Leaving the World (46 page)

Even though I knew nothing at this point about Calgary I still sensed that any area named Saddle Ridge was probably stuck out in the ’burbs.

I checked my watch. It was seven-thirty. There were a couple of beefy guys at an adjoining table.

‘Morning,’ I said. ‘I just arrived in town last night . . .’

‘And you ended up here?’ one of them said, causing the other two to laugh. ‘Lady, you’ve got a nose for the wrong side of the tracks.’

‘It’s a mistake I won’t make again. But listen, what’s a decent hotel in Calgary?’

‘A decent hotel in Calgary?’ the same guy said again, repeating my question with a certain mordancy. ‘You really think we know stuff like that?’

‘Sorry to have troubled you.’

‘Hey,’ one of his colleagues said to the guy, ‘show the lady some respect.’

‘I wasn’t being disrespectful.’

‘The Palliser,’ the third man said. ‘Was in there once when there was a fire in the kitchen.’

‘Was that back in 1934?’ the first guy asked.

‘You got to excuse our friend here,’ the third man said. ‘He thinks he’s a comedian, but no one at the station house ever laughs at his jokes. You want a good hotel, you go to the Palliser. But it’ll cost ya.’

I did a very fast calculation of the money in my jacket pocket – between my cash and my traveler’s checks I had not far off $4,000 Canadian. I could afford a few nights in a decent hotel. Check that: I needed to be in reasonable surroundings while I got my bearings.

‘Do you know if there’s a phone around here?’ I asked him.

‘Who you wanna call?’

‘A taxi.’

He pulled out a cellphone.

‘Consider it done.’

The cab arrived in minutes. It took nearly half an hour to reach the Palliser.

‘I didn’t realize I was so far from downtown,’ I said to the driver.

‘Calgary’s a sprawl.’

Calgary was also a non-stop construction site: condos, bedroom communities, new developments, new strip malls. There were few extant historic buildings . . . bar the Palliser. It was located on 8th Avenue in what appeared to be the downtown. From all my years teaching the literature of America’s Gilded Age, I immediately responded to the Palliser. Its facade was Robber Baron. Its interior was updated faded glitz – an accurate oxymoron (which, in itself,
is
an oxymoron). It was an old railroad hotel which a century ago catered to the leisured class who had somehow managed to find themselves in this isolated outpost – arriving by the Canadian Pacific from the East, laden down with steamer trunks that were carried by a manservant who probably slept in cramped downstairs quarters while his oil-magnate master and his overfed wife retired to a vast suite on a higher floor.

All right, all right – I was mentally riffing. But it was rare to come across such a relic from the era in which (academically speaking) I had lived for so long. This was a hotel out of a novel by Dreiser or Frank Norris. It was also exactly the sort of place about which my father spoke so often back in the days when he spoke about such things – waxing lyrical about his long-vanished Canadian childhood when his father once brought his then ten-year-old son on a trans-Canadian trip, during which Granddad was drunk from eleven in the morning onwards. I’m certain he once mentioned staying in ‘some big old pile’ in Calgary, how it was right after Christmas and he’d never been colder in his life . . . until, a couple of days later, they ended up in Edmonton.

‘You should’ve seen winter back then,’ he told me.

‘Can I help you?’

It was the woman at the front desk. In her twenties, black-haired with a decided Eastern European accent. How had she landed herself in Calgary?

‘I was looking for a room for a couple of nights.’

She explained that they had rooms from $275 to $800 per night. I blanched – and she noticed that.

‘It’s a bit beyond my budget,’ I said.

‘How many nights would you be with us?’

‘Maybe four or five. I’m new in town and will be hunting for a place to live.’

‘When did you arrive?’

‘Just last night.’

‘You have a job here?’

I shook my head.

‘Family? Friends?’

Again I shook my head.

‘Why Calgary?’ she asked.

‘Random selection.’

‘Like evolution,’ she said with a smile, then added: ‘I studied biology back in Poland.’

‘And here?’

‘I still study biology at the university – and do this to pay my bills.’

‘But why Calgary?’

‘Random selection.’

She tapped away at her computer terminal for several minutes, then picked up the phone and spoke in a low voice to someone. When she ended the call she was all smiles.

‘Things are a bit slow at the hotel this week – so if you are willing to commit to five nights here I can offer you a special employee’s rate of a hundred and fifty per night. It won’t be one of our larger rooms, but it’s still pretty nice.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, handing over my debit card.

‘Jane Howard,’ she said, reading my embossed name. ‘Any thoughts on what you’ll be doing in Calgary?’

‘None,’ I said.

‘That’s a start.’

As described, the room wasn’t big – maybe 200 square feet. But after the nightmare motel, it was more than adequate. There was a queen-sized bed, a good armchair, a desk, a very clean functioning bathroom. I unpacked my bag, turned on my radio, found the classical music station of the CBC, ran a hot bath, undressed and sat in it for the better part of an hour, contemplating my next move, trying to grapple with the daily gloom. But ‘to grapple’ is to attempt to come to terms with a set of circumstances. There was no antidote to all this. There was just the matter of trying to get through the day.

So, after my bath, I picked up the phone and called the concierge – and explained that I was moving to Calgary and wanted to rent an apartment, but knew nothing of the city. The concierge was named Gary – a very friendly type, eager to help.

‘You in the oil business?’ he asked.

‘Uh, no . . .’ I said, just a little bemused.

‘Calgary’s a big oil town – the Dallas of the North – so most of the relocating executives we get staying in the hotel are in petroleum.’

‘I’m a teacher.’

‘Then I guess you’re not going to be after some big executive pad.’

‘My budget’s pretty modest.’

‘Any idea where you want to live in town?’

‘None.’

‘Do you have a car?’

‘No.’

‘Will you have a car?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘And you teach what?’

‘Literature.’

‘In high school?’

‘I was a professor.’

‘Right – then you’ll probably want to be near some bookshops and decent cafés and not far from the art cinemas in town.’

‘There are art-house cinemas in Calgary?’

‘Don’t sound that surprised. There are three – and even a couple of very good theaters and not a bad symphony orchestra.’

Well, this was news.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘my advice to you would be to look either in an area called Kensington or somewhere around 17th Avenue SW – and I do know a realtor who might be able to help you. How fast are you wanting to move?’

‘I need a place in a couple of days.’

‘OK – I’m on the job . . .’

Within fifteen minutes he called back to say that a realtor named Helen Ross would be calling momentarily. This she did.

‘Understand you’re looking for a rental unit in either Kensington or Mount Royal. What’s your budget?’

‘I really couldn’t spend more than seven hundred a month.’

‘Furnished or unfurnished?’

‘Furnished would be preferable.’

‘Then we’re probably talking a studio, if that’s OK with you.’

‘That’s fine.’

‘Mind me asking what you do?’

I knew this was coming – and had a straightforward answer prepared. I had taught university. The contract had ended. I was now looking for work.

‘So no gainful employment right now?’

‘Is that a problem?’

‘Not if you can show you have adequate funds to cover the year’s lease.’

Damn. That would mean contacting my bank in Boston – as she would probably need a reference as well. By getting in touch with the bank I’d be informing someone of my whereabouts . . . unless my guy there could be trusted to stay shtum about this. Are bankers like priests?

‘I can provide you with anything you need,’ I said.

‘Very good then. I have a viewing this morning, but say I came by the hotel at three this afternoon?’

I was waiting for her in the lobby when she drove up in a silver Lexus. Helen Ross was in her fifties. Well preserved. Well dressed. Two serious diamond rings on her left hand. A hint of Botox around the eyes. Direct, pleasant and evidently not wanting to spend too much time on such a small-beer letting, but still determined to be professional and courteous. I could see her looking me over, sizing me up, probably categorizing me as an eternal-student type . . . which wasn’t too off the truth. In a very casual way she asked me about my background. I provided her with just enough to satisfy her curiosity, mentioning my Canadian father, my doctorate from Harvard (that made her glance at me with care – gauging whether I was being straight with her or was some fantasist) and how I was now ‘between jobs’ and had decided on ‘a change of life, a change of scene’.

‘Divorced?’ she asked.

‘We weren’t officially married, but . . .’

She nodded grimly.

‘My husband left me last year – after twenty-three years together. I got the big house and the Lexus and a lot of grief that doesn’t seem to want to go away. You know about that too?’

‘I know about grief.’

Helen Ross took that in – and correctly sensed from my tone that I didn’t want to pursue this subject. Instead, she changed course, telling me that Calgary was now booming. House prices had doubled in the last eighteen months. Biggest growth of any Canadian city. Some of the best restaurants in the country. Cool arts scene, the city having finally gotten wise to the idea that fostering a ‘creative community’ was a boon to business. And, of course, with the Rockies just forty minutes away by car . . .

It was like being with a one-person Chamber of Commerce. But I liked Helen Ross – and her forthrightness with me about her post-divorce emotional injuries immediately made me realize that I was wrong to judge her simply on the material evidence of her well-upholstered life. She bled like the rest of us and she wanted me to know that as well . . . which, coming from a complete stranger, had an honest poignancy.

‘Now I have only three places I can show you – and the first is the best.’

It was located in an area called Mount Royal, right off 17th Avenue SW.

‘This is one of the trendiest parts of town.’

At one end of 17th Avenue SW were some ugly apartment blocks (they seemed to be a Calgary specialty) and a 7-Eleven. As the avenue progressed I did note some cafés, some boutiques, a collection of renovated brick buildings, a few bookshops and quite a number of restaurants. All right, it wasn’t Harvard Square. But after my initial shell-shocked impressions of Calgary . . . well, this wasn’t bad at all.

We turned into a side street and pulled up in front of one of the few old buildings in the area. By old I’m talking l930s – and judging by its institutional girth, it had started life as an educational establishment.

‘This was an old schoolhouse,’ Helen Ross said, ‘but is now a very nice apartment building.’

The ‘unit’ that Helen had earmarked for me was located on the second floor, right in the back of the building. (‘But it still gets great morning sunlight.’) As promised it was a studio – maybe 250 square feet at most – but nicely renovated. Plain off-white walls. Stained hardwood floors. A modern alcove kitchen with all the basic equipment. A modern neutral bathroom. A sofa in gray fabric. A matching armchair with an ottoman. A floor-to-ceiling set of doors that opened to reveal a queen-sized Murphy bed with a reasonably hard mattress. A Paris-style café table and two mahogany bentwood chairs.

‘There’s one very decent walk-in closet. There’s a communal laundry in the basement. There’s room for a desk on that wall over there by the window. It’s wired for cable and broadband . . .’

‘
I don’t watch television and I don’t have a computer anymore
,’ I was going to tell her, but decided not to sound like a Luddite crank.

‘And if you’re willing to sign a two-year lease I can get the price down by a hundred a month to six twenty-five.’

‘Sold,’ I said.

But I still needed to provide references. So the following morning, I called Laurence Phillips, the manager at the local branch of Fleet Bank in Somerville, where I deposited my money. We’d had few dealings with each other – and though he took my call immediately, he seemed genuinely surprised to hear from me.

‘I was aware of the fact that you had left the Boston area . . . just as I had also heard about your dreadful loss. I am so sorry. I don’t know if you received our letter of condolence . . .’

‘I couldn’t read any of them.’

‘Of course you couldn’t. How can I help?’

‘Are you good at keeping a secret, Mr Phillips?’

‘As long as it doesn’t entail anything illegal.’

‘It’s nothing illegal. It just has to do with my whereabouts.’

Then I explained about how I had landed in Calgary, leaving out the failed suicide attempt . . .

‘I simply need you to fax the realtor my bank statement and a letter from you stating that I’m a client in good standing etc . . .’

‘I’m happy to do that.’

‘I also need you to promise me that you will not mention my new location to anybody.’