The Last Resort (23 page)

These, then, are the hours when Rose de Thé bears witness to an entirely different array of activities, for these are the hours when Ana takes over the room—oh, they are delicious hours, between ten o’clock and noontime, followed by the brief spell before lunch when she goes down to the pool to find Bea. Then, unfortunately, the afternoon rolls around, dragging her slowly through siesta time, the frightful hour when Ana must have sex with Antonio, an activity she has managed to avoid for the last two days thanks to heavy doses of pain relievers and old heartfelt excuses like “I’m sorry, Antonio, I have the worst headache. You can’t imagine, it’s just awful. I think I’d rather just go for a walk . . .” This is followed by the hour that is just about to materialize, heralded once again by the shrill sounds of the alarm clock. Four-thirty.

This is the time of day when Sánchez usually returns to Rose de Thé to take care of a bit of professional business, which normally involves jotting down a number of unrelated thoughts that he might be able to use on his radio show. This afternoon, however, Antonio S. has a slightly more taxing task at hand: He has been asked to write forty lines for a newspaper spread.
Shit,
he thinks. This is the last thing he wants to do, but there is no way he can get out of it, since he did give the paper his word. The assignment—one of those supposedly innovative projects dreamed up at newspaper editorial meetings—is for a special issue of a very important Sunday supplement in which twenty important public figures—writers, politicians, actors, businessmen, and famous radio personalities such as himself—are to write about their perception of the state of contemporary Spanish society. Something meaningful, something fresh and new.
As if there is anything new to write about,
Sánchez thinks.
The more a society advances, the less it is capable of ever truly changing.
That is what the great Sánchez believes, even though he probably shouldn’t say so, for it sounds old-fashioned and unworthy of a man as astute and perceptive as he. “Everything must change in order for things to stay the same,” he very mistakenly quotes, taking a deep breath. He then decides to shelve the philosophical ruminations for the moment so that he can focus on his forty lines. There is nothing better than lashing out at a few politicians, he thinks.

Sánchez sits at the desk, but before settling in he casts a disapproving glance at the corner piled high with Ana Fernández de Bugambilla’s belongings, most specifically her Nintendo Game Boy.
Doesn’t this child have anything better to do with her mind than occupy it with machines that take her to nonexistent worlds? Poor fool,
he thinks.

“What a bore. Words, real words, spoken words are what I am good at, not letters printed on a page . . .” he sighs. “All right, let’s see what I come up with this time. It can’t be that hard.”

He opens his Sony VAIO, 29 by 20 centimeters of pure technology. This, he tells himself, was designed to serve the mind—not vice versa, as in the case of the Nintendo Game Boy that belongs to his “poor fool.” For a fleeting moment he thinks of her legs which, he must admit, are truly divine and that, in the end, is all that matters. She can addle her brain with Nintendo all she wants for all he cares, as long as she keeps those goddesslike legs of hers in tiptop shape. Sánchez hits the power button on his laptop; the ten seconds of boot-up time allow him to perform a kind of warm-up exercise in which he and his body prepare themselves for the art of creation. How amazing it is to feel his thoughts come into alignment, forming a miracle, his mind achieving a kind of astral convergence with his Sony. As he prepares for what is to come, Sánchez cracks his knuckles like a pianist preparing to attack a polonaise. Wait. Pause. The program logo appears on the screen, the anti-virus program runs through its routine, and by the time the Start menu has finally appeared, Sánchez has already decided what he will write about today: a son-of-a-bitch congresswoman who, just yesterday, had the gall to snub her party by casting the decisive ballot in favor of the government in a congressional vote. The witch. Sánchez hopes that forty lines will be enough to create something dense and complex, evocative of the lucid prose of the most acidic political columnist. A difficult task, admittedly, and for this reason he has turned to his dictionary of modern slang, which is now open to page 125, where he has highlighted the word “dick.”

He creates a new document and immediately saves it with a single-word title: “whore.” Using only one word is the best way to remain focused on the topic at hand. Whore. He cracks his knuckles again as he conjures up the image of that turncoat congresswoman who deserves all the derision he can dish out, a blonde with an ample bosom and extremely abundant backside.
Fucking traitor,
he thinks.
Lying bitch.

Despite the very vulgar nature of the media nowadays, Antonio S. still holds on to
some
scruples: He knows that it would be in extremely poor taste, for example, to make a crack about a lady’s physical attributes in a newspaper article. Such a shame. One of his greatest talents on the airwaves, back in the days when he commented on general-interest issues rather than politics, was the masterful manner in which he wove people’s most obvious physical traits into his very convincing sermons. Nowadays, however, he is more than just a mere radio announcer—he is a Journalist with a capital
J,
and he does not feel it appropriate for a Journalist to exploit a woman’s physical appearance in a politically oriented article that will be read by thousands—no matter how much the woman deserves it.

“Dicking everyone around, that’s what our little congresswoman has been doing to her electorate. Careful, careful, sweetheart, you wouldn’t want to fall on your face like Burt Lancaster did in the movie
Trapeze.
But that doesn’t matter much now, because one thing is crystal-clear: You’re in free fall, lady . . .”

Now, Rose de Thé is not the aggressive sort of room with walls that close in on its occupants, attacking them with inopportune, long-forgotten memories. But for some reason, these last few words (or perhaps it was the image of Burt Lancaster) prompt Sánchez to pause for a moment. He raises his eyes from the computer screen.

He is scarcely five lines into his article, and although he finds the topic perfectly serviceable, his eyes have strayed over to the wall, where his gaze settles on a bouquet of yellow roses. He has lost his train of thought while staring at that flowered wallpaper, damnit. It was as if some sort of imaginary wall suddenly came between him and his thoughts about the traitorous congresswoman.

His eyes return to the screen and he rereads what he has written. The piece isn’t half bad, he tells himself, and that last bit about Burt Lancaster is pretty sharp. Now, with renewed energy, Sánchez decides to delete the last two lines, but after a brief pause he rewrites them exactly as they were: “to fall on your face like Burt Lancaster did in the movie
Trapeze
. . .” He continues clicking away on the keyboard for a few more minutes, coming up with two more very convincing paragraphs, and then . . .

He is certain now. It is those two words, “Burt Lancaster,” that have begun to create interference on the VAIO. Every single time he types in the name Burt Lancaster he suddenly feels a surge of word association—or perhaps “idea association” would more accurately describe the phenomenon that has somehow led him to confuse that fine actor’s square jaw with another, very similar jaw that has been tickling the subconscious of Antonio S., radio announcer to the masses, for the past few days.

At first that angular mandible appears in his mind as a shadow and then it becomes an outline, then a sketch, and now, all of a sudden, amid the yellow-flowered wallpaper reflected on his computer screen, he sees not just the jaw but the entire face of one of his fellow hotel guests: the screenwriter Santiago Arce. This truly startling mental process makes Sánchez turn around and actually look for the man, even though he knows it is preposterous—what on earth could Arce be doing nestled among the flowers on his wallpaper? He duly confirms that there is no one there, but the incident is enough to interrupt his train of thought again, and his eyes travel aimlessly over the folds of the curtains, dappled with tea roses. Of course, the flowers have nothing to do with his loss of inspiration, just as Santiago Arce has nothing to do with the newspaper article he is presently writing.

One angular jaw can be very similar to another, no doubt about it. And a keen mind like that of Antonio Sánchez can be expected to draw unforeseen connections between the two. Burt Lancaster and Santiago Arce. Yes . . . maybe there is a certain resemblance around the jaw area, but nothing more. Sánchez knows that he has to get back on topic. The treacherous congresswoman is the one and only thing that should occupy his thoughts right now.

“Come on, come on, it’s starting to look like you can’t do this, come on. Shit, it’s forty lines, forty lines that will be published alongside the opinions of the most important minds in the country. Come on, man . . .”

Antonio waits, and the screen flickers. But not one single idea flashes through his head. He racks his brains to come up with some explanation for this writer’s block. Sánchez is a man with a fertile imagination, and so it takes him less than two seconds. The problem, the reason for all this interference, is ridiculously simple: The topic of the traitorous congresswoman is a dreadful bore.

His inspiration floats back to Santiago Arce, and it does not settle on the topic of his jawline but rather on that of his love life and the attraction he very clearly feels for Mercedes Algorta. There’s dirt here, he can feel it. And now nothing can stop his fingers, which seem to have developed, in conjunction with the Sony VAIO, a mind of their own.

What is a person to do in a situation like this? Should he allow his inspiration to take over? His ideas—or perhaps his fingers—crackle and hum now that he has let them loose on the keyboard. Very well, they are free now . . . let us see where these ideas go. But what if they cannot be used for the article he has been asked to write about the current state of Spanish society? After all, he has a reputation to consider, one that should not be sullied by frivolous topics, boudoir gossip. Oh, it doesn’t matter, he tells himself. He will find some way to turn it into a terribly important issue—a metaphor for all the sins of his nation, something like that. Yes, what a magnificent idea: He shall illustrate the sins of his nation by way of a little love story that is taking place before his very eyes here at L’Hirondelle d’Or.

The ingredients are all there: Following the very odd death of her husband, a rich widow plans a rendezvous with her lover in a remote corner of Morocco. Now, why have they decided to travel such a great distance? Do they have something to hide? What is their real sin? Ah, what a superb topic—a story that illustrates the moral and ethical decline of the nation. Much more tantalizing than that little story about the congresswoman, no doubt about it. People are sick to death of politicians, but they just love stories about illicit lovers.

His fingers fly freely across the keyboard; nothing can stop them now. All Sánchez has to do is lean back and watch his magical fingers take over, unstoppable and lightning-fast. And soon the screen of his Sony VAIO comes to life with something far more intriguing than what he was writing before:

“Crime doesn’t pay.”
Not a bad opener,
he thinks.
Looks promising. Let’s see where it goes.

Little by little, an entire paragraph of sparkling prose emerges on the screen. He writes:

“Crime does not pay. Crime is an art. An enlightened method for changing the course of Destiny. But nobody, not even the most deranged criminal, is immune to the despicable feeling of guilt.”

A bit moralistic perhaps? Not worthy of Hemingway. Perhaps, but wait . . . let us see how Sánchez gets himself out of this one.

“Guilt,” Sánchez types, “is like an old, nearsighted exhibitionist . . .”

Nearsighted exhibitionist? That sounds a bit farfetched. Perhaps he should interrupt this stream of consciousness and stop his index and middle fingers as they race across the keyboard. They couldn’t possibly have meant to write “nearsighted.” That must have been a mistake. But no. Sánchez lets his fingers do the talking, and he continues to read as they type away:

“Yes, that’s right. Guilt is like a dirty old man, nearsighted as all hell, who hides out in parks and leers at all the pretty blond girls with ribbons in their hair. A man who never dares to step out into the light until one day. The day of his big event. And oh does he make a scene, in the worst possible place. No longer able to contain his urge to let everything hang out, this bold but nearsighted exhibitionist waves his cane up and down, left and right, until he finally reaches a deep, dark place. Far from everything. And there, this unrepentant criminal grows aroused . . . very, very aroused. What he does not realize, however, is that the deep, dark place he has chosen to exhibit his ignominy is the metro station at Callao. A public location like this, naturally, is teeming with cops. Big, tall, brawny cops, the six-foot-four type. Ballbusters.”

This very long introduction, which presents the notion of guilt in the guise of an old nearsighted exhibitionist, will serve as a lead-in to the revelations that he now prepares to deliver. As he types away, Sánchez watches as his prose slowly evolves into a far simpler writing style:

“This is a story for our times, a story that reveals the utter lack of backbone and moral values in modern Spanish society. And yet there is something even more troubling here. Consider this: Mercedes Algorta, a prominent figure of Madrid society, has just been widowed. How did it happen?, we may ask ourselves. Was her husband’s death a setup? These stories about rich girls are always so fraught with contradiction, with lies. Let us suppose for a moment that her newfound freedom is in fact the result of a terrible accident. And yet, now, with her husband’s body still warm in his grave, Mercedes Algorta has just made the same mistake as the nearsighted exhibitionist in the Callao metro station.”