The Billionaire, the Goddess, and the Daredevil

That Young Sailor—who by no coincidence then answered to the name of Javier—was signed on aboard Leviathan, a sailboat just over a hundred feet in length: a job he considered from the very start an outright steal for what he intended to do with his brand-new life, a favor offered him by his twinkling fate, and one where, by his own choosing, he was already secluded at the time, studying Comparative Literature on his own.

It was a lot of sailboat for a single man—a wooden-built classic gleaming with varnishes, bronzes, and abundant rigging. However, that Young Sailor, who most of the time passed for a freak given his striking extravagance, was actually a seasoned airborne veteran who still retained the martial demeanor worn for years, since he was honorably discharged just a few months ago.

Philippe Leroy, the shipowner, had met Javier at a soirée held on a rooftop along Barcelona’s Rambla with killer views, arranged by a French expat, Adrien Joffre, whom every last soul knew, judging by the turnout and the constant stream of people on the building’s ancient staircase.

Besides serving Catalan wine in abundance—especially the hairy grenache—Adrien had set up a Brazilian-style barbecue, also known as picanha, which would at least prevent all that wine from landing on an empty stomach. As was the rule on such occasions, at least among friends, when Fatboy Slim’s music began booming through the speakers and the dancing got underway, the one who wound up turning the meat over the mesquite embers was the only one capable of staying sober and skillful amid the mounting chaos: the ever-watchful Javier.

As night fell over the nearby silhouette of Montjuich promontory, a moon on which could be spotted with the naked eye the ash of its shadowed face ended up tragically impaled on the slender Calatrava Tower, in the manner of an olive that at the bottom of a glass of dry Martini rests, a magical moment when Philippe arrived, in the midst of his inseparable cloud of smoke—a chain-smoker like few others—accompanied by a woman of bewildering beauty whom there were who took for Helen of Troy herself, though the name of that Parisian model was in all truth none other than Malou Guex.

Drawn by savory aromas, Malou proved somewhat demanding toward Javier, asking him for ever thinner slices of the picanha, because, despite it being an early June night, he was dressed head to toe in stark black, and without the slightest malice she came to mistake him, in the first instance, fo