How Not To Run A B&B: A Woman's True Memoir

by Bobby Hutchinson

  “A famous filmmaker from New York,” Eric sighs. “And you asked him to leave when he wanted to stay on?”

  “I had to. He reserved for only two nights, and I was fully booked for the third.”

  “And he filmed you.”

  “Yeah, even though I told him I’m the least photogenic person in the western world. I sat on a chair in the garden and he asked me questions about life and death and food and destiny. In relation to Tommy Chong.”

  “But you don’t even know Tommy Chong. You never met him, right?”

  “Right. I told Josh that, too.” I was raising babies and trying to survive several desperate and abusive marriages during the sixties and early seventies. I remembered those years all too clearly, which of course means I didn’t partake in sex and drugs and rock and roll.

  “I mostly just babbled on about spirituality.”

  Eric shook his head. “You know, you have spiritual Tourette’s. What did you tell him, all that stuff about there only being one of us here and God didn’t make this world, we did, and it’s all a dream anyway, that we’re actually safe at home and not here at all?”

  “Yup.” Eric made me laugh. Which is why I love him. In the midst of the relentless questioning, he’ll come up with some off the cuff insightful remark like that spiritual Tourette’s line. Which isn’t accurate, not really.

  I never launch into my spiritual beliefs unless someone asks me what they are. Of course, I’m very good at getting people to do that.

  I also love Eric’s generosity, his kindness, his refusal to criticize. He never refuses anything lest he hurt one’s feelings. He always says, thanks, maybe later, when I offer him food he doesn’t want to eat. And I love that he can fix almost anything, and does, at my beck and call to a ridiculous degree when toilets bung up or something electrical goes haywire.

  And there’s also his endless gentle patience with next door Louie, who is the bane and thus the blessing of my existence.

  As I said before, Louie is mentally challenged and his major, endless, single minded topic of conversation is his ginger tomcat, Sammy. That is, when he’s not trying to convince me he used to be a fashion photographer who filmed women in their underwear. Or explaining that the cat actually owns my property.

  More of Louie later, right now there’s Eric and the black garbage bags of gifts he leaves on my back deck several times a week, always in the middle of the night.

  I sleep as if I’m comatose. I never hear Eric come into the garden, or creep up the steps and steal away again, but when I open the deck curtains in the morning, there’ll be a bag of the most astounding stuff, hundreds of CD’s, boxes of luxury soap, bottles of shampoo, obscure magazines, dozens of pens and pencils, pirated movies, books, once even an authentic Japanese kimono of heavy white embroidered silk, complete with endless obi belt. It fitted me perfectly, although where I’d ever wear it—well, I guess if I ever wanted a traditional Japanese style wedding, it would be perfect. It’s sure not something you lounge around in while watching Oprah and eating microwave popcorn.

  I know Eric gets the loot from Dumpster Dan, a tall, dark tragically beautiful alcoholic who makes his living by scavenging garbage cans on the wealthy end of town late at night. Dan’s a refugee from some Eastern bloc country, here without official sanction. The word is he murdered someone back in his home town. Or maybe several, but after the first one, it’s just a matter of numbers. He lives in a basement room so crowded with his Dumpster treasures there’s barely room to move, but then, so does Eric.

  He and Eric have some unfathomable agreement about the merchandise Dan gathers. Eric gets his pick, but I know him well enough to understand that whatever it is he does in return for Dan repays him a thousand fold. Maybe it’s a tooth thing?

  I try to thank Eric for my dubious largesse, but he gives me this inscrutable Chinese sidelong glance and a shy smile. I’ve never asked him not to keep gifting me with wild things, because after I divorced, I felt like a fire that has burned dangerously low because no one cared enough to throw on another log. So I asked humbly in my prayers that someone—anyone—spoil me. Just a little.

  I longed for flagons and apples and purple silk, for flowers and zircons and pomegranates and magazines and book of the month selections from Reader’s Digest.

  I didn’t want the burden of a beloved along with the largesse, I reminded the Holy Spirit respectfully. For me, men came with too much baggage.

  Not their baggage---mine. Until I figured out why I kept attracting good looking abusive alcoholics, I only wanted the trappings of adoration. And with its usual batty sense of humor, the universe sent Eric, and these endless, outrageous, unpredictable, late night gifts.

  And I am grateful. I am so grateful, because along with the wacky things he brings me is this unfathomable sense of connection between us, this purely platonic brotherhood, like an umbilical cord of friendship stretched between him and me.

  I trust Eric. I love him. Sure, he drives me nuts—but what are good friends for?

  He’s quiet for a while, mourning the fact that he didn’t get to meet Josh Gilbert before I kicked him out. Then he perks up.

  “So who’s coming next?”

  “A family from France. Their kid, Pierre, is here going to school at Langara College. He came by, looked at the rooms and asked if his mother, her boyfriend, his sister, her boyfriend, and his uncle could come and stay for a week. You have to come by and meet them.”

  “Wow. Full house.”

  “Yeah. It’s gonna be fun.”

  “Do they speak English?”

  “I hope so, because I only had two years of French at school, and I flunked. All I remember is, J’entre dans la salle de classe, Je regarde autour de moi, je dit bonjour au professeur.”

  “Quelle horrible,” Eric pronounced.

  The next morning on the deck, a black plastic bag wrapped around a narrow box revealed a full set of educational tapes. Conversational French, straight from Berlitz.

  I guess the message here is, Don’t be careful what you ask for. Just expect it, be grateful and then duck, because sure as hell it’s coming down the tube.

  PAIN PERDUE OR LOST BREAD, THE ORIGINAL FRENCH NAME FOR FRENCH TOAST

  Preheat a griddle to good old moderate. Beat 2 eggs severely, and add (omigod) 1 cup of sugar. Beat again. Dissolve 1 tablespoon cornstarch in a little water and beat that in. Beat in 1 cup whole milk and ½ teaspoon nutmeg. Coat 6 slices of stale white bread (homemade is superb, French in bought loaf style works too.) Butter hot griddle, add bread and cook 3 or 4 minutes on each side. Serve hot with maple syrup or berry sauce. Send guests out for a nice long walk to counteract the sugar rush.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A rat by any other name

  Monique, Alphonse, Lulu, Gerard, and Monique’s bachelor brother, Henri, arrived the following afternoon, and I got them settled in their respective rooms. Their English was on a par with my French, but fortunately, Pierre was able to translate, at least for the first hour. Then he left for classes, and I was on my own.

  By now I had a printed sheet with my Blue Collar logo welcoming guests with a check list of what they preferred for breakfast. After French toast, pancakes or Irish oatmeal, I’d coyly added, Something wonderful at the cook’s discretion.

  They all checked that one, making me curse myself—who knew I’d have to come up with something suitable for jaded French palettes?

  There was a rapid fire exchange over which beverages they wanted. Juice, yes, coffee, yes, but could I also make them chocolat?

  With a smile and exuding confidence I was far from feeling, I said, “Absolutely.”

  I had no idea what true French chocolat consisted of, but I was fairly certain Fry’s Cocoa wasn’t going to cut it.

  Good old Google found me a recipe. A call to Starbuck’s revealed that the special chocolate I needed was at Superstore, in the bulk section. I picked it up along with several quarts of whipping cream, cooked up the basic recipe, and the next mor
ning concocted cups of thick, sinfully rich chocolat, complete with whiffs of cinnamon on top. I basked in their effusive French praise.

  Henri, who’d been flirting mildly ever since I’d told Pierre that yes, I was single, threw me an extravagant five finger kiss, and the other’s pronounced breakfast tres, tres, tres bien.

  Having guests for longer than one or two mornings was challenging. I didn’t want to serve the same thing every day, so each night I pored over cookbooks, trying to come up with new and exciting offerings, which necessitated ever earlier mornings for me.

  Crawling out of bed at five to have breakfast ready for eight, I made cheese and tomato pie, Morning Wifesaver, Egg nests, Quiche. I even went totally berserk and started setting dough at night for fresh croissants.

  In true French fashion, my guests were up to the challenge. Breakfast became a feast, with everyone tasting, commenting, approving. Henri had progressed to kissing my hand, encrusted though it was with flour, butter, spatters of egg, flecks of chocolate.

  Then on the fourth morning, as I was sautéing zucchini for an omelet, Henri crept down the stairs before anyone else was up, and with a wink and a bent forefinger, invited me to follow him. He was wearing blue and white striped pajamas, and his fly was gaping. I tried not to look, but I am insatiably curious. LOL

  Not that I was attracted to Henri. His sister and I had learned to communicate, as any two sensible women will do, and she’d confided that Henri had been married three times, that all the women had left after only a few months, that he was intolerably fussy, that he slept with an eye shield and ear plugs and couldn’t tolerate anyone in his bed for longer than half an hour. I thought she’d hinted at some fascinatingly obscure sexual deviation as well, but the language barrier was too extreme for me to get the real gist of it.

  I gestured at the sauté pan, but he was insistent. What the hell. It was flattering that he found me attractive, and I could gently disengage myself after he’d made his initial move. It seemed easier than standing here arguing. I turned off the zucchini and followed him up the narrow staircase.

  Henri was in the gabled room at the front of the house. He took my hand and led me into the bedroom, closed the door firmly behind us. I waited for him to put his arms around me.

  Instead, he gestured down at the rug. Chunks of beige carpeting were strewn everywhere. The rug had been chewed all along the doorsill.

  “Un rat,” he whispered. “Un grand rongeur.” He made rapid chomping motions with his teeth, but I understood his French. Rat was rat in any language.

  Totally horrified, I stared down at the mess. “It must have been trying to get out,” I whispered. My skin crawling, I glanced at the ill fitting doors that led to the closets and the crawl space under the eaves. Monsieur Rat had to still be in there. This bedroom and the adjoining spaces were self contained. And what if the thing had bitten Henri? Images of bubonic plague and massive lawsuits swirled in my head.

  “Oh, Henri, je suis regret,” I stammered. “Je suis tres—devastated. So, so sorry.”

  Henri shook his head, held out his hands and raised his eyebrows in a quintessential French gesture. I took it to mean, what can anyone do? Monsieur Rat was obviously an act of God.

  Downstairs, a glance at the clock showed that it wasn’t yet seven. Regardless, I picked up the phone with trembling fingers and dialed.

  “Eric? Oh, God, Eric, there’s a rat in the upstairs bedroom.”

  Silence. Breathing. I’d woken him up.

  He cleared his throat. “So. So, Henri came on to you, huh? I figured you couldn’t trust him.” He’d met my guests and liked them, reserving judgment only on poor Henri.

  “It’s a rat, Eric. As in rodent. It’s no joke, what if they report me to somebody?”

  “Like the Rat Patrol?” He let out an amused snort and then coughed and cleared his throat. “Okay, what time is breakfast over with?”

  “Ten.”

  “Okay, I’ll ride over on my lunch hour.”

  He arrived at noon with four rattling rat traps looped around his neck, tied together with shoelaces so he could carry them on his bike. He made his clanking way upstairs wearing his helmet and crawled into the spaces between the walls and carefully baited the traps with peanut butter.

  I hovered in the bedroom doorway, ready to make a quick run for it if Monsieur Rat made a break for freedom.

  “These traps are big,” Eric warned, crawling backwards out of the closet. “It’s gonna make an awful noise when the rat gets caught.” He was sweating profusely. “If it happens at night it’ll wake everybody up, because the trap will snap and the rat will squeal.”

  I shuddered. “And I’ll phone you to come and get rid of it.”

  He gave a wicked grin. “Henri can do it, it’s in his room. It’s his rat.”

  The French were with me for another three days, and I didn’t have another room for Henri unless I invited him to share my bed, which I wasn’t about to do, rat or no rat. Amazingly, he didn’t ask to be moved, but Monique did tell me he stopped sleeping with ear plugs.

  I lay awake at night praying the trap wouldn’t go off. I spent the days like a zombie, praying it would. I racked my brains for ways to get my guests out of the house early each morning so they’d avoid the death screams when the rat hit the trap, which is why I offered to teach them to play Canadian softball, ignoring the fact that I hadn’t played myself since my elementary school years, had forgotten or probably never learned the rules of the game, being the antithesis of a team player, or an athlete.

  So I led the way to a nearby playing field and made up my own totally civilized version. One base only. The person at bats had as many tries as he wanted to hit the ball. If anyone out in the field got tired or bored, he or she could put up their hand and the entire group had to take a break.

  There was no winning or losing, just the playing of the game. Every twenty minutes or so, we paused for the orange juice liberally laced with wine I’d brought along.

  They loved it all, and for a few glorious hours, I even forgot about the rat. Home again, I sent up a fervent prayer that the thing had died in one of the traps while we were out.

  My guests went out for dinner, and Eric wheeled into the back garden soon afterward to check the trap line.

  “Nothing,” he said, sweating under his bike helmet as he emerged from the nether regions of the attic. “But there’s a whole pile of shells up there from those pistachio nuts you have in each bedroom.”

  I’d graced each room with a bowl of pistachios and another of chocolate, in case my guests needed a snack. The nuts had been disappearing at a phenomenal rate.

  “Can rats shell pistachios?”

  Eric shrugged. “They’re pretty smart. They must have, or where did all the shells come from?”

  “Then maybe we should use pistachio nuts instead of peanut butter in the traps?”

  Eric gave me a look. “Have you ever tried to set a rat trap? Even with peanut butter, you oughta insure your fingers.” He held up a hand, encased in a heavy leather glove. “There’s no way to get a pistachio nut to stay under the spring.”

  “Okay, but how come the thing isn’t getting caught if peanut butter’s so great?”

  “It will. There’s lots of poop in the crawl space, so we know he’s around.” He grinned, white teeth gleaming. “Maybe you’ve got the only rat in Vancouver that’s allergic to peanut butter.”

  “Don’t joke. This isn’t funny. I can’t sleep, and I’m terrified of being sued over rat bites. If there’s one rat, there’s bound to be more.”

  But nothing happened, although the last two nights the French were there, I barely slept at all, wondering where the rodent was and what it was doing. By the morning of their flight back to Paris, Monsieur Rat was still at large and I was seriously sleep deprived.

  The moment came for departure. They each gave me a resounding kiss on each cheek, a substantial tip, and a barrage of French I took to mean they’d enjoyed staying in spite of a
cts of God.

  And the moment they were in their taxi, I called an exterminator, asking if they could park down the block and skulk down the alley, creeping in through my back door—the last thing I wanted was the neighbors knowing I had rats. Nosy Louie couldn’t keep a secret to save his soul, and the nice people on the other side had asked about reservations for visiting relatives from Peking. I was already trying out recipes for tofu scrambler.

  The gum chewing receptionist at Pestaway promised anonymity and then asked for my Visa number. This was going to cost about as much as I’d just made on the French, but what else could I do? Eric, for the first time, had failed me.

  Three hours later, two humorless men lumbered down the alley, covered from head to toe in white hazard suits, carrying big bulky gym bags stuffed with traps. This was their idea of discretion?

  They unpacked and disappeared into the crawl space. I wrung my hands in between scrubbing the bathroom and pulling the sheets off the beds, revealing that everyone except Pierre had had a rollicking good time. Thank god I’d saved that toothbrush.

  “Ma’am?” One of the spacemen held out something in a small plastic box. “We don’t think you have a rat, ma’am.” He gestured to the small round pellets in the box.

  “This is gerbil feces. And by the number of nutshells in there, you may have more than one.”

  Immediately, I thought Norway and things became clear.

  Several months before, I’d rented a room long term to two Norwegian art students, plump pretty girls with that engaging accent, lovely skin and those soulful blue eyes. They’d asked if they could have a pet, and I’d gently refused. They’d gently gone out and bought two gerbils, which they smuggled in and kept hidden in their closet until the day I went in to investigate a strange whirring noise and found the little creatures running frantically around the wheel in their cage.