Barcelona Noir by Adriana V. Lopez & Carmen Ospina

Author:Adriana V. Lopez & Carmen Ospina [Lopez, Adriana V. & Ospina, Carmen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2011-04-15T22:00:00+00:00

A HIGH-END NEIGHBORHOD

BY JORDI SIERRA I FABRA

Turó Parc

Pelayo Morales Masdeu is ten years old and a bastard. Short, rather fat because of bad eating habits, blackhaired, bleary-eyed, with a small nose and mouth (a wreck of a face dominated by cheeks, chin, and forehead, four cardinal points of excess). When he smiles, his eyes shrink until they turn into horizontal slats. When he speaks, almost always shouting, he raises his eyebrows extravagantly. But the worst almost always comes when he does neither of these things. Then the whole world shakes.

Pelayo Morales Masdeu was a child once upon a time. Now he’s an old man.

A ten-year-old old man.

“I want to go to the park.”

“It’s late now, master.”

“I want to go to the park NOW,” he says calmly and emphatically.

“Don’t you think that after yesterday …?”

“Whose side are you on, you stupid cow?”

“Don’t talk like that, please.”

“Let’s go to the park then.”

“Look, come out to the balcony. The same mothers are there.”

“So what?” He begins to get angry. “I didn’t push that moron down the slide! And I didn’t throw sand in the other kid’s eye! The first kid fell and the second is an asshole!”

“The girls’ mothers are there too.”

“Why do I care if they’re all jerks? All girls are the same!” His anger grows. “If you don’t take me to the park, I’ll go by myself!”

“You know you can’t go by yourself. Your father has forbidden it.”

“Who’s going to kidnap me? I’m going, I’m going, I’m going!”

“Master …”

“Then come with me. You’re supposed to be here to serve me, right?”

“Among other things, master.”

“You’re so stupid … Sometimes I understand why they kicked you out of your country.”

“They didn’t kick me out. I came to Spain to—”

“Oh, go to hell! Are we going or what?”

He’s already in the vestibule. Felipa doesn’t know what to do. He’s quite capable of opening the door and running downstairs. It wouldn’t be the first time. Then he’d hide and scare her to death. What he’d said about kidnapping were not just empty words. His father wants her to keep an eye on him at all times. His mother too.

“Are you coming or not, you moron?”

“Why don’t you play with your PC or with that little gadget—”

“The little gadget, the little gadget,” he says, then bursts out laughing. “The PlayStation, stupid! Now leave me alone!”

He opens the door and Felipa only has time to grab her jacket to cover her maid’s uniform. Pelayo is already one floor down, taking the steps two-by-two and three-by-three.

“I’m telling you again: don’t talk to me like that, master, please! What will the neighbors think?”

She hears his voice moving away from her: “What do I care what those old people say?”

She catches up with him on the street. It’s useless to try to take his hand. He says that she sweats, that she smells, that she’s nothing but an Indian, like all of them. And when she reminds him that in the Philippines they don’t have Indians, he says he looked

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