The twenty-two walk up the steep grassy slope and come to the hotel garden.

They form into a single line and wave to a non-existent crowd.

It looks like the moment before the start of an important football match.

The South American stares at this vision, transfixed. His wife lifts her sad gaze and looks at him. She asks him in Spanish, “What are you thinking about?”

The stadium floodlights go out in a single stroke.

“The future,” he says.

48

Lena is asleep in the suite’s double bed. The room is dark.

Fred is in the little lounge, sitting in the middle of the couch. From here he can see Lena asleep in the bedroom. Then he turns away from her and stares into space. He starts to reflect on things, while his thumb and forefinger rub a sweet wrapper imperceptibly at irregular intervals to produce a simple but beautiful melody.

It is that tiny sound that wakes Lena. She opens one eye. Without getting up, she studies her father sitting in the lounge.

49

The lights are dimmed for the night. At reception, two night porters are hurrying through the formalities for a group of six that has just arrived. They are quite ordinary in appearance, four women and two men, all in their forties. But their luggage consists of strange rigid metal cases.

Then two more women come in carrying metal clothes racks from which hang dozens of costumes protected by suit carriers.

They all seem exhausted.

50

In one part of the hotel is an imitation underground grotto with papier-mâché walls that simulate Alpine rocks.

A long spiral staircase descends below ground and ends directly in a large circular pool that contains dark water and so many mineral salts you can float spread-eagled on your back without any effort.

In fact, in a chosen dark corner, Mick Boyle and his five scriptwriters are floating naked and supine, spread out in haphazard fashion.

They are working out the final scene of “Last Day in a Life”.

The scriptwriter with the joking manner makes a suggestion. “He’s on the bed, about to die, and whispers to his wife, ‘I should have focused on you and our relationship instead of spending my life trying to become an insurance kingpin.’”

“Or he says something ordinary and simple like ‘Look after yourself’,” adds the scriptwriter who is in love with the girl.

“No, we have to stay with the physical pain right to the end,” the intellectual of the group interjects. “He should say, ‘Even the morphine doesn’t do a thing for me anymore.’”

“And what if his last words are on some insignificant detail? If he says, ‘I wonder what became of that horseshoe key ring you gave me twenty-five years ago!’” the girl suggests.

Mick interrupts them. “No. On the point of death on his bed, the man says nothing.”

The scriptwriters are silent. They wait.

“It’s his wife who speaks. Brenda. And she says, ‘Michael, I’ve lost so much time with you. The best years of my life. I’ve lost them.’”