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IF SOMEONE HAD ASKED ME two years ago where I'd be right now, I would tell him something along the lines of 'having brunch at The Ritz', or perhaps 'lounging around my newly acquired mansion somewhere in the Alps' where there were no fucking tourists like in the centre of Madrid.
And that is exactly where I was, pushing through the sweaty pile of Americans staring at the neoclassical facade of Congreso de los Diputados, eyes wide open and drinking in every word coming from the translating headset. It featured me, trying to and failing miserably, to pass without being elbowed or squished between the pudgy balls of sweat in I ♥ MADRID shirts and the statue of poor Miguel de Cervantes probably perspiring under the 38 °C Spanish sun.
The saddest part was, in no calculations, in no plan Z or 43 or Epsilon did I expect to find myself hiding under a badly cut blonde wig and a pair of teashades while I sneaked out to buy some strawberry yoghurt and cigarettes — the sustainable breakfast of champions and fugitive art thieves — in a local supermarket near the apartment I rented a few weeks ago.
Keep your head down, nice and casual, the silly mantra repeated itself like a broken gramophone as I pushed into the hole-in-the-wall shop, cursing all the deities when the door scrapped loudly against the cheap, peeling linoleum lining the floor. The cashier deigned to take her nose out of her magazine for a moment to shoot me a withering glare.
Shrinking into my light shirt, I marched straight for my yoghurt, making sure to keep my eyes trained on the sticky linoleum.
Even the reflection of my hollow appearance on the refrigerator's glass door mocked me, picking at the ashen colour of my skin, the permanently tense set of jaw. No one could recognise the person staring back at me from the reflective glass. At least, I hoped so.
And I don't need another judgmental mirror in my life, the one hanging above my sink does just fine.
It started, as many things did; with a marvellous, beautiful, supposedly well-thought-out heist.
Two Ming dynasty statues and a vase was all we had to snag from the Museo Arqueolgico Nacional, a routine job with my regular colleagues that shared my affinity for a fine antique and pretty price that came with smuggling precious artefacts over the Spanish borders.
Despite not being the friendliest bunch of criminals on the block, they were a good connection to the international art dealers, something I was in desperate need of to get myself on stable footing ever since I traded the picturesque Italian living for the scorching streets of the country I remembered only from vague childhood memories and short family trips — Spain.
