The House On Dale Street

Chapter 3

The Anzara motel was a sprawling Victorian Style hotel that sat down the street a ways, on the other side of the road. It was huge compared to the little bed and breakfast we'd just left and, back then, run by a cult. We didn't know that they were a cult at the time, and only found that out later. In the beginning, we actually thought they were just very religious- Bible thumping Christians.

The price was the same: fifty dollars a week, although, that didn't include breakfast. You did get use of the kitchen but you had to buy your own food. There was a little grocery store in town (tiny, without even a frozen food section) and Hazel and I would go there and get bread and chips, cans of Campbell soup and sandwich stuff. Mostly items we could easily carry back with us, since we didn't have a car and were walking.

Our room was relatively large and was located downstairs by the laundry room. I was still cutting tobacco, and Hazel spent her days reading or going on walks, basically, just waiting on me to come home. There were people staying at the hotel, some who hadn't yet joined the cult but who the cult was trying to woo. One in particular was this very rich woman from New York City. She had a little dog and Hazel had befriended her. Hazel sat outside with her and her little dog on the porch swing and smoked her Pall Mall cigarettes (even though Hazel didn't normally smoke, as a rule) and they would talk for hours. Hazel was really impressed with her stories of New York, as Hazel had always wanted to go there, and she loved hearing about the Art Museums and the movie stars the woman had met or seen on the street. I sat out with them a few times. I thought the woman was nice but I remember wondering why a woman as worldy as she was, was in this small town, not really there to visit anyone, just there to be there. I would find out later that that was what this cult did; pursued people with money, trying to get them to join and "donate." I do remember though, that this woman always seemed sad. She was always dressed very nice, with a full face of make-up and her hair perfect, but there was always the most pitiful look on her face and Hazel said she was always talking about people she'd know who'd either died or left her. "Abandoned," was the word she used, Hazel said. The woman often times said she'd been abandoned. Sometimes, Hazel would come back to our room after talking to this lady and slump down into a chair and say, "God, she's just so sad, I've never met anyone in my life so very sad..."

I told her maybe she should stop spending so much time with her but Hazel enjoyed spending time with her and hearing about New York and the woman claimed to have known Tennessee Williams in some round about way, and Hazel sat and listened to her stories and came to really like her.

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After about our first week at the Anzara, Hazel got a job as a waitress at the cafe in town. She was surprised to get it as she'd thought Mary Frances hated her but one day when we'd stopped for breakfast, Mary Frances had been there and she had come up to our table and said gruffly to Hazel, "You still want the job? When can you start?"

The cafe was owned by this guy named Marshall, who also owned the video store next door. Mary Frances was Marshall's wife and she ran the cafe. She was a hard bitten woman of about fifty-five, with bleached blonde hair and glittery blue eye shadow. She smoked those long brown cigarettes and seemed to constantly be glaring at you. Well, if she looked at you at all. Mostly she pretended you weren't there but if she was forced to look at you- she would glare. She wasn't very friendly. Hazel couldn't stand her but she was getting bored sitting around the hotel room so the job gave her something to do. It didn't pay much but it gave her a place to go every day.

One night as we sat out on the front porch of the hotel, Hazel put her tanned legs in my lap and said, "The people from the hotel came in today and, can you believe, there were like twelve of them and they didn't even tip me?"