The Last Resort Read Free Page B

relatives. Better yet, try and do it slowly. With serenity,” he said, and immediately congratulated himself for having used such a word. “Serenity” sounded good. It was a word that he had not used or thought of in quite some time.
    “All right, fair enough. But don’t go telling me now that I talk too much. Have you ever thought about how bad girls always seem to have better luck in life than us saints? Well, that is what this story is all about.”
    Molinet was able to endure this little digression without losing his patience. It was the kind of digression that often serves as a prelude to a frivolous gossip tale, and he took advantage of the moment to sneak another peek at the two restaurant patrons sitting at the only occupied table downstairs. Drones had emptied out little by little. A group of noisy Italians were still jabbering away at a table nearby, but on the downstairs level the only people in sight were the two that Fernanda had pointed out. In silent boredom, they alternated between taking sips of their coffee and staring out at nothing in particular, and their faces had that ventriloquist’s-dummy look of unhappy husbands and wives who think that nobody is watching them. The man was sixty-something, rather short, and had the curious habit of jerking to attention in his chair every so often, as if to stop himself from nodding off. Now he sat upright once again, took a long sip of coffee, and allowed his gaze to settle on the wall in front of him, as if he was scanning it or waiting for something or someone.
    Apart from a pair of unusually alert eyes, there is nothing out of the ordinary about him,
thought Molinet.
He may just be a man who is extremely bored, although I would say he has a certain air about him . . . What would be the right word? Self-assured. Yes, that is what it is, the kind of self-assurance that comes from having held countless glasses of champagne at countless gala benefits where he is always something of the outsider.
    Then he turned his gaze to the woman, who was easily twenty-five years younger than her husband. Even from that distance, he was duly impressed with her angular face, which changed depending on whether you looked at her face-on or in profile. It was fickle in the way that some Magyar faces are, with high cheekbones and very dark eyebrows. Her medium-length hair, on the other hand, was very light—an inconsistency. Pulled back, it rested softly against the nape of her neck to reveal her very tiny ears.
    “Now, you might think I’m old-fashioned, but I am going to start this story by telling you what Alvaro-husband thinks of our friend Isabella,” he heard Fernanda say.
    “He thinks Isabella is a bitch. Well, actually, that’s what he thought of her until the day the two of them ended up in the same Golf Clinic at the Puerta de Hierro Golf Club. ‘Oh, Alvaro!’ she kept saying. ‘Oh, I’m sorry! I’ll just never get the hang of this club!’ And that was all it took to change his opinion—radically change, I might add. But you know, don’t you, that men’s moral judgments can be so . . . fragile when it comes to pretty women. They fall to pieces with a simple little flutter of the eyelashes.”
    As Fernanda laughed, Molinet noted that his niece’s eyelashes were not exactly paralytic, either.
    “That should give you a fair idea of what kind of person we’re dealing with. In any case, and all joking aside, one thing is for sure: Isabellalaínez—and take a good look at her, now—came very close to getting herself in a big old mess, thanks to her personal charms.
    “It’s the oldest story in the world,” she continued. “I could tell it to you in two words. But I don’t want to do that. I think it would be much more fun to first describe all the personalities involved. Tales of adultery are so boring if you don’t accessorize them a bit. Even this one, which ended up in the Almudena.”
    “The what, my dear?”
    “In the cemetery, darling. Forgive