Excerpt from The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The Pink Door

In my sixty-three years of life, it has never occurred to me to hire the services of a prostitute. If anything, I was the one who, as a young man, exchanged sex for favours—such as a good meal and a warm bed—when I went backpacking around Europe. You might say that it was Lili, my wife, who planted the seed in my brain with a passing comment that triggered a long chain of thoughts and actions. One afternoon, as we were walking through our neighbourhood down one of the deserted little streets adjoining our own, Lili pointed out a new business, although in fact all that was there was a very narrow door the colour of pink bubblegum, with little blue and green hearts painted on it in pastel tones. It looked like the door of a teenage girl's bedroom. The afternoon was fading, illuminating the cobbled ground of the alley and its grey walls with a violet light, and making the colour of the door stand out with an unusual glow. I suppose it was this light that made us notice it.

'Have you seen what's over there?' remarked my wife, excited as a child. She had stood up on her tiptoes to get a better look.

High up in the wall, two coquettish little windows were pushed open like sleepy eyelids. Rather than being designed to allow someone to see the outside, their function seemed to be to provide ventilation while preventing passersby from looking in. If you made an effort, however, it was possible to make out a few decorative objects that rendered the place even more perplexing. My wife pointed out the candelabra with beads of orange glass—or were they plastic?—hanging from the ceiling. On the wall, a long red balloon with a metallic sheen formed the word Love in English.

'What a strange little space!' remarked Lili, awakening in me the same curiosity she felt. 'Have you seen it before?'

'Never.'

'You're the one who always walks home down this street. I can't believe you've never noticed it before.'

'Well, yeah, but it wasn't here before. It's appeared overnight. Maybe they only painted it yesterday,' I replied, prickling a little.

'If that was the case it would smell of fresh paint, no? Most likely it's been here for weeks and we just didn't notice.'

'Maybe it's the room of a girl who's just left home for the first time,' I hazarded, and I would have been content with that explanation if my wife hadn't counterattacked.

'I've never known any woman old enough to leave home who still has balloons in her bedroom,' she replied, very sure of herself. 'Isn't it more likely to belong to a prostitute, or her pimp?'

I, in contrast, am convinced that bad taste has no upper age limit, but I was tired and wanted to get home as quickly as possible, so I chose to agree.

'Don't you even think about showing your face here!' my wife said, half serious and half teasing, pointing her finger at me.

I pretended to have lost all interest in the matter, but in fact, quite the opposite occurred. Over that same week I thought about the place again on several occasions. When I least expected it, the little door would appear in my mind's eye, except that now it was ajar, as if inviting me to enter. One night I imagined that I poked my head around it, allowing me to glimpse the owner of that room: a female student, with soft brown skin, who was sitting in her underwear touching up the nail varnish on her toes. The image produced a movement between my legs so unusual in recent times that I couldn't help but feel surprised; the most potent erection I had had in years. By my side, her head buried in a pile of pillows, my wife snored on. I looked at my watch: it was twenty-five past midnight. I thought about sneaking out of the house and walking to Calle Mariposa, but almost immediately recalled Lili's voice categorically forbidding me to go near the premises. I wondered when the last time was that she and I had had sex and, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember.

Excerpted from The Accidentals by Guadalupe Nettel. Copyright © 2025 by Guadalupe Nettel. Excerpted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.