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“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.”

In the volleyball court on the private beach below the hotel's deck, the two mixed teams jump and shout and laugh loudly. A female player falls to the ground, gets up coated in white sand and starts brushing it off her breasts and hips amidst a chorus of naughty titters and vaguely sexual whistles.

“If I jerk off one more time, my clitoris is going to fall off,” says Iris Gonzalvo.

Her hair is long and curly in a way that is incongruent with the decade in progress. Long and curly like the hair of some models and actresses in the eighties.

The Floor Manager and the Director of Customer Service begin to cross the smooth, sunny length of the deck toward Yanel and his fiancée. On the beach volleyball court a more tangible sexual episode is taking place. A couple of male players are laughing and chasing a female player around the court. She carries the ball nestled below her swinging breasts. The scene is strongly reminiscent of certain classic pictorial motifs having to do with the hunt of half-naked women.

“I've only been in one car commercial where no one could see me.” Eric Yanel gazes at the off-season Ibiza sun with his eyes covered by the protector. “And I did it as a favor. That's something we actors do. Sometimes our agents ask us to do favors for their friends.”

The Floor Manager and the Director of Customer Service stop in front of the deck chairs occupied by the engaged couple. The Director of Customer Service moves a step ahead of the Floor Manager, as stated in company protocol. The Director of Customer Service is very tanned and his hair is dyed blond. The only corporate emblem he is wearing on his sporty attire is his plastic ID badge pinned to the front of his shirt.

“Mr. Yanel,” the Director of Customer Service addresses the face partially covered by the eye protector, “we don't have to do this out here. We can move to a more private location.”

Eric Yanel takes off his eye protector calmly and delivers a perfectly proportioned smile to the Director of Customer Service. A smile that could be a perfect advertising smile except for a certain yellowish tone. He sits up and offers a hand to the Director of Customer Service. The Director of Customer Service looks at the hand as if he were having some reservations before shaking it with a neutral expression.

“Mr. Yanel. I have to ask you pay the bill that you have outstanding,” he says. “You have been warned a dozen times.”

“The situation is completely under control.” Yanel barely alters his smile. “I spoke this morning with that man that…” He stops when he sees the Floor Manager from his floor. “Oh, hi. How are you, sir?” He extends his hand to the Floor Manager. The Floor Manager stares at Yanel's hand as if it were a cockroach the size of a hand. “We already spoke this morning.”

“Mr. Yanel,” says the Director of Customer Service. “I am sorry to inform you, but you must pay your bill.”

Eric Yanel theatrically pats his pockets.

“I don't usually bring my cards down so they can sunbathe.” He makes one of those pauses that are made right after a joke. Then his face takes on a serious look. “This could all backfire on you, you know that?” He frowns. “I'm talking about humiliating a client in front of his fiancée and all that. Who knows. My lawyer might find something criminal in all this.”

“Sir.” The Director of Customer Service looks around him furtively. “I must ask you to clear out of your room immediately and pay your bill at the reception desk.”

Iris Gonzalvo lifts her heart-shaped gaze from the deck chair where she has just taken a sip of her Finlandia with cranberry juice, the glass still in her hand, and smiles at the Director of Customer Service with a dramatic smile that looks a bit patronizing.

“He can't pay the bill,” she says. “Because he hasn't got any money.”

A fat kid with a swimsuit printed with characters from a Japanese cartoon show takes a running start across the deck's tiled floor splattered with water. Creating a generalized tremor of swaying fat that jiggles and spills in every direction. When he reaches the edge of the pool he makes a greasy, jiggly leap and, while suspended in the air, hugs his knees so he lands in the water in the posture traditionally known as “the cannonball.” Iris Gonzalvo observes, expressionless, the system of centrifugal waves where the fat kid plunged into the pool. The Floor Manager remains a step behind his superior ranking employee. In addition to the plastic ID badge pinned to his shirt front, he wears a full Floor Manager uniform made up of a blue linen bolero jacket with white pinstripes, matching pants, a white short-sleeved shirt and a corporate tie featuring the establishment's insignia.

“Of course”—the Director of Customer Service brings a hand to the tip of his nose nervously as he says this—“our company is prepared to take all types of legal action.”

Eric Yanel sighs. He places the protector over his eyes and lies back in the deck chair again.

“This is typical,” he says. His hand feels its way, searching for the ten-year-old Macallan on the little aluminum table. He eventually finds it and raises it to his lips. “The typical impression that people have about actors. As if we had money coming out of our asses. Like we never have any cash-flow problems. But it's not like that. It's a job that's filled with sacrifices. A job that requires patience.” He points with his glass of Macallan to the two hotel employees in a vaguely accusatory gesture. “You know? Sometimes I think you have to be very brave to be an actor in this country.”

There is a moment of silence. The fat kid that had plunged into the pool a minute before finally appears on the surface, in the midst of an upsurge of water. With his arms held high. In that radiant arms-held-high pose in which synchronized swimmers come to the surface after successfully concluding a number.

CHAPTER 3. The Fishing Trophy Room

The Fishing Trophy Room in the Giraut family house in the Ampurdan region is an enormous room located on the second floor. One wall is filled with large windows overlooking the Mediterranean, and there's a bar half hidden in some sort of nook near the door. Trophies from throughout Estefanía “Fanny” Giraut's career in sportfishing cover the walls. Stuffed, mounted fish on wooden plaques with commemorative inscriptions. Six-and-a-half-foot-long swordfish with their nose swords pointing to the other fishing trophies. Photographs of Fanny Giraut at high sea, with her vest filled with pockets and her captain's hat. Lucas Giraut doesn't exactly know why the executive meeting he is attending is being held in the Fishing Trophy Room of their house in the Ampurdan. Or, for that matter, why most of the executive meetings of the heirs to his father's company are held there. In his heart of hearts he suspects that it could be one of his mother's tactics to make him uncomfortable. Somehow his mother is convinced that she's stronger and more powerful inside this room.

Besides Lucas and his mother, a man that they all simply know as Fonseca is present at the meeting. He is Fanny Giraut's lawyer and confidant. Known in the Barcelona law world for his sycophantic loyalty to his client. Known in Barcelona by such terms as “deputy,” “right hand” or even “goon” by those who feel no special sympathy for Fanny Giraut's business project. Fonseca is seated on one of the leather sofas, with a glass of Finlandia and tonic in his hand.

“This is the primary objective of this meeting.” Fonseca frowns at Lucas Giraut, who is standing in front of one of the large windows. “To present you with the business plan for the coming year. Especially the plans for our International Division. Which, as you know, is now fully up and running. And that's why we've called you here. We could have just sent you the plans, you know. But that's not how we want to work with you. That's not the way your mother wants to deal with this delicate situation.” He makes a tinkling sound with the ice cubes in a glass of Finlandia with tonic as he looks toward where Lucas Giraut is standing, with his back to the meeting. “I am referring, of course, to the situation that your father's death has left us in.”

The Giraut family house in the Ampurdan is an art nouveau — style mansion, with three floors and forged-steel balconies, built facing a breakwater a mile away from a small fishing village. The house's name as it appears on the town registry is Villa Estefanía. In the Giraut family, though, everyone calls it the Villa. The man known simply as Fonseca is wearing a fishing vest on top of a wool turtleneck sweater and thigh-high rubber boots. On the temples of his bony face, a thick network of veins swell and deflate to the rhythm of his emotional ups and downs. Lucas Giraut is wearing a turtleneck sweater and thigh-high rubber boots, but instead of a fishing vest he has on some sort of tool belt adapted for fishing. Fanny Giraut wears a wool coat and scarf and rubber boots that only come up to her ankles. All three wear wool hats.

“The International Division,” continues Fonseca. “Fifty men and women with thirteen different nationalities. With promising careers and areas of knowledge that cover the entire market.” A slight note of elegy betrays his speech. A note he seems to suddenly be aware of, given that he frowns and takes a sip of his drink, a quiver of embarrassment showing in the veins of his temples. Then he shrugs his shoulders and continues. “You already know Carlos Chicote, the Director of our International Division. And you are already familiar with our restoration project for the Speyer Cathedral. That project, my boy, is the only thing right now that separates us from a position of dominance. From being the top European company in the field, in terms of capital and resources and client portfolio.” He looks at Lucas Giraut's back with a frown. “That is why we've sent Chicote to Germany with an unlimited line of credit and with exact instructions to have dinner with everyone he should be having dinner with.”

“We want Chicote to have dinner more.” Fanny Giraut observes the glass of Finlandia with ice she holds in her hand with a blank expression. Seated in her favorite leather armchair. Even when she isn't showing any particular emotion, her face is a horrible mask, her lips bruised from the silicone injections and the skin tensed beyond mobility by the face-lifts. It's not a face you can bond with emotionally. Her features aren't features in the general sense of the word. “To go to the bathroom and vomit after each meal if he has to. We want him to have dinner three times a day.”

Lucas Giraut is the only one who isn't seated. He's standing in front of one of the large windows that overlook the breakwater. From there he can see the window he often sat in as a boy with binoculars, watching his father during Fanny's parties. His father would stand in front of the same large window where Lucas is now, drinking a glass of Macallan and smoking a cigarette. The smaller window where Lucas positioned himself to lie in wait with his binoculars is in the part of the house known, within the family, as the North Wing or the Boy's Wing.