Wonderful World

by Javier Calvo

  The commotion spreads to the waitresses at the bar. To the customers farthest from the door. One of the waitresses at the bar, who has her back turned to the door, continues shaking a cocktail shaker with brio while all the others have stopped what they are doing and are now just looking at the door. Her shaking makes her bare breasts move awkwardly.

  And finally the commotion reaches Bocanegra. As some of the customers have already gotten up from their tables and are literally running. Running between the tables. Jumping over toppled chairs and customers that have fallen to the floor in the midst of the confusion. Bocanegra turns his stool toward the place everyone suddenly seems to be fleeing from and looks. With his drink garnished with a tiny umbrella in one hand and his cigar in the other.

  Commissioner Farina is walking toward the bar. With his hands in the pockets of his coat. Around him, about fifty uniformed policemen are intercepting customers trying to flee and in some cases taking them out of action with their official billy clubs. Some customers have climbed up onto the stage and are now trying to escape through the door to the dressing rooms behind the heavy velvet curtains. As usually happens in this kind of situation, the dancers that just a moment ago were practicing various modalities of sexual relations are now modestly covering their genitals and breasts with their hands. A couple of uniformed cops try to separate a middle-aged customer from a voluptuous statue of kneeling Aphrodite that he refuses to stop embracing.

  Meanwhile, the mirror ball keeps turning in the middle of the room. Projecting its myriad shapes and colors on the walls and tables and terrified faces of the customers and the arms of the policemen, raised high as they bring down the more stubborn customers.

  Commissioner Farina sits on the stool next to Bocanegra's. Bocanegra stares at him as he takes a pensive drag on his cigar.

  “I'm guessing this is a joke,” he says. Releasing a mouthful of cigar smoke in the general direction of Farina's face.

  “Of course.” Farina nods. Watching his lackeys work with something similar to paternal pride. Or perhaps with something similar to the amused pride of someone who has just made an effectively impressive entrance. “This is fun. I won't deny it. I'm having fun. Can we talk here?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Or are you going to invite me up to that famous private club upstairs?”

  Onstage, the naked dancers watch the uniformed cops giving chase to the customers, from the same place where they were having sex. Bewildered and modestly covering their breasts and genitals. Some of them use the velvet curtains to cover themselves. There are customers in business suits lying facedown between the tables with their hands handcuffed behind their backs. There are customers with their heads bowed, talking to uniformed cops that are jotting down everything they say in their notebooks. The music is still playing. Somehow, the fact that the music is still playing is the most disconcerting element in the entire scene. The politician is on all fours, trying to escape behind the bar without being seen.

  “Give the commissioner a drink.” Bocanegra signals to a terrified waitress.

  Farina looks around him. Clapping. Some of the uniformed cops make theatrical curtsies.

  “I don't understand how you can stand to be around all these girls all day.” He scratches his chin in a calculating gesture. “I would have arrested myself by now. I want the same thing you're having,” he adds. “It looks good, with that umbrella. Elegant. Kind of like this place. It's got the Bocanegra style, I'd say.”

  One of the cops is posing with two of The Dark Side of the Moon's naked dancers while another takes a photograph with his cell phone. The posing cop takes the cap of his uniform off for a moment to run a hand through his hair and then smiles.

  The terrified waitress gives Farina his drink, and he looks at it for a moment with an expression that blends sarcasm with genuine admiration.

  “This is the message.” Farina grabs the tiny umbrella in his drink with his fingertips and uses it to stir the contents of the glass in an absent gesture. The cocktail is a yellow color with hints of green that makes you think of nuclear waste and those spectrographic images they make of stars and heavenly bodies. “Before you get impatient. We've been talking to your friend Bob Marley. I'm not saying that it wasn't a bit of work to get him talking. But in the end we solve these things with psychology.” He shrugs his shoulders. He looks around him. The Dark Side of the Moon customers that were putting up a fight are now lined up against a wall covered in fine wood paneling and erotic Indian engravings from the Mughal period. “The truth is that at first I had trouble putting things together. Your friend Bob Marley isn't very smart. A nice guy, sure. But I wouldn't give him any prizes for cleverness.”

  The multicolored reflection of the stage's spotlights on the rotating facets of the mirror ball illuminates, for a fraction of a second, the terrified face of a middle-aged man in a business suit that has just been discovered by the cops. Hidden behind a statue of Jupiter erotically chasing the mortal Alcmene. The multicolored light projects for a second onto his tense face and wide-open mouth and then continues its rotation. Bocanegra takes a drag on his cigar. A longer drag than any Farina has ever seen taken on any cigar ever.

  “In general terms, you could say I know everything.” Farina uses the toothpick stem of the umbrella to fish for a maraschino cherry in his radioactive cocktail. He spears the cherry and brings it to his mouth. He chews on it with an expression of someone chewing on something that wasn't really meant to be eaten. “I know the whole story. About the paintings you switched in the gallery that you're gonna sell to that English guy next week.” He smiles happily. “Actually I've made some appearances throughout the story. But discreetly. I suppose you already know that I picked up Bob Marley at your friend Cruz's house. Ex-friend. I'll admit that intrigued me. It was like I was seeing the details of something big, but I was missing the link between them. And then that name came up. Giraut. But Giraut was pushing up daisies. Then it hit me.” He punches the palm of his hand the way some people do to show they've discovered something they hadn't been able to see up until that moment, due to paradoxical questions of proximity. “It was his son. When his father died you adopted the son. Not literally, of course. Is that who I think it is?” Farina points with his cocktail toward something crawling on the floor, followed by several uniformed cops.

  Bocanegra looks toward where Farina is pointing. Things in The Dark Side of the Moon take place in a way very similar to the way things appear reflected in a mirror ball. Occupying the center of the scene both simultaneously and at the same time successively. In a way that makes it hard to concentrate on them. Bocanegra squints. To see better under the strobe lights that ricochet off the facets of the mirror ball. The city government official crawls between tables at the back of the room. Chased by several uniformed cops. Swerving to avoid people's legs. With a napkin still tied around his head. One of the cops throws himself to the ground and manages to grab him by a leg. A struggle ensues. The city official pulls the tablecloth off a nearby table and covers his face with it. Bocanegra looks away. The simultaneous and successive way that things are happening in The Dark Side of the Moon makes it hard to pay attention to them for more than a second.

  “But of course.” Farina points to Bocanegra with the tiny cocktail umbrella. It doesn't look like he's taken a sip of his drink yet. “If you wanted to adopt Giraut's little tyke there's something you'd have to do first. Because you and Giraut and Cruz make three. So you'd have to get rid of Cruz. Before the kid heard about him and decided to go with him. Like his pop did. When you guys were like brothers. Not literally, of course.” He gestures with his glass toward the last traces of resistance among the clientele, entrenched on the stage and using chairs as weapons. As if said traces could offer some sort of support to what he's saying. “That's why you sent Bob Marley to his house. To take him out of circulation. I mean Cruz. Because you knew that sooner or later he'd find the little tyke or the little tyke would find him. And, anyway, I don't think this was the first time you tr
ied it.” He makes a theatrically intrigued look. As if he couldn't quite remember. “Wasn't there some story about a bomb or something like that? In the seventies?”

  The last traces of resistance among The Dark Side of the Moon's clientele disappear. A couple of blows and a couple of groans are heard from the stage. Mr. Bocanegra, Showbiz Impresario, doesn't seem to be paying particular attention to what's going on around him. Apart from the fact that the drags he's taking on his cigar are much larger and deeper than any drag Farina has seen anyone take on any cigar ever, the only sign of worry that crops up on Bocanegra's face is a focused expression that's hard to decipher. It's not exactly that expression of furrowed brow and clenched jaw of someone trying to hide a mind racing with worry. Nor one of those impassive expressions betrayed only by an occasional, slightly awkward, swallowing of saliva. It's closer to that overly impassive and almost paradoxically distracted expression of large predators waiting crouched behind a thicket for the moment to leap onto their prey.

  Farina signals with his hand to the uniformed cop that seems to be in charge of the operation.

  “This is a courtesy visit,” he says, leaving his untouched drink on the bar. “You can tell that to all these gentlemen. Purely routine. We're looking out for their safety, in a manner of speaking. One of those visits to make sure that everything is still going fine. I'm glad to see that everything's going fine.” He stands up and absently smooths down his suit with his hands. “Although I'm afraid I'm gonna have to shut the place down. The mayor doesn't like this whole illegally bringing in underage girls stuff. Anyway, who's going to come after what happened tonight? This is the end, and you know it.” He pauses thoughtfully. “That doesn't mean that I want to send you to jail. I can keep you out of jail. If you scratch my back, of course. You can give me the paintings now. Or better yet, give me the paintings and Giraut.” He smiles. “Or even better still, next week you can give me the paintings, Giraut and the buyer.”

  Bocanegra watches Farina's back as Farina walks toward the door. The mirror ball projects a series of infinitesimally minute multicolored shapes on the back of his jacket.

  At the back of the room, several Dark Side of the Moon employees in G-strings and various city government minions are helping the city official. Who is lying on the floor. Partially covered by a tablecloth. Having what seems to be a momentary fit of hyperventilation.

  Wonderful World

  CHAPTER 58

  Suitology

  The beams of morning sunlight fall between the balconies of the Gothic Quarter like rubble from the ceiling falls onto fleeing characters in the dramatic climax of an action movie. Juan de la Cruz Saudade's grimy head appears among the shadows surrounded by bags of garbage in one of the doorways. Partially wrapped in cigarette smoke. With his eyes half closed and a beard obscuring the lower half of his grimy face. His resolutely threatening expression is one that doesn't necessarily mean he has a gun hidden in his pants, but which is often found on the faces of people with guns hidden in their pants. He tosses his cigarette butt onto the paving stones. He steps on it with a circular movement at the tip of his foot and finally spits on what's left of the butt. A dog that's rummaging around in the bags of garbage stares at him with a vaguely interested gesture. The way Saudade usually spits on the sidewalk and throws his butts down and releases the contents of his nasal passages onto the ground by pressing one wing of his nose with his finger suggests some sort of primitive territory marking. The dog wrinkles his muzzle and stretches out his back in a movement analogous to shrugging his shoulders and heads off down the street.

  Now Saudade sticks his head and one shoulder out of the shadows of the doorway. With that smooth turn of the body you associate with people hiding in doorways in spy movies. He makes a pistol with his fingers and shoots an invisible bullet while making a shooting sound with his lips. He is aiming at the door of the former ducal palace where Lucas Giraut lives, which, in that precise moment, opens. Saudade hides in the shadows of the door and, a second later, peeks out again cautiously. A woman has just come out of Giraut's doorway. One of those women devoid of noteworthy sexual features that make Saudade feel somewhat depressed. He watches the woman's butt as she walks away. With his lips pursed disapprovingly. Saudade's clothes could be classified as decidedly filthy. His face looks like the result of taking an unwashed face that hasn't slept for four days and running it over with a ten-ton truck.

  Five minutes later, Saudade closes the door to Giraut's apartment behind his back and stows his professional case filled with picklocks in the back pocket of his implausibly grimy sweatpants. He looks around. Giraut's apartment doesn't have an entryway with beaded curtains or one of those frosted mirrors. Or one of those buckets for people to leave wet umbrellas in. The front door opens directly into a living room where you could easily play a game of soccer. Everything displays that lack of common sense that Saudade associates with people who don't have to worry about money. In his experience, you can always tell a rich person's house because there's too much space between things. It's like they don't know how to make good use of the space, or like they want to brag about how much space they have in their houses, so much that they don't know how to fill it up. He'd sure know how to take full advantage of a big room like that. He'd get rid of all those fancy-pants little rugs and weird sofas and he'd put in a gym on one side, and a wood bar on the other, the good kind of wood. And one of those giant TVs with a good three-seater sofa in front of it. And he'd still have plenty of room.

  After a first look in the closets, Saudade makes himself comfortable on the sofa with a glass, a bottle of Macallan, a bottle of Finlandia, two cans of Diet Coke and the remote. For some reason, ever since he became homeless a week ago, and jobless, and ran out of gas for his car, he feels overwhelmed by an intense feeling of vulnerability. Of imminent doom. As if he were walking in his team's colors through the stands of the city's other team, watching as the rival fans approach with iron bars and brass knuckles. Somewhere deep in his mind he trusts that this sensation of lost omnipotence has nothing to do with being about to turn thirty. He shakes his head sadly. He takes a long sip on his glass of Macallan and Diet Coke, leaving it half empty, and changes the television channels several times until he finds something that looks like a lingerie runway show. Except for the fact that it's on a television set and the entire audience is elderly women who watch the models with obvious disapproval. What is happening to him? he asks himself bitterly. With all his comings and goings from the world of crime to the police force and back again, there was always one constant in his life. A certain feeling that the world was, in some way, designed to display his excellence in the art of life. And now people move away from him on public transportation, with disgusted expressions and holding their noses. He frowns at the empty bottle of Macallan and throws it against the wall in front of him. The stain that remains on the white wall is shaped like a starfish that's been stepped on.

  He goes up the unvarnished wood staircase with the bottle of Finlandia in one hand and the remote in the other. He stops for a moment to look at the wall of the landing with his flashlight's beam. It would be a really nice place if someone with half a brain had decorated it. Who's the asshole who decided to leave the bricks showing along the whole staircase? He shrugs and tosses the remote into the landing's ornamental fish tank. On the upper floor he amuses himself for a few minutes tipping over bookshelves and emptying out the contents of closets onto the floor and attacking the paintings with the foot of a steel lamp. He lights a bedspread on fire with his lighter and after a minute changes his mind and takes the smoking, balled-up bedspread off the bed and puts it under the faucets of the bathtub. Somehow all that destruction makes him feel good, but at the same time makes him feel intensely bad. His small individual acts of vandalism against Giraut's furnishings give him overwhelmingly ephemeral doses of satisfaction, followed by waves of despondency. Nothing seems to give him the well-being he needs. He pisses on the pillows and manages to rip the sink ou
t of the wall. In a closet on the stairway he finds a toolbox. He starts a general remodeling of the apartment with a mallet and five minutes later he's crying inconsolably on the sofa, covering his face with his forearm.

  What's the point of so much effort? What's the point of living in a world that doesn't reward work and personal merit? Like take this asshole Giraut, thinks Saudade as he vomits on Giraut's sofa. What the hell did he do to have this apartment and that collection of fancy suits upstairs and a bathroom so lovely it makes you want to move in there? And what's the point of destroying it all? As much as he destroys the apartment now, even if he destroyed it ten times over, Mr. Filthy Rich Shit for Brains can just come in with his credit cards and his bank accounts and put it back the way it was. The truth is, he now thinks, dropping from the sofa to the rug and crawling toward the cocktail cabinet, is that he'd give anything never to have met that dickwad Giraut. Maybe Giraut hadn't caused all of his current problems, but there was no doubt that he symbolized them. A hair-salon-going, fancy-suit-wearing, odiously unflappable symbol. With that stupid chubby-cheeked poker face. As if the world wasn't worth stopping to think about. Saudade twists on the rug. With his teeth gnashing. He stretches out an arm, as if with his last dying breath, toward the cocktail cabinet. He manages to open its door. He grabs a second bottle of Finlandia and takes the top off with his teeth. If only he had never laid eyes on that fucking filthy rich moron's stupid face. In Saudade's opinion, the class war is something that mostly takes place between the individual class made up of Juan de la Cruz Saudade and the class made up of all the fucking filthy rich morons in the world. The modus operandi of said war, in general terms, is analogous to the way someone parts a crowd, moving through it with an ax. It's not about any intentional self-centeredness in Saudade's general attitude toward life. It's not about any basic aggressiveness either. His attitude is closer to the way certain animals eat very quickly and keep glancing suspiciously over their shoulders.