The bar employee who approaches them with an obsequious smile is dressed in stiletto heels and sequined panties. She also has something like sequins, maybe glitter, sprinkled over her face and torso.
“My name is Anaïs,” the employee says to them. “I'm here to ensure you have an unforgettable evening.”
“His name is Mr. Bocanegra.” Aníbal Manta points to Bocanegra with his thumb. His plugged-up nostrils turn his voice into some sort of rich, buzzing boom. “We came to look for a friend of ours. If everyone minds their own business, I don't think anybody will end up getting hurt.”
Anaïs's obsequious smile melts like a bar of soap that's fallen into a vat of steaming sulfuric acid and is replaced by an expression of immense terror. She nods several times and moves away from the two men as quickly as her stiletto heels allow her. Her speed gives her bare breasts an exaggerated rhythmic vertical sway. Some of the clients that have been watching the scene surreptitiously also begin distancing maneuvers. Some of which are so subtle as to hardly be noticed, and others so hasty that they leave behind unfinished cocktails and scantily clad companions.
Raymond Panakian is sitting on a stool at the hostess bar with his back curved, dressed in the same blue, paint-stained coveralls he was wearing when he escaped the night before. His facial expression suggests that he's been sitting on that same stool for a long time and has drunk several dozen glasses of Macallan. Under the bar's strobe lights, the paint smatterings on his face and hair make him look like a lazily trancelike model from some seminal work of the psychedelic film genre. At one point he extends his arm in an almost nostalgic gesture to touch the genitals of the striptease dancer dancing in front of him. Something that looks like a string of saliva falls from the corner of his mouth.
Aníbal Manta and Mr. Bocanegra sit on the stools beside Raymond Panakian. One on each side. The striptease dancer dancing in front of him begins to distance herself subtly. Still dancing.
“Under normal circumstances,” says Bocanegra to Panakian's bowed and vaguely drooling head, “I would be the one to take care of you. As a question of hierarchy, of course. I'd be the one that'd make you understand that it's not right to leave a job with no notice, et cetera. And without finishing the job, obviously. It is one of my duties as supreme chief. To give those who are doing something they shouldn't a few good tugs on the ear and then smile and pat them on the back and tell them not to worry about it after all. That we're all friends here and that we've never held a grudge. And yet, given the present circumstances”—Bocanegra points with his head to Aníbal Manta, sitting on the stool on the other side of Panakian—“I think that my friend Aníbal is interested in being the one who has that little chat with you personally. And I'm going to let him have that.” His lips trace an enormous cruel smile. “That is if you don't mind, of course.”
Panakian turns his head slowly to look at Manta. Aníbal Manta nods his head and says something that's unintelligible because his nostrils are clogged with dried blood and broken cartilage and cotton balls. The only words that can be understood are “recognize” and “mother.”
Raymond Panakian's next movement is completely unexpected from a man of his age and complexion, especially a man who seems to have drunk so many dozens of glasses of Macallan. As if he had some sort of spring in his lower body, or perhaps a jet engine. Panakian shoots forward and up toward the spot where the dancer had been just a minute earlier. It's probably one of those physical feats born of absolute desperation and fear for one's life. Which can only be pulled off when the seized-up, desperate mind forgets for a second that the body is incapable of it. And it almost works. Raymond Panakian is about to successfully jump from his bar stool to the stage. Except for the fact that just as he is hanging in midair, Aníbal Manta manages to grab him by the ankle. Causing Panakian's floating body to jerk and fall facedown on the edge of the stage. Breaking most of his teeth against it.
“Grrfssslll,” says Panakian from the floor. Spitting out pieces of teeth and protecting his head with his hands.
“I don't understand,” says Mr. Bocanegra with a frown. He raises a hand to his ear in that universal gesture meant to show someone that they haven't spoken loudly or clearly enough. “What do you think he said?”
“I don't know,” says Aníbal Manta. “Must be one of those weird languages.”
Mr. Bocanegra picks up a pool cue from a rack beside one of the pool tables. By that point, the vast majority of people in the establishment have already left or are taking cover behind some piece of furniture, watching with fascinated horror. Bocanegra grabs the pool cue by both ends and breaks it in half over his knee. Then he tosses the larger piece to Aníbal Manta. Manta catches it airborne.
What happens next is quick, efficient and not pretty. Manta grabs Raymond Panakian by the scruff of the neck and lifts him to shoulder height. He pushes him against the edge of the stage in such a way that Panakian's body is conveniently folded in half with his rear end slightly projected outward. In one swift tug he pulls down his pants and his underwear.
“Be careful with the hands,” says Mr. Bocanegra.
Aníbal Manta looks at his hands quizzically.
“No, you idiot, with his hands.”
Manta lets out a grunt of acquiescence. Then he looks at Panakian's pale, scrawny backside. With the splintered piece of pool cue in his hand. With the same facial expression that Olympic archers have before releasing an arrow. Or bowlers before sending the ball down the lane. The spectators groan and make horrified faces and shake their heads. Aníbal Manta smiles beneath his broken nose.
CHAPTER 26. The Lost River Within
Eric Yanel stretches out his neck periscopically to see above the heads of the party guests, who are nothing like any idea Yanel has ever had about what party guests should be. In spite of the fact that it's perfectly clear that a party is being celebrated in the uptown nightclub. There are uniformed waiters strolling with trays of filled glasses, which are being replaced with empty glasses at a dizzying rate. Everyone is animatedly drinking and smoking and talking. But Yanel can't seem to reconcile the guests with his idea of a party. Many of them are fat. Others are old, and some are both things at once. No one is wearing really expensive clothes and most of those present have no discernible hairstyle. A veritable ocean of spare tires, beer bellies, fat ankles, swaying double chins and nonexistent waists as far as the eye can see. Many of the guests look as if they've never set foot in a gym in their lives.
After a moment, Yanel locates Iris Gonzalvo at a distant point of the party. Talking to a guy with a wide face and metal-rimmed glasses. The most striking aesthetic element of the guy talking to Iris seems to be an ass much larger than any ass Yanel has ever seen on a man. An ass that would even be too big on a woman. Big and fat. It used to be that Iris would never have been seen in public talking to a man with an ass like that. Yanel feels vaguely alarmed. With his drink in his hand, and trying not to touch anyone more than strictly necessary, he makes his way through the mass of unlikely party guests that separates him from his fiancée.
“I don't think you should feel bad,” the guy with the unbelievably fat ass is saying to Iris when Eric stops in front of them with his drink in his hand. “For having put out your cigarette in that man's face. Of course it is annoying that he's suing you and all that. Especially when you say you're going through a difficult moment financially.” He shrugs his shoulders. Now that he can see it up close, Yanel speculates that the guy's face is actually wider than it is long. “But you definitely were expressing what you were feeling. Solving a complex communicative situation. It was brave to do what you did. And, more importantly, you were completely sincere.”