"How perfect!", he said to himself. Franck Grandino looked around and smiled with satisfaction at his own good taste: his was a feminine household all right. Noticing a stain on the black varnish of his coffee table, he groped for some paper tissue. He liked —— no, loved —— his flat so much. He loved himself so much too. The truth was that he thought of himsef as a nice creature. There was even, so he thought, something motherly in his demeanour. "Le poupée" was the nickname a French guy had once given him. For someone who had chosen bank robbery as a career, such a description might sound slightly unusual. The presence of the definite article le had clearly been intented by the Frenchman in question —— in truth a most questionable Frenchman as the bloke had Polish origins (so it seemed) —— as some sort of grammatical pun pointing to the physical outlook and sexual inclinations of Grandino. The French-Polish guy (Bukowski? Polanski?) would have been of no importance to his eyes, if Grandino had remained on the safe side of bank robbery. Unfortunately, Grandino could be really bitchy at times and, amongst his essential shortcomings, he had this almost visceral incapacity to be grateful to those who sincerely helped him. And, unfortunately, he had been particularly ungrateful to a young woman with whom the other guy (Karminski?) happened to be in love. Grandino looked at his face in the large mirror of his living room. His features were regular and he only regretted the thinness of his lips. He had recently bought a tiny tube of gloss that was supposed to plump up his pout. To no avail. Contemplating the picture of himself lost in his thoughts, Grandino started when he heard the phone ring and his face pulled into a grimace. He picked up the phone :
"Good morning Grandino", a voice said at the other end. "It's a long way to Marbella, you know. But here I am. I want to play".
Grandino first felt a mixture of surprise and unease.
"Who are you? What do you mean play?"
There was a pause then the voice resumed:
"I have found your Spanish doll's house Grandino. I want to play with you now. Je vais jouer au poupée, honey. Right?"
There was a click. And a beep beep dial tone was heard, echoing.
