Port-au-prince

I recognized Richard sitting on a bar stool as soon as we walked into the hotel. I had seen the episode of No Reservations where Anthony Bourdain stayed at the Oloffson and chatted with Richard, the hotel’s owner, at a small table on the restaurant's balcony. They talked about the history of the Oloffson, about Haiti, about Rara. Seeing the Oloffson on television had sparked my interest in visiting this mysterious place, and knowing that Richard had spent time with Anthony Bourdain was notable, but what really mattered to me was that Richard knew my friend Dick, who had been operating a medical clinic in Haiti for the last 30 years. I had just spent two weeks with Dick in Jacmel, working on finishing the final draft of the book I was writing about Dick’s life in Haiti—my first book and one I had been working on for two years. My husband Jim and I were spending a few days in Port-au-Prince for R&R before flying back to the States, and it had become imperative that I stay at Oloffson while in the city. I needed to sleep in one of the hotel’s old beds, to walk the grounds, to touch the walls and the banisters. In my mind, it was an enigma, something I couldn’t understand until I set foot into the lobby, saw the layout of the rooms, the empty pool. Graham Greene was here. He wrote about it. And now I am here.

I walked up to Richard, who was hunched over the bar sipping a sweaty Prestige, and introduced myself. He barely turned his body in my direction as he grunted an incomprehensible response. “My friend Dick says hi,” I told him, showing him a photo of Dick on my phone, waiting for his demeanor to change, for a look of excitement to come with the recognition of a familiar face. “I meet a lot of people here,” he said, glancing only for a second at my phone. I pulled my phone toward my chest as though Dick were actually in it, trying to protect him from Richard’s cold reply. I frowned at him even though he couldn’t see my face. What an uninviting way to greet a guest, I thought. My enthusiasm for our stay at the Oloffson started to fade as I turned back to Jim, who was patiently waiting with our bags a few feet away. As I shuffled over to him, I heard Richard mumble faintly, “You know, when you come here, you check in, you write a book. They all did. That’s why I put their names on the doors of the rooms.”

I stopped and looked back at him, a small shudder going down my spine. What did he just say? Does he know? How could he know that I was writing a book about Haiti? About Dick? About the medical clinic and the patients and the volunteers? He couldn’t know. I paused for a second, then smiled and nodded at Richard, who had already gone back to his beer. Jim and I made our way to our room, noticing the names of the famous authors Richard had mentioned, reading them out loud and thinking about their time spent at the Oloffson. We stayed for three days and never did see Richard again, and although after becoming familiar with the hotel during our trip and no longer feeling that it was an enigma in my mind, Richard sure has remained one to me.