The Last Resort (6 page)

Any mental digressions from the practical matters at hand could be very dangerous for him. Just yesterday, for example, a few minutes after his niece had called him to confirm their date at Drones, he very innocently bumped into one of his favorite pieces of furniture—his mother’s favorite ottoman—and was suddenly reminded of his mother’s last pain-filled days. Certain memories were suddenly too much for him to bear: the shape of his mother’s head; the fragile neck that sank so deeply into the pillow; the bright white lace appliqués, as white as the sheets that he had changed every day and washed every night, with the same care and attention he devoted to everything in his mother’s environment—the last stop on her very eventful journey through life. About when he turned fifty, he had begun to care for his mother, his only source of company, in their rambling old house near Holland Park. Unfortunately, the costly upkeep had forced him to take in boarders, horrid as they were, and little by little he had had to sell off all the paintings, the dining room set, and much of the living room furniture to pawnbrokers and secondhand shops. He couldn’t have cared less when the paying guests complained about the lack of creature comforts, the cockroaches, the chill in the austere, curtainless rooms, and a thousand other annoyances, but his mother’s room was untouchable, unaffected by the passage of time. He went to great pains to ensure that the room was exactly as it had always been, so that when she opened her eyes, the whites whitened by all the sedatives he gave her, she would see exactly what she had always seen in all of the houses they had lived in together: the blond-wood armoire that went so well with the queen-size Indian mahogany bed bought in Havana; the mirror with the silver handle that sat on top; the clock that no longer told the correct time—not because it was broken, but because one day his mother had decided that it should always be set at ten minutes to five. And then there were the photographs. Very close by, almost within arm’s reach, was the little table where his mother had kept her collection of silver frames, filled with photographs arranged in rather idiosyncratic order. They were something of a walk through her life and began with a large, magnificent portrait of her at a party in Biarritz as an adolescent; it was signed by Cartier-Bresson himself. Next to this photograph sat a cluster of smaller frames that constituted the River Plate series: the house in El Prado where her husband had been born; a group of people dressed in white at a picnic; and finally, his mother in her wedding dress, standing alone at the door to the house in all her regal beauty.

There were also two other oversize frames. The one closer to the bed featured a very young Molinet in a raw linen suit and Panama hat on a ship’s deck. This photograph was occasionally moved from its spot—not because of any intrinsic virtue or flaw it possessed, but because its placement on the table blocked another frame whose fate waxed and waned depending on the ailing woman’s mood. Whenever she said to him, “Rafael, I want to see your father today,” he understood exactly what she meant and would quickly turn around the one photograph that was normally condemned to face the wall.

These memories came rushing back into Molinet’s mind all because of a clumsy brush against a footstool upholstered in petit point. The experience very nearly prompted him to call Dr. Pertini, but he decided against it. He had to learn to live without Dr. Pertini.

“From now on, whenever you start to feel nostalgic, dear Molinet, why not write to a friend, get your feelings out on paper. It is, after all, far less expensive than Kleinian therapy,” Pertini had said to him as he sent Molinet on his way at the end of their last appointment. “Sending him on his way,” of course, was not quite the same thing as “declaring him cured,” even though the result was the same. It meant he was on his own now, without a penny to his name and still plagued by the same nightmares that led him to the doctor in the first place. Following his comment, the doctor had written out three or four prescriptions on an elegant red notepad before ceremoniously walking Molinet to the door in his white, probably custom-made, robe:

“Here you are,” Dr. Pertini had said to him. “A muscle relax-ant, some vitamins, and these sleeping pills. But, please, don’t abuse them, because if you do, they might start causing you more nightmares. And think, my friend. Think that you are cured, that you have emerged from your depression, that there is nothing more that science can do for you.”

Science, Molinet knew, can do precious little for someone who hasn’t the wherewithal to pay his psychiatry bills. Even so, Pertini accompanied him to the door like a true professional. “If you need anything, you know where we are,” he said, using the well-practiced good-bye speech, which very obliquely indicated that Molinet needn’t bother calling him again, although he was kind enough to suggest that little bit about writing to a friend to unload his cares—Dr. Pertini was
so
polite.

That was when Molinet was struck by the splendid idea of reserving a room at a fabulously expensive hotel, far away from the real world, not to whittle away his time writing letters to friends—he had none—but to ingest every last pill that Dr. Pertini had prescribed in one fell swoop, and end his days as a gentleman in an amenable environment.

“Write, Molinet. Write to a friend,” Dr. Pertini repeated in that soft monotone so often used by doctors. He sounded as if he were reciting items off a very long list.

“But you are the only friend I have now,” Molinet exclaimed, trying his luck with one last bit of flattery, but Pertini didn’t take the bait. Instead, he just slipped his arm around Molinet and gave him a couple of reassuring pats on the back.

“Come now, don’t be concerned. Why, anyone would be thrilled to receive a letter from you filled with stories like the ones you’ve told me. I assure you, Molinet, you are a walking novel, especially your childhood, your adolescence . . . my goodness! Now, why don’t you go and take a little trip somewhere?” he suggested.

“That marvelous caftan you wear to our therapy sessions deserves a better climate than the London fog and mist,” the doctor exclaimed. “Why don’t you go to Morocco for a few days? They say the weather there is absolutely brilliant.”

Certain ideas need a bit of time to grow after they have been planted. As he left Cedars of Lebanon, Molinet would never have dreamed that he would soon be spending night after night plotting his very theatrical departure from the world, an idea that had unexpectedly occurred to him while chatting with Pertini. But a few days in Tooting Bec was all he needed to realize what the future held for him if he did not take drastic measures. “The worst thing about poverty is how awful it smells,” the doctor had said to him. And yet Molinet knew of a fate even worse, even more tragic: growing accustomed to the smell of boiling cabbage, finding himself actually enjoying the fresh scent of Mr. Clean mixed in with the smell of cat pee, losing the ability to react or escape—even if escaping meant ingesting an entire bottle of sleeping pills. But then again, why not? Only fools fear death more than squalor.

The minute he made his decision, everything around him seemed to brighten up somehow. He actually felt a kind of pleasure as he planned all the little details: buying the plane ticket, selecting the best hotel. Even seeing his niece and listening to all that inane gossip was like an amusing general rehearsal of sorts.

Now he had two weeks before him in which he would, quite literally, throw his life out the window and say good-bye,
ciao, au revoir,
dying exactly as he had lived: beyond his means, Oscar Wilde
dixit.

And now, on the eve of his departure, he had to take care of all the final details: so many little things to remember. As such, he could not allow a stupid little footstool or some other family heirloom to come between him and his plans and ruin the delicious ritual of packing his suitcase.

Molinet looked neither left nor right.

It was almost seven o’clock. His white caftan sat neatly on top of his bed, along with a number of other articles of clothing: a pair of lambskin slippers, a linen suit, the least threadbare of his dinner jackets, a Panama hat . . . everything seemed ready to go. Now, all he had to do was muster up a bit of resolve and put certain sad (and useless) thoughts out of his mind.

“Mr. Molinet! Sir!”

He had just entered the bathroom to collect the bottles of pills Dr. Pertini had prescribed him and was still hunting for them when he heard the voice.

“May I, Mr. Molinet? May I?”

The young man had entered through a window, bumping into and overturning the little basil plant that he himself had deposited on Molinet’s windowsill not two days after the men first met. He was so lithe, firm, and young that he had already jumped over the vertically sliding window and was standing in the middle of the living room by the time Molinet’s head had popped out from the bathroom.

“Hello, Reza. Hellllo, Reizzzah,” he intoned, as would a Persian aristocrat accustomed to the customs and idiosyncrasies of the age-old court of the Blue Peacock. “Reizzzahh darling, I have told you a thousand times to please use the front door.”

“Excuse me, chief. You know I try to use the door whenever I come to bring you your dog, but he’s sleeping right now, and . . .”

“Is he still running a fever?”

“He’s fine, just cries a little bit when we touch the paw. But that’s normal after a vaccination.”

Young Reza, his next door neighbor, had the odd habit of always speaking in the plural whenever he spoke of dogs and cats, as if the sustained contact with animals of all shapes and sizes had somehow granted him that very paternal authority assumed by so many physicians. In the back pocket of his tight jeans he usually carried some instrument of his chosen profession: a pair of scissors or a metal-tipped comb. Ever since they had met a few weeks earlier, it was the rare afternoon when Molinet, with some excuse, did not venture out to see how skillfully his neighbor handled things in the back room of his canine beauty parlor, hypnotized by the movements of those lustrous arms, exposed by the carefully rolled up sleeves of a cotton shirt. He would watch him slip his fingers in between the paws of the animals he tended. And Molinet reveled in the sight of those muscles as they grew tight under the sheath of his youthful skin, especially when they were busy handling his dog.

“Relax, Gomez. Relax, darling,” Reza would say to the dog before giving his coat a healthy comb-through. Reza would then flip up his ears in search of some nonexistent parasite, whispering all sorts of sweet nothings in Persian mixed in with a little bit of lower-class French slang that, to Molinet’s ears, was a song of pure bliss. The dog had, as do all basset hounds, a long, sad face, and broad ears that flopped down over a set of stumpy, bowlegged paws that were utterly incapable of conferring him even the tiniest shred of dignity. And calling the dog Gomez was an exercise in pure vengeance, for that had been the name of a certain majordomo that Molinet’s father had brought with him to Europe from America. And, no, it wasn’t that the dog actually reminded him of Ceferino Gomez, that vul-gar, ridiculously loyal houseboy who looked like a dockworker and whom his father always addressed by last name only in one of his many attempts to Anglify the un-Anglifiable. No, that wasn’t it at all—he just liked how ludicrous the name sounded. Molinet would have called him Bertie, in memory of the man who sired him, but he sensed that he might actually start to feel some affection for the pup. Of course, the real reason Molinet had succumbed to the extravagant purchase of a pet was to have an excuse for sitting down every so often in the canine coiffeur’s back room as Reza worked his magic on the various animals that entered his shop.

“Things are a bit of a mess around here, chief, aren’t they?” Reza said. “I see you’re cleaning house.”

Three open suitcases indicated travel, not housecleaning, but Reza just scratched the back of his neck, apparently thinking of other things. Perhaps he was thinking of Gomez, who had remained in his care during Molinet’s lunch with Fernanda. Or perhaps he was thinking about his business or some nighttime escapade or something else entirely. But never of Rafael Molinet.

“Reizzah darling, I wonder if you might do me a little favor. Nothing important, just
une petite chose.
”

He was sitting back in his easy chair, with young Reza standing very close by, just a few paces away. If he looked straight ahead he could see only Reza’s bottom half, clad in jeans so tight that it became rather difficult to look any higher.

“Whatever you say, chief,” young Reza said, smiling.

“Listen, Reizzaah. I am finally going to go on the little vacation I mentioned to you the other day. And I would be so grateful if you’d look after Gomez while I’m gone. It will only be for two weeks.”

“To Morocco?”

“Yes, to Morocco.”

Young Reza had knelt down and was now straddling the arm of the sofa, so close that Molinet could have reached out and touched the knee trapped in those piercing blue jeans.

“I also have to ask you a favor, chief.” And those Persian cat eyes shone with a brilliance that was not unfamiliar to Molinet.

“How much money do you need?”

Reza’s hand, the same hand that so assiduously stroked the bodies of domesticated animals, the hand that delivered such skillful caresses, had moved perilously close to Molinet. It slid across the back of the sofa and Molinet watched as it came to a stop near a tiny speck of dust resting against his neck. Only once before had Reza’s hand come this close to him. It had taken place a few weeks earlier, when they had met for the first time following Molinet’s arrival at the flat. Reza had been kind enough to help him arrange his furniture, and when they were finished, Molinet had felt obligated to give him a tip—twenty pounds, a fortune—but he was such a very friendly neighbor.

“You know what, chief? I think it will do you very good to leave this dump for a little while. Really. Tooting Bec is no place for a gentleman like you. Take it from me.”

“How much money do you need, Reza?”

The young man shrugged; his abusively green eyes answered the question.