GUEST FROM HELL LANDS AT WORST POSSIBLE TIME
I thought I was being a good Samaritan when I agreed to take in an old acquaintance who needed to come back to Canada when the coronavirus lockdown started. But he turned out to be a “covidiot.”
I’m a travel writer, and way back in early March I was preparing to go on a European press trip. So when Steve, who has been living in Mexico for years, asked if I knew a place where he could crash for a month or so, I blithely offered up my place thinking I’d be away for most of the time he was here.
Steve said he was willing to throw some cash my way in exchange for my spare bedroom, so I thought it would work out well for both of us. You know what happened with that plan. The federal government urged all Canadians to come home immediately and Steve and I were stuck living together.
I should have recalled what happened when I last saw Steve in 1995. I was living in Vancouver then and he said he needed a place to crash for a few days on his way back from Mexico. I met him at the airport on a cold January evening and he walked off the plane wearing shorts and flip-flops. I remember he brought a bottle of tequila and some fresh corn tortillas. A few days later, after he’d packed up and left without so much as a thank you, I noticed the tequila and the tortillas had walked out with him. How time fogs the memory. This time around, Steve promised he was toilet trained, animal friendly, a competent cook and tidy. One of those things turned out to be true: he liked my dog.
He was due to fly in on St. Patrick’s Day. I stocked up on food and wine, then cooked dinner so he’d have something to eat when he showed up. He arrived wearing shorts and flip-flops, carrying a bottle of tequila and some dried poblano peppers.
My déjà vu alarm was ringing. But by then, B.C. had declared a state of emergency and had told returning travellers to quarantine themselves for 14 days. That meant I’d have to self-isolate as well with flip-flop man.
A friend had generously offered to pick up groceries and any other necessities while we hunkered down for the quarantine period. I laid out a few ground rules to Steve on that first night. “I’ll cook if you do the dishes. If you want to cook once in a while, I’ll clean up. And if you’re going for a walk, maybe you can take the dog. Deal?”
“Gotcha,” he said.
Quarantine, Day 1: Steve came back from his morning walk with a Slurpie and a bag of tomatillos from the local grocery store. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Nobody in Mexico has the virus,” he replied. Even if that were true, which it wasn’t, he had spent several hours in a virus incubator, also known as an airplane. I told him to stay out of the grocery store and to add anything he wanted to my friend’s shopping list. He wrote down steak and vodka.
Day 2: Steve came back from his afternoon walk with a parcel he’d picked up from the post office and told me that he’d taken the bus to visit a pal. It’s the first time I’ve heard that he has friends in Victoria other than me. I used my outside voice this time. “What part of quarantine don’t you understand?” “Well, I didn’t touch anyone,” he responded.
Day 3: Steve was in the kitchen for about two hours, making his “famous” tomatillo sauce, oven-fried potatoes and prepping a steak to barbecue. I don’t eat red meat, but I joined him for the potatoes (which got cold from being left on the kitchen counter while he grilled the steak) and I drank lots of wine. There was no sign of the famous sauce. “It didn’t work out,” he said.
Day 4: I came back mid-afternoon from walking the dog and noticed that the cover for the gas barbecue was sitting in the middle of the deck. About to put it back on, I noticed that the grill was red hot. So was my temper when I went back into the house and told Steve that he’d left the barbecue on full blast for the past 18 hours. “Wow, I could have burned the house down.” End of sentence. No apology. I was still fuming long after the grill cooled down, but I knew the time had come to tell, not ask, Steve when he was going to leave. “You’ve got to go when the quarantine is over,” I said. “We’ll kill each other before COVID-19 gets either of us.” He grunted, put on the new puffy coat he’d picked up at the post office and went outside.
Days 5 and 6: I mentioned the rent we agreed on. He looked at me and left the room.
Day 7: At 4:30 a.m., I heard him bumbling around in the kitchen. I tried to go back to sleep to the sound of a spoon scraping against a bowl. I got up at 6 a.m. and found the dirty bowl and the oatmeal pot on the counter.
Day 8: My friend came by with groceries, including the martini olives Steve had asked her to get. He made martinis for the three of us, and we drank them sitting outside, two metres apart.
Days 9 and 10: We have an avoidance routine. Steve leaves around 7 a.m. He returns around noon and reads on his laptop in his room. Then he moves outside around 4 p.m. and gazes at the garden for a few hours. “There’s dinner on the counter,” I say and eat in front of the TV because he doesn’t watch TV, his “intellect is above that.” I no longer invite him to join me for dinner.
Day 11: I’ve been guerrilla gardening, shovelling compost and digging vegetable beds for several days now while Steve watches from the deck.
Day 12: Steve is taking longer and longer walks. He never took the dog. I hunkered down in my office, avoiding conversation and thanking my lucky stars that I had laid in a case of wine before I got stuck in quarantine. I have no idea what Steve is doing when he leaves the house for hours at a time. I know he’s breaking all the rules, but there is not much I can do about it.
Day 13: Today he asked if I needed any help gardening. “Sure, that would be great,” I replied, knowing that he is only volunteering to get in my good books because the clock is ticking.
Day 14: When I came back from the morning dog walk, Steve was getting ready to head out on the town, like it was any other morning. “So we made it through alive,” I said with new-found cheeriness. “Are you all packed?” “Whaddya mean?” “I told you 10 days ago that you could only stay until the quarantine period was over. That’s today, buddy.” “I don’t have anywhere to go.” “Stay with one of your friends,” I said. I was now aware that he knows quite a few people in Victoria because they have been calling since he arrived. I wonder why they didn’t put him up in the first place? But I realize I probably know the answer to that question. “Well, if you’d told me before that you were going to throw me out, I would have taken my chances and stayed in Mexico,” he said. By now, my temper is as hot as the barbecue grill. “I don’t care where you go, just get out. Now!” He storms into his room, throws his stuff into a suitcase and calls a cab. “Thanks a lot,” he says. I checked later and discovered he had taken the tequila and the vodka. And he didn’t pay the rent. One name in this story has been changed to protect the guilty.