At 17, new to Vancouver and desperately broke, I walked the seedy side and scored a job at the State Hotel, a disintegrating flophouse hunkered atop a fragrant French bakery. No paperwork was required. I was hired on the spot by virtue of having climbed the pee-stained stairs and mentioning the sign. If I could do that, I could chambermaid the innards of the sorry State Hotel.

The State was run by a trio of merry delusionals. Mr. McGillivray, a silver-haired senior with wispy business experience, had purchased the joint with a silent partner, confident that replacing the lobby’s flickering fluorescents and warped linoleum would transform the relic into a profitable tourist inn. The renos were pending, awaiting fresh income.  Meanwhile, he’d hired Will Padilla, a lanky young Mexican, to man the front desk. The two men, opposite in every way except their naivety, played front of house to a house of horrors.

Will, fresh from his parents’ Acapulco resort, seemed not to notice his new clientele were not well-heeled tourists, but dealers, pimps, prostitutes, addicts, drifters, and pensioners. He was a sleepy-eyed amigo who sprawled all day across the counter, dreaming about the Canadian house he imagined buying and the patterns he’d use to paper-wall it, and the beautiful Canadian girl he planned to find and marry. There was little action at the front desk during the day, and when he wasn’t replacing lost  keys, his mind swirled with visions of his hoped-for bourgeoisie.

 Neither man ventured from the lobby to the guest rooms. Nor did Lottie, the wizened head housekeeper who, after 30 years in house, had earned the right to gossip with management when she wasn’t chain-smoking in the laundry room or stuffing deplorable linens into old machines.  The abused sheets and towels were delivered by her minions:  Cindy and me. My fellow chambermaid, a gorgeous, 18-year-old Gidget– equally lost—had been hired the same week.  Together we ran the top three floors like flirty den mothers, tag-teaming the rooms with Pine-Sol and trash bags,  and befriending the residents. Every day was an education.

At least half the tenants were permanent guests, or at least as permanent as anchorless, shattered souls can be, and we soon found our favorites.  First was Kenny Baron, a rakish 57-year-old who dressed by nine each morning in a white shirt, bowtie, and plaid vest, and henceforth invited us to share a “Kenny Baron Special”: a tumblerful of cheap sherry and rotgut whiskey, mixed over his rusty sink. To be polite, we’d take a few gut-churning sips and then watch Kenny drink his, transforming him from a cheerful morning person to a sobbing wreck over his Life’s Regret: the drinking that capsized his marriage, decades ago. Each time, he’d pull out a fading wartime photo and show us his lost bride, weeping as if she’d just walked out.  Kenny’s wretched performance never failed to stun me. I could see his how his entrenched narrative mired him in a rut he’d never escape, even if he wanted to. He’d found the perfect excuse to drink himself to death. 

Several doors down, we’d visit Earl, a charismatic black pimp from Detroit, who beguiled us with gleaming  white teeth, honeyed speech, and endless innuendo.  When Earl got dressed—never till late afternoon– he wore broad felt hats and belted overcoats, straight out of Motown. He lounged till noon,  and he’d host from under the covers, languorous as a cat. His ebony eyes wandered our bodies like feathers, making us melty and off-balance. On Mondays he’d mentally undress us to gauge if we’d gained a pound or two since the previous Friday. Once, after I’d spent another weekend  smoking pot and baking with my boyfriend, he called me ‘Thunder Thighs’, an epithet laden with double meaning. He liked fresh towels and white girls and making us burn. But Cindy and I had boyfriends, and weren’t for sale. Still, I harbored a shameful crush, simultaneously imagining falling into bed with him and being appalled by my wicked imagination. Cindy and I never talked about Earl; the feelings  he stirred were too intimate.  We just kept going back, as if pulled by the moon.

By mid-afternoon, Alabama Dan would be waking up on the fourth floor, ready to invite Cindy and me for a smoke from his extensive drug stash. Dan was a drifter, a draft-dodger, and a mediocre con artist. He wore a wide leather hat over his long, greasy pony tail, even in bed, and, unlike Earl, never requested fresh towels because he never bathed. We held our breath  while Dan compulsively strummed his guitar to accompany his confusing anecdotes and anti-establishment ramblings.  He was hard to take on many levels— olfactorily, morally, aesthetically– but we felt sorry for him, having lost most of his brain to drugs and depravity. Like Kenny, he served as a cautionary tale: Do drugs, but don’t overdo them. Never reach the point where you’re wearing hats to bed. And mind your hygiene if you hope to have friends. Alabama Dan had none, and while we understood why, we nobly tried to fill the void in his rotten life. Plus, he always had a complimentary joint or pipe of hash to buy our company—the biggest draw, if I’m being honest.

 A tiny, bright-eyed pensioner named Mr. O’Leary was another favorite. Mr. O kept to himself; he’d lived in the State for years and did his own cleaning.  Every Tuesday  we had a standing appointment in the lobby to exchange laundry. He wore an ancient three-piece suit and was always chipper, in spite of hard knocks.  Years ago, Lottie told us, he’d been a firefighter, a husband, and a homeowner. But life had eroded everything except his government pension, barely enough to cover rent and subsist on hotplate soup and noodles. Still, he pursued dignity: rising early and following a tidy schedule of walking, shopping, and library sitting, keeping himself occupied.  His room, when we passed by, never stank, and he seemed to inhabit a brighter, cleaner world than his drug-addled neighbors.

One Tuesday, Mr. O’Leary missed his laundry appointment, but we barely noticed. The next week, realizing no one had seen him come or go for days, Lottie sent me with a spare key to investigate.  As soon as I cracked the door and inhaled, I knew what I would find. But I had no idea how thoroughly three pounds of brains could splatter a floor, three walls, and the faded bedspread of an army-tucked bed. Or how empty and freighted a room vacated by suicide can feel.  His tidy quarters were otherwise immaculate. On his bedside table was a slim ledger book, itemizing every purchase he’d made in the past year. Crackers, tinned milk, bars of soap. No next-of-kin.

I looked and recoiled for 20 horrified seconds before bolting to the lobby. Mr. McGillivray called the police, and Cindy and I spent the rest of the day avoiding the fourth floor. This time, Mr. O’Leary’s room was professionally cleaned by discreet workers who locked the door behind them. For a long time, maybe until the State met its own death, the room stayed locked.

Poor Mr. O’Leary; his exemplary, miserable life was over. But the violence of his death haunted me. Why a gun, why so gruesome an exit? I couldn’t imagine his despair. And I couldn’t fathom a death where there was no one left to mourn.

For six immersive months, the State Hotel was my second, vicarious life. Cindy and I were free agents, as long as we dealt with the vomit, needles, empties, and mystery-stained linens from the overnight guests—the ones we never saw– and didn’t pester Lottie with questions. We bounced from floor to floor on our springy young legs (no elevators in the State), chortling over Will and Mr. McGillivray’s shared lunacy and Lottie’s tenured uselessness, and marveling at the perks of a job where getting high all day was not only free, but advisable. Indeed, we couldn’t have coped with the State’s putrefaction without cannabis and Kenny Baron specials. On rough days, when the overnight guests left disturbing residuals and Mr. McGillivray sensed we needed  a boost, he’d splurge on croissants and petit fours from the French bakery, bringing the exquisite aroma of butter, chocolate, and almonds to jostle with the putrid lobby air.

And when melt-in-your-mouth pastry wasn’t enough, Cindy and I would fortify ourselves with a beer-and-tomato-juice lunch at the nearest pub before wobbling back to work at the strangest university in town.