My hotel is on English Bay facing the ocean. A venerated boutique hotel that is predicted not to last out the decade, but which has been here since the century before the one just past. A long time.
“Do you know Errol Flynn’s dick fell off at this hotel?” Overheard as I stand in line, waiting to check in.
Response. “Who’s Errol Flynn?”
“Wasn’t he a Red Hot Chili Pepper?” I offer, deadpan. The two girls look at each other questioningly, then give me a wide berth as they head for the exit. I don’t blame them. Theirs is probably the right call.
I’m not long in my room. I don’t need time to think, but I’ve got time to kill and walking seems a better way to do that than fighting the hotel television system in my room. And I didn’t bring a book.
I open the package containing my burner Bersa and a box of cartridges and tuck them into the safe in the room. I unpack my suitcase, then go back to the lobby. I get an umbrella from the concierge, then head out the front door and into a light and refreshing evening rain. It isn’t cold.
There is a seawall in Vancouver. It snakes around the edge of the city for miles and miles, a little pedestrian highway at the edge of the sea. I walk this now. Not thinking about my destination or if I even really have one. I figure, in fact, I probably do not, just enjoying the feeling of being able to walk out at night. I tried it once in the country and it scared the hell out of me. Noises in the dark. Likely small harmless animals. Or deer, more frightened of me than I was of them. Still. I know all too well the danger that can lurk in the night. There are chances I choose not to take. Better safe than sorry, once again.
The city at night is vibrant, though. And I am in a safe area, populated by tourists and fashionable couples. I walk on the seawall in the direction of the city, not the big park near the hotel. I have an idea of where I am going. I let my feet take me there.
I force my mind blank, making the walk meditative. Healing. Trying to stay aware of the cool sea air filling my lungs and the soft kiss of moisture on my skin, welcome after the hours in airports and planes.
I walk along the seawall as far as I can, then up a few blocks to where tomorrow I will do what I’ve come to do. One way or another. I’m in front of a four-story building of tidy appearance, despite the crumbling brick. It has an aura of solidity, even though it is in a terrible part of town.
I stand there in the rain for a few minutes, looking at the building, thinking of what approach I will take when the time comes. I am so focused, and maybe so tired, that I am startled when the front door opens and a man pops out. He is energetic and more youthful than the photo I’d been sent had led me to think he would be, but I know that it is him.
Though I am a few feet from the entrance, to my surprise my usual invisibility shield of middle-aged woman doesn’t hold. He crosses to me in a few strong steps, and does it so quickly, I have no time to collect myself and scurry away.
“Is everything all right?” he says when he reaches me. He is concerned. It is possible this is not the sort of neighborhood a woman can safely wander around in by herself. I hadn’t known that.
“Well, sure,” I reply reflexively. “I’m kind of a tourist. Out for an evening walk. I guess I got a bit turned around.”
“I guess you did,” he says, and I look at him quickly, but there is nothing but warmth in his voice and on his face. Nothing more than honest concern. “What’s a bit of a tourist, anyway? Never mind. You can tell me while we walk. I’m heading home now myself. Walking. Will be no trouble for me to see you right. Where are you staying? What part of town?”
“I’m at the Sylvia. In the West End.”
He nods approvingly and starts guiding me west. “Good choice. Charming. Not ostentatious. And all the right ghosts.”
“Errol Flynn?” I say, pushing myself to keep up with his longer strides.
“Oh yeah. Him. Sure. I think. But others. Some apparition sits on the bed in one of the rooms on the sixth floor, if I remember correctly. Something I read. You’re not on the sixth floor, are you?”
I shake my head.
“You should be all right then.”
I laugh as we walk. “Well, that’s a relief. Where are you walking me?”
“I live in Coal Harbour, which is not exactly where you’re going, but it’s quite close. I’m going to see you home.”
“Ah,” I say, trying not to think about how complicated this is getting. And then, after a while, not caring. We enjoy a companionable silence and, when we chat, words move easily between us.
As we walk, he talks about points of interest. He does it easily and well, and I can tell he is a man who is used to being treated like he has things worth saying. He asks what I do and something I’d read in the in-fight magazine provides the answer. I tell him I’m a civic planner, sent to Vancouver to evaluate local design.
“A lot of people are doing that now,” he says. “I read about that somewhere. Apparently, we have a lot of civic design worth emulating in this city. Who knew?”
I wonder if we’d read the
