Giraut intertwines his fingers and rests his smooth, hairless chin on the resulting double fist. About ten feet from where they are talking, on the other side of the frosted glass kitchen window of the two-story house, Marcia Parini's silhouette is flipping a crêpe in the air. Lucas Giraut's most striking physical feature is a round, largely hairless face that doesn't seem to belong to the same person as his tall, thin body with its long limbs. The brown eyes below pale brows always seem vaguely sleepy, giving his face a generally namby-pamby air.
“I made the last chapter longer.” Valentina Parini adopts a tone somewhat similar to the expert acuity of a literary professional. “I added more descriptions. Of dead girls in the school yard. With their basketball jerseys riddled with bullet holes. Or burned.” She pulls up the plaid blanket that's covering her legs and lap to ward off the twilight chilliness of the December evening. “Some of their heads are blown off.”
From the other side of the courtyard they can hear noises from the street. Christmas carols coming from cheap municipal amplification systems. The directions guides give to the groups of tourists that cluster around the cathedral. The shouts of alarm when one of those tourists discovers that the handbag tucked under the arm of the pick-pocket who's athletically running away belongs to them.
“I'm dying to see their faces,” says Valentina. “At the talent show.”
CHAPTER 2. Eric & Iris
Eric Yanel and his fiancée Iris Gonzalvo are lying on contiguous deck chairs on the enormous deck of the Palladium Hotel & Spa in Ibiza. Beneath the reasonably warm sun of Ibiza's off-season. On the hotel's private beach, made of tempered salt with a high iodine content, a group of sunbathers with permagrins watch the game of mixed volleyball that is taking place a few feet below the deck. The deck chairs where Eric Yanel and Iris Gonzalvo are lying aren't exactly arranged in parallel, but rather in slightly centrifugal angles. Perfectly symmetrical to both sides of the small aluminum table where their drinks rest. A Finlandia with cranberry juice for her and a ten-year-old Macallan with ice for him. With a partially melted ice cube floating on its golden surface, like someone doing the dead man's float under the sun.
Iris Gonzalvo sits up to take off her eye protector and watches her fiancé while leisurely stroking the golden ring that joins the cups of the upper half of her navy blue Dior bikini. Eric Yanel has a cigarette dangling from the side of his lips and is looking with a frown at a magazine open in his hands. The shadow of the umbrella with the Palladium Hotel & Spa's corporate emblem that Eric and Iris have behind them only covers the part of their bodies above the chest.
“What is this?” Eric Yanel uses the back of his hand to tap the satin-finished page of the open magazine. It's one of those glossy magazines for men. With photo essays on the breasts and buttocks of sculpted and digitally retouched women. “Who the hell is Penny DeMink? And why is there a photo of you here?”
Iris's expression is inscrutable behind the heart-shaped frames of her sunglasses. She bought those glasses after she saw them in an old movie projected onto the wall of a discothèque. A sonic amalgam of diving bodies, children's screams and the whistle blows of the hotel's social directors reach the deck from the private beach that extends below and from the hotel's complex of indoor pools. In addition to the tempered salt private beach, the Palladium Hotel & Spa in Ibiza has indoor pools on every floor, outdoor pools filled with seawater, a special aloe vera bath, saunas, Roman steam rooms, special tubs for thalassotherapy and a fangotherapy room.
“I swear I don't understand why I keep wasting my time with you,” says Iris Gonzalvo. Her voice is smooth and at the same time gravelly, like the voice of someone who, due to lack of lung power, has learned to fill their tone with sharp edges. “You're not even listening to me. I'm Penny DeMink. It's one of those names. What are they called? And what's important is what it says about me. In case you haven't gotten that.”
Iris Gonzalvo's body is thin. With a very flat stomach and wide shoulders. Her skin is very white in spite of the sun and has a light covering of freckles that can only be seen when you get up close. Neither of them is wearing a bathing suit, strictly speaking. Eric Yanel is wearing some jean shorts and an Armani Sport polo shirt. Iris Gonzalvo is wearing the top of a navy blue Dior bikini and a paisley Cacharel sarong. The midday heat is that reasonably warm heat, like a caress, that's typical of the low season in Ibiza.
Eric Yanel pulls a tiny bottle out of the pocket of his shorts, one of those bottles of cocaine with the screw-on tops that come with a tiny spoon built in. He opens it, fills the tiny spoon, and raises it first to one nostril and then the other while he sniffs with a distracted expression. He reads the text of the glossy magazine for men and puts the tiny bottle back in his pocket.
“Pseudonym,” he says. “But what's this? You made a dirty movie?” He shakes his head. The way he pronounces the word “dirty” betrays his French origins. “Shit. At least I've never done a dirty movie.”
“It's not a dirty movie.” Iris Gonzalvo takes the magazine from his lap and puts it on the little table. “It's an adult film. And of course you've never done one. You've never done any kind of movie. Your specialty is car commercials where no one can see you because you're inside the car.”
Eric Yanel's long, blond, perfectly coiffed hair, which includes a somewhat larger-than-life wave over his forehead, also betrays his French origins. His habit of wearing penny loafers without socks isn't a particularly French trait, but along with his fondness for polo shirts and his long, blond, very coiffed wavy hair, helps to distinguish him as a member, or at least a descendant, of the French rural upper class.
“Of course you know why you're with me.” Yanel picks up the eye protector from the little table and places it over his eyes while reclining the adjustable upper part of the deck chair. He lies back with his hands on his chest. His gesture reminds you of the position in which corpses are placed into coffins. “You're with me because if you weren't with me you wouldn't be able to be in a place like this drinking and sunbathing. Instead you'd be throwing yourself at German businessmen in convention hotels.”
“Right now I'd enjoy throwing myself at a businessman,” says Iris Gonzalvo in an even tone. “From Germany or from wherever. I'm twenty-four years old. I'm incredibly hot. And I'm in Ibiza. I should be fucking until I can't walk anymore.”
Eric Yanel turns his head toward his fiancée and stares at her as if he could see her through the plastic eye protector. Each half of the eye protector is shaped like a mollusk shell. Beyond his fiancée's deck chair, in a spot that would be perfectly visible to Yanel were he not wearing the eye protector, a Floor Manager of the Palladium Hotel & Spa is speaking in a hushed tone to the Director of Customer Service.
“You women just don't get it.” Yanel takes the tiny bottle of cocaine out of his pocket again. He unscrews the top and raises the tiny spoon first to one nostril and then the other before replacing his eye protector. “The male sex drive is much more subtle than people think. Ever since sexual liberation, women started seeing men as simple objects. That can be used at any moment. They glorify the permanent erection. But the truth is”—he makes a hand gesture that suggests resignation—“we aren't machines. It's been shown that men obtain their fullest sexual gratification through masturbation. Scientifically proven.”