One of the waitresses, with the restaurant's trademark blank expression, asks for permission to remove their plates and bring their second courses. Both Giraut and Iris have chosen something called The Manhattan Project, according to the embossed menu in the shape of a nuclear mushroom. Among its ingredients is something called Projectile Squid Sashimi.
“Miss Iris,” says Lucas Giraut, once the waitress has gone.
“Lucas.” She interrupts him again. Now that she's not wearing sunglasses, her eyes are large and green and have those kinds of large, thick lids that give the impression that her eyes are never fully open. “I think it would be better if you just left out the 'miss.' It will make things easier if we're going to end up fucking.”
Lucas blinks.
“That isn't what I'm trying to suggest,” he says. “You are mistaken as to my intentions. I'm not doing this so I can sleep with you.”
Iris takes out a pack of English tobacco from her purse and places a cigarette between her lips. She waits for Giraut to take out a lighter and light it for her, protecting the flame with the palms of his bony hands. Then she exhales a mouthful of smoke.
“You're a good guy,” she says. “A bit odd, maybe. But that's to be expected, considering you're an antiques dealer and all that. You aren't like all the other men I've met, that's for sure. You still haven't tried to fuck me. You haven't offered me drugs or tried to impress me. And I don't think you're into guys. I'm good at seeing that kind of thing. I don't know why I like you. It must be intuition,” she says. She pauses while one of the waitresses places their second courses on the table. The raw squid in the dish known as The Manhattan Project really are shaped like torpedoes or projectiles about to be launched from a plane. “I think we can work together. I'm not saying that you're doing what you're doing just so you can fuck me. That's clear for the moment. My romantic relationship with Eric has been a pretty negative experience. That doesn't mean I'm doing things out of spite or to try to make him feel bad.” She pauses. There is nothing in her attitude that suggests she has any intention of eating her second course. “Although I have to admit that I chose this place so we would be seen together. A lot of Eric's friends come here.”
Lucas Giraut looks around him. Since they arrived at the Atomic restaurant, which is full at dinner hour, he's had the feeling that the other customers have been watching Iris Gonzalvo. Although they've only known each other for a few days, he has already realized that this seems to happen everywhere she goes. Like a vortex. Like some sort of magnetic force field that moves along with her. Causing reactions at neighboring tables and in practically everyone that crosses her path. The most shocking photographs at Atomic aren't in the main room. They are in the wide, well-lit hallway that leads to the bathrooms. A series of photographs showing different types of burns and wounds on victims of nuclear explosions. The location of said photographs is a question that isn't explained by any of the restaurant reviews that Giraut has read. Now he notices a man who is staring at Iris Gonzalvo. The man takes a pair of glasses out of his pocket and puts them on so he can see her better. He blinks several times and furrows his brow. The man is dressed entirely in white. His white suit has scallop trim and frills embroidered into the lapels and the sleeves that give the suit a certain Mexican air without actually making you think of Mexico at all. His face is unrealistically tan.
“I don't know who that woman that came to your apartment the other day was,” says Iris Gonzalvo. “But she wasn't your girlfriend. I can always tell these things. An ex-girlfriend, maybe.”
The tall man dressed in white has stood up and is now walking toward their table without taking his eyes off the low-cut back of Iris's dress. Iris follows Giraut's gaze as the tall man dressed in white stops beside their table and crosses his arms.
“Santi.” Iris looks at the man with a cold smile. “What a wonderful surprise. Let me introduce you to my friend Lucas Giraut. This is Santi Denís.”
“Terrific.” The face of the guy with the white suit is one of those artificially tanned faces where the entire complex system of facial wrinkles has transformed into a moving network of white lines. The effect is reminiscent of how spiderwebs are depicted in comic books. “As far as I'm concerned you can screw the king of Spain if you want. I was expecting a slightly more remorseful attitude after you lied to the security guards at my party and snuck into my bedroom. But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about. In fact, the less I talk to you the better. Your asshole boyfriend owes me a lot of money. I haven't had his face broken yet only because I can't find him. But you.” He uncrosses his arms and sticks a big tan finger into Iris's bare shoulder. “You do know where he is. And I'm not going to make a scene here. As much as I'd love to give you a good beating. But give him a message for me. He has twenty-four hours to give me my money.”
According to the restaurant review of Atomic that appeared in one of Barcelona's biggest newspapers, the place “descends to the kingdom of the atavistic as it confronts food and death. There is nothing in this place that doesn't bring you back to death's primal impulse and the fear that it arouses, from the employees' surgical garb to the hanging crocodile and the allusions to unnatural births and deaths. The masterpiece is undoubtedly the images of mutagenic explosions in the hallway leading to the bathrooms, where the nutritional act/mutated birth finds its parallel in the elimination/death by disintegration.” Iris Gonzalvo exhales a final mouthful of cigarette smoke and stubs out the butt in the saucer that holds the table's candle. She looks at Lucas Giraut with a slightly tense half smile and shrugs her shoulders.
CHAPTER 37. A Bench in the Park
The park on the outskirts of Barcelona where Matilde Saudade and her son Cristian have agreed to meet with their husband and father, respectively, is one of those parks on the outskirts of Barcelona with a cement floor and rusty metal constructivist sculptures. The only places in the park where the color gray doesn't prevail are those places where the wastebaskets are overflowing with fast-food wrappers, soft-drink cans and pornographic magazines. An irritated-looking pigeon alights on the ground in front of the bench where the three members that comprise the Saudade family unit are seated, and pecks at the grime on the cement floor. Looking to either side with an irritated expression. The three members of the Saudade family unit have been sitting for five minutes in silence on a metal bench in the park that gives its name to their neighborhood. Juan de la Cruz Saudade takes a pack of Fortuna cigarettes from the pocket of his powder blue and white sweatshirt and puts one between his lips. The new year has brought with it a cold snap that the press is calling Siberian. Siberian cold snaps are inexplicable, but relatively normal, occurrences in Barcelona's climate. Matilde Saudade extends a hand in a silent request for a cigarette but her husband has already put the pack back in his pocket.
“I talked to my mother and my sisters.” Matilde Saudade sighs, sitting on the bench in a vaguely childlike position, swaying her legs, grabbing the edge of the bench with her hands and looking at her feet. “They say I have to give you another chance. The last chance. Honestly, I don't understand why I have to give you another chance. I don't see any difference between this time and the ones before. Or why I have to let you come home.”
Matilde Saudade's most characteristic facial trait is a nervous tic that makes her compulsively wrinkle her forehead at regular intervals, as if she were surprised about something approximately every half second. The tic also makes everything she says sound slightly hesitant. As if she herself didn't believe the words that were coming out of her mouth. Matilde Saudade is wearing white stretch jeans and high-tops and a sweatshirt of a well-known sports brand that is actually an imitation of that brand's sweatshirts. Saudade's sweat suit is the official Umbro sweat suit of his favorite soccer club. The way the three members of the family are seated is the following: (a) Matilde Saudade on the right side of the bench, grabbing its edge with her hands and not looking directly at her husband or her son; (b) Cristian Saudade in the middle, covering his ears with his hands; and (c) Juan de la Cruz Saudade on the left side of the bench. Not so much seated as lounging with his legs open very widely and his head resting on the part of the back of the bench where most people rest their backs, smoking with large puffs and exhaling the smoke in his son and wife's general direction.