The Last Resort (35 page)

Just like Mama at Bertie’s funeral, I think back with pride. Nobody saw tears fall from her eyes either—and she did have such lovely lilac eyes. Nor did people ever catch her avoiding them, despite everything she had been through and all the despicable things they so openly said about her.

“I will toast to that!” I call out, raising my glass in the direction of Hassam so that he will serve me a bit more of that pox he calls a dry martini. As I do this, my eyes cannot help but stray over to the other side of the pool, to the little widow who never shed a tear, according to all the gossipers. And as she sees me raise my martini high in the air, she returns the friendly gesture by raising her own.

“To your health, Mr. Moulinex,” I hear her say, for my ears are in far better condition than my eyes. At that very moment a beam of sunlight bounces off her wrist, making it sparkle a bit more brightly than it should. This of course must be due to that thick bracelet she wears, the one that seems so out of place at a country hotel, the one she stopped wearing after that first day we bumped into each other down here by the pool.

“How odd,” I say to myself, though for the moment it is just a passing thought, because without my distance glasses I cannot see a bloody thing from so far away. I am blind as a bat. Anyway, I really must get back to Fernanda’s fax.

Why are long letters such a bother to read? I must admit that Fernanda’s rambling is often quite entertaining, but in this case I find myself skipping over various sections until my eyes suddenly come across a familiar word, “Borrioboola-Gha,” which makes me backtrack a paragraph or so. I read:

And since I am much more generous than you when it comes to divulging information about certain people we know, I should warn you that there is a fresh batch of news regarding Isabella Steine and I
must
tell you about it blow by blow. Because her situation—my God, it makes you want to do voodoo on her.

Bon Dieu.
I pray the blows are brief ones. I have come to live in fear of Fernanda’s treatises on Isabella Steine. She has a way of ripping
la petite
Isabella to shreds.

Here’s the latest, Uncle. It appears that our Isabella (I assume you remember her, even though you are a total disaster when it comes to names. She is the gorgeous woman we ran into at Drones, the woman who sparked our entire conversation about Mercedes and Jaime Valdés) has gotten over the death of her ex-lover incredibly fast because she already has a new boyfriend, and he is quite a little dreamboat. She seems to think he is the
ne plus ultra
because he is absolutely everywhere, always getting invited to this event and that event, they’re literally fighting over him at parties—I mean, there are so few eligible bachelors in Madrid that the women here would duke it out over a donkey, but the point is, the man in question is named J. P. Bonilla and, believe me, you would die if you ever checked him out.

I have to confess that I skipped over the J. P. Bonilla description—but my memory for names is not quite as bad as Fernanda believes, for I do happen to remember a very long story about this Bonilla character from my recent chat with Bea on the north balcony of the hotel. From what I could tell, a very
réussi
editor—one of those disciples of American-style marketing who always knows how to take the tiniest little bits of trivia about his authors and turn them into major news. According to Bea, Bonilla is a very cheeky man who very recently tried to convince her to do a job that sounded like some kind of scam. If memory serves me correctly, it involved the author of an erotic novel entitled
The Blue Midriff
—he wanted Bea to throw her parties, get her photographed, and basically go everywhere with this woman, a native of a place called Borrioboola-Gha—wherever
that
is. And speaking of geography, I cannot help but feel that the world is so very small and Madrid even smaller. My God, to think that here, without moving an inch from L’Hirondelle, I have come to know
tout le monde:
Bonilla, Isabella, Bea, and then some. Of course, I can’t say that I am very surprised, because all the tightly knit, insular societies of the world are so very small in the end. High society everywhere is made up of about four or five fat cats, and everyone always knows everyone else. As such, I skip over one or two
Who’s Who
–type paragraphs and continue reading a bit further down in Fernanda’s fax:

As you know, I couldn’t care less about Isabella’s love life—she can shack up with all the J. P. Bonillas on Earth for all I care. My problem with that little two-faced darling is that her meddling has left me without a job that Bonilla had originally promised me. You see, he had been scouting around for a woman friend to do a little job for him, a really cushy assignment given my circumstances. You
know
how things are for me and Alvaro financially—it is so hard to make any money these days. Anyway, Bonilla had picked me for this project—a fabulous project; it even had a bit of cultural cachet to it. Believe it or not, the idea was that I was supposed to accompany this very famous Borrioboolian writer named Harpic or Sidol or, oh, I don’t know—some name that sounds like a bathroom cleanser, but it doesn’t matter—she’s incredibly famous, that is what I am getting at. The idea totally appealed to me, because it meant that for a few days we would be invited around everywhere, we would get covered in
¡Hola!,
which is always fun . . . but all of that is beside the point, really. The point is, what really got me was that Bonilla was going to pay me a fortune for about three days’ worth of work. I have no idea why he decided to be generous, because let me tell you, any one of my friends would have been thrilled to do it for free. It sounded fun. You’d meet all sorts of interesting people, go to all sorts of parties. You know what I mean. It would have been so glamorous—which is exactly what Isabella must have thought, too, because in the wink of an eye I was left
sans
Harpic,
sans
photo spread in
¡Hola!, sans
cushy job, because of Isabella, who is already loaded. Life is so unfair, Uncle Rafael.

Borrioboola-Gha,
I think. Isabella, unwittingly involved in the Borrioboola-Gha mess. Not bad. Maybe life is not as unfair as Fernanda thinks. Of course I know she wouldn’t agree, because two or three paragraphs down I come across another tale of what Fernanda calls “the stony-faced Isabella Steine.”

. . . All right, now. I promise to stop talking about that witch, but I can’t resist showing you one more little thing—proof positive of what tacky, tacky people Bonilla and Isabella really are.

I flip to the next page of this eternal fax and find Fernanda, once again, in top form:

To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, take a look at this article and photo I clipped from a gossip magazine. It states that “the renowned and beautiful Isabella Steine” blah, blah, blah, “will act as escort and hostess to a famous author from Borrioboola-Gha” whose name, as I told you before, sounds like some kind of toilet cleaner. As you can see, the photo from the press release is not new. It was taken the same day as the other photo I sent you a few days ago—you remember, don’t you? The shot of Valdés (may he rest in peace) at a party with Mercedes and Isabella. How do I know this, you ask? Darling, a person who devours gossip magazines like you do shouldn’t even have to ask. Can’t you see the girl is dressed exactly the same as in the other photo? She’s even wearing the same Cartier heirloom bracelet that Mercedes spotted in a Christie’s catalogue and Isabella got old Papa Steine to give her for Christmas. Obviously they used an old photo, but it goes so perfectly with the article—it’s a close-up from the waist up, perfect for catching every little detail of our darling Isabella’s features. Look at her. Her posture is so perfect, and it almost seems as if she predicted the whole thing, because she even has a kind of intellectual look on her face, the hand resting on the jaw as if she were just
waiting
to read
The Blue Midriff,
that little fraud. The only thing that doesn’t fit the intellectual look is the bracelet–a bit too much, wouldn’t you say? Look at that leopard-printed gold, top-of-the-line Cartier.—Did it come out in the fax? I tried to enlarge it a bit this time, because I know how much you love these little details. After all, you’re such a snob, Uncle Rafael!

Cheap & Chic

What is a person to do when he believes he has finished telling the story of a bad girl, a story whose elements fit together as perfectly as the pieces of a puzzle? A story that has no bad girl at all, as the reader discovers in the end? Perhaps the less-conscientious reader must be told that there
was
one bad girl, a very long time ago—a bad girl who wasn’t even a member of the female sex and who one night took a silver-handled mirror, committed a crime, and never felt the slightest twinge of guilt. As far as the other characters in the story are concerned, the ones you have met at L’Hirondelle d’Or, we all know that following a
petit accident,
the good girl is redeemed and absolved of all guilt and the bad man pays dearly for his lies. And finally, as for the third man (that is, yours truly, me, Rafael Molinet), a man with an old debt to settle, well, after forty long years he finally takes his tiny but very delicious bit of revenge on the gossipmongers of the world. But what is a man to do, I ask, when he believes he has finished telling the most perfect, most complete story . . . and then suddenly realizes that there is a fly in the ointment? He drinks another martini, obviously.

“Hassam, before you go back, dear, leave the cocktail shaker on the table here, please.”

“Did you like the last one, sir?”

“It is as dreadful as all the rest, Hassam, but I am afraid I will be needing it. This one, and two or three more, I fear.”

All because of a devilishly clear photo in Fernanda’s fax.

Ever since this story began, ten days ago in this very spot, I have made quite a big deal about the fact that I have told everything exactly as it unfolded before my eyes, as if I were a spectator at the theater. I have even gone so far as to proudly assert that I would intersperse the various situations, combining more recent ones with older ones, mixing in Fernanda’s information with some of my own conclusions . . . after all, isn’t that what writers do? They are so very devilish. And I can do it just as well as they do. The writer always has the upper hand, after all, because he knows the ending of his story. And I too know how this story ends, which makes it easy for me to make all the pieces fit, every last one . . . Every last one! That was true up until a few seconds ago, when Fernanda’s fax had to go and ruin everything.

I look down at the fax again and there it is: the photo of Isabella, clear as a bell, down to the most unpleasant details; no room for a single doubt. Now, don’t go thinking that I would have purposely avoided mentioning the one discordant fact in the story of Valdés’s death—meaning the Cartier bracelet that has appeared three or four times in the course of this tale. But, well, it just seemed like an incidental fact that was impossible to verify one way or the other. Now, however, Isabella’s image in the photo Fernanda faxed me is so clear that it seems to be crying out at me, “Look! Look!” Nobody ever wants the incongruous elements of a story to come jumping back to haunt them especially when everything else fits so perfectly. But sometimes they do.

An utterly unmistakable Cartier bracelet . . . a bracelet that disappeared the night Valdés died. A bracelet that, as such, could only have been saved as a token or as a bit of revenge by someone who should have been occupied with more Samaritan tasks at that moment. Yes, this bracelet has popped up several times throughout the course of my story, almost as if it were trying to disrupt the harmony between the story of my mother and the story of Mercedes Algorta. Yet I disregarded it, thinking it superfluous, and perhaps I did that on purpose. In the end, on that distant day—the night Bertie Molinet died, I mean—there was a bracelet, useless and inconsequential, that ended up on the floor next to the grandfather clock in the vestibule. It was a tiny, misleading little chord on my part, I suppose. A writer’s trick—or perhaps it was more like a violinist’s trick, the perfect dissonant note clashing against the magical harmony of the rest of the story, ruining the loveliest piece of music.

I say this because I am enchanted by the soothing notion that our lives possess a kind of musical harmony, a mirroring of sorts, not unlike the echo that follows the sound of every bell that tolls if one listens closely enough: two identical stories; two philandering husbands; two innocent wives unfairly accused. And so, many years later, I take an action to prevent a gossip broker from disseminating lies. Sweet revenge.

I take a long sip of my martini, which is actually beginning to seem drinkable. Now, what would happen if I were suddenly to question the innocence of one of my good girls—and I am referring to my little widow, who reminds me so much of Mama. What would happen if she was not innocent but guilty, as Sánchez intended to claim?

This calls for another gulp of my martini. And the gin, such a wise liquor, successfully calms the two or three vital organs that have suddenly begun to palpitate at this new thought. No wonder all those tough guys, all the detectives in those police novels, are always drinking gimlets and martinis, for they are such rational cocktails. The first horrible notion diminished by this gin is that your very own Philip Marlowe has unjustly sent the noble Mr. Sánchez straight to hell precisely when he was on the brink of publishing not a calumny but rather the awful, awful truth about Mercedes Algorta. Nevertheless, this amiable liquid very quickly reminds me of a very handy trick for vanquishing this fear.

“Listen, darling,” the gin seems to tell me. “Don’t waste your time worrying. In this topsy-turvy life of ours, even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Nice quote, isn’t it? And, no, it was not uttered by Philip Marlowe or James Bond or any other famous gin drinker, although it could have been. It was said by Mama. She said it a lot, in fact, and it is nothing short of gospel to my ears. Sánchez was preparing to expose Mercedes not because he knew of anything specific—as I do, for example, thanks to that damn bracelet—but because he
felt
like it. He was all set to write a scandalous article based on two or three stupid coincidences, and while a broken clock may be right twice a day, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t toss it into the garbage.