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“I hope you won't mind me asking if you have an agent.” The silver-haired guy beside Iris Gonzalvo offers her a business card. “Because I'm an agent. I don't know if you do commercials or films. I assume you're an actress. With that face…And with, well, all the rest. I'm sure I've seen you in something. And I know everyone says that.” He smiles beneath his silvery hair. The headband that he uses to keep his long silvery hair off his forehead and away from his face isn't a headband. It's a pair of sunglasses, a classic model from the eighties, recently rereleased as part of the aesthetic fervor for said decade. “As if I was trying to get you into bed. Do you do commercials or films?”

Mr. Bocanegra, Show Business Impresario and owner of the legendary Barcelona nightspot The Dark Side of the Moon, starts walking among the shoot's crew members, looking as if he's searching for someone. With his hands in the pockets of his markedly feminine coat. With a touch of cruelty in his squinted eyes while he scrutinizes the shoot location. His right-hand man, Aníbal Manta, doesn't have his hands in his pockets. It's not clear that they make pockets big enough to contain Aníbal Manta's hands. In the center of the shoot location, the director is looking at a small monochrome screen surrounded by a group of people eating doughnuts and watching in silence. The most common attire of the members of the shooting crew seems to consist of urban sport shoes, combat pants of various hues, and parkas. Many of them use the shooting breaks to breathe steaming mouthfuls of breath into their hands and do that thing with their feet that people do when they have to stand still in the cold. A bit like stomping on invisible grapes.

Mr. Bocanegra and his right-hand man Aníbal Manta are not wearing parkas or combat pants or any sort of urban gear. They are wearing Italian suits and loafers. They have mustaches. Aníbal Manta has a crew cut and a hoop earring that are completely incongruent with the rest of his appearance. They each weigh as much as two members of the shooting crew.

“Both,” says Iris Gonzalvo. “I do commercials and films.”

About six feet away, the three models with the coats laugh at Eric Yanel's comments as they drink coffee from a thermos brought to them by a girl in a parka and combat pants. The guy with the silvery hair takes some prescription glasses out of the pocket of his leather jacket, puts them on with a blink and fixes his gaze on Mr. Bocanegra and Aníbal Manta. Manta has just moved aside one of the containing fences and is now stepping to one side so Bocanegra can pass through, with a gesture that is reminiscent of a doorman in a luxury hotel or a gangster's chauffeur holding a car door open for his boss.

“You can't go through there,” says the guy with the silvery hair. With a sudden frown. “Who are those guys? They look like major players.”

Iris Gonzalvo watches as Eric Yanel's smiling expression turns first to shock and then to horror a second later, when he sees Mr. Bocanegra and Aníbal Manta striding toward him. The former with his hands in the pockets of his markedly feminine coat. The latter with an iron bar that he has just pulled out of some part of his Italian suit.

“I've done a couple of movies,” says Iris. “Under the name Penny DeMink. They both went directly to cable.”

Some of the technicians in the shooting crew gathered around the director seem to now notice the presence of the two guys with mustaches that have broken through the sealed containing fences and now seem to be talking to Eric Yanel. The trays of doughnuts from breakfast placed on camping tables are already almost empty and the only doughnuts left on them are the less popular flavors. Particularly coconut. Someone asks someone else if anyone knows those two guys with mustaches. Someone answers that they must be major players if they came out of the Jaguar parked back there. After which the crew's general attention unanimously shifts to the Jaguar.

“DeMink?” The guy with silvery hair strokes his chin without taking his eyes off of Bocanegra and Manta. “What kind of a name is that?”

Iris Gonzalvo watches with a frown as Aníbal Manta grabs the arm of one of the models with bare legs and pushes her onto the grass of the epic field. Then he smacks one of the other models on the rear end and watches with a mocking smile as she runs off in terror. The third model is already cross-country running. Iris takes off her dark glasses to better see the scene that's taking place in the middle of the cigarette ad shoot, in the middle of the already half-dispersed cloud of carbonic smoke that floats around the sports car. Now Bocanegra and Manta seem to have focused their attention onto Yanel. The guy with the silvery hair looks at Iris Gonzalvo's face now suddenly stripped of dark glasses, and his expression transforms. His cheeks get red. His neck gets red. Finally, his forehead gets red.

“Fuck,” he says in a low voice. “Now I remember where I've seen you.”

In the cloud of smoke semi-dispersed by the wind, Eric Yanel's race car helmet rolls in the grass. Aníbal Manta lifts his iron bar above his head in a threatening gesture. Kneeling on the grass, Yanel nods emphatically and then shakes his head emphatically and brings his hands together in front of his chest as if he were praying. With his features twisted into a grimace of terror. Aníbal Manta makes threatening, rhythmic little taps into his open palm with his iron bar. Mr. Bocanegra grabs Yanel by one ear and twists it with an expression that accentuates the intrinsically cruel elements of his physiognomy.

The guy with the long silvery hair squints his eyes in an attempt to make out the trio of vaguely visible figures through the diffuse cloud of carbonic smoke.

The scream that comes out of Eric Yanel's red, tearstained face as a response to the cruel twisting of his ear can be clearly heard at the containing fence. The guy with the long silvery hair looks at Iris Gonzalvo in alarm.

“I'm going to call the police,” he says.

And he pulls a cell phone out of his leather jacket. Iris Gonzalvo takes it out of his hand before he has a chance to open it and she throws it far and high, over the containing fence.

“My boyfriend is talking to those guys,” says Iris. And she points with her head to the place where Eric Yanel is now twisting in pain while Aníbal Manta's Italian loafer steps on his face, hard, burying it in the grass. “Can't you see that?”

Several figures in parkas and urban gear wipe the doughnut crumbs from their mouths and set off running toward the containing fence.

CHAPTER 7. Unnumbered Birthday

The subject of the Mexican corrido being sung by a mariachi with some sort of oversized twelve-string guitar seems to be Emiliano Zapata's death. Or, more specifically, the elements of injustice and emotional pain surrounding Zapata's death. Standing beside the stage, and wearing one of the intercom headsets that have been distributed among the organizational team, Lucas Giraut moves his foot distractedly to the rhythm of the Tex-Mex music that comes out of the impressive speaker system. The place is the pool deck of Barcelona's Gran Hotel La Florida. The occasion is the 2006 Unnumbered Birthday of Estefanía “Fanny” Giraut. In addition to the mariachi who plays the twelve-string guitar, the band hired for the event is made up of a lead singer equipped with an accordion, a guitar player — backup singer with a standard-sized guitar with the standard number of strings and an appropriately smaller guy that plays some kind of smaller-than-standard guitar.

“Son,” says the voice of Fonseca from behind Lucas Giraut.

The pool deck of Barcelona's Gran Hotel La Florida is filled with two hundred political, institutional and business figures for the occasion of Fanny Giraut's Unnumbered Birthday. The air of the surrounding hills lends a very slight scent of pine trees that mixes with the smell of cigarettes and pool chlorine. The guests gravitate in a complex system of meta-adjacent groups around the hostess with the surgically taut face. Due to the unnumbered nature of Fanny Giraut's birthdays, her Corporate Chief of Public Relations established the tradition five years ago of distinguishing the successive birthdays by preceding the word “Birthday” with the number of the year in progress.

“Son,” repeats Fonseca in the exact moment that Lucas Giraut turns to see him appear by his side with two clinking glasses.

The veins in his temples are swollen in a way that seems to indicate a medium-to-high degree of emotional stress and nervous agitation.

Fonseca puts a clinking glass filled with the evening's special cocktail into Giraut's hand. All the glasses used to serve the cocktail are inscribed with “FANNY GIRAUT: 2006 BIRTHDAY.” The suit Lucas Giraut is wearing is a pearl gray Lino Rossi suit. The design of the cocktail and the glasses and the other elements of corporate imagery exclusive to the party are the responsibility of Fanny Giraut's Personal Public Relations Office.

“Son, what sort of joke is this?” Fonseca points with his drink to the four musicians wearing fancy dress Tex-Mex suits who are playing the corrido with the Zapatista subject matter. “Who is the imbecile who hired these guys? It hasn't even been three months since we buried your father.”

Lucas Giraut nods as he takes a sip of cocktail with his gaze fixed on the Tex-Mex musical quartet. The musicians in the quartet smile with toothy expressions of professional optimism that are somehow particularly Mexican. The lead singer with the accordion is alluding to the fact that Emiliano Zapata's death constitutes an unforgettable event due to its negative historical repercussions for Mexican peasantry.

“Son,” says Fanny Giraut's lawyer and right-hand man. “You still haven't signed the agreements for the restructuring plan. Your mother is starting to worry. She's just been made a widow, for the love of God.” He shakes his head. “She needs a son's support now more than ever.”

Lucas Giraut nods again and stretches out his neck to get a look at his mother, who is perfectly positioned in the center of the system of meta-adjacent groups and totally absorbed in an animated conversation with two senior officials of the Upper Franconian Ministry of Culture. As a result of her face's lack of mobility, Fanny Giraut's smile consists primarily of retracting her lips to reveal horrifically white gums. A bit farther on, at the edge of the meta-adjacent groups closest to the six-story birthday cake, the Director of the International Division of LORENZO GIRAUT, LTD., Carlos Chicote, is passing his fingertip surreptitiously over the surface of the cake. Lucas Giraut raises a hand to the earpiece of his headset and frowns with an attentive look.