The Last Resort by Carmen Posadas Read Free Book Online Page B

noise of swiftly approaching trains, he began to elbow his way forward through the crowd. After a few seconds he successfully made it through the swell of heads bobbing up and down, everyone in a terrible rush—brunettes, blondes, with hats or with Rastafarian dreadlocks—racing together toward the deepest tunnels of the London Tube.
    The Remains of the Shipwreck
    Molinet placed the key in the lock, turned it twice, and then inhaled deeply as his feet navigated through a patchwork of gray linoleum. Advancing down the long communal hallway at top speed, past the fireproof glass doors and through two more corridors, he finally arrived at the door to his apartment. Holding his breath, he entered and rapidly made his way to the sitting room without bothering to turn on the light. He knew exactly how his furniture was laid out and easily dodged the old leather easy chair and the side table. He was still holding his breath when his hand finally located the solid, age-old bronze lamp and turned it on. Only then did he allow himself to inhale deeply, for the danger had been successfully averted: Once more he had skillfully eluded the wall of unforgivable odors that wafted from the neighboring apartments.
    Long before settling into these two rooms, in a sad house on the outskirts of London, Rafael Molinet had known how dismal such squalid living quarters would be. However, the person who had actually articulated this thought and put a name to the feelings was Dr. Pertini.
    “The worst, most repugnant thing about poverty,” his shrink had said during one of their last sessions, “is how awful it smells.”
    For Molinet, this had been something of a revelation, and ever since that moment he had repeated the phrase thousands of times whenever he thought back to the many experiences he had lived through over the past few years. Every squalid house had its own particular stench, and his own present lodgings seemed to take pride in a tenacious odor that was a combination of boiled cabbage, pine-scented Mr. Clean, and cat urine, an aroma that had a way of clinging to the pituitary gland with all the conviction of life’s cruelest realities. It was as if they conspired to remind him again and again:
You are bankrupt. You are a nobody. You are nothing but a destitute old man.
    Ever since his release from the hospital a few weeks earlier, he was determined not to let the hallway wreak its havoc on him. His two little rooms formed a true oasis, a sacred haven in a land of infidels, and it smelled of absolutely nothing except, on occasion, the Floris room deodorizer that he had pocketed from Harrod’s and now stored in one of his night-table drawers. Now and then he would add a bit of water to the bottle to extend the product’s shelf life a bit, and whenever he was feeling especially low he would very generously spray the potion around the apartment so that for a few brief minutes, at least, his home might be suffused with the indulgent aroma of opulence amid “the remains of the shipwreck,” which is how he referred to his home that overflowed with all the mementos he had hung on to following his mother’s death. Every piece of furniture had been down the same path in life as he (splendor, stupor, decadence, and disaster).
    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