Story of a Sociopath by Julia Navarro

Author:Julia Navarro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

“Thank you, Dad, I know that I can count on you. But I have to try to make it on my own. Although if things go badly, I will of course come to you.”

John would have smiled at me. My words would have made him happy.

“You know that your grandfather and I know a lot of people. Don’t hold back in asking for help, at least not at the start. You’ll need clients and maybe we could convince some of our friends to give you a chance, commission a campaign from you. Do you remember Robert Hardy? Your mother took care of him in the hospital when he had his heart operation. I’m sure he’d commission a campaign for one of his food lines. I don’t know, canned tomatoes, mayonnaise, something.”

“I’m sure he would, Dad, but don’t worry about that now. I’ll be back soon and if I need help I’ll ask you and Grandpa to lend me a hand. But I’ll feel a lot better about leaving if I know you’ll take care of yourself. Don’t push yourself to go back to work. Do you promise?”

“Of course, of course.”

Then I would have leaned over to kiss him on the cheek and he would have been overjoyed.

—

But I didn’t say any of those words or make any of those gestures. I left the hospital room without even looking at him.

—

Evelyn was waiting for me at Barajas Airport. In Madrid that morning the sun lit up the city even though the cold made its way through the seams of my coat. The light—I was reminded that the magical thing about the city was its light.

Jim Cooper was with Neil Collins and a couple of newspapermen he’d met on his trips through Spain. But they weren’t going to bring me up to date on the situation until later that afternoon, so I went to the hotel to relax.

I slept until the telephone rang. Evelyn said that they were waiting for me at reception to go and have lunch.

“It’s three o’clock,” I replied. “It’s no time to have lunch.”

“Remember we’re in Spain. Now is when they eat. There’s a restaurant nearby, and the food is amazing. Hurry up.”

Yes, we were in Spain. For a moment I had forgotten that Spanish time is very different from American or English time. I was surprised by these people, so able to live and to work at all hours. The light, I said to myself again, it’s the light that makes them like this.

Cooper gave me a rundown of the situation. It was not easy for them to design the campaign. The environmental organizations and the political parties and the newspapers were far too powerful as opponents. Even though unemployment in the south of Spain was high, and oil could help to counteract the economic downturn, none of this affected those who viewed oil companies as the enemy.

Spanish society was more ideologically rigid than in the U.K. and especially the U.S., where the only form of militancy was a fundamental belief in the free market.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.