by Javier Calvo
And lastly, a part of his mind was telling him that he might have reached the end of his journey. His fate. That it was likely that Ollie was there. Among all those people. His son could be just one more of the masses, controlled by the vortex in that communication center, but there was also the possibility that he was like him. One of the immune. A survivor.
Now Chuck rummaged through his pocket and grabbed the pistol with a trembling hand. Probably a totally useless instrument in that situation, but comforting in spite of it all. A vestige of the old civilization.
That was when it happened. Chuck didn't need to turn around to know that the cold pressure on the nape of his neck was the barrel of a gun and that the metallic sound that echoed down the empty street was the sound of a pistol being cocked.
“If you were one of Them I wouldn't have been able to get this close to you without you reading my thoughts,” said a low voice right behind his head. The guy that had just rested his gun on the nape of Chuck's neck had to be very close to his head, maybe just an inch away. Chuck could feel his hot breath on the back of his neck. “And if you were one of us, I'd know you. So, who the hell are you?” said the voice. “And more importantly, how did you manage to get here?”
The pressure of the gun's barrel was removed from his neck. Chuck raised his arms and turned around very slowly. The guy that was aiming at him with an automatic weapon must have been twenty-five years old at most. He was dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans worn out at the knees. His expression conveyed deep concern mixed with curiosity. It had been many days since Chuck had seen a face like that. A real face with a real expression. Since he had left Saunders to his fate in the basement of his house. Chuck couldn't control his reaction. He started crying like a baby. Before the other man could do anything, Chuck wrapped his arms around him in a trembling hug. He had found another real human being. In the middle of that deserted street.
He was hugging him, his head resting on his shoulder, when the young man spoke in a tone of genuine shock.
“Mr. Kimball?” said the young man. “Is that you?”
Chuck moved away abruptly. He stared at the young man's face, examining his features. A lump formed in his throat. He knew those features, though it must have been several months since he'd seen them. It was as if the young man's face had aged ten years in that time. Wrinkles had appeared on his forehead and worry lines around his eyes, but there was no doubt. It was Paul Clark. His son's basketball coach.
“Paul?” said Chuck. He couldn't believe his eyes.
They both looked at each other for an instant without knowing what to say.
“Congratulations,” said Paul Clark finally. “You've found the Boston Resistance.”
PART III
“And They All Hid in the Caves and Among the Mountain Crags”
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 32
Take Me to Your Leader
Lucas Giraut is sitting in the study of his apartment in the former ducal palace, working on his Louis XV cartonnier that, up until a few days ago, was in his office on the mezzanine of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD. There is no natural light. All the light in the study comes from an art nouveau lamp on a coffee table near the desk. On top of the desk, open like an anesthetized animal with its legs splayed in a veterinarian's office, is a copy of The Lost Rivers of London by Álex Jardí, into which Giraut is transplanting pages of Stephen King's new novel. Carefully extracting the original signatures and replacing them with others meticulously trimmed to the right size. All with the help of his kit for restoring and repairing books. A motley collection of bradawls, rods with serrated ends and small, sharp, surgical-looking blades. On top of the cartonnier there are also nonabrasive glue and nonabrasive cleaning products.
Giraut has just pasted the central signature of Wonderful World into The Lost Rivers, the signature that contains the central block of chapters thirty to thirty-six, when his doorbell rings.
He looks up from his work and frowns into the darkness that surrounds his worktable. For a split second, his mind tells him that it's Valentina. Making one of her Friday afternoon visits. Then he remembers what happened the week before. On a normal Friday afternoon this is the time Valentina Parini would come looking for him to go down to the courtyard. There he'd sit in a chair while she took the hammock and together they would succumb to the pleasures of conversation. Usually about something related to Stephen King's books or movies. Like Victorian gentlemen conversing phlegmatically beneath the trellis of a colonial villa. With the sound of cannons firing in the background.
The doorbell rings again. Giraut sighs and takes off the latex gloves he's been wearing to work on the transplant of signatures. He doesn't recognize the figure that appears on the other side of his apartment door. It's a tall, slender woman who's much more sexually attractive than any woman he's ever had dealings with before.
“Are you Mr. Lucas Giraut?” The woman at the door looks through her dark glasses at the ochre-colored Lino Rossi dressing gown Giraut is wearing over his clothes. With no decipherable expression on her face. “The antiques dealer?”
There is something genuinely strange about the woman at the door. It's not her evening gown with a shawl over her shoulders, or her high-heeled shoes with straps up to the knee, or her dark glasses inappropriate to the late-afternoon light, or the decidedly outmoded scarf she wears tied around her head. Although Giraut's suitological analysis is mainly applied to men's suits, the woman's brand names and indicators of social distinction are conspicuous. Prada. Miyake. Dolce & Gabbana. What is strange about the woman's appearance, however, is the fact that both her haughty posture and her attire seem completely detached from reality. They seem more like the haughty posture and attire of certain tragic, tall actresses of the American studio system of the forties and fifties. Her acceptance of the body she was born with brings to mind images of loneliness in ivory towers and hotel night tables filled with bottles of barbiturates.
“I'm looking for Mr. Lucas Giraut.” The woman rummages in her leather purse that has a gaudy Roy Lichtenstein print on it, and pulls out one of Lucas Giraut's business cards. Giraut takes the card and stares at it as if it contained some clue to the woman's identity or the reasons behind her late-afternoon appearance. “It's very important. His neighbor downstairs let me in.” The woman zips up her purse. “May I come in?”
Lucas Giraut and the woman with the aesthetic predisposition to ingest barbiturates both remain seated for a moment on leather sofas in the living room of Giraut's apartment. In silence. With facial expressions that dance around the concept of the smile. Now that it's closer, Giraut can see that the Lichtenstein image on his strange visitor's purse depicts a sensual woman saying, “TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER.” Giraut clears his throat with a fist in front of his mouth. The tall, haughty woman has her legs crossed at her knees and is smoking a British brand of cigarette with her fingers extended. Her leg is slender and very white and has a braided crown of thorns tattooed on the ankle.
“This doesn't look like a mansion to me,” the woman says finally. Her voice is deep, the way tall women's voices usually are. “It's a nice house with good furniture, but that's it. Are you rich?”
Giraut considers the question. His hands are casually intertwined and holding up his chin.
“I am the primary shareholder and president of a multinational company.” He shrugs his shoulders. “My family is rich, so I guess I am, too. And you are…?”
The woman seems to be thinking for a second. As if she wasn't entirely sure who she was. She takes a drag on the British cigarette.
“My name is Penny DeMink,” she says.
“Miss DeMink.” Giraut frowns. “Can you remind me of when we've met? Is it somehow related to my business, perhaps? Did I sell you something? Or are you looking to buy?”
The woman seated on the sofa is definitely the most attractive woman that Lucas Giraut has ever had any dealings with in his entire life. The crux of her sexual appeal isn't in her almost perfect adhe
rence to the prevailing canons of physical beauty in the fashion, film or television worlds. Nor in her long, slender legs crossed at knee height, which now occupy the absolute center of Giraut's visual field. Nor is it related to external signs of self-assurance or absolute sexual confidence. But rather, her appeal could be chalked up to a certain general inscrutability. To the fact that the color of her eyes and her hair is a complete mystery, or how it's impossible to know what she's looking at behind her dark glasses. Her expression, her clothes, her general attitude—none of it seems to correspond to anything known or familiar or real. The resulting visual sensation is like television static. Like something fleeting, or like the profound ontological instability of things that are too perfect.
“Haven't you ever had the feeling that you've been robbed of something vital?” The woman releases a little cloud of smoke from between two rows of apparently perfect teeth. “I mean something really important. Something that they took from you when you were a child. Something that makes the difference between a good life and a shitty life. They stole something from me.” She nods. “I can't say exactly when. Maybe when I was too little to realize. And since then everything has been shitty. I mean everything has gone really badly. I'm sure you've noticed that I'm an exceptionally attractive woman.”
Even though her eyes are invisible behind her dark glasses, Lucas Giraut has a certain inexplicable feeling that the woman's pupils have moved vertically toward her own body. “I've always wanted to be an actress. And I'm not only good-looking. I'm talented, too. I'm intelligent. I can play dramatic parts and that kind of thing. I dance, too. So I ask myself: Why do I have this shitty life when I've got everything anyone could want in life? Well, it's because I'm missing something essential. Something that was taken from me. Maybe before I was born. I think you can be born missing something they've taken from you. You know what I mean. And in my case, what they took from me has something to do with a guy named Eric Yanel. I think you know him. It's not that he's the one who robbed me, or that he has what they took from me. But I'm convinced that he has something to do with all this. That's why I ended my personal relationship with Mr. Yanel. And my professional relationship with him.” She makes a pause during which she stubs out the butt of her cigarette emphatically in the ashtray shaped like the Roman Colosseum on the coffee table. “I don't know if Mr. Yanel has spoken to you about me. Maybe he has. Maybe using another name, I don't know. He told me that you produce films. And that perhaps you had a part for me.” She pauses. “Do you think you could bring me a drink?”
Giraut considers the possibility of going down to the first-floor apartment, for a wider selection of drinks than he has in his. After a moment he comes back from his office with an unopened bottle of Macallan and two highball glasses with tinkling ice cubes. He makes some remark about the fact that he doesn't usually receive guests in his apartment, as an explanation of his lack of alcoholic options, and serves the whiskey with his gaze fixed on the woman's crossed knees. As hard as he tries to focus on one part of the woman's anatomy or clothing, he keeps having the same sensation of ontological fleetingness. The same sensation of having something in front of him that's too good to be real.
“Miss DeMink.” Giraut forces himself to move his gaze from her knee to a neutral spot in the living room. “I assure you that I do not produce films of any kind. The person you mentioned is not on my client list, nor among my professional associates,” he says very slowly, as if gauging the scope and implications of his words. “It's possible that I could have some idea of who the person you mentioned is. But perhaps I should warn you that it is not in your best interests to continue on that course. The person you mention could be associated with dangerous people. People involved in shady dealings.”
Iris Gonzalvo, alias Penny DeMink, alias Penny Longlegs in her early films, takes a sip on her glass of whiskey. The way she sips her whiskey is extremely skillful, harkening back to outdated ideas of femininity. It gives the impression that she's only just wet her lips but causes the liquor level to descend considerably. Barely leaning her head back at all. Without gathering her features together or wrinkling her mouth. Without any visible changes to her facial musculature.
“Mr. Giraut.” The woman puts her glass on the table without any unpleasant noise of glass hitting against glass. “Consider this a gift. The fact that I came to your house. Something very lucky. I think you want to sleep with me. You don't have to apologize. What I want to make clear is that there's nothing you can find in Eric that you can't find in me. In a better version, I mean.” The woman's face, while still inscrutable behind her dark glasses and scarf, is now facing Giraut. He is trying to avoid staring at his visitor. “I won't disappoint you. That is the message I want to convey to you above all. In regard to any agreement you might have with him. It's in your best interests to stick with me. I can do everything he can, and much more. So I'm what you need.”
The woman lights a cigarette with the gold lighter that Giraut holds out to her face, protecting the flame with the palm of his hand. For the second it takes to light the cigarette Giraut thinks he can make out a slight wrinkle on her brow. Their bodies are now much closer than they have been since the woman arrived. The tattoo of a crown of interlaced thorns that the woman has around her ankle is actually a classic ornamental motif that Giraut is very familiar with. Found on many moldings, and in decorative stenciling on furniture and interiors from several periods. The woman exhales smoke and looks at Giraut with her eyebrows raised questioningly. That's when the doorbell rings again.
Giraut stands up, pushing his hands against his knees. On the other side of the door he finds the slightly worried face of Marcia Parini. With one of those hesitant smiles she often uses to try to hide her worry. Marcia raises her hand to one side of her head and tucks her hair behind her ear with her fingers. One of Marcia Parini's characteristic gestures, which evoke in the spectator some kind of helpless charm. Helpless charm, by the way, seems to be Marcia Parini's main type of charm.
“I think we should go out tonight,” says Marcia Parini. She looks at Giraut's dressing gown and then looks over Giraut's shoulder at the living room where Penny DeMink has just lit a second English cigarette. “You and I. Have dinner in a nice restaurant. My psychologist told me I should go out more. Especially now that Valentina isn't at home. That I have to be honest with myself and spend time with people that I really like.” She extends her neck to get a better look at the woman seated in the living room and places a hand on Giraut's chest to push him softly out of her sight line. “People that make me feel loved.”
Giraut nods. Fondling the lapel of his dressing gown thoughtfully. Squinting his eyes in a vague defense against the light coming in from the palace's staircase.
“Someone's here right now,” he says. “An unexpected visit.”
Marcia Parini smiles hesitantly and grabs the sleeve of Giraut's dressing gown in a helplessly charming gesture. In that completely helpless way children grab adults' sleeves when strolling through zoos or other places filled with potentially terrifying experiences. She takes a couple of steps into the apartment's entryway until she has a clearer image of the woman sitting on Lucas Giraut's leather sofa, smoking. Of her incredibly long, slender legs and her perfect body, according to all the canons of physical beauty.
“I don't mind you bringing women home,” she says finally. Without letting go of the sleeve of his dressing gown. “You have the right to do what you want with your life.”
Lucas Giraut doesn't say anything. There is a moment of silence while Penny DeMink uncrosses her legs and leans forward slightly to have a look through her sunglasses at what's going on in the entryway. Her face is wrapped in a vaporous little cloud of cigarette smoke. Marcia Parini's silence has become a solid, enveloping entity. Like one of those shapeless monsters in old horror movies set in the Arctic.
Wonderful World
CHAPTER 33
The Prayer of Those Who Have No Father and No Mother
; The renowned children's psychiatric center where Valentina Parini has been hospitalized indefinitely is located on one of those blocks in uptown Barcelona that seem to have been built according to a strictly centripetal logic. With its back to everything that isn't located within the block. Surrounded by walls and closed off to the city's traffic. One of those centripetal blocks of uptown Barcelona that have private inner parking garages and barriers of perennial trees and security guards in little huts that keep watch over the entrance to the psychiatric complex.
Lucas Giraut is sitting in the middle of a row of armless institutional seats in the reception area of the renowned children's psychiatric center. Dressed in an ash-colored linen houndstooth Lino Rossi suit. In front of him there is a family composed of a mother with dark circles under her eyes and a shockingly obese boy dressed in a school uniform that looks like it's about to burst at several points. The shockingly obese boy is chewing on a rubber object that looks very much like those rubber objects that dog owners buy for their dogs to chew on. Lucas Giraut has an anthropomorphic-looking package on his knees, wrapped in the gift wrap of a popular comic book store downtown. The Admissions desk of the children's psychiatric center is protected by a reinforced-glass partition decorated with Christmas garlands and shiny balls. With those shiny balls people hang on Christmas trees and with bunches of mistletoe. The shockingly obese boy is furiously chewing his unidentified rubber object when knocks are heard from inside the partition. The nurse in charge of the Admissions desk signals for Giraut to come closer.