Wonderful World

by Javier Calvo

  When he wakes up in his tightie whities inside the bathtub, peacefully hugging an empty bottle of Finlandia, he doesn't have the slightest idea how long he's been there. The inside of his head seems to have turned into a handful of swollen nerves that someone is rhythmically beating on with a guitar. He throws up on himself twice before managing to stand up in the bathtub and he takes a freezing cold shower, watching the remains of vomit swirl around the drain clockwise. He looks at himself, for the first time in several weeks, in the mirror over where the sink used to be and discovers he has a cut through his eyebrow and a series of strange liver spots under his eyes. Then he goes to Giraut's walk-in closet and chooses a charcoal gray suit. From his collection of the latest season of Lino Rossi suits. In the office next to the bedroom he finds a new checkbook in Giraut's name and half a dozen Cartier, Rolex and TAG Heuer watches in a drawer. For a moment he contemplates the Louis XV cartonnier that dominates the room. He uses the mallet to make several holes in the polychrome rosewood and finally, somewhat satisfied, throws the hammer into the fish tank on the landing and goes down the stairs whistling, his haul distributed between the pocket of the suit jacket and his two wrists.

  Judging by the growling in his stomach, it must be past lunchtime. Saudade is thinking about checks that can buy hot meals in expensive restaurants as he goes out onto the street and someone brusquely pulls him by the arm and pushes him into a car. It all happens very quickly and through the opaque, sticky screen of his headache. The inside of the car he's just been pushed into seems to spin on various axes at the same time. Finally he manages to look up and he sees that he's lying on his side in the backseat. Next to him, a guy with a repugnant smile is pointing a gun at his face. For a moment he considers the advantages of telling him that he has three luxury watches on each wrist.

  “Delighted to meet you, Mr. Giraut,” says Leon, pointing the gun. With a Russian accent that, given the circumstances, makes all of Saudade's body hair stand on end. With an absurdly high-pitched voice, considering his giant shoulders and his enormous bullet-shaped head. Still smiling, Leon indicates that he should sit in the middle of the backseat. Between the guy with the gun and the other enormous guy, who also looks Russian, that pushed him into the car. Saudade obeys. “I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Giraut. An important guy, huh? Lately it seems everyone wants to be your friend, huh?” Leon says, and pauses as if what he just said was a joke and he was leaving time for people to laugh. One of the main reasons why Leon is repugnant is the contrast between his enormous hairy body and his absurdly high-pitched voice. Another reason is the smell of industrial grease that seems to emanate from his body. And which none of the people in the car, except for Saudade, seems to notice. “I personally know someone who wants to meet you, too. To really get to know you. Because he's convinced you'll understand each other perfectly. And I agree, of course. This person's name probably won't be familiar to you.” He arches his eyebrows in a vaguely afflicted gesture. “But you can call him Donald Duck. That's what we all call him around here.”

  Saudade follows Leon's gaze to a tiny little man sitting in the passenger seat. The little man turns and says something that does sound quite a bit like something Donald Duck would say. His voice comes out of one of those surgical collars people who've had their vocal cords operated on wear. With a transistor in the front. Saudade looks up and considers the barrel of the gun that is pointed at his face. The car is turning onto one of Vía Laietana's packed lanes. Something tells him he'd better think fast. Find a way out of the predicament he's gotten himself into. That they got him into. It's obvious that that asshole Bob Marley sold Giraut out to the Russians. But it's also clear that trying to convince these Russian assholes that he isn't Giraut is gonna sound like the typical thing Giraut would say to save his ass if he were the one sitting in that car. In Saudade's aching mind the dilemma starts to look grimly like a vicious circle.

  “Listen,” says Saudade, in that overly obsequious tone you use when you want to be extremely careful not to piss off the person you're talking to. “I know this is the typical thing I would say if I really was Giraut and wanted to convince you that I'm not,” he starts to say, with a nervous smile. Wiping the sweat from his temples. And he stops. Staring at Leon's bullet-shaped face, which is staring at him while aiming at his face.

  And he realizes he's made a mistake. As the signs of anger start to furiously bubble up in the frowning, elephantine and suddenly red face of the guy pointing a gun at him.

  Wonderful World

  CHAPTER 59

  Biosphere Park

  Iris Gonzalvo looks up through her Versace sunglasses and observes the upside-down heads of about thirty people, shouting as they rush along at a hundred and forty miles an hour, their heads and hands hanging over the backdrop of the cloudless Mediterranean sky. She takes a drag on her cigarette-shaped plastic mentholated inhaler with a thoughtful face. The tortoiseshell Versace glasses Iris is wearing have aquamarine and blue sapphire chips on the sides. She is also wearing a burgundy Versace dress and black gloves up to her elbows. Now she leans forward to look through one of the telescopes on the scenic lookout and moves it until she can focus on Aníbal Manta, who waves with an enormous hand from the other side of the Palace of Gravity fence. As he eats what looks like a reddish cloud of cotton candy. Iris straightens up and takes another drag on her plastic mentholated cigarette. With a design similar to a spool of wire bent erratically by some spectacular explosion, the Evolution roller coaster is silhouetted against the sky above the wide, low dome of the Palace of Gravity. The screams of its passengers during the upside-down stretches are heard every twenty seconds, exactly.

  Iris rests her butt on the railing of the scenic lookout and watches as Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey come through the crowd of families with digital video cameras and school groups. With their blond, partially bald heads. With their identically freckled faces that could be any age between thirty and forty-five. The scenic lookout at Biosphere Park is the place stipulated for the meeting with Mr. Travers's two employees. In front of the entrance to the Palace of Gravity. At the convergence of the paths that lead to the Amazon of the Past and the Amazon of the Future.

  Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey stop a few feet from Iris and rest their butts on the same railing where her butt is resting. Without looking directly at her. Without making any sign or addressing her in any way. The lookout's terrace at midday is packed with families with kids and school groups only partially controlled by desperate-looking teachers. Beside Iris, several schoolkids try to destroy one of the telescopes by both hanging off of one end and pulling down. Iris notices that Travers's two men are sucking on plastic mentholated inhalers just like hers.

  “This does not look like a safe place to make the exchange, Miss DeMink,” says Mr. Fleck in a smooth tone. Or maybe it's Mr. Downey. He takes a drag on his inhaler and looks at Iris Gonzalvo out of the corner of his eye.

  Iris shrugs. The idea of meeting Travers's men at the Biosphere Park scenic lookout on the Costa Dorada initially seems to be based on it being a busy, crowded place. Or at least that's what Iris figured when she got her instructions. The same reason she always figured the exchange of microfilm and hostages in the movies takes place at amusement parks. Now a woman holding a child with each hand stops in front of Iris with a furious face and gestures toward her plastic cigarette and then at a giant sign telling visitors that there is no smoking in the park. The sign shows a drawing of a koala with its eyes popping out of its head, choking in a cloud of smoke. The koala, according to what Iris read in a brochure, answers to the name of Kooky and represents the park's commitment to environmental and scientific education. Everywhere you looked, there was Kooky. On giant billboards where Kooky asks visitors to turn off their cell phones during the educational performances. With a napkin tied around its neck at the entrance to all the fast-food restaurants. There are people walking among the crowd in Kooky disguises handing out coupons for the McDonald's, Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts franch
ises in the park. Iris puts her menthol inhaler in her pocket.

  “Please,” says Mr. Fleck, or maybe Mr. Downey. With that indirect, or more like implicit way of addressing Iris. “Meet us on the other side of the fence.”

  Mr. Travers's two employees, followed at a certain distance by Iris, join the river of people moving toward the fences of the Palace of Gravity. The path goes by a bridge that overlooks the grounds of the Amazon of the Past and the Amazon of the Future. To her right, Iris can see the Amazon of the Past's luxuriant forest with its dozens of animal and plant species meticulously locked up behind bars and labeled. To her left, the Amazon of the Future is a black, smoking plateau filled with animal corpses and mutant-looking bushes through which actors playing zombies graze. Next to the Amazon of the Future's exit there's a hut with a medical team to attend to the dozens of kids that have nervous fits from their visit.

  Five minutes later, Iris gets to the doors of the Palace of Gravity. Without a doubt, the park's Top Attraction. A postadolescent employee wearing a Biosphere Park uniform and intensely depressed expression reads the bar code on Iris's ticket with a device vaguely similar to a pistol and wishes her a good visit with the tone of voice people usually use to wish someone a horrible slow death. On the other side of the fences, Iris stops beneath the palace's entrance arch. The sign at the entrance says “PALACE OF GRAVITY” in enormous, very rounded letters beside which there's a drawing of Kooky the koala flying through the air, grasping a balloon in one of his front paws. Iris leans her head down to see over her Versace sunglasses and examines the place. A few feet from her is Aníbal Manta, finishing his cotton candy and looking furtively at her over his comic book. A bit farther on, in the line to get in, are Travers's men. Who aren't looking anywhere. Indistinguishable in their identical suits. Sucking on their menthol inhalers. Iris sighs and gets in line.

  The inside of the Palace of Gravity is, for some reason, reminiscent of a covered ice-skating rink. Except for the fact that all of the people inside are floating. As the educational panels at the entrance explain, the main rink surrounded by stands replicates the gravitational conditions of space travel. Or of moon landings. The conditions universally known as Zero Gravity. For the price of a ticket plus a small supplement visitors can rent special harnesses tied down with a special nonabrasive cord to the monitoring and security area and float in zero gravity for thirty minutes. For the littlest ones and the less brave there is the option of floating holding on to one of the monitors' hands. Iris walks up to the security railing around the Zero Gravity rink and stares at the groups of people floating. Many of them do pirouettes and prance around in slow motion. Others are doing the zero gravity equivalent of the dead man's float. Some seem disconcerted and only a very few seem to be panicking. One of the floating visitors seems to be chasing his wallet through the air.

  Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey lean on the security railing next to Iris. One of them leaves an envelope on top of the railing. Halfway between where they are and where Iris is. Iris takes the envelope and puts it into her purse.

  “Locker number fifty-two,” says Mr. Fleck, or Mr. Downey. “At the coat check.”

  Iris pretends that she's watching the people floating in the Zero Gravity area while her gaze searches for Aníbal Manta. The public-address system warns visitors that entering the Zero Gravity area without the protective harness is strictly forbidden. Manta is sitting on one of the lower spectator stands. With his superhero comic rolled up in one of his coat pockets. Staring at Iris. Or what looks like Iris. It's hard to tell with all the people in the middle, floating around. Finally Iris looks around in her purse and takes out another envelope. One that looks very much like the first one. She leaves it on the railing. Near Travers's two men.

  “Parking lot number three,” she says. “Row twelve. Spot number eighty. It's a white van.” She pauses and her gaze wanders toward the stands where Manta is sitting. The rolled-up comic book that sticks out of his coat pocket looks kind of like an antenna. Manta doesn't wave. Iris turns toward Travers's men. “Enjoy your visit,” she says to them.

  Mr. Fleck and Mr. Downey stare at her with blank faces. With their plastic menthol inhalers between their lips. Iris has the sudden sensation that there's something in the general structure of their faces that looks like it's about to disintegrate. As if that something had precariously withstood all the negotiations and meetings in safe spots and only had enough ontological resistance to hold out until the end of the exchange. As if Travers's two employees that she had met in his palace in Paris were nothing more than some sort of transitory identity limited to this sale. Iris stares at the two men's faces while one of them picks up her envelope and puts it in the pocket of his suit jacket. Their faces are definitely much more freckled than the first time she saw them. Their hair seems blonder and thinner. Their eyelids seem to be trembling due to some sort of malfunctioning in their nervous systems. Iris stares at them through her Versace sunglasses as they head off toward the exit. The public-address system requests that the parents of a boy who has exceeded his flotation time come by the security area to pick him up. Iris takes the menthol inhaler out of her purse and takes a thoughtful drag on it. Then she starts walking toward the exit.

  When she is approaching the lines for the exit she feels the soft but firm pressure of an enormous hand on her arm. She looks up. Her gaze travels the long and mostly suit-covered path from the enormous hairy hand to the face of Aníbal Manta. Who is looking at her with a frown. With all of his features wrinkled into that expression of intense intellectual effort that he makes when he is at all suspicious of the person in front of him. As if he were watching real surgery on TV. Or as if he had to go to the bathroom and had been holding it in too long. For a fraction of a second they both just look into each other's eyes.

  “Not so fast, pretty lady.” Manta lets go of her arm. He clears his throat. He watches as Iris raises a hand instinctively to where he had been grabbing her arm. “What you've got in that purse is for me.”

  And that's when it happens. The kick Iris gives Aníbal's knee is enough to throw him off balance and a reflex makes him fold his leg. The push she then gives him with her entire body propels him backward and over the railing of the security strip. Into which he falls backward. Impelled by his own weight. And of course, without the chance to extend his arms to protect himself from the fall, since he is grabbing his leg with both hands. The sound that comes out of his mouth as his back hits the ground on the edge of the Zero Gravity area is somewhere between heavy breathing and a horse snorting. Something like the sound of an air chamber emptying abruptly.

  Manta lies on the floor on his back for a moment, his face very red. And all of a sudden, before he can get up or even get his breath back, his butt is no longer touching the ground. His shoes are no longer touching the ground. Most of his back is no longer touching the ground at the edge of the Zero Gravity area. A Palace of Gravity monitor starts to blow his whistle to sound the alarm. Iris Gonzalvo watches wide-eyed for a moment as Aníbal Manta rises, floating slowly above her head. Looking at her with an expression that blends rage with horror. With the tails of his coat rising like two flaccid wings. His comic book comes out of his coat pocket and starts its own, completely independent, journey. Iris Gonzalvo runs away.

  As she leaves the Palace of Gravity and runs through the crowd of park visitors, beneath the warm winter sun, Iris thinks of all the climactic movie scenes set in amusement parks that she's seen throughout her life. Those scenes of adrenaline-filled exchanges of hostages and briefcases full of cash. Where villains with evil grimaces put guns to the temples of innocent women and children. Somehow she no longer feels like herself. Somehow she has the feeling that it's someone else running through the crowd, bumping into people and knocking them down. It's not a feeling of inner transformation. Or of split personality, although it is true that one part of her brain is imagining her race through the park from outside of her own head. Like movie directors supposedly imagine things. In a
n epic panoramic shot. Or maybe an overhead view. Now she runs past the Sustainable Agriculture Pavilion, where several groups of kids are throwing stones and soda cans at actors playing traditional farmworkers. The silhouette of the shack that holds the coat check appears in her visual field. Still tiny but already magnificent. Shining in the distance like some kind of magnificent palace. Somehow, Iris feels that her strides through the crowd are taking her along the path she always wanted to travel, but could never find.

  Inside the shack, with her hair sweaty and stuck to her forehead, Iris tears open the envelope and unlocks locker number fifty-two with the key she finds inside it. The briefcase inside isn't a briefcase. It's a bottle green Puma sports bag. She opens it and takes a look inside and then sticks her Prada high heels into it before turning and running off toward the parking lot. The camera inside her head follows her from a cinematographic point located somewhere above the roofs of the pavilions. Maybe from the peak of the Evolution roller coaster.

  In the parking lot, Iris runs barefoot through the apparently infinite rows of parked cars. With the Puma bag hanging from her shoulder. Stopping every once in a while to wipe her hair out of her face and look around and check the maps printed on informative panels distributed throughout the parking lot at regular intervals. After many wrong turns and backtracking filmed in her imagination by cameras in helicopters, she finally sees her brick red Alfa Romeo wedged between several rows of family cars. She is already at its door, feeling around in her purse for her keys, when she realizes that the keys aren't in her purse. That the keys must still be in Manta's pants pocket, since Manta parked the car and then put them there. Desperate, she looks around. Her desperation is filmed in her imagination by a circular crane that revolves around her slender, desperate frame. And then she sees him. Limping in the distance. Enraged. Manta approaches limping through the rows of parked cars. Some of the park visitors have stopped to watch Aníbal Manta approaching, his face red with fury. Like a large mammal seething in its quest for revenge.