Artist's Guest House

     As a rule, I like hotels. The thrill of luxury and perfection. The little twin bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The hush when the door clicks shut. The mountain of pillows. Or motels, with their bare bones comfort, rest, sanctuary from the road, uniformity, value.

     And yet. Nothing is more antiseptic than a hotel room. Ideally. You do not want a crumb, a trace of any of the thousands of previous occupants. Generic art on the walls. Anodyne furnishings. Nobody wants to live in a hotel room.
     An Airbnb can be different.  Much better. Or worse. There is a roll-the-dice quality. One pair of guests at the wedding last weekend had their Airbnb cancel at the last minute. Another compared their lodging to a Mediterranean villa. You take what you get. Then again, hotels can screw up too; my sister's hotel lost her second night's reservation, forcing us to scramble to relocate her.

     With an Airbnb, you are moving into somebody's home, often literally, a place they may have recently occupied. The owner is very present in quirky furnishings and decorations. 

     That can be a good thing, or a bad thing. There is a risk, but also a reward. You aren't a guest of Mr. Hilton or Ms. Marriott, but a real person — ideally. Some Airbnb's are pretty corporate themselves.

     Still, a good option, particularly in a pricey resort town like Charlevoix, Michigan. We'd be occupying an expensive suite the day before and after the wedding — the groomsmen would be changing there. So something a bit more affordable was in order for the first two days — and, crucially, a place that allows dogs, as our Kitty was a flower girl in the wedding. This led us to the Artist's Guest House. 

     There was an actual artist, John Posa, and I have never moved into an Airbnb where the presence of the owner was felt quite as strongly as it was here. 

     His widow, Oksana, showed us around the place, explaining that her husband recently died, and since they had bookings, she was continuing on with the Airbnb while she figured out what to do with it. Her husband had used the small building, a former mocassin store, as a studio — there were two big lithography presses in the living room.

   I gave my condolences and then asked how recently he had died, fearing it was last week. She had tears in her eyes, and said it happened in February. Recent enough.
     Not that she was dour. She was kind, upbeat, welcoming. She left us with a loaf of walnut bread baked that morning, some farm fresh eggs. A variety of wines were available at $10 a bottle.
     We settled in, looked around. I liked his prints more than his paintings — the dog over the fireplace seems to be floating in air rather than water — but he certainly had talent, and a sensibility. Having closed down my father's studio a few years ago, I was conscious that this was Posa's space, with tubes of ink scattered around, rollers, pencils he had no doubt sharpened. Long thin drawers contained stacks of fresh prints. He had also been a patent attorney, and had a hobby of going to yard sales and buying contraptions that had their 

patent number on them, then pairing them in tableaus with their patent filings. I was excited, the next morning, to notice a wooden box from Kraft American Cheese. (Any idea what Kraft was patenting? Weigh your options. Perhaps it would be best to think of actual cheese. What does it have that Kraft American cheese-like product lacks? Correct. Rinds. That's intentional. "The principal objects of my invention are to prepare cheese of the type described, in units of such size and shape that can be readily sold ... while at the same time drying out or spoilage of the unsold cheese is practically eliminated; to provide a cheese of the American variety which shall be free from objectionable rind or inedible skin...")  

     The bed was wonderfully firm and we slept well. In the morning, my wife made a lovely breakfast with eggs, peppers, real cheese and bread, plus a grapefruit we had brought with us (like Hunter S. Thompson, I make a point of traveling with grapefruit). I put on one of the artist's CDs: Boccherini quintets for string quartet and guitar. 

    The Artist's Guest House is right on 31, the main drag, but quiet enough, and a brief stroll from Charlevoix's touristy downtown of jam shops and cute little boutiques — certainly better than driving, since the bridge is raised every half hour, tangling traffic.

      We were glad to stay there and would be glad to return, if it's still around. The space's future is uncertain. Then again, all of our futures are uncertain. As a person shielding my own little guttering creative flame from the downpour of life, I tried to look extra hard at the dead artist's studio, reflecting on the brief span it will remain. The brief span that any of us will remain.