Mr. Bocanegra makes a half turn and grabs something that's leaning against a wall. It is some sort of thick paper rolled into a cylinder. He puts it on a table and unrolls it. The others come closer to have a look. The paper shows some sort of rural villa. With gardens. With enormous windows that look out on a rural landscape. And with statues. Dozens of statues everywhere. In the garden. In the greenhouse. At the entrance for cars. All of it in the middle of a landscape with all the idyllic elements rural landscapes are meant to have. Herds of cows. Wild horses frolicking. Barns shaped like giant mushrooms. Lucas Giraut draws his face closer to examine the page in detail. It isn't a photograph. It is one of those computer-generated landscapes. A simulation.
And on top of it all, dominating the image of the house and the statues and the computer-simulated rural landscape, written in enormous, optimistic letters, it reads:
THE ARNOLD LAYNE CHILDREN'S CENTER AND FOUNDATION
Everyone present looks at the sheet of paper for a moment. Someone clears his throat.
“It's…nice,” says Aníbal Manta cautiously.
“But, what is it?” says Saudade, who has somehow managed to get himself another bottle of Moët et Chandon on his way to the table and is now looking at the sheet of paper as he takes sips on the bottle.
“All my life I've wanted something like this,” says Mr. Bocanegra. His cruel features give way to those slightly trembling and slightly moist elements that indicate an Emotionally Intense Moment is approaching. His enormous bald head trembles. His mustache trembles. The long luxurious fur of his unmistakably feminine coat trembles a tiny bit, too. “All my life. There is nothing my heart loves more than children. Like an uncle. The truth is I feel like an uncle to every child. My heart has enough room. Because I don't have any children of my own. And I'm getting old. It's the loneliness of a childless man.” He takes a deep, melancholy drag on his cigar. “That's why I decided to set this up. A home. For children without parents. Or for the ones that have shitty parents who beat them. You know. I'll run it myself. I'll be like an uncle to each one of those kids. Once it's built, of course.” He claps his enormous hands one time. One of those claps that serve as a signal to return from a fantasy back to the surrounding reality. “Meanwhile, you all should know that everything you're doing, all our work, will help give a home to all those poor little kids.”
There is a moment of solemn silence. In some part of the warehouse a commotion is heard, like furniture being violently moved around.
“My father beat us,” says Aníbal Manta with a pensive face. “But it never occurred to me to think about that stuff about loneliness.”
The sound of furniture being moved violently is followed by an abrupt, muffled din. Like something heavy falling from a certain height. Mr. Bocanegra frowns.
“What's over there?”
He points with a big, hairy, ring-filled finger in the direction the noises are coming from. It is one of the unused wings of the warehouse, connected to the main part by a metal door that is now ajar.
Lucas Giraut shrugs his shoulders.
“It's a storage room,” he says. “For tools. Old furniture. Things like that.”
Noises continue to come from the door, now weaker. Like muffled echoes.
“Has anyone seen Yanel?” says Aníbal Manta.
Everyone looks around. In the warehouse lit by little multicolored blinking Christmas lights there are only five men. Saudade is polishing off his third bottle. Raymond Panakian seems to be talking to himself in whatever language it is he speaks while he fills his mouth with pieces of cake. But there is no trace of Eric Yanel. He seems to have disappeared in a moment of distraction.
Mr. Bocanegra starts to walk toward the half-open metal door. Followed closely by Lucas Giraut and Aníbal Manta.
The storage room on the other side of the door is dark and smells damp and like it hasn't been opened for months. The spiderwebs that hang from the ceiling get tangled in their hair and faces, forcing them to walk through the room swatting. Eric Yanel is hanging from the ceiling, too, from the lamp fixture in the middle. With the belt from his pants around his neck. With his face blue and kicking the air frenetically the way people do when they're choking. It's never very clear if the kicking means the person has changed their mind right in the middle of hanging themselves or if they are just experiencing the intrinsic emotional pain of the hanging. At his feet there are several dozen objects and pieces of furniture knocked over by the kicking.
The three men look at each other for a moment.
“But what the fuck is this?” says Mr. Bocanegra.
“I think he's committing suicide.” Aníbal Manta scratches his head pensively.
Yanel looks at them with his face blue and his eyes bulging. Still kicking.
“There'll be no suicide,” says Mr. Bocanegra in a firm tone. “And much less on such a happy night. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, for fuck's sake. And you”—he points at Yanel with his cigar—“still owe me money. So don't even think about trying to get over.”
Mr. Bocanegra leaves the room with an indignant air. Aníbal Manta sighs and carefully tries to get closer to Yanel. Trying to avoid his frenetic kicking.
CHAPTER 30. Stuck in the Armpit of Love
Christmas in Barcelona looks like a story by Stephen King. Not exactly because of the combination of Christmas lights, streetlamps lit up in the early evening, shop windows and corporate signs. A combination that's yellow and doesn't cast a single shadow. Not because of the institutional carols that hundreds of public-address speakers simultaneously emit. Not because of the hordes of people crossing Diagonal and other avenues, loaded down with bags from the big department stores either. It's their faces. The happy faces you see on people. The way the children laugh and run through the streets, and their parents' tired but happy faces. Like in those Stephen King novels where entire towns are controlled by a Central Intelligence. Those novels where one of the main characters, who's immune to the central control, runs through the streets shouting and crashing into hordes of happy-faced pedestrians. And suddenly, as soon as the sun sets behind the hills, the people begin to disappear. The streets are deserted in mere minutes. Like in those novels by Stephen King about mind control where night falls and wild dogs take over the city.
Iris Gonzalvo drives her brick red Alfa Romeo through the deserted blocks of the Upper Ensanche. With her wrist leaning on the upper curve of the steering wheel, and the car's interior flooded with an analgesic blend of music at top volume and cigarette smoke. She reaches into the purse on the adjoining seat and pulls out her key chain equipped with some sort of miniature remote control that opens the door to the garage. Without ever looking in the direction of the purse or the key chain, her gaze fixed on the deserted street in front of the Alfa Romeo. When she gets to the corner where her parking garage and her apartment are she makes an abrupt turn, causing a lingering family of holiday shoppers to scatter in every direction, shouting and dropping their bags full of gifts.
Once she's parked, Iris turns off the music and grabs the Blockbuster bag that's on the backseat. She goes up the stairs awash in yellow light that leads to her apartment and puts the high-security key into the lock. The kind of Stephen King novels that the staircase leading from the garage to the apartment is reminiscent of are those zombie novels where there's a couple of zombies lying in wait in a parking lot staircase. When Iris enters the apartment, there's a commercial on TV for a channel in which several famous people are toasting with cava. The way they're staring at the camera makes them look like they're being controlled by some Central Intelligence. With enormous smiles. And dubious expressions of clichéd enthusiasm.