The Homeless Millionaire

The next day, Roch and I made a pact over breakfast: we would not talk about anything connected with the robbery over the next few days. We would work on the houses all week and generally behave ourselves. No matter what precautions we took, contacting the museum greatly increased our chances of getting caught. The cops had most likely spent the last week checking out people they had in their files, because the first thing any bureaucracy does is check its files. They'd drawn a blank - none of us figured in police files - and they'd be very eager to pounce on a new track. We'd provide them with that when we contacted the museum.

Roch and I agreed that the wise thing to do was lay in some supplies. We set off for the nearest supermarket and I asked Roch why he didn't have a car.

"Mother needs it today," he said.

"Yeah, okay, but why don't you have a car of your own? You have to deal with all those houses and get supplies and shit."

"I get supplies in the Toyota. I'm holding out for the old man's Impala. He promised it to me, you know. Said he would be getting a new car. But then he started driving it around, and decided he liked it. He tried to bribe me with a used Ford someone he knew was selling, perfect condition, but I said I'll wait for the Impala. It makes him feel guilty, so he's become pretty generous with money."

"Smart."

"Yeah. By the way, we went to the house yesterday. The old man thought you did a beautiful painting job and you're officially hired to do the house we're working on this week. Have I taken you there?"

"No."

"It's where my aunt used to live. There's still lots of her stuff around. It's got a phone and there's a place right around the corner that has beer on tap and good fries. They do them Belgian style."

"Sounds like the perfect work location."

"It is. Hey, speed up. We'll cross before the light changes."

"F.u.c.k! It's a long way to that store. When I think about humping all that stuff back, I feel destroyed, man. Just totally nuked. Nothing but some charred bones left on the pavement."

"Jesus, relax. We can always get a cab home. We'll be saving plenty of money anyway, instead of giving it away to that thief on the corner."

"I thought you said you liked the owner."

"I do. I like him. But he's still a thief."

"A kindred soul," I said, and Roch looked at me sharply and we didn't talk the rest of the way to the store.

We spent a good couple of hours shopping; there was a regular department store on the upper floors, and it even had a section with art supplies. I bought a box of charcoal and some paper; the sheets in the sketchbook I had taken to the cottage were too flimsy for watercolor. We also took full advantage of the fact that booze was much cheaper there than in our corner store, and ended up loaded like two heavy-duty camels. Roch decided that as advertised earlier, we would take a cab home; it turned out his conscience-ridden old man refunded the fare when the cab ride was necessitated by the house renovations.

"You're a new employee and I had to take you shopping," he explained.

"You're the boss."

"F.u.c.k.i.n.g right."

We got home, unpacked, and tasted some of the stuff we'd brought: fresh baguettes, ham, lettuce, and wine. The store had Beaujolais on special and Beaujolais goes down pretty easily, and when we finished the bottle Roch made a small speech. He reminded me that his old man was an efficiency expert, and that he, Roch, could not but pick up some of the techniques and tricks of the trade. That made him the efficiency expert in our little company, and as such he declared there wasn't any sense in our working on the houses that day. We simply wouldn't be efficient.

"What's more," he said, wagging a finger in my face, "Alcohol on the job can lead to accidents. I won't allow that. I'm the boss here."

It was fine with me. We spent the day lazing around, eating, drinking, and smoking the joints Roch brought from upstairs at regular intervals. It was smart of him not to bring the down the bag of pot, we would've likely smoked all of it. After my second joint, I got going with the tubed watercolors I hadn't had the chance to try out at the lake. I painted a still nature number, using the fruit and vegetables we'd bought as models. It was f.u.c.k.i.n.g awful and I tore it up and got depressed for a short while. I had thought that I'd be looking at that Rembrandt I had upstairs at least a couple of times a day, and before going to bed for sure. I didn't look at it that night. It would have f.u.c.k.i.n.g killed me.

We set out for work at half past eight the next morning, like model citizens. We went to the house we'd worked on the previous week. The kitchen needed another coat of paint to make it perfect, and then there was some cleaning up and moving stuff around. We finished that around three, needing to eat lunch badly. By the time we'd had our lunch, it was nearing five. So we knocked off for the day and went home and drank some wine. We'd bought six bottles of that Beaujolais; it had been really cheap, most likely they were clearing out old stock before the annual Beaujolais Nouveau event. There was a single bottle left around ten that evening, and Roch said he'd get more the next day - he'd have the use of his mother's Corolla. So we drank bottle number six before going to bed.

We set out for work at half past nine the next morning, like hungover model citizens. The house Roch's aunt had lived in was further away than the one we'd been working at; it took us over a quarter of an hour to get there. The walk cleared our heads and once Roch had shown me around, he left to get his mother's car. He was to get a couple of new scr.a.p.ers and painting trays on the way back. The paint was already there, a full f.u.c.k.i.n.g dozen gallon cans, and when I looked at them I felt faint. I spent my time waiting for Roch to return by looking at the furniture that we were to move around in the very near future. It was nice to look at: it had been handmade at least half a century earlier, and it was made to last a couple of centuries. It had kept well, I was sure Roch would have made a small fortune had he sold that lot along with the stuff from his own house. I wondered what had prevented him.

It was a while before I saw him park the red Corolla in front of the house. I helped him carry stuff inside, and discovered that in addition to the painting supplies he'd bought food: fresh French bread and a hunk of Montreal smoked meat, lettuce, onion, tomatoes, and ten bottles of Beaujolais. Special price or not, it had to cost a packet and that didn't make me happy: I'd already spent well more than half my cash the previous day. However, I got to hear some good news for a change.

"The old man left a fifty for you," Roch explained. "So I took the twenty that you still owed me after painting that other house, and spent another twenty on your behalf, for a total of forty. So here's a ten, and I've also got you a couple of packs of cigarettes."

"I bought a carton yesterday."

"Did you? You don't want them?"

"Don't be a moron."

We decided to start off lightly, with the turret room on the first floor. Yeah, that house actually had a turret in one corner. On the ground floor, it formed an open dining alcove; on the first floor, the space had been shut off into a circular room with wallpapered walls overlaid by intricate bamboo paneling that was dark with age. We didn't attempt to prise that paneling off the wall, it would have likely broken up into a thousand pieces. It was a f.u.c.k.i.n.g horror to scr.a.p.e the wallpaper off without doing any damage to the paneling. While we were at it, Roch told me his aunt used to drink tea in that room. She would go there once or twice a day and spend up to half an hour doing nothing but drinking tea, surrounded by bamboo. The wallpaper actually depicted slender bamboo branches,

it was bamboo trip all the way.

I wondered what the wallpaper had been like in her bedroom. It had been scr.a.p.ed off already, Roch hadn't seen it either: the job was done by the builder Roch's father hired initially before the efficiency expert part of him kicked in, and he realized he could have Roch handle the whole thing in exchange for the house he was going to give him anyway. It still cost him, sure, but far less than with a professional crew on the job. And he still rode around in the Impala, which was what pissed Roch off more than anything else. He said that if he had that car, he wouldn't have to make the slightest effort to pick up fresh meat Saturday night. All he'd have to do was park in a good spot and open the passenger door.

"Sure," I said to that. "Dream on."

"That's how it works, Mike. I've done it before, you haven't. Chicks go crazy for a hot car. A car is an extension of your d.i.c.k. Hot car, hot d.i.c.k. An advertis.e.m.e.nt on wheels."

"Yeah, sure," I said. "I think I saw a couple of articles about that in the moron magazines."

"Moron magazines?"

"The magazines for people who need to be told what to think."

"I have a surprise for you, Mike. Most people like to be told what to think."

"Moron," I said, and we both snickered at each other for a while.

By the end of that day, we'd stripped no more than half the walls. Roch looked at me and said:

"I hate this paneling."

"So do I," I said.

"No one's ever going to drink tea in here again. My aunt kept a maid. I can't see my old guys hiring a maid just so they can drink tea in that room. I don't see them carrying tea trays up and down the stairs either."

"I don't know, Roch," I said. "You're the man with the vision."

We ripped the paneling off and had the walls scr.a.p.ed clean by early evening.

On Thursday, I gave that room two good coats of paint, helping Roch sand down the door jambs and window frames while the first coat dried. The doors were beyond salvation; they had bent with age, just like people. Getting them shut required plenty of extra effort.

At the end of the day, Roch pulled out a couple of joints and we smoked them in the former tea room, admiring our work. Then I said:

"You're seeing Michel tomorrow night, aren't you?"

Roch nodded. He didn't say anything, maybe because he'd just taken a big hit and his mouth was full of smoke.

"You haven't been in touch with him in the meantime?"

Roch shook his head, then performed a small pantomime communicating that he wanted me to shut up. Eventually he said:

"Of course I haven't been in touch with him. That's what we agreed on: no communication until Friday night. You know that."

"I guess he's made contact by now."

"Yeah. Denis was due to have his checkup today."

"Tomorrow is going to be a long, long day. What time to do you expect to get home from the bar? After you've talked to Michel?"

"I don't know. Depends on what he'll have to say."

"Don't give me that. If it's bad news, you'll get back fast to tell me, right? If it's good news, you'll do the same. Am I right or am I right?"

"For f.u.c.k's sake, Mike, give me a break. Yeah, I'll be back fast if it's good news or bad news. It might take a while if it's unexpected news. News are unexpected by definition, okay?"

"Not all."

"Well they might be. And if that happens, I might be gone a bit longer. Just f.u.c.k.i.n.g lay off."

I did, and tried to convince myself that I was turning paranoid. Pot always amplified buried feelings. I had something pretty serious to get paranoid about, so I got paranoid when I got stoned. I told myself that a few times, but I still didn't quite feel convinced.

Roch and I did our best to chill out that evening. We tasted the newly bought wine, our very own Beaujolais Nouveau, and agreed it somehow wasn't quite as good as the first batch. We killed a couple of bottles anyway. It was the only way we could relax enough to go to sleep, even though we were both pretty tired.

Right before I fell asleep, I realized there was no way to predict what I'd be doing the next evening. I could be on top of the world, drinking myself stupid. I could also be sitting in a hard chair, watched by hard eyes while I answered questions. Very difficult questions, where the wrong answer meant years in jail.

In spite of all this I slept like a baby, a baby with a very conscientious guardian angel.