Christmas in a Traphouse Hotel by Meredith MacDonald

Nick was born in Trinidad. His complexion was the color of milky coffee, and he had beautiful hands and wide brown eyes. He moved to Vancouver from Toronto, after coming into money in the form of travelers’ cheques. I suspect the cheques were fraudulent, but Nick was evasive and skipped over any details. In Vancouver, there was a lapse before he could access his American Express haul so he applied for welfare except he only got a $300 rental allowance. It was impossible for Nick to find an apartment with such a small amount of money. He returned to the welfare office and explained that to his worker.

She replied, “Yes, you need to find a hotel that will rent you a room by the month.”

He took her advice and rented a hotel room on East Hastings Street. He was living in one of the poorest areas in Canada, so he observed how the people survived. When a neighbor asked him for two slices of bread a day after the cheque issue, he began to understand why the other residents were stuck in a never-ending loop. Even their grocery money went to buy drugs.

Nick felt confident that addiction would never touch him.

Instead of scrambling to leave the DTES (Downtown Lower East Side), Nick bet on the opportunities he watched. He noticed that the drug dealers received admiration and respect. Nick knew he could be a better drug dealer than any of the others. The other dealers stood on the street corners and asked every person who passed by if they needed ‘rock, down, side’.

Nick had a plan, a valuable tool, but his biggest advantage was that he never wanted to use drugs.

Nick’s fingernails formed perfect half-moons. He didn’t need manicures, yet his fingernails always looked perfect. He spoke with a slight accent and a bit of a lisp. I questioned Nick about Trinidad. He is Indian but his family settled in Trinidad generations earlier. He spent   mornings in the vegetable fields and his mother gently rubbed cold cream on his arms and his back.

His parents sent all their children to live in Western countries. Nick was fifteen when he travelled alone to Toronto to live with an older brother. His brother, in his mid-twenties, and a successful firefighter, was not interested in a younger brother who he had not seen in years. Nick took the city bus to school and home again, alone. His brother made a habit of leaving him money on the kitchen counter. At dinnertime, Nick scooped up the money and walked to a greasy spoon to eat his dinner alone. What he craved was the Indian food his mother cooked for him in Trinidad.

After he moved to Canada, Nick never saw his parents again. His parents died in Trinidad without the children they spent a lifetime sacrificing and working to provide the best opportunities they could afford.

            School in Canada was not a happy place for Nick. The kids bullied him because he was different and at the time he had a strong accent. He was almost twenty years older than me, so he went to school before our culture began to change and appreciate multiculturalism.

 In Vancouver, Nick was ready to seize the opportunities that had eluded him in Toronto. First, he rented multiple rooms in the Brandiz Hotel at 122 East Hastings Street. The rooms had a purpose: the fourth-floor room was our room. The other rooms were for storing and packaging drugs. He changed those rooms frequently, and the owners helped him by registering the extra rooms with false tenant names. He left those room keys above the door, on the door frame to avoid having a key on him. Even the tenants in the hotel could never see which rooms he went into and only saw him enter the fourth-floor room. But drugs pushed people to take risks. One girl talked the desk man into unlocking the door to the fourth-floor room after I was arrested and left the room empty. She told him that her coat was in our room but once inside, she searched everywhere. The deskman eventually confessed to Nick that Angela was the girl who went into his room.  Nick went down to the third floor and kicked in her door. He evicted her.  I would have left the hotel long before Nick had a chance to find me, but she didn’t. The girl, Angela, ended up later being killed on Pickton’s pig farm.

Nick eventually owned a condominium in the West End. I preferred to stay in the hotel, so I made up reasons not to go with him after he finished work. He didn’t leave the DTES for long though, because eventually he had workers in two hotels, the Brandiz Hotel and the Orwell Hotel. Each worker had a 12-hour shift, 24 hours were covered every day. A shift began with two $1500 work bags of pre-packaged dope. The dope bags contained flaps or tiny envelopes, worth $10. Every work bag had fifty rocks of crack, fifty papers of heroin, and fifty papers of powder cocaine. A worker took his pay in dope or cash; a 12-hour shift was worth $150. But $150 in flaps or fifteen rocks was equivalent to 1.5 grams of drugs. The heroin was less; fifteen papers of heroin was 7.5 points with ten points being one gram. On top of the small pay, a worker had to stay in the room for 12 hours and answer the door constantly. The worker’s pay cost Nick less than $25. He bought enormous amounts of drugs and paid wholesale prices. Nick was swimming in money.

To become a big drug dealer, a person needed to be ruthless. I was a terrible drug dealer. I worked in the rooms many times. All the customers lied to me. Mostly the females—one girl tearfully told me her mother died and to attend the funeral she needed to have some drugs to take with her. She wore a very conservative green dress with a crocheted collar. It was unlike anything she usually wore. It was a problem, a shame, except I gave her drugs before so she could go to her mother’s funeral. I had a sinking feeling she was taking advantage of me.

When the shift finished, the worker counted the leftover ten-dollar pieces, the cash, and subtracted the pay so each so bag balanced. A returned bag could not be an unbalanced bag. Yet, if a worker sold four bags in one shift his pay didn’t increase. It was tricky to balance a bag. The customers were experts at distraction and manipulation. For me, sad stories always end with, so that’s why I need to borrow some dope’. It was irrelevant to Nick or the customer if it screwed me up to help someone. Lost money was replaced even if it meant working unpaid shifts.

 Nick sometimes had worker problems; people pestered him for dope. But nothing made him as angry as I did. Everything I did was wrong, like picking up take-out food too slowly. I wasn’t punctual, and I had bad habits. I knew this because once I was reading a book in the hotel lobby and Nick kept staring at me. Finally, he spoke.

“You, you have terrible habits. You leave everything on the floor. You used a white towel to dry your dirty hands and then drop the towel on the floor. I’ve spent hours and days looking for you when you disappear. You embarrass me, running into the alley and sitting in all the filth.”

I opened my eyes wide while he critiqued everything about me. His words burned and simultaneously rang like fire alarms in my ears. I thought, I’m an animal, no I’m an insect. I’m a cockroach.

It was an exceptionally cold December. Nick usually vacationed at Christmas to tropical climates because Christmas Day in the DTES reeked of pain. It was palpable and tangible. Everything familiar like the convenience stores, drop-in services, and the outreach nurses van were not open. The street hustle shut down and it was silent. The volunteers were gone, the Christmas meals were over. The drug dealers who gathered on the corners now holed up in their small apartments with their small children and girlfriends to celebrate Christmas.

Once on Christmas day, I was walking past the Army and Navy store on Hastings Street. I was alone when two young Chinese ladies noticed me and crossed the intersection to talk to me. One of the women handed me a present. I tore off the paper to find knitted socks and mittens. I felt invisible on Christmas day, and I expected no presents to unwrap. Yet, those women saw me. They shared their humanity when they showed me kindness. Also, we were the same—if their feet and hands ached in the cold, they knew my hands and feet ached also.

 Now, I woke up in the hotel room with frost covering the inside of the windows. It was freezing, so I jumped out of bed and curled up in front of the space heater with my knees against my chest. Nick was gone. It wasn’t unusual for him to get up and dress while I slept. He was an organized person. A disorganized person appreciates an organized person. So much so that in this hotel, we all silently agreed he was our leader even if it wasn’t beneficial to us.

 I pulled a wooden chair over to the sink and stood on top of the chair. I was looking for a hidden compartment on the top of the medicine cabinet. Nick found it and used it to stash a small amount of dope. I was expected to ask his permission before I took the bags out. The reason I didn’t was because it led to him pointing out all my failings as he reminded me that I was a shameless addict. I didn’t know when he would return. As I skillfully used a pair of scissors to dig out the plastic bags, I heard a key turn in the lock. I jumped off the chair and used my foot to push it against the wall. I scrambled into bed and pulled the covers up, all in seconds, one step ahead of Nick.

“Are you awake?”

I hesitated before I turned over. I pretended that his voice woke me up. “Barely,” I whispered.

Nick said, “I’m thinking about doing something different this Christmas. Can you help me?”

Nick said he considered how most people in the hotel would not celebrate Christmas. Worse, there would be no Christmas dinner here. He wanted to cook dinner for everyone who lived in the hotel. Shocked, I tilted my head to scrutinize his face. He was a mystery. Nick ran this hotel with an iron fist, yet he had an underbelly of softness. I considered his mom and wondered what his life would be like if he had stayed with her instead of coming to Canada alone.

“Are you going to help me?”

I nodded my head. Nick knew I could never say no to him.

 I wanted to help him, but there were no kitchens in the hotel. The people here ate pizza slices sold from the bar downstairs out of a window that faced the street. The slices cost a dollar.

Nick said, “Then you need to go to Safeway on Davie Street and buy the food. I’ve made a list. When you’re finished, bring it to the condo so I can put it in the fridge until tomorrow.”

 “What if the store doesn’t have something on your list?”

“Then, choose something else. Can you do this without screwing it up?”

“Yes.” But I think to myself, probably not.

Nick laid a pile of twenty-dollar bills on the bed and walked to the door. As he stepped into the hallway, he turned back to face me, “You found the scissors. You might also leave them hanging off the top of the medicine cabinet so they’re always there when you’re pulling the dope out fast. Like when I’m getting off the elevator.” 

“Ha, Nick. You crazy.” I giggled and laughed until I heard the elevator door close.

On Christmas Day I flagged down a taxi to go to Nick’s place with all the food. The cabbie had the radio turned on to Christmas music. It was snowing lightly. It felt like a real Christmas, and I was excited.

At his condo, Nick stood at the stove, stirring gravy. Yvonne sat at the table where she mashed sweet potatoes in a huge pot. Yvonne, the angel, moved to Canada from Africa. She lived on the third floor of the hotel and was the hotel cleaner. If I owned the hotel, I would cancel the electricity and pay for Yvonne to light up the whole building. She radiated goodness and light.

The summer before, Yvonne had helped me. I had been sitting on the curb behind the CIBC parking lot on the corner of Main Street. Two policemen drove past me and slowed down. With open windows, the driver called out to me. I was looking down; female drug addicts often are obsessed with hurting the skin on their arms and hands. Not because all of us saw bugs on our skin. It was more a mental state of hyperfocus and hypervigilance together with an ability to not feel self-inflicted pain. The girls dug holes in the skin on their bodies in a way that disgusted others. When I looked up at the police officer, he pepper-sprayed me. The men drove away. My face and eyes seared from the chemicals but inside I felt only rage. The police officers went around the block and drove up beside me. I ignored them, but I was crying. It struck me, their blatant cruelty, and to such an easy target. The driver said, “Go to the hotel and wash out the pepper spray.” I had stumbled down Pender Street with my hand touching the buildings to orient myself. In the hotel lobby, the desk guy pressed the elevator buttons. I got off on the third floor, Yvonne’s floor, and knocked on her door. She opened it, and as soon as I saw her pretty face I started to cry again. She whispered, “Hush. I am going to help you.” She led me to the concrete shower stall where she shampooed the sticky poison out of my eyes, face, hair, and clothes.

At Nick’s condo, I told Yvonne how happy I was that she came. Nick answered, “Kenny’s here too and I just buzzed Robin up. Go say hi to Kenny.”

Kenny and Robin lived in the hotel. Kenny sat on Nick’s living room window ledge, smoking a cigarette. Although he was skinny, and his hair was long, Kenny swaggered. He was a natural charmer from Cape Breton. In the past, Nick had sent me out to run errands for him, but I ran into Kenny in the stairwell. We ended up laughing so hard that I forgot about Nick’s errands.

I waved at Kenny as Robin walked into the room.

“Eh, am I late?” Robin was from Montreal and an artist.

“No. I just got here too. Come, sit down.” I patted the seat beside me.

 One time, Robin stopped Nick in the hotel lobby and asked him to come upstairs and see his artwork. The next day, Nick returned to the hotel with a bag from an art store. He filled it with art supplies, pencils, charcoal, erasers, sketch pads. As he passed Robin in the lobby, he placed the bag at his feet and said, “Don’t sell this stuff, use it for your artwork.”

Robin became as loyal to Nick as he was to anyone alive.

Nick came into the living room. He moved quietly.

Yvonne wrapped the turkey in the kitchen. Nick sat down in a chair and faced Robin and me. Nick told Robin to move the aluminum trays out to the truck and told me to gather up the paper plates, napkins, utensils, everything on my dining room table. He said, “You and Kenny will serve the food in the lobby and pour the drinks.” When Nick mentioned drinks Kenny joined the conversation, “Yeah, umm Nick, about the drinks”. Kenny got off the window and came to where we sat. When Nick turned his head, Kenny winked at me and said, “Hey Nick, this is a bunch of work and in case you forgot it’s Christmas.”  Kenny could say anything to Nick because he was Nick’s favorite.  He was in the same position as everyone on Hastings Street and Kenny had worked countless shifts in the hotel rooms and never handed in a balanced work bag. But Kenny made us laugh in a place that streamed with an undercurrent of sadness. Kenny was like a salve; he was the cold cream on sunburned skin. His crazy helped us survive.

Yvonne sat on the sofa beside me.

Kenny said, “Nick, is this a party or ain’t it? Because if it is, we got to have alcohol.”

“It’s only dinner, Kenny.”

“Yeah, that’s my point Nick. It’s Christmas dinner.”

 “I already stopped at a liquor store yesterday on my way downtown.”

Kenny smiled and nodded his head. He caught my eye and winked a second time.

“Eh Nick, those old men who live on the first floor? What if they don’t eat dinner if they’re drinking?” Robin accentuated the wrong syllables when he spoke English. His concern reflected his desire for dinner to be perfect, so Nick felt good afterward.

Nick said, “One drink for everyone. Too many people to give out more than one drink.” Nick told us to cover up the rest of the food with aluminum foil.

Nick had a cube truck. I helped cover trays filled with turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, corn, and green beans. Yvonne collected the serving spoons, butter, and a jar of cranberry sauce. After we filled the back of the truck with food and supplies, Kenny and Robin stayed in the back while Yvonne and I climbed into the cab. Nick drove the truck because he was the only one of us with a driver’s license. We were his motley crew of misfits, and we competed for his attention.

Once downtown, Nick gave everyone a job. My job was to stay with the unlocked truck. The others carried the food into the hotel lobby. Alex had brought us a long foldable table up from the basement.

Alex owned the hotel. He allowed Nick free reign as long as Nick kept other drug dealers out of the building. Alex was Chinese and soft-spoken. Yet, he was as street savvy as anyone who lived in his building. He watched everything without getting involved in anything illegal. He was not a slumlord like other hotel owners in the DTES. When he bought the hotel, it needed repairs, and the rooms were infested with cockroaches. Alex fumigated it, and he renovated each room. Still, it was a hotel where poor people lived. There was only so much Alex could change.

The trays of food were taken out of the truck. I moved inside the vehicle, towards the back, to lock the sliding door from the inside. After I checked the locked doors, I jumped out and slammed the passenger door. The moment the door connected; I realized that the truck keys were inside laying on the console. My stomach dropped because I didn’t want to be the person who ruined Nick’s night.

Kenny sauntered out of the hotel lobby. He turned the corner and found me sitting on the sidewalk. ‘Hey, what’s wrong?”

Between laughing and sobbing, I swallowed a mouthful of air. “I locked Nick’s keys in the truck.”

“Oh, good God I thought something terrible happened. Look around. Do you see where we live? This street only accepts people with a wide range of criminal skills. On the fourth floor alone, half a dozen guys support themselves by breaking into vehicles to grab change. Helping Nick? They’ll fight over who gets the honor.”

“Kenny. I’m not joking. I’m in trouble and the dinner hasn’t even started. Nick asked me, can you help me without screwing things up. I said yes but I should have said, no. I’m always screwing things up.”

“Okay. Yeah, truthfully, yeah. You’ve screwed a lot of things up before. It’s your expertise.’

“Kenny!”

“It’s what makes you special. You can screw up anything and in a population of eight billion no one else can do it as well as you. Do you know how rare that is? You’re not even aware of it. I wouldn’t give you the keys to a public washroom. But car keys? My God, woman. He is not getting mad at you. Everyone knows not to leave anything important in your hands. Not today, not ever. I’ll be back.”

I was thinking I would never be allowed to join them for Christmas dinner. The Christmas carols stopped playing in my head, but then Kenny returned. He sat on the sidewalk beside me.

 “I went in the lobby, and I said to Nick, I’m taking over.”

 “Turns out, I didn’t need to take over because Nick anticipated a problem.”

Kenny dug in his pocket and pulled out a set of truck keys.

“When I told him about the keys, Nick said, are you insane? Of course I brought extra keys.”

“But did he tell you I should leave?”

“Leave? If he didn’t want you to be around him, he wouldn’t get so mad at you. He’s trying to teach you different ways to do things before you run away.”

“I don’t want to be the target of his anger.”

“Yeah. All Nick said was, I was born in Trinidad. I wasn’t born in the alley like you two. But he wants you to come back. He even said, tell her that no one could serve the dinner as well as her.” 

Kenny started giggling. Robin, who was minding his own business, laughed aloud. Once Robin started laughing, he couldn’t stop.

 “Eh, she serve the dinner like the expert. Until it’s on your crotch. Eh, we need her here. The hotel still standing.” He laughed so hard his accent got thicker.

 I laughed too and played along even as I envisioned Robin’s crotch covered in scalding gravy.

Inside the lobby, Nick told me and Robin to go upstairs and bring the tenants down for dinner. Soon we crept back down the stairs. Robin nervously said,

 “Eh, Nick, nobody wants to come to our dinner.”

Nick, the Pied Piper of the hotel, did not look discouraged.

Kenny nodded toward me and Robin. “Yeah. Imagine them two knockin on your door. What a sight. It’s true ain’t it, Nick?”

Yvonne laughed and said, “Nick, you must go yourself and invite the people.”

Nick knocked on doors on the first floor, and word spread. People flooded down into the lobby and shared Christmas dinner. Yvonne made sure that the old men took a plate of food with their drink.

I wasn’t invisible that Christmas day because it was our dinner, and we saw ourselves when we saw each other. That year, Nick gave us a gift by allowing us to be together. On Christmas Day the next year, and in the years that followed, Alex and his family served Chinese food in the lobby. An excellent choice: we all loved Chinese!