by Javier Calvo
A couple of minutes pass. A pair of salesgirls wearing the store's two-tone corporate vest hand out promotional T-shirts for WONDERFUL WORLD to the fans on line. With the same bucolic suburban scene and the same inscription, WONDERFUL WORLD, that adorns all the display stands and banderoles. When she gets to Valentina's spot in line, the employee looks at her with a concerned smile and offers her a large T-shirt.
“I only have sizes L and XL left,” the salesgirl starts to say, but she stops short when she sees Valentina's face. Who is now gnawing on the inside of her cheeks to mitigate the feeling of danger. “Okay, kid,” she adds in a slightly annoyed tone, “you don't have to get like that.”
One of the fans in the line is dressed as a zombie. He has white makeup on and his hair is covered in some sort of green gel and he has a fake scar on his neck that seems to be trying to indicate that he recently had his throat slit. Another of the fans on line has the frighteningly outdated hairstyle and pointy fake ears that characterize those born on the planet Vulcan. Some of the fans chat in low voices, as if they were in some sort of religious setting, and make jokes that can only be understood by Stephen King fans. Photographers, and even a couple of local television cameras, mill around the line taking photos of the fans. In her spot at the end of the line, Valentina Parini can feel her heart rate speeding up and she starts to see strange kaleidoscopic figures in the margins of her visual field. A minute later someone cuts a ribbon like the ones at the openings of official buildings and a burst of applause is heard accompanied by camera flashes. The line begins to advance as the first shoppers acquire their copies of Wonderful World. The first buyer holds his copy up over his head like people do when they've just won a sports trophy.
“Excuse me,” the person behind Valentina Parini in line says to her. “The line is moving.”
Valentina Parini has once again begun to rock back and forth. The number of fans that look at her strangely and distance themselves has increased in the last few minutes. After a moment, Valentina leaves her place in the line. The Christmas noises seem to come from everywhere and nowhere. The canned corporate carols. Valentina walks toward the desk where smiling employees with two-tone vests are ringing up sales. She takes a copy from the desk and hugs it against her chest.
“Hey,” says a fan who's buying his copy right then. “Where are you going? Get back in line.”
Valentina Parini snatches the book out of his hands and then tries to do the same thing to another fan near her, but the second fan holds on tightly to his copy and pushes Valentina.
“Excuse me,” says one of the employees to Valentina. “You have to wait in line. You can't do that.”
Valentina looks at the fan that pushed her with a face filled with hate. One of the employees puts a hand on Valentina's shoulder, and she turns and pushes him so hard against the desk covered with Stephen King's new novel that he falls onto the table. Knocking down all the piles of copies. Shouts are heard.
“Get out,” screams Valentina. As the walls of the bookstore begin to spin around her. Or maybe she's the one who's spinning. “I'm the only one who can solve this. Leave me alone.”
Most of the Stephen King fans have opted for moving away from Valentina, who seems to be about to lose her balance. A security guard approaches the scene with his walkie-talkie in his hand. Pushing aside a giant rabbit that is actually a person in a full-body rabbit costume. Valentina kneels on the ground, still hugging the book against her chest. Someone approaches her and she hits them in the crotch with her copy of Wonderful World. The employees in charge of selling Stephen King's new novel are explaining what's going on to the security guard, who looks at Valentina with a frown. Some of the press photographers are taking photographs of the girl kneeling on the ground. Someone asks if all this is part of the launch of Stephen King's new novel.
“Fuck,” says the Stephen King fan who has the outmoded hairdo and the ears of a Vulcan. “A real nutcase.”
On her knees on the ground, hugging her book, Valentina Parini bares her teeth threateningly. And in that precise moment, as the clocks in the Plaza Catalunya mark twelve on the dot, the lights in the store begin to flicker. A moment later they go out. The book section where the launch of Stephen King's new book is taking place is completely in the dark. Someone screams. After a moment, most of the Stephen King fans gathered there start shouting in terror.
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 28
Eclipse
Eric Yanel observes the upper part of the anonymous building uptown that houses the Hannah Linus Gallery with an anguished expression. Planted in the middle of the sidewalk, in front of the building's fire escape. He is wearing tall rubber boots and a protective jumpsuit, the kind people wear when working with toxic materials. On his jumpsuit there's a silk-screened schematic drawing of a lightning bolt cutting an insect in half and the words “ARNOLD LAYNE, WOOD PARASITE SOLUTIONS.” Behind him is Aníbal Manta, disguised in an identical, but much bigger, jumpsuit. The biggest protective jumpsuit Yanel has ever seen in his life. They're both wearing backpacks and have gas masks hanging from their necks. They're both standing on the sidewalk, looking up at the first-floor fire exit, which is directly connected to the offices of Hannah Linus's gallery. A few minutes before midnight on the Night of the World Launch of Stephen King's New Novel, and the street is deserted. The building is dark. The gallery occupies the first three floors, and the rest of the building is all offices. A company that promotes Barcelonian cuisine in the Far East. A company that subcontracts telephone customer care companies for the sale of telephone services. And the offices of a board game distributor on the top floor. The entire building is empty. Each corporate space is protected by its own alarm system. And the winter moon floats lazily over them all.
“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Aníbal Manta says finally. He looks at his colleague disapprovingly. “What's the point of us dressing like this if you're gonna show up with that face?” He shakes his head. “Why don't you just wear a sign that says 'I'm a criminal'?”
Eric Yanel doesn't look as if he's shaved in many days. The skin on his face has that crusty look of someone who's barely gotten out of bed for days. His traditional long blond wave of hair has turned into something closer to a twisted Mohawk. Rigid and greasy at the same time. His nose and eyes are red, like he's been crying. Now he sighs. He looks over his shoulder at Manta, who gives him a sign to wait. A pedestrian has just turned the corner and is now approaching along the sidewalk. Carrying a couple of department-store bags filled with Christmas gifts and walking with his head bowed, absorbed in the little clouds of steam of his own breath. Manta waits for him to get far enough away and lifts a thumb toward his partner in crime.
“Now,” he says. “And make sure your hands don't shake. I'm not in the mood to have you fall on me.”
Yanel grabs the lower end of the building's fire escape ladder. He climbs up to the first landing and drops onto the steel structure. Aníbal Manta crosses the street with that paradoxical gracefulness of his that makes you think of superheroes genetically altered by radiation. Yanel picks up the backpack his partner tosses to him and then releases the ladder. The entire steel structure trembles and clatters and threatens to collapse under Aníbal Manta's weight.
Yanel unfolds his case of small, shiny instruments in front of the fire exit. He chooses from the selection of rods and tiny tools that look like miniature dental equipment and spends a minute or two working on the lock. In spite of the cold, a drop of sweat slides down his cheek and falls onto the frost-covered steel of the fire escape. Followed by another. The infinitesimal little noises that his actions produce inside the lock are transformed into an electronic signal and monitored by a little digital device that Manta has stuck to the surface of the door next to the lock. Yanel moves his rods with his gaze fixed on the little device's screen and finally a click is heard, loud enough to cause Manta to let out a satisfied grunt. They both gather up all their vaguely dental equipment as fast as they
can and push the door open. Yanel sniffs and Aníbal Manta realizes that what he had thought were drops of sweat were actually tears. Yanel dries his cheeks and takes a deep breath. Like a tormented actress regaining her composure just before going onstage to act in a comedy.
Inside the building, they both place bands with special nonreflective flashlights onto their heads. They have a dark hallway in front of them. From the building's blueprints they know that the hallway ends at the back exit of the gallery's office complex. And that is where they stop. In front of the door's security panel with its magnetic card reader. In front of the office's alarm system box that hangs above the door. Everything seems to converge at that door for an instant. An instant of cosmic respect. Of reverential fear. Aníbal Manta farts in the silence of the hallway.
Yanel runs the copy of Hannah Linus's magnetic card through the reader. A little green light turns on. Beneath the vaguely bluish glow of Yanel and Manta's nonreflective flashlights, Hannah Linus's complex of offices is somewhat like an underwater world. The switched-off computers are banks of coral. The photos of family members, stuffed toys, and other artifacts designed to humanize the desks are the remains of shipwrecks. The broom closets are dangerous underwater caves. On the other side of the office complex lies the door to the gallery. The real Treasure Cave. Yanel opens it with the copy of the card.
The two intruders remain in the threshold for a moment. The gust of air-conditioning that comes in from the gallery brings with it a scent of old things. A scent of wood and earth and something that could be the aroma of moth-eaten fabric stored at the back of a closet. They both look at their watches. Two minutes to midnight. Their operation has so far taken four and a half minutes.
The Night of the World Launch of Stephen King's New Novel is extremely cold and triggers that feeling of distress you get in the seconds before a great disaster. Aníbal Manta and Eric Yanel noticed it in the car on the way to the Hannah Linus Gallery. Hannah Linus herself is noticing it right now, in the form of a sexual session with Saudade that is less satisfying and exhausting than usual and much less filled with moments of evil, self-degrading pleasure. Marcia Parini notices it as a vague fear that something terrible will happen in the discothèque where she is having drinks with a potential sexual partner. Raymond Panakian notices it in the middle of his delirium tremens shakes. Everyone notices it, although just during a few seconds of confusion. Objects are more defined than normal. The fine hair on your skin stands on end when touched, with the exacerbated sensitivity of a high fever. The same empty gallery that on any ordinary night would be placid suggests imminent catastrophe. Like those things that hunt children in their dark bedrooms. Those nameless, shapeless things.
Aníbal Manta and Eric Yanel leave their backpacks on the floor and take out the zippered bags designed to transport fragile works of art. They are silver bags that from the outside are strangely similar to the bags used to transport refrigerated foodstuffs. Each one of their movements inside the gallery has been scrupulously rehearsed and calculated. To save time and enhance the operation's internal efficiency. They take the four St. Kieran Panels off the wall and leave them on the floor next to their backpacks and zippered bags. The distance between the edges of each painting's base and the hooks that hold it to the wall have been replicated to the millimeter. Everything is going well, in spite of the vague, general sensation that everything is going badly. Then something happens. The two intruders look at each other. At first it's just a slight trembling of the outlines of things. It takes them a moment to realize that it's the light flickering. Or, better put, the lights. The pilot light of the gallery's security circuit. The glow of the streetlights that enters through the gallery's skylight. Even the light from the flashlights attached to their heads. Everything blinks for a second. And then goes out.
Aníbal Manta and Eric Yanel remain in the dark for a moment. Listening to the noise of their own breathing. Even though they're at least three feet away from each other, the darkness is so complete that they can't make out each other's movements. The world seems to have just disappeared.
“What's going on?” says Yanel.
“It's a blackout,” says Manta.
Neither of them mentions the fact that their battery-powered flashlights have also gone out. They deliberately don't mention it.
“Let's wait.” Manta lifts a finger even though he knows Yanel can't see him. “And let's not lose our cool.”
They both remain in their places. After a moment an erratic noise is heard, coming from where Manta thinks Yanel is. Some sort of soft, damp cough that slowly turns into a choked, hoarse weeping. Aníbal Manta takes the band off of his head and taps the flashlight with his finger. He brings it to his ear with a frown. Perhaps unconsciously imitating the classic gesture of bringing a wind-up watch that's stopped working to one's ear. A second later, as he's placing the elastic band around his head again, the lights come back on with a flicker. The pilots of the security circuit and the flashlights and all the rest. The blackout, if that's what it was, lasted less than half a minute.
Manta holds his breath. He waits a second. Two. Three. But nothing happens. The return of the electricity didn't set off the alarms. He doesn't hear the symphony of sirens, bells and howls that usually fills the streets when the electricity comes back on after a power outage. Everything is just as it was before. As if the blackout had never happened.
Manta takes a look around. Then he kicks Yanel, who is sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and whimpering with his face sunk into his hands. Yanel lifts his damp face and looks around with a frown. Four minutes later they have hung the copies of the paintings and put the originals into their backpacks and are back on the street. Walking away from the gallery with nimble, but not hurried, steps. Just as the centuries-old tradition stipulates that criminals should flee crime scenes. Precisely calibrating the speed of their flight.
Eric Yanel stops in the middle of the street. With a frown. With his meticulously waved and conditioned hairdo transformed into a twisted grotesque Mohawk. Like one of those comedic characters that get caught in bad weather and whose hair freezes into impossible crystalline forms. He makes a half turn and stares at the gallery building at the end of the street.
Manta looks at him quizzically.
“That thing that happened in the gallery,” says Yanel, “wasn't normal, was it? That wasn't a normal blackout.”
Manta shrugs his shoulders.
“Who cares?” he says. “We have the paintings. And if you get your ass in gear, everything will work out fine.”
Yanel starts walking behind Manta, who has resumed his departure with his own brand of paradoxical gracefulness. Which stems from the seeming impossibility of anyone his size achieving any sort of gracefulness. Now the two men turn a corner and a tall office building with a parking area at back appears before them. The few pedestrians that walk after midnight through the neighborhood of bank headquarters and corporate buildings walk alone and stare intently at the ground in their path.
“I've seen that before,” says Yanel, jogging a bit to keep up with Manta. The speed makes his wave of blond hair undergo a new rhythmic, vertical waving. “The exact same thing. I didn't know before what it reminded me of, but I just remembered. And you should remember, too. I bet you've seen it in your comic books.”
Aníbal Manta goes into the building's parking lot and walks between the parked cars toward the van at the back of the lot with the corporate logo of “ARNOLD LAYNE, WOOD PARASITE SOLUTIONS” printed on one side. With the lightning bolt splitting the insect in half. Manta walks toward the frost-covered window of the van's cab. He lifts up one of his colossal arms and makes a series of taps with his knuckles on the window, causing several pieces of frost to fall to the parking lot's asphalt floor. No reply comes from inside the van.
“I remember it from movies about aliens.” Yanel uses his index finger to push the nonprescription glasses that are part of his disguise back on his nose. “When the space
ship passes by. You know. And everything stops working for a moment.”
Manta cleans the windowpane with his hand and looks inside. There is no one in the van's cab. His face transmits several degrees of shock and anger. Then he walks with furious strides toward the back doors of the van, followed by Yanel. He pulls open the back doors, which for a moment give the impression they're about to go flying. Manta and Yanel stare into the back of the van.
Saudade seems to have found a way to partially remove the “ARNOLD LAYNE, WOOD PARASITE SOLUTIONS” jumpsuit in such a way that the whole thing lies empty and wrinkled around his ankles. The naked young woman on her knees in front of his open legs has goose bumps. Saudade looks up and stares at Manta and Yanel. The young woman looks over her shoulder with Saudade's penis still in her mouth and stares at Manta and Yanel with a not-very-friendly expression. A little cloud of steam comes out of her mouth.
“This is how you keep a lookout?” says Manta. Blushing.
Saudade shrugs his shoulders.
“I thought I could start celebrating the job,” he says. “I knew you guys were gonna do everything right.”
Manta closes his fist so tightly that his knuckles turn blue and then break out in a slight layer of flush as a result of the sequence of bursting capillaries. Everyone present can clearly hear the wave of metacarpal bones cracking. Manta would love to do something extremely violent to Saudade's face. Something that would leave the entire inside of the van dripping with blood and would make Saudade's whore flee buck-naked through the wintry parking lot, shrieking feminine little shrieks and covering her mouth with her hands. But he can't move. He is held back by the same emotional stress due to feelings of inadequacy and physical grotesqueness that has always left him paralyzed in situations like this one. A shame too deeply buried to be grabbed by the ear and pulled out into the open for once and for all. Saudade's penis seems to be looking at him with a mocking, defiant expression. Enormous and perfectly erect. As if Saudade were mocking him and defying him to break out of his paralysis with the image of that perfect penis.