The Homeless Millionaire

For so-called normal people, leading so-called normal lives, Friday is a day filled with happy anticipation. Here comes the weekend! Just a few more hours, and it will be time for some fun!

Like most other people, Roch and I were filled with anticipation that Friday morning. However, our anticipation was mixed with dread. Roch was to see Michel that evening, meet him - seemingly by chance - in a downtown bar. Talleyrand, the Machiavellian French diplomat, once said words are a means of hiding one's real thoughts. It was very true that morning. Roch and I talked almost incessantly over breakfast and during the drive to the turreted mansion we were working on. Neither of us said a word about the robbery and the upcoming meeting with Michel, and that said a lot.

When we arrived at the house, we began by going up to the top floor. I hadn't been there before. The door at the top of the staircase was locked; it led to a flat complete with its own kitchenette and bathroom. It had been converted into a self-contained unit just a few years earlier, and had subsequently been used for sleeping and not much else. Occupied by the nurses who cared for Roch's aunt during her final years, it needed very little work. The only room that needed a fresh coat of paint was the kitchenette. We decided to get it done next; that way, Roch would be able to tell his old man we'd done the whole top floor, and got started on the next. He always briefed his father on progress with the renovation work after Sunday's dinner, when his old man would be full of good food and booze.

"It's about the only time when he's not in his professional mode," Roch told me. "You have no idea what a f.u.c.k.i.n.g horror life is when your old man is an efficiency expert. One big stream of constant criticism. You're doing this wrong and forgot to do that and so on. Mother doesn't let him do that to herself, and Heloise always escapes into hysterics, so he focuses on me."

He babbled on about how happy he'd been to move out while I silently smoked a cigarette, and wondered what we'd find out from Michel that evening. I had the unpleasant thought that maybe there would be no meeting with Michel, because he was already sitting in a prison cell. I was sure Roch had had that thought too. Most likely, it was the reason behind his attack of verbal diarrhea. When he paused to light a cigarette, I said:

"What time do you think you'll be back tonight?" He shot me a quick glance before getting all irritated.

"Jesus, Mike, we've been over this already. I'll be back when I know everything there's to know, all right? Let 's just get going with this. Can you bring up the trays and a can of paint from downstairs? I'll get the drop sheets."

"White?" The kitchen had been painted a very pale banana yellow; it had turned orange in the corner over the small, two-coil electric stove. Roch said:

"Yeah, white. F.u.c.k it. It will mean two coats, maybe three for that corner, but f.u.c.k it. Let's go with white."

"Okay," I said. I went down to the ground floor to fetch the stuff, and found out I needed another cigarette before starting work. So I smoked it standing by the front window, looking out onto the street. It was all big residential houses and completely deserted, no one and nothing moving except for a cat trotting along the sidewalk on my side of the street. It was white with a couple of black patches and didn't look at me even though I tapped the the window pane to get its attention. It just flicked an ear my way for a moment while continuing its journey. That cat looked as if it knew exactly where it was going. I wished I felt the same way.

The cop car hove into view just as I was finishing my cigarette. It glided down the street almost soundlessly; I could only hear the thrum of the idling engine when it passed directly in front of me. The cop sitting on my side turned and looked straight at my face and somehow I felt compelled to grin and give him a little wave. He instantly turned away and I saw his mouth move as he said something to his partner. But they didn't stop, they kept on going slowly, soundlessly. Maybe they were looking for that cat.

I knew it was stupid of me to grin and wave to the cop who had looked at me. Only someone guilty of something would have done something like that. Hello guys, I'm all innocent - that was something I was sure cops ran into all the f.u.c.k.i.n.g time, and it was almost always a lie. Hell, everyone was guilty of something. They probably were inured to all that, and thought I was just another idiot with a stain on his conscience. If the cops were to investigate every suspicious character they came across, they would work 24/7 to process one in ten cases.

That incident made me very quiet and we worked on the kitchenette in almost total silence, save for the slap of the wet rollers on the wall. We put down the first coat in a little over two hours and Roch went down to make some coffee while I f.u.c.k.e.d around with a paintbrush, finishing up the corners. In the corner to the left of the entrance, someone had written a short column of tiny numbers:

4

3

1

The digits were so small they were invisible from a step away. They had been written with a blue ballpoint pen, and I had to slop on some extra paint to wipe them from view. I felt a faint dread when I was doing that. Someone had written that for a reason. There was a message of some sort in those numbers. Maybe it was also meant for me. I told myself it was normal to get stupidly mystical when in the grip of a strong emotion - love, hate, joy, fear, you name it. Well, I was definitely scared shitless of hearing bad news that evening.

I told Roch about the tiny column of tiny numbers written on the wall. I must have had a stupid look on my face when I was doing that, because he started laughing.

"Yeah, it's sign for sure," he said. "But maybe you should add them up and divide by two, that's the digit that's missing. F.u.c.k, Mike. How do you expect me to know who wrote that and why? You know something, that paint will take a while to dry, let's just go out and have a long lunch. There's that place round the corner I told you about, you can buy a paper on the way and read your horoscope. Maybe it will make you feel better."

I didn't tell him to go f.u.c.k himself because that was the moment I had an idea why those numbers had such deep significance for me. There were four people initially involved in the robbery: us three and Armand, who had just died. There would be just one person left before long, I could feel it. I had the premonition that it would be me.

I tried to shake that mood, but it just wouldn't go away. We went for that lunch, drank beer and ate, surrounded by other people going about their lives. Everything seemed to be normal, just fine, and then I caught myself watching Roch's plate. He had four of the famous Belgian fries left. He ate one; that left three. Then he speared a couple with his fork and ate them, leaving only one. He left it there for a long time too, snatched it up with his fingers only when the waitress came round to take our plates away. He looked at it and said:

"F.u.c.k! It's all burnt on one side." And he tossed it into the ashtray with disdain. I had had enough. I stood up and said:

"Let's go, the paint will be dry by now."

We didn't talk when we got back, and finished the kitchenette very quickly. When I'd washed my hands and was putting my watch back on, I checked the time. It was around half past four. I looked more closely and saw that it was exactly four thirty one.

"Shit," I said.

"What was that?" asked Roch. He was just about to start washing himself in the basin.

"Nothing."

Roch dropped me off at home. We didn't speak the whole way. I'd left the car and stopped to wait for him and instead of getting out, he rolled down the window and told me he was driving to his parents' place. He had to return his mother's car. He also informed me he wouldn't be home until after he'd seen Michel.

"I have to spend some time with my mother," he explained. "I'm using her car all the time and so on. You know how it is. I'll help her with the dinner, chop up the onions for her. When she sees me crying she'll be extra nice to me."

"Yeah," I said. "I'll be extra nice to you too, when you get back."

"Good to hear. Shake that asshole mood, man. Have some wine. Just don't drink it all by yourself." He pulled his face back from the window and stuck out a carefree elbow instead and drove off.

There was no way I could drink all the wine by myself, no matter how hard I tried: there were ten bottles of Beaujolais, and three of white wine. I popped open a bottle of flowery-sweet German white: it was weaker and wouldn't get me drunk as fast. I wandered around the house with a glass in my hand, looking around. It felt wrong to enter Roch's room, but I examined every other room except for my own. There was no writing on any of the walls.

I finished the German white looking at my Rembrandt. I was still keeping it under my pillow, wrapped in a pair of thick pyjamas I'd brought to wear in the winter. I looked at the painting for quite a while, and thought where else to put it: I honestly couldn't think of a good hiding place. I turned it round in my hands absentmindedly while glancing around - I had next to no furniture in my room, basically the only alternative was to put it in my in my bag. I could slide it into the pyjamas and put those in my arts haversack and then put the haversack in the bag - yes, that was better than keeping it under the pillow. I looked at the painting and saw the museum's catalog number, written on the back of the frame in indelible ink. It consisted of a bunch of letters and three digits: 431.

My hands were shaking when I wrapped the pyjamas around the Rembrandt and put it back under the pillow. I started to exit the room and turned round and snatched the painting out from under the pillow. Maybe that was how that number got imprinted on my mind? I put it inside the haversack and the haversack in the bag and jammed the bag in between the head of mattress bed and the wall. I turned the bag around so that opening it involved moving the mattress first. Then I went down to the kitchen and got going on the Beaujolais, chain-smoking cigarettes.

A bottle later, it was eight o'clock; Roch would be on his way to the bar. As I was opening my second Beaujolais, I saw that the excise tax number on the banderole stuck over the cork ended with 431. This was too much. Coincidences like that simply didn't happen. It was a sign. I put that bottle away unopened and looked through the remaining ones until I found one whose banderole number didn't contain the digits 4, 3, 1.

Halfway through that neutral bottle, my head started feeling very heavy. I slid my chair closer to the table and moved the wine and the ashtray further away, put my head down on my arms and fell asleep.

I woke up when the front door slammed shut. There was a clock in the kitchen: a round dial framed in metal, hung midway between the stove and the door. It said it was just past midnight.

I listened to Roch approaching down the hallway, trying to guess what kind of news he was bringing from the way he walked. I couldn't tell. When he appeared in the doorway, I looked at his face: it was pale and pinched with fear, but he was smiling. He said:

"Sober up, Mike. I've got mixed news. We've got contact with the museum guys and they're willing to pay, but Michel's got cops on his tail."