Free Barcelona Shadows by Marc Pastor

errands.”
    Blackmouth looks at his grimy fingernails and rips off a bit of skin from the side of his finger. He lowers his gaze and kicks a stone towards a horse-drawn carriage that comes down the street, lifting up dust. Whip in hand, the driver glares at him, it was really nothing, and then he looks at the woman, just as their paths cross. That evening the driver will not remember her features, but he won’t forget the unpleasant feeling that ran up his spine.
    “You have to know people,” she says, like a continuation of her thoughts.
    “I don’t know anyone.”
    “That’s just it. You have to have acquaintances. Never friendships, they always bring problems. You have to know people’s names and figure out what they have a weakness for, that way you’ll always have them in your pocket.”
    “But I don’t—”
    “If you know enough people you can have it all: money, power, respect…”
    “Sex?”
    She doesn’t turn her gaze towards him now either, but it’s clear she didn’t like the comment. She thinks it over.
    “Sex is power.”
    Blackmouth doesn’t understand. Sex is sex. Shagging, fucking, screwing, getting off. He doesn’t always have the opportunity, because he doesn’t always have money. There have been times when he’s waited beside a woman until drink left her groggy, and then he’d had a ball. There is a girl, over on Lluna Street, whom he often sees passing by and one day he’s going to corner her and—every time he thinks of it he gets hard. He can almost smell her scent. He imagines her in his claws. He is overcome with such a desire to get some action that he can’t walk normally.
    “Will I meet girls?”
    “I can introduce you to girls, if that’s what I have to do to get you to focus.”

    I like to disguise myself as a man, cloak myself in your skin and pass as one of you. I can talk to whomever and open up their soul like a pomegranate, without them suspecting who I really am. I let them think they have the upper hand, I establish trust, and they start spilling. That doesn’t mean they aren’t lying, though. You shouldn’t believe half of what Joan Pujaló says: he’s a blowhard.
    My wife was a whore and, in her own way, she still is one. That’s something you never give up. No, no, it’s not just a bad habit: it’s ambition. Joan Pujaló bristles his moustache and looksat the empty glass, dirty with foam. He stares at me, squinting his eyes, as if he didn’t believe a word of what I had told him, and he continues chatting. She already was one when I met her. Enriqueta was young, but a big, strong, well-formed woman who was all business. The customers came in through the door and blew their wad before she took off her blouse. Not me, I gave her pleasure, and I could be there for hours. I had as much money as stamina, because I’ve always been an athlete, I don’t know if I mentioned that.
    Sometimes she pretended she wasn’t there, even though I heard her talking with Dionisia, there on Riereta Street, behind the door, because I left her so burnt out she couldn’t work for a week. Did you know Dionisia? No? She was very clean, she was, and she took very good care of the girls. She had six, and at first I went there for Rosaura, a gypsyish girl with enormous eyes who never opened her mouth but let you do everything, you know what I mean. Rosaura had small breasts, soft like egg custards and—well, the thing is that one day, when I got there, Dionisia told me she had a new girl, and she introduced me to her. I saw her come into the vestibule, with a gauzy little dress that hinted at some powerful hips and that gaze that singles you out, and introduced myself.
    “Juanitu, at your service.”
    But, really, she was the one serving me.
    I visited the brothel on Riereta Street more and more; it’s closed now, a municipal policeman lives there with his wife and children, ain’t life strange. That was around ’94, you know? Barcelona was very different. Every so