Love in the Time of Chat

By José Luis Palma / Roca Infantes

A story of an elder man who falls in love with a younger woman through the mysteries of the unknown cyberworld. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Jun 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507111871

Book preview

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHAT

Table of Contents

Title Page

José Luis Palma y Roca Infantes

Selected among the ten finalists of Premio Planeta 1999

I

Enter password | Authentification failed. Try again or consult your dealer

II

http:// www.firmamento.com/partchat/senior30+./

III

Welcome. Rilke user has connected to the chat. We are running.

-Welcome. Belledejour user has joint channel

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHAT | ( Second Part )

XVI

XVII

Beloved Josele | Daddy and Mommy will love you and pamper you | You will live in our hearts forever | 1998

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

END

José Luis Palma y Roca Infantes

Selected among the ten finalists of Premio Planeta 1999

"Love in Time of Chat" ranked third among the finalists of Premio Planeta 1999.

This novel was written by José Luis Palma and Roca Infantes as a team, and it was presented under the name of Palma Infantes and published in 2000 in the collection of Autores Españoles e Hispanoamericanos of Planeta editorial, having a great sales success.

The authors are very glad to re-edit this novel for e-Book edition hoping that it may reach a great number of readers.

We hope you enjoy this reading.

Authors’ note:

Ninety nine percent of the story of this novel is based on a true story. Names and places have obviously been changed. The rest is pure fantasy; and it is probably the only part worth reading.

Frivolous and stubborn always talk of the past, sensible ones simply talk about the present, but it is only the crazy who dare talk of the future

As author of half of these pages, I dedicate my work to Roca Infantes; the author of the other half. For having taught me so many new things and for always having so much patience, sometimes even infinite tenderness. For having turned this experience into an unforgettable and marvelous adventure as well as a marvelous one, and sometimes passionate. For sharing her friendship and also a little bit of her beaming youth, which is –in the end– the little treasure we all want to share and preserve.

José Luis Palma

Half of my dedication is entirely for Raúl. The other half, which is a quarter of the total, is to be shared by my parents, my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, my cousins; David, Tina, Luis, Fabián, Lea and José Luis, of course, author of the other half.

Roca Infantes

I

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Do not chase the impossible, but do not avoid it either if it is within your reach. Her father, who was born in the heart of Andalusia, had a lot of Arabic in him, a bit of Jewish, and very little or almost nothing of old Christian. He was prone to tinting the most important things in life underlying them with judgments only God knows where he heard. Now, that phrase she had heard so many times coming from his lips, and which was insistently pounding on her brain, that phrase was encouraging her not to give up on her frustrating endeavor although she had the feeling that what she was chasing was quite far from reach, trying to have access to the content of that damned computer and she still hadn’t obtained it. Maybe she was chasing the impossible. Not having access to the information, not knowing the key, was destroying her deteriorated appearance. Every day she had to spend doing that maddening activity would be one more day she would have to subtract from the scarce time she had set aside for this sad and unexpected visit to Madrid. In the United States, in a hurry because of the trip, she had left her house and family kind of abandoned. She was now fully focused on solving that situation effectively and fast and to return to Minneapolis soon. She would then go back with Larry and Eddy to finish doing every necessary and unavoidable thing more quietly and peacefully.

Her lawyer had been very clear; without the necessary documents, the proceeding could take months or even years. For Almudena and Eduardo, her brother, those documents were obviously very important; but her personal interest was beyond that. She was convinced that in the innards of that gadget which was resisting to be opened were the keys and answers to many questions she had made herself in the last few days, in the last few weeks, in the last few months and even years.

Unfortunately for her, and to her despair, that stubborn computer monster, before giving her the passwords she needed, required another password first; the essential key to open the software which contained the files she wanted to open and read. Tireless and invincible, with the repetitive insistence of a stupid machine, it gave back the same invariable message when she tried to crack it:

Enter password

Authentification failed. Try again or consult your dealer

Being desperate, she entered as possible passwords her father’s name, her mother’s, her brother’s, her own name, birthdays of the entire family, her children’s names, every family member’s initials, cities as Madrid, Minneapolis, Medina. Everything was useless; the answer to every new password she entered, which she did more angrily every time, remained the same: Enter password. Authentification failed. Try again or consult your dealer.

With the help of Fabricio Manrique; an old family friend who became her lawyer and almost counsel,  her temporary confident, and her savior, once again she tried cracking the software of that damned computer trying to avoid the access password by taking alternative routes suggested by Fabricio. Repeated attempts failed; the damned machine tirelessly repeated the hateful message: Enter password. Authentification failed. Try again or consult your dealer.

Fabricio’s elemental computer knowledge encouraged him, under the urgent beg of Almudena, to open up the computer, withdraw the hard drive very carefully and install it in another system. Maybe this way the access password could be avoided. When they finished the installation and connected the trial PC again, they held their breaths while the operating system loaded. Damn it! Once again: Authentification failed. Try again or consult your dealer

––Almudena; let’s be sensible. It’s very clear, there’s no doubt. This machine doesn’t speak, but it’s insistently yelling, in its own way, a fully logical message: Consult your dealer. Let’s consult the dealer then. One must listen to these machines, because even if it’s annoying, they are always right. They were programmed to be always right, their version of it. Where and when was this computer bought?

––My dear Fabricio ––answered Almudena despondently ––; when I left this house over seven years ago, the only appliances were in the kitchen: washing machine, drying machine, fridge, microwave, and dishwasher, nothing else, except the televisions in the living room and bedrooms. Oh! And my hair dryer. How am I supposed to know where and when this obnoxious computer was bought?

They decided to do what the tireless message of the tireless machine had been repeatedly telling them, which they persistently and fearlessly had been ignoring. Messages from these machines must be blindly obeyed –Fabricio determined– because as silly as they may seem, they are always right. They even end up seeming smart although they seemed stupid at first sight. He looked for a number in his agenda and phoned his dealer to tell him about the problem. Luckily to both of them, the expert from Compusoft-Land Corporation specialist in this kind of issues, was in the office. Pressured by the importance of a client as Mr. Fabricio Manrique, he cleared his schedule and agreed to go to the indicated address that same afternoon so as to try to get that stubborn PC’s hard drive going.

Java, the greatest of experts at Comp soft-Land Corporation invested more than four hours in leisurely activate all and every single one of that computer’s keys shooting complicated and sometimes tricky messages by means of intricate by-passes (as he called them) to which the computer didn’t pay any attention. In the meantime, cautious after the technician, Almudena and Fabricio anguishedly and desperately helped with the repeatedly failed operations of the computer expert. Anyone is an expert nowadays, Fabricio and Almudena thought.

Without flinching, not even a little bit (computer experts, except on rare occasions, are a special breed), and without lifting his sight from the screen or his hands from the keyboard, Java sentenced:

––I’m sorry Mr. Fabricio. This PC is super protected and access without the key and without the password is impossible in spite of all the by-passes I shoot at it. I can only think of one thing, but that... and you being a lawyer, you need to talk it over with the boss, because the solution... what can I tell you, it’s a bit dodgy, a bit illegal I mean, well, it’s forbidden, if you know what I mean.

––Well, I don’t–– Fabricio answered–– Why is it illegal to carry out an operation as necessary as finding an access key that has been lost or forgotten? Anyone can forget their own password; let’s see what they do then; throw away the computer with all their information or try to shoot all possible by-passes to solve the problem?

–– You’re absolutely right, sir, but what do you want me to tell you Mr. Fabricio? It’s forbidden and really forbidden because we’re talking about decoding a secret access key, which is already a crime, but it must also be done using pirate programs, forbidden programs, although here, between you and me, that would be the only way to decode the key of this stupid computer and find out what the password is, if you know what I mean. But...programs that do this, programs that decode access to blocked PCs, are secret programs used by the police to gut ETA PCs when they nick them, or programs used by the American police to investigate delinquency, drug trafficking, money washing, organized crime and that kind of stuff, if you know what I mean. But I don’t want anything to do with that, that’s the kind of job my boss handles, I’m just here to do my job, if you know what I mean. Talk it over with my boss, and if he authorizes it, I’ll be glad to do it. But be careful! If you talk to him, I haven’t said anything about this, if you know what I mean, I don’t want to be framed for this. Do you get me?

––Yes, I do, and you have nothing to worry about, man. I’ll talk to him; we’re close enough to do this and much more. Plus, we won’t have any kind of problem. We won’t do anything criminal with this computer, I assure you. Tell me; when could you come back? It’s urgent.

––If my boss authorizes this, I can come as soon as tomorrow. It would be the first thing I do in the morning.

––You can count on it and please don’t fail us. Accessing the information this computer is withholding is very important to us.

––Don’t worry; I’ll be here first thing, if my boss tells me to, of course, if you know what I mean.

At 9 AM the following morning, the computer expert from Comp soft-Land Corporation was at Almudena Abascal’s door.

––Isn’t Mr. Fabricio here? he said, omitting an essential ‘good morning’.

––Good morning ––Almudena greeted him––. Please come in. Mr. Fabricio is coming a bit later. He told me you should start working as soon as you came although he wasn’t here.

––Well let’s get down to it!––Java answered.

Sitting in front of the computer, Java prepared himself as if he was going to celebrate a magic ritual. As soon as he had everything in order, he turned on the computer with a special hard drive of the system while he said in a low voice: ‘let’s see if you don’t resist me today, bastard.’

When the computer asked him to, he introduced the master floppy disc. Almudena anxiously observed the constant flickering of the light indicating the hard drive was loading information, without lifting her sight from the monitor. In less than a minute, there was a wonderful message on the screen:

Possible password; BELLEDEJOUR, if not, repeat procedure, insert disk 2 and try again

––The password ma’am, here it says it could be Belledejour; does it ring a bell?

––Belledejour? No. It doesn’t ring a bell, well it does; it sounds like that Buñuel movie, but it doesn’t matter, please try entering that password to see if it’s luckily the one.

Almudena anxiously crossed her fingers. Her palms were completely wet and cold.

The computer expert turned the PC on again. Before Windows loaded, the hateful message was again on the screen: Enter password.

Almudena held her breath.

When Java entered the key: BELLEDEJOUR, the computer, obediently, unfolded every each and single program in its hard drive. The problem was solved. Now Almudena’s job was to investigate the files which could give her the data she was anxiously looking for. Before starting the investigation, she told herself: Belledejour? I don’t understand why my father chose that strange access key.

II

––––––––

He wasn’t very sure he had turned off the alarm, not even of having heard it, but he still decided to painfully pull the sheets to once again enter the routine of a new day. Being awake and surrounded by immense solitude in an empty bed felt worse every day. As usual, he took his feet out of bed, remained sitting on the border of the bed for a few seconds and he then straightened up with difficulty and putting his hands on his knees to stand up. Once he achieved that, his legs automatically led him to his bathroom. As he did every morning, he connected the little radio to listen to the same things he hated so much. While he stretched with a huge yawn, he unloaded liquid its bladder had accumulated during the night. At such early hour, his neurons were still dazzled; they didn’t allow him to think in too many things. It was better that way. Nothing worse than a brain which tries to work at such an early hour and under such unfavorable circumstances.

He had finished brushing his teeth when the current broadcaster greeted the audience once again, with an artificially joyful and annoying voice, saying the clock at the studio stroke seven fifteen –an hour less in Canaries– of a cold but splendid Sunday morning. 

Sunday? He arranged his ideas in the most elemental way he could. Effectively; if yesterday was Saturday, and he did remember this well because for many Saturdays he had attended the auditorium concert with Paloma, so today had to be Sunday. It was Sunday, January 13, apparently.

What could he invent to fill so many empty hours of a Sunday which appeared would be even longer than others? Going back to bed, even though morning coldness was inviting, was unthinkable. He could check that it was still a closed night by looking through the slits of the half-open shutter in the bathroom.

He shaved himself as leisurely as always, crawled  into the shower and got into the wide pair of Sunday grey sweatpants matched with the red plaited shirt and a thick blue cable pattern sweater that he had bought over fifteen years ago in a little street market in London. When choosing shoes, he went for thick leather boots with rubber soles and lined on the inside. As many Sundays he would go up to Rascafría to walk alone the upward side of the Lozoya River in search of his birth, which he had never found.

While he waited for the sound of the coffee machine to announce that the coffee was ready, he connected several other radios strategically distributed around the house; in the kitchen, in a hallway, in a living room, and he of course left connected the one he had turned on first thing in the bathroom. What radios could be broadcasting at such an hour was not of his interest. If he did it, it was to feel wrapped up by the noise coming from every transmitter. This was somehow his way to feel accompanied in a big and empty house in which there were only traces of a past and strange family life.

It’d been over three years since Eduardo, his only son, lived in Las Palmas of Gran Canarias where he had moved after winning the competition to State Finance Inspector. Eduardo was single and his relationship with girls was inconsistent and non-persistent. To his father, Eduardo sometimes had some eccentric habits. If the relationship between father and son had never been smooth, ever since he had left to the islands communications had been colder and colder, as well as more infrequent. Actually, almost all of it was limited to a monthly short phone contact at the most. In spite of his best efforts, there was always a misunderstanding between him and his son, the cause of which he was never fully able to discover. Now, after all these years, he found it very difficult to recover an almost lost relationship.

Almudena, his only and dear heart daughter, had been living in Minneapolis for over seven years. He could have never imagine that his only support, his confident for non-excessively personal things, his little friend, his illusory hope to a very uncertain future, would fall desperately in love with an American economist that had coincidentally come to Madrid to audit the multinational company where Almudena had just started working. Seven years of marriage and mother of two children already. What a race she was running! He had never liked that patriotic and familiar way the average American has of doing ordinary things in life. Unfortunately for him, Larry, his son-in-law belonged to that very special breed that only grows in the central states in deep America. He was sure the American would fill her with children to file for divorce a few years later and run away with a younger woman. He had always wanted to tell his daughter about this, but he never found either the way or the moment to do so.

Almudena called him at least twice a month and he did the same for her. She went back to Madrid every year, at least twice; she did so almost always in summer, sometimes alone, sometimes with her husband and two children. José Ramón had already understood that little by little these visits would be wider apart from each other every year until they would be done almost as a duty or by chance. This didn’t worry him much either. On the other hand, hardly a year went by in which he didn’t go to the States for business reasons. He almost always took advantage of these trips and spent two or three days at his daughter’s place. Not more than a few days although, since he was certain that a visit that was extended beyond what was reasonable and prudent, would transform the happiness of a spontaneous encounter in a blunt discourtesy and maybe even unbearable boredom. Moreover, the loneliness and silence to which he was used at  his house in the outskirts of Madrid sometimes made it impossible for him to bear the deafening noise generated by those two dwarves in their childish games, which their mother usually reprimanded unconvincedly: ‘Kids, don’t yell so much. You’re annoying grandpa’. He wasn’t handling the grandpa thing very well. Grandfather, even if it was a harsh term, would have been less traumatic, but grandpa was excessively unpleasant to his ears, not very elegant, cruel even for he still felt young and willing to reorganize his life next to someone who could help him through his monotonous and grey existence. Fifty three years were not so many as to start a new life, but they seemed too few to be called grandpa. Fortunately, those little angels, who talked all the time in a Spanish and English hybrid –that is– Spanglish, went drastically from their father to their mother, who they only saw as a not-so-familiar being and who they only briefly greeted welcome. He hadn’t felt that extraordinary affection that grandparents are said to have for their grandchildren, maybe because he didn’t see them a lot, maybe because he was aware of how they had replaced his affection in his daughter’s heart, or maybe because at the end of the day, they were the children of an average, quite ordinary American, for whom he didn’t feel excessive sympathy.

After sipping the coffee, he momentarily felt like talking to his daughter, but in a quick mental calculation he realized that it was one in the morning in Minneapolis. He would do it in the afternoon.

He took the breakfast cup from the kitchen table and placed instead the notebook that in the past few months had become his inseparable tool. He opened a file of a medical paper he had been working on for a long time and although he changed paragraphs, commas, stops, gerunds, and even quotes, he didn’t feel like trapping himself in the matter until he would be able to finish it as it had been his first intention. He closed the computer without even saving changes made and decided to go out on another Sunday to wander the sides of the Lozoya from the very top of Guadarrama hill up to the dam that carries its name.

As every morning in the garage he delighted in the powerful roar of his BMW 525 starter. In the luxurious dashboard, he verified that the clock showed the same time as his Cartier watch. He always trusted his car’s clock better than his old and fancy watch. Before taking national I he stopped at the same newspaper stand where he had always and routinely bought the same paper. In spite of all the years gone by, his relationship with the salesman hadn’t changed from good morning and how much do I owe you? That morning, José Ramón Abascal thought again about how difficult every day contact with people around him was becoming even though for professional reasons, communications was the essential pivot of his professional activity.

He bought three Sunday newspapers with their corresponding supplements, two newsmagazines, another one dedicated to the world of engines, and another IT one whose title greatly caught his attention: ‘Caught in the Net: Enter a new world of relationships with the Internet. Make thousands of contacts with chat’.

He very well knew all the advantages of the Internet to him as a doctor, the Net of nets. Actually, José Ramón had been a habitual cybernaut for more than two years, and he even thought that in his initial stage he was excessively caught by the system, but that didn’t last long. Nowadays he just used the Internet for emails and bibliographical references on Medline. Visits to websites, even though varied, interesting and fun in the past, had ended up boring him and he almost didn’t surf them lately.

In the past few weeks he had heard the world of chat being talked about in different environments. He vaguely knew what it was about but he wasn’t aware of the details. That recently bought magazine would possibly clarify some of the many doubts he was so eager to clear. He would leave that for the afternoon, as his body and specially his spirit urgently felt the lonely call from the mount and its river.

He stuck a Mendelssohn tape in the car’s player and let A Midsummer Night's Dream play despite the time, date, and specially the ruling cold, didn’t encourage that kind of music. Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi was, among all composers, his favorite author, specially due to the elephant and relaxing harmony which sprang from his works. Every artist who is born and work between two cultural movements, and this is what happened with Mendelssohn; achieve better glory than those who belong to the very heart of a given movement. He didn’t understand how he had found, through his life, apparently cultivated people who hadn’t even heard of this superb author.

When he arrived at the El Paular monastery, where he usually parked his car, the thermometer showed that the temperature outside was of 2 degrees. The sky was a faded grey and the air was markedly could and foggy. Clouds hung over the low mountain as gigantic hank of frayed and dirty cotton. Once again he felt betrayed by false expectations given by the radio broadcaster who announced a ‘splendid’ Sunday morning. He almost regretted having gone up there. Coldness, for a while now, immobilized him a bit at a time, so he doubted whether to climb out of the car or not. In the end he got out. He put on his fur lined overcoat, covered his neck with a thick Scottish scarf and covered his head with a blue velveteen bonnet. He thought he may look quite ridiculous, but he was reassured by seeing that everyone who visited that place at such an early hour on a Sunday looked even worse than he did.

As other times and before starting walking on the mount, he entered the empty monastery chapel to sit on the last bench and to observe every detail of that enclosure. In spite of considering himself deductive agnostic, tranquility of churches served as the best, and the least damaging, tranquilizer. Solitude and silence ruling those beatific places accelerated his thoughts diffusing and he immediately could imagine what his life would have been like if he had chosen to be a devout monk for the Order of St. Jerome, as well as what could have been the degree of personal satisfaction of those men dressed in black tunics, living in that secluded and magnificent place dedicated to an almost gazing, almost useless life. A sacristan monk, who was preparing the sacristy at the high altar, came to remove him from that delicious calmness. He observed him for a couple of minutes and left the temple. His gazing moment was over. With slow steps, he immersed himself in the thick grove lining the right side of the Lozoya River. In those lonely walks his mind stopped thinking for his feelings to take the lead.

For a couple of hours he went up and down those roads moving away weeds and being careful of the semi wild cows which were spending winter there. The aroma exhaled at those early hours by the woods and the turbulent water of the river profoundly invaded him, comforting him. Towards noon people started arriving. The same people as always, the ones that every Sunday outrage the mount’s solemn peace; rowdy, noisy, ordinary people loaded with naughty and rude children who throw stones at the cows, dry branches to the river, and who seed the sow with indestructible plastic things and horrible beer and coke cans. These were the people who announced him that it was his time to go back. Plus, he never thought how convenient it would be to fence in the field, and specially that magical an mystic place.

He always did the way back more slowly than the way there. He tried to make the most of those brief hours of weekly rest in which he recharged his weak batteries for a new week of frenzied activity.

He preferred buying some ready meals at a pick-up restaurant to eat them at home to sitting alone behind some newspaper in a restaurant. He brought up from the home wine cellar a Rioja from 86. He uncorked the bottled in the habitual ritual such a wine deserves and he drank it fully accompanying what he had bought. Without paying too much attention to it, he let in his ears the news reeled off with a somewhat silly smile by the current broadcaster in some national radio station at the three o’clock news. It was the same as always; wars, corruption, accidents, abuse, natural disasters and politics; specially politics, everything was covered by some political crap that could transform the blue color in the TV screen to brown. With the help of the remote control, he angrily extinguished the image in that apparatus. He put on a CD and played Mendelssohn’s Scottish and fell on the couch. Before getting to his favorite movement, the third one, he had already fallen deeply asleep.

He counted up to six phone rings, before the answer machine started repeating the well-known phrase that invited the desperate caller to leave his message after the beep. It was Paloma with her high-pitched voice.

—Are you there, José Ramón? If you are, please pick up the phone. I’ve got something to tell you.

—Can you hear me, José Ramón? Okay, I’ll call later. I’ve got the theater tickets. Call me when you can. It’s Sunday at eight, at the María Guerrero. 

He didn’t feel like talking to Paloma and he certainly didn’t want to go to the theater with her, no matter how interesting the play may be. Paloma was a good girl, they even got along in and out of bed, but sometimes she became excessively motherly with him, trying to meddle in his most personal affairs. He specially couldn’t stand the advice she intended to give him on what he should or shouldn’t do about his son: ‘You’ve given your life to him and look how he pays you back. Because you were both father and mother at the same time. If I were you, I would disinherit him right now and prohibit him to enter my house. I believe that boy is weirder than you think. He never goes out with girls and don’t get me started; that’s not normal at his age. What you need is someone to reorganize this chaotic life you are leading. To be who you have become just to be all on your own. What a plan! Some children!’

If twentieth century man has invented so many interesting things, few have been as helpful as the answering machine –thought José Ramón–. He thought that this electronic machine had come to replace with extraordinary perfection, and even to out-do, the old maids, always so willing to help ‘Mr. José Ramón is not here right now, but would you like to leave a message?’.

He chose the Tragic Overture by Brahms from his abundant collection of CDs and started to have a look at the newspapers without much interest. The news was redundant compared to those of the radio. He quickly went through every page of every newspaper and supplement. That scarce interest was basically due to wanting to focus his attention on that IT magazine in which the Internet, chat, its resources and possibilities were discussed.

Once he finished reading the article he felt a bit disappointed. Actually there are few articles whose content live up to what is suggested in their titles. This particular article only made some vague remarks and retold some anecdotal accounts of different relationships that in some cases had even ended up hitched in church thus ending single life for two lonely beings who had found a solution to their endless dialogues in a crowded chat room. According to the article, over eighty per percent of chat room users suffered from more or less significant loneliness or even almost absolute loneliness. Websites to connect to the most varied chats were provided. There were love, movies, IT, soft or hard sex, sports, literature and any kind of imaginable chat room. All you had to do was choose a website, find an adequate nickname to one’s personality and keep up with the conversation.

After Reading that, he thought that there were no good theory that wasn’t accompanied by the corresponding practice. He then turned on the computer to connect to the Internet. In the low right margin of the screen, the clock struck 5.21 pm. He took the first suggested website and typed it in the URL space:

http:// www.firmamento.com/partchat/senior30+./

He had to wait a little over three minutes for the chat room to load in his computer. An additional screen popped up to remind him of some simple instructions to enter the that; essential rules of the game and of conduct to enter a virtual room probably stuffed with chat room users of the most varied types. In such a room, the minimum age was