. With his jacket indolently placed over the back of the institutional chair. “Is that you've only seen Mr. Chicote in person half a dozen times in your life. Before this trial began. That before this trial you had only seen Mr. Chicote on six occasions. And on none of those occasions did you deal with company matters. I want the bench to take good note”—he holds up a sheet of paper indolently for the bench members to see—“that Mr. Giraut was able to remember and precisely date every one of his encounters with Mr. Chicote. Including details regarding the date and place and motive for each encounter.”

A court employee approaches the defense area to take the sheet of paper the non-Caucasian lawyer is holding up. The facially top-heavy judge is not leaning his head indolently on his hand. Nor has he taken off his shoes under his desk. Yet, there is something in his general attitude that seems to suggest the same indolent indifference of people who take off their shoes in public, or doodle on the paper in front of them, or rest their head wearily on the palm of one hand. The judge takes the paper that the court employee brings him and passes it to the court clerk, seated to his right on the bench. The clerk nods and passes it to a lower-ranking member of the judge's bench.