My last kiss with Sylvie was our first.
She arrived with the kids of summer at the end of May in '81. Hired from job fairs in places like Winnipeg, Moncton and Montreal; escaping parents and cutting loose. Some wanted the mountain experience, and the others, mostly, they came for the party. Sylvie was an archetype of neither.
I met her while turning the garden beds behind Outlook cabin. The seedlings, toughened in the cold boxes, were ready to plant. Thousands of annuals to color hundreds of acres. Nasturtiums and snapdragons, begonias and zinnias, summer blossoms for the guests.
Sylvie was in a back window with a Du Maurier pursed in her lips. The lapel of her uniform carelessly turned up and buttons left undone, a crucifix necklaced above her breast. She could be fired for smoking in the rooms. She took a long draw and released a lazy arrow of smoke in my direction.
"Yer not a rat are you?" she asked. "I mean, even if you are a rat, I'll deny dat. It's your word against mine, eh? "
She spoke in a raspy, feral voice, with a whiff of français. And not the succinct, staccato of the European French, but she spoke in the lazy syllables of the Québécois. Where a Parisian might, as a rule, always drop their aitches, Sylvie would use them or not, willy-nilly.
This introduction to Sylvie was off-putting; a caricature, a shtick. Someone in charge, not a housekeeper. Someone with experience, not a kid. The confidence of someone with beauty. And while her face was okay, it was cut with sharp angles, and without makeup, it was just plain. Dirty blonde hair, sloppy beyond the shoulders. A slight figure, narrow in the hips and a bit of a belly. Not fat, but bigger than recently. Later, she would show me how the top button of her pants no longer closed.
She wasn't going to leave it alone, "Hey. I said, yer not a rat, are you?"
"What are you talking about?" I stopped to lean on my shovel and confront her. She didn't shrink, steering my eyes to the ground.
"Well, you look old enough to be a rat. I mean yer a pretty old guy to be standing over a shovel, and you can't make dat much money here. I guess maybe yer some kinda loner, not a rat. Loners are a whole different kinda trouble... I know dem loners, dere a whole udder kinda trouble."
"Maybe I like it here," I said.
"Yeah, but maybe a guy yer age should be a guest 'ere, not standing over dat shovel."
"And what are you?... Cleaning rooms?" I asked, my anger brewing.
"I'm not saying dat yer a bum or anything like dat. It just seems yer pretty old to be standing over a shovel, dat's all."
"And what about you? A housekeeper?"
"I'm twenty-two. Not old, fer sure. It's just a summer job for me." She flicked her cigarette into the garden and told me, "Cover dat up, okay?... You ever been inside?"
"I've seen it through the windows."
"Come on. You can come in, it's okay," she said. "Just take your shoes off. I just did da floor... Come on, you're not a bum. You can see."
She opened a side door where there was a stone patio and sitting area with low back rocking chairs made from logs. The patio overlooked the little inlet on the north side of Lac Beauvert. In the fall the geese migration would fly in low over the inlet before landing on the lake. Inside, there was a large sitting room with more log furniture and a wooden inlaid table in front of cobblestone fireplace. On the table was an informational pamphlet.
Sylvie picked up the pamphlet and read for me. Reading, word by word, awkwardly reciting the English, "Out-look Cabin is known as 'da Royal re-treat. It is da lodges most storied cabin. Serving as 'ome to Queen Elizabeth and George da six, who stayed in Outlook on a Royal visit to western Canada. It became a favorite calling of Bing Crosby - I don't know who dat is - and has been 'ome to many other prominent celebrities, including James Stewart and Marilyn Monroe. Robert and Et'del Kennedy are among the many world leaders who have visited Outlook cabin." She put the brochure down and scoffed, "Da queen... Who cares about 'er?"
