The Last Resort (11 page)

I folded up the clipping, and as I made my way down to the dining room I took a few moments to recap the information I had gathered. Mercedes was the widow in that convoluted story Fernanda had told me in London. Strange, unexpected, but it was still little more than a bit of common gossip, a
petite histoire
that could not even be considered adulterous. In the end, what were the facts, who were the characters? Two couples who had decided to spend the weekend together in a recently purchased country house on the shores of a river in Spain. There was a dead Don Juan character, victim of the most ludicrous sort of death, but then aren’t all deaths ludicrous somehow? Then there was the issue of the wife who wasn’t at home but who appeared on the scene precisely when her husband suddenly fell ill, and the other woman, who was present when Don Juan started feeling ill but who nonetheless disappeared on the double. All of this, of course, was the story according to Fernanda, who, let us not forget, had a rather peculiar way of accessorizing her tales so that they sounded more “fun”—that, I believe, was the term she used. “Oh, who cares about accuracy, anyway?” she had said. All I had really cared about was making a little backgammon money as a bit of a diversion. Society gossip, in these situations, usually only serves to describe the characters, and give you a bit of information—nothing more.

I set off down the hallway, prepared to greet Mercedes Algorta a bit more effusively than before in the event that we bumped into each other in the dining room. It’s odd, but when you get to know a person through “classified” information, you inevitably—and unwittingly—begin to feel they are more familiar, closer somehow. Yes, that’s it, closer. And I knew that the minute I saw her my smile would be wider and my very Japanese nod of the head would be a bit less stiff than usual. That was to be expected.

What I did not know was that when I finally reached the dining room, I would not have the time to concentrate on such details. How could I have possibly known that after taking the shortcut through the garden, I would open the door to the dining room just as another door opened at the opposite end, introducing a whole new set of characters to the story? Have you ever noticed that when one very strange coincidence occurs, it never takes long for even stranger ones to materialize? Well, that is precisely what happened that night. If I were a more superstitious man, I would almost venture to say that everything during those two weeks seemed to be the work of a very capricious Lady Luck, who had dealt the cards of fate and then, suddenly, had been inspired to throw a few more jokers into the game . . .

Some Notes Regarding Men’s Attire

A man who aspires to be elegant—and this is a very desirable aspiration, as long as it is always within the bounds of reason—would never wear the same clothing in the country as he would in the city, for the riding coat, the black trousers, the low-cut vest and the stovepipe hat are entirely superfluous in the city. And in the morning hours, the elegant man would never dress like a notary called in to draw up a last will and testament, for he knows that the frock coat and top hat are inadmissible until the afternoon visiting hour. Bearing in mind these and other sensible recommendations, anyone in the world may achieve the appearance of a true gentleman.

—Baroness Staffe,
The Obligations of a
Gentleman, Great and Small

The Well-Dressed Man

If we could somehow freeze the first impression we generate when we lay eyes on someone for the first time, and then if we could save that impression in its purest state, preventing it from becoming clouded by rational judgments, or snobbery, then we would be very wise indeed.

The reason I mention all of this is so that you may bear
in mente
my first impressions of the new arrivals in the dining room, and I suppose it is also to justify the seeming inanity of the comments I am about to make. But, believe me, these observations are precisely the kind of assessments that turn out to be startlingly accurate.

I had just entered the restaurant through the door to the garden. At first, until my eyes adjusted to the light, the room seemed terribly dark to me, almost darker than outside, where at least there was a sky full of shining stars.

To determine whether your hotel belongs in the “extremely exclusive” category, all you have to do is study a restaurant’s lighting. L’Hirondelle d’Or was certainly extremely exclusive. The candlelight made it virtually impossible to tell whether the sauces one ingested were red or green, tartar or curry: Discretion was clearly more important than gastronomy, and darkness has a way of confusing the eyes even more than the palate. This lighting scheme successfully eliminates the chances that a guest might choke on his pepper steak upon seeing an unexpectedly familiar face precisely when he has come to the ends of the earth so as not to run into anyone at all.

The awful thing about rich people is that even when they seek anonymity, their mode of operation is the always the same. They all perform the same exhaustive amount of advance research, take great pains to select their vacation destination (“where it will be just you and me, alone, darling, surrounded by Germans or Belgians, nobody we know . . .”), arm themselves with the Michelin guide, and then they all end up at the same isolated hotel in the middle of nowhere.

That, no doubt, was exactly what happened to the quartet of Spaniards who very unfortunately turned up at L’Hirondelle d’Or wanting only to relax, smear themselves with restorative muds, and maintain as low a profile as possible. I should add that the massive amount of information I now possess regarding their lives was culled with infinite patience and acute observation, because, for a few days at least, I kept my distance from my protagonists and simply watched them in action as they staged their three-ring circus. And, like a spectator sitting comfortably in his seat at the theater, I watched them stumble, fall, and make complete fools of themselves. I had little trouble spying on them, because the quarters were close in that hotel and the guests were all there—quite conveniently for me—to focus on themselves and the needle on their bathroom scale rather than on their fellow vacationers. But it is a trifle early to be going into all that right now. For the moment, let us return to the beginning of the evening—that is, the moment when the recent arrivals, the four new characters in my little puppet theater, entered through the north door just as I did the same through the garden door.

As I walked through the restaurant, taking care not to stumble in the semi-darkness, it is possible that I may have missed one or two significant expressions on their faces as they bumped into one another.
Good God,
they must have thought.
You, of all people, here at this hotel!
And Mercedes Algorta must have thought the very same thing, because all five of them surveyed one another from a distance at first and then you could just see them thinking,
Oh Christ, we have to say hello. How can we not . . . ?
Which is exactly what they did next. The four newcomers approached Mercedes, who couldn’t stop tugging at her shirtsleeve, as if she was suddenly trying very hard to make her hand, her wrist—or both—disappear. This entire exchange occurred so providentially close to my table that I was able to hear each and every word they exchanged while I remained shrouded in my anonymity and certain in my knowledge that Spanish people, whenever they travel, inevitably speak in horribly loud voices, thinking that nobody can understand them anyway.

Like our four recent arrivals in the dining room, for example.
Ah,
our four newcomers must have thought as they surveyed the terrain to see if, like Mercedes, there were any other Spanish ears that might understand their conversation.
All right . . . let’s see who else we have here!
Yes, that is most definitely what they must have thought. As they all hurried over to say hello to the widow, I could see them shooting furtive glances around the restaurant in an effort to assess the outfits of the other guests. A very prudent but ultimately useless measure, for I can just imagine the kind of conclusions to which they arrived. So simple. And so very dangerous. After rapidly scanning the other tables, they seemed satisfied by the fact that there were no green quilted hunting jackets or Tyrolean-style outfits anywhere in sight and they clearly said to themselves,
Oh thank goodness, no Spaniards here,
and then began to talk in the loudest voices possible. Spaniards of a certain social class seem to have a secret compulsion to dress up like Austrian game hunters when they go on vacation. They are like perfect little Tyroleans, especially when it comes to outerwear—they always seem to wear hunting jackets, usually khaki green, as if camouflage were hardwired into their souls,
que c’est bizarre.
I must remember to mention this to Fernanda one of these days.

The four newcomers were two men and two women, and they were not very difficult to assess. Even if I hadn’t heard a word they said (and I heard plenty from my neighboring table), I could have figured them out. I had the audacity to look straight at them, without the slightest modesty, but since I don’t happen to cultivate the olive-green look, they clearly took me for another innocuous foreigner. Just like the boring Belgian couple sitting at the table next to the window. Or the group of self-involved Germans. (Oddly enough, by the way, neither Germans nor Austrians ever dress in the olive-green Tyrolean attire so favored by Spaniards; they prefer to dress up like Bostonians on a weekend away in Martha’s Vineyard.) As such, there is no confusion possible—not even for amateur observers like my four new friends.

But let us return to the story at hand. Digressions are not good for the momentum of the story.

As I was saying, my four new characters were two women and two men. And if I have chosen to isolate my first reactions to them it is only because of the extremely distressed expressions that came over their faces as they greeted Mercedes, which left very little doubt in my mind: These four people were two couples . . . or
non-couples,
as my mother might have called them. She was always so delicate with her euphemisms. I would have just called them adulterers, or secret lovers if you prefer, but in the end the names are all the same. In any event, I began my examination with the leader of the pack, for there is always a leader, and he is very easy to distinguish. This one had a blonde hanging off his arm as he walked through the front door, but he very quickly set her loose as soon as he caught sight of Mercedes. Well, to be more precise, I would have to say that
both
of them jumped up as they spotted the widow, executing a lovely lateral
ciseau,
just as if they had been bitten by a poisonous scorpion. His clothing did not interest me (and it requires little description, because it consisted of the same green quilted jacket I mentioned before, on top of a gray executive-type suit), but his persona did. From far away he almost looked, oddly enough, as if he were sitting down, even though this was obviously not the case, because he had just walked through the room with enviable agility and grace. Perhaps this was because he had far too big a chest for far too small a pedestal. If he had been sitting on a sofa, for example, I am sure he would have seemed downright formidable with his great big head of unruly salt-and-pepper curls. He had broad temples and very light eyes which were framed by an intelligent-looking pair of eyebrows that for some reason made me think of George Orwell’s Big Brother. His mouth also struck me as rather intriguing—he had very thick lips that seemed somewhat bare without an enormous, smoldering Cohiba between them. Something was missing, let’s put it that way. His trunk was every bit as imposing as the rest of his upper body, but from there on down the effect dissipated entirely. This great man was held upright by a pair of legs that simply did not do him justice. They were short and slightly knock-kneed and, though I can’t say quite why, something about him made him look like a walking torso, a beautiful sculpture left unfinished because the artist ran out of money.

I spent very little time studying the blonde who hung from his arm. She looked like one of those typical clones who turn forty with such great fear that as soon as the candles on their birthday cakes are blown out, they go running to get breast, lip, and cheek jobs. And now those lips were very coincidentally dissolving into a smile for the benefit of Mercedes.

“Daaarling, what a surprise. How fabulous to run into you. My God . . .”

Her collagen-implanted lips swelled up to the point of near-explosion and her expression very clearly revealed what she felt:
Son of a bitch, what the fuck are you doing here? You always turn up where you’re not supposed to. And now what? How the hell am I going to explain what my married lover and I are doing on a romantic getaway together?

Yes, that was precisely what she was thinking, without a doubt. Blond clones are so transparent, and love foul language, too.

I don’t know if she and the leader of the pack actually attempted a friendlier greeting with Mercedes; perhaps they did. The problem was, there were so many things going on at once that I couldn’t take it all in. And unfortunately, I had already turned my head a few degrees to study the other couple. The man’s name was Antonio Sánchez López—in point of fact, I didn’t find that out until the next day, when I was able to send Fernanda a fax requesting information on each of them (and, by the way, I was right about everyone; my theory regarding first impressions never fails). Mr. Sánchez was escorting a second blonde, who seemed much younger than she of the astonishingly plump lips, I don’t think she was much older than thirty. As it turned out, Ana Fernández de Bugambilla was her very original and flamboyant name, and she had the frightened air of a novice in the art of illicit affairs. To tell the truth, I have known very many Ana Fernández de Bugambillas in my life. I have observed them at hotels and house parties, petrified guests wishing they could disappear, dissolve into the background, evaporate into thin air. Fernanda’s explications would not be necessary, nor would I need to do too much observation to understand what her issues were. From the very first moment, they were written all over her face, as clear as a bell. A trip with a newly minted lover, a virtual stranger, is what lay behind that expression, a combination of bewilderment and fear, which seemed to say, “Good Lord, how did I let myself get caught up in this? How the hell did I get mixed up in this mess—or this bed, to be more precise?”