He wasn’t buoyant, most of the time. Or so they believed. In fact, he refused to allow himself to. It was a matter of taste. In the same way, he was never in a rush. All those things implied a certain mundane flair he wasn’t interested in feeding. If any, he had time on his side. He liked to wait for things to make sense. Days and months passed by, and he was barely seen leaving the house. It was believed his skin felt younger than it should, due to the fact that he disregarded the calendar. That’s what the neighbors mostly talked about. It was not about his solitude, but the look of his skin. It was them, that actually turned his days into a myth. Nobody knows precisely for how long he lived here. It was music that informed about his presence. Other than that, it was silence. Only the sprinklers disturbed that monotony. The neighbors fantasized the garden watering had become the tenant’s way of knowing the time. The caretaker moved around the house in a persistent rhythm as well and barely saw his boss. It was an agreement, a speechless contract. They almost never crossed paths; when one left the room, the other followed on the other side of the house, in a ballet of sorts. After a long weekend, when the caretaker arrived back to work he realized with surprise the house had been emptied. Cleaned. And no one was on sight. No inhabitant, no furniture, nothing. He kept on working, regardless, waiting for years, but nobody ever returned. There was not a goodbye, not a note, nothing. Forgotten in one closet was a small closed cardboard box. It contained photographs, some souvenirs, and written notes, which have been installed in the kitchen of the house. They are the only clues, a fragmented version if so, that could tell about the life and interests of the man who lived in this house. The works of art and design displayed here form, altogether, a portrait of sorts, from afar; things that I imagine would have pleased The Last Tenant. - Mario García Torres