Vancouver

Vancouver is the setting for a privately sponsored poetry reading that takes Henry Chinaski from Seattle across the Canadian border. The city offers a contrast to the harsher urban settings he describes elsewhere: the visit is marked by a clean, calmer atmosphere, a drunken audience more congenial to him than a university crowd, and a brief encounter with Iris Duarte. It remains a stop in a paid itinerary, however, and the reading and its new connections quickly give way to departure.

Arrival and the Reading

The engagement is arranged for $500 plus airfare and lodging. Its sponsor, Bart Mcintosh, worries about crossing the border, so the plan routes Henry through Seattle, where Mcintosh will meet him and drive him to Vancouver. Henry accepts without fully understanding the arrangement. Traveling with a small suitcase, spare clothes, several poetry books, and typescripts of ten or twelve new poems, he reflects on the oddness of being paid to read after years of low-paid work. His double vodka-7 accompanies the transition from laborer to traveling poet, a role he still finds difficult to take seriously.

At the border, roughly a hundred cars wait while guards process traffic at their own pace. Mcintosh is anxious about the crossing; Henry cannot see a reason for the panic, and Mcintosh’s relief once they are through makes the border itself a small drama in the journey. The sponsor then drives him to a hotel directly on the water. A refrigerator stocked with beer turns the room into a place to pause before the performance, though the next day’s schedule already presses forward: after the reading, Henry expects to have been paid and to be back in the air by noon.

The reading begins with an hour of waiting while a young boy sings. The audience talks through the act; bottles clank and laughter rises, making the event feel more like a drunken gathering than a formal literary occasion. Henry drinks backstage with Mcintosh, Silvers, and others. Silvers remarks that Henry is the first male poet they have had in a long time, an observation that prompts Henry to ask what he means. The available scene presents the reading less as an orderly cultural ceremony than as a performance situated among drinkers and informal company.

The City as a Temporary Contrast

Henry likes Vancouver’s clean streets and the impression that its people lack the hard look he associates with a big city. At a restaurant several blocks from the hotel, he notices that prices are about 40 percent higher than in his part of Los Angeles, orders a roast beef sandwich, and has another beer. The visit changes his sense of place without dislodging his habits: the city feels calmer and less false to him, but the comparison is still made through familiar concerns about cost, drink, and the prospect of leaving.

After dinner, Henry returns to the hotel, showers, and looks down at the water from his window. He anticipates the end of the engagement and the return flight, then drinks three or four more beers before sleeping. The view offers a pause rather than a new home or lasting destination. Vancouver’s difference registers clearly, but it is framed by a brief itinerary and by Henry’s awareness that he will soon be gone.

Iris Duarte and Departure

The Vancouver visit also leads to Henry’s encounter with Iris Duarte. After they spend the night together, they exchange addresses and phone numbers. Iris appears fond of him, but the connection has no established continuation in the account. Mcintosh arrives about fifteen minutes later, and the two men drive Iris to an intersection near her workplace. Henry learns that she actually works as a waitress and that belly dancing is an ambition, then kisses her goodbye as she leaves.

Mcintosh characterizes the encounter as another conquest; Henry dismisses the comment lightly. The exchange places the intimacy within the same passing, episodic rhythm as the reading itself: a new contact arises during travel, receives a brief farewell, and does not alter the onward journey. Mcintosh heads for the airport with Henry, leaving Vancouver behind as both a paid performance stop and a temporary interruption in his usual routine.