Lost Girls (6 page)

Something's different up here.

The brush creeps up to the orange line that marks the boundary of the road and reaches across as a territorial challenge. Lone fence posts push up from the earth like bent thumbs. Occasional signs give directions to marinas, campgrounds, and private side roads that are no longer there. Then even the signs become difficult to see as bugs begin to kamikaze the windshield, obscuring my view with their yellow guts. On go the windshield wipers and I squeeze off a couple good sprays of washer fluid, but there's something in the insects' blood that resists easy removal and I'm left to peer ahead through a smudgy haze of horsefly, dragonfly, and moth.

Of course on a map it all looks the same: a vast white space marked by a couple of rail lines, watercolor dabs of small blue lakes, jagged veins for rivers throughout. But when you get here the map might as well be a child's crayon drawing. The lines are imaginary, nothing relates.

No matter where you start from, north is always so close in this country. Almost any exit taken off the main highway along Lake Ontario after the heavy industries, warehouses, and nuclear power stations have passed, and in only a couple of hours it's all over you. A place where the ratio of altered to unaltered space gets shifted dramatically in the latter's favor and there is little more ahead than an interminable expanse of humanlessness. Despite patchy settlement and the logical plotting of county lines the north communicates to those traveling through it what it probably always has: there is good reason why most people on this continent hug the ocean, lakeshores, or riverbanks, for those are places where someone might have a clue where they are.

Of the true character and magnitude of nature I know nothing, of course. I recall novels and poems fed to us in high school that involved lonely settlers and their wives, the difficulties in building a log cabin, and the eventual freezing to death of the protagonist. This, I believed throughout my schoolboy career, was the single plot and full extent of Canadian Literature. And so, too, of nature. For Barth Crane is no adventurer. At least not of the compass and pup-tent variety. Fresh air inspires nothing in me but suspicion and quick fatigue. A city slicker born in a country where the cities are few and far between.

But here I am anyway. Only a couple hundred miles north of where the six-lane artery from Toronto ends, from well-lit service centers and towns with hotel and restaurant chains large enough to have network TV commercials and American head offices, from the bedroom communities where the commuting middle-class has staked its claim, wrestles with the mortgage, and in the evenings haggles over which of the thousand satellite channels to watch for that particular half hour--two hundred miles from the world lies the north. And I don't belong.

The only indications that forest might soon be giving way to an outpost of civilization are the roadside stands that begin to appear, clapboard rectangles wedged into the trees: one for blueberries, one firewood, one earthworms, all closed. The area had long ago been touted as a future destination for wealthy Torontonians once the four-lane highway was extended north as promised by a provincial government ousted four or five elections ago. However, after some bean counter pointed out the cost of the project and its unlikely benefits, the extension was never undertaken. Those wealthy Torontonians not already in possession of family summer places either stayed put or ponied up the dough to get their foot in the Establishment door in Muskoka, having wisely decided that five hours was too long a drive just to smell pine sap six weekends a year.

Still, there must have been a few who took the bait, for there, stenciled onto a slab of wood resting against the town sign that tells me where I am (MURDOCH--POP. 4,400 --GATEWAY TO THE MIDNORTH) and the local service clubs (Optimists and Rotary only) is the now-belated greeting, WELCOME BACK, SUMMER PEOPLE!

''I am not a summer person,'' I say out loud as I pass at a speed that most would consider improper for a town populated by young pedestrians, seniors, and pets. ''I am a man for
all
seasons.''

Isearch for lodgings. The first candidate is the Sunshine Motor Inn on the edge of town. Comfortable enough looking in a homely, anonymous way, but currently suffering from ''renovations'' which consist of a pickup truck of yokels knocking down a wall in the reception area and hammering a bar in place on the other side to make way for what the owner winkingly promises will be the town's new ''meeting place.'' It's immediately clear that the future of the Sunshine lies in providing shelter to adulterous middle-agers for the half hour they require to complete their blubbery poundings. While this type of market repositioning doesn't trouble me, the shriek of circular saws and the grunted profanities of workmen do. On the way back to my car I seek the advice of one of the hammer holders who appears to be acting as foreman (sporting a shirt and the fewest tattoos), as to alternative accommodation.

''You stayin' in town?''

''Or as near to it as possible.''

''Well, the only other hotel round here is the Empire. But nobody stays there but the peelers.''

''The owner's family?''

''They're no family. Peelers are strippers, man.''

''Ah! How do I get there?''

''Downtown. Across from the old Bank of Commerce.''

''I'm not familiar with it, but I'm sure the Empire's marquee will be a sufficient beacon.''

This brings a smile to the foreman's lips, or what may be a smile. A brief exposure of blackened gums before he returns to his work.

The Empire Hotel. I like the sound of it, its suggestions of local history and color. The former jewel of the county with a once distinguished tavern on the main floor and high-ceilinged rooms above, one likely containing a bed that was once given the business by some duchess or prince visiting the colonies as part of their regrettable royal obligations. Every Ontario town has such a place, and most have either gone pay-by-the-week or been gutted and drywalled into bingo halls. But with a name that Protestant, that splendidly Victorian, that naively overreaching --the
Empire Hotel
--how far could it have declined during the region's intervening decades of brief boom and prolonged bust?

The Empire Hotel sits at one end of Murdoch's main thoroughfare, Ontario Street, and the County Courthouse at the other. Between them there's a coffee shop with floral curtains halfway up its grease-coated windows, a used bookstore, used children's clothing store, as well as a pawnshop called All Things Used!, two women's hair salons (the Glamor-ette and Split Enz), a closet-size barber-shop, an army surplus place, a butcher and a baker (but no candlestick maker, alas). A third of the windows are empty, and many of these seem to have given up hope of occupation, barren even of FOR LEASE, RENT, or SALE signs. I've always taken this as a sure indication of a local economy's health. When the real estate brokers stop trying to sell it, it's pretty much all over.

When I reach the end of the street I lean over to the passenger window and confirm I'm at the right place from the electric-blue letters that round the corner of the building, with THE EMP facing Ontario Street and IRE HOTEL over Victoria Avenue, all with bulbs inside them strong enough to illuminate the snaking trails of rust descending from each of the
E
's. A small marquee screwed above the entrance to the bar on the south side announces: COM NG EVE TS--GIRLS! FRI AND SAT. None of the usual mention of ''dancers'' qualified as ''beautiful'' or ''exotic.'' Perhaps this is simply because the girls of the Empire Hotel are neither beautiful nor exotic. Nor do they dance, as that word is commonly understood.

The building itself is a four-story whitewashed affair whose plainness is offset by some copper detailing over the main-floor windows (roaring lions before fluttering Union Jacks and, behind them, EST. 1904) as well as a series of stone gargoyles set along the rooftop's edge. Not the standard depictions of growling mastiff or sneering gremlin either. These are clearly human, faces sculpted by a stone-mason whose wonky craftsmanship is apparent even in the gray light of dusk. All male and bearded in the ministerial, turn-of-the-century style of early immigrant Brits. From this I surmise that these are the heads of Murdoch's founding fathers. Yet their expressions are anything but noble. It's impossible to tell if it's the result of intended caricature or the mistake of limited artistic ability, but each of the heads seems to bear its own unique threat or perversion. Eyes half shut in drunken lasciviousness or bulging in terror. Mouths held tight as though keeping a secret within or opened wide with a pointed tongue lolling out.

I park the Lincoln on the street before the front door and stand for a moment with my head craned back, taking in one head and then another. It's as though their expressions change while I look at them so that when I turn from the second back to the first, eyes that were open have closed shut, or from the fourth back to the third, a tongue extended that had previously been licking lips. A blur of movement just beyond the peripheral range of what I can see. It's a common sort of illusion, I suppose, but real enough that I have to force a laugh and lower my head to street level again to rid myself of it. But no matter what I tell myself as I pull my garment bag and briefcase out of the trunk and step up to the door, I don't look up.

The hotel lobby is lit by a single oversize chandelier fitted with those fake gas-lamp bulbs, so that one has to peer for direction and footing through an orange fog. The next striking thing is the smell. Something distinctly geriatric ward about it: a combination of damp linen, bean soup, and the sting of chemicals wafting out from the stack of deodorizing pucks that sit at the bottom of the men'sroom urinals. To the left is the padded black leather door to the bar and above it a screwed-in sign with fancy script: THE LORD BYRON COCKTAIL LOUNGE. GENTLEMEN'S ENTRANCE. From the other side comes the sound of music, or at least certain wavering vibrations that never move above or below the middle range--the sleepy murk of elevators, waiting rooms, and department stores. On the right is an open archway to an unlit room that, judging from the streetlight that finds its way through the salty grease of the front window, was at one time the parlor. A large mirror over the mantel that sends back a picture of me standing in the lobby. Faded, sickly, a smudge of paleness fixed over the dark background. A yellowed newspaper photograph discovered in an attic trunk.

I step up to the reception desk and bring my palm down on the service bell. No immediate stirrings, and for a time I stand and wait, staring into the pattern of complicated vines bulging out from the velvet wallpaper. It's as old and smoke stained as everything else but isn't dreadful, probably even an admired extravagance when first plastered up fifty or sixty years ago. In fact the only thing that seems to belong to the present decade is the bottom-of-the-line computer that sits behind the desk and displays a blue screen unblemished by text. Beside it a quarter-full coffeepot sitting on a hot plate, islands of turquoise mold floating on its surface.

Ring the bell again. This time there's the sound of crumpling tinfoil from the back office, and then a man with papery skin and a bald head mapped with burst capillaries steps out into the dull marine light.

''What can I do you for?'' he asks, the inside of his mouth caked with sandwich residue.

''You can do me for a room. Something large, with generous natural light. And quiet, if you can manage that.''

''They're all the same. 'Cept for the honeymoon suite.'' He lifts his eyes to mine, but there's nothing in them.

''It's got a TV, phone, separate shower?''

''Ever been in a hotel room that didn't?''

''Well, in Europe . . .'' I begin foolishly, but the blankness of his eyes remains set. ''The honeymoon suite sounds like just the thing.''

I register, pay for the first night (I'm not asked how many more may follow), take the key and directions from Mr. Hospitality, and ascend a set of stairs marked by a brass plaque with GRAND STAIRCASE on it in raised letters, though now not so much grand as unnecessarily wide. Turn right and all the way down to the end, unlock the door, kick it open, flick on the bedside lamp.

It's big. One could certainly say that about it. Bigger than the standard. Right on the corner, too, so that each exterior wall has its own window overlooking its own street, as well as a semicircle of glass between them and a ledge wide enough to sit on. The smell of vegetable oil and burnt beef, moisture stains blotched over the ceiling, furniture of a sufficient age and ugliness to be sold at ''antique'' prices in the city but which in this room show only their age and ugliness. All of that and still not bad. Unimaginable what set of misfortunes would ever bring present-day honeymooners to spend a single moment in such a room, but for Bartholomew Christian Crane, long-resigned bachelor and aficionado of the seedy, not bad at all.

Sometime in the dead of night the phone at the reception desk downstairs starts to ring. It's one of the old ones with a real tin bell inside, and the sound it makes carries up the stairs, down the long hallway, and through the heavy bedroom door without any muting of its volume.

Four rings, five--doesn't that zombie who checked me in have anyone work the desk overnight? Six rings, seven --who the hell would be calling an empty hotel at this hour for so long? No doubt some long-suffering wife of a regular at the lobby bar attempting to locate her gin-soaked lesser half.

With each ring I'm pulled closer to consciousness, although I resist opening my eyes. But by the time ring number fifteen finishes I take the Lord's name in vain, pull on socks and pants, slip over the hardwood floor to the door, and step out into the hallway, ready to go down and rip the phone cord out of the wall. But for a time I only stand there. Arms crossed, cool drafts breathing against my back.