The Homeless Millionaire

Henry Houghton-Briggs was late. He pranced it nearly twenty minutes past six, brandishing an envelope with a triumphant smile. He placed it on the reception counter with a flourish and said:

"Your salary, my dear boy. Had a good night? No trouble, I hope."

I told him that there had been no trouble at all.

"I think I'll be going, if that's all right," I added, pointedly glancing at the clock behind me.

"Is it as late as that? My dear fellow! Please forgive me. I must have forgotten to wind my watch." He made a small show of winding it, and I stole a look at the dial - it indeed showed five past six.

"Go on, go on," said HB. "You must be eager to get home. I'll see you tomorrow evening." He treated me to another sunny smile, and I took the envelope and left.

I opened the envelope the moment I was on the street. It contained a small wad of banknotes folded in half, held together by a paper clip. No pay slip - well, I fully expected it to be one of those under-the-table deals, so I wasn't really disappointed. But that wad of banknotes was so small, so thin -

I took them out and transferred them into my wallet. Four tens, one five, three ones. I had made a grand total of six dollars and fifty cents in tips Thursday and Friday night. My total weekly earnings at the Montrose amounted to fifty four dollars and fifty cents. It made me feel so dejected that I decided to walk all the way home. A long, brisk walk always improved my mood.

I got home close to eight: on the way, I stopped for a coffee in a greasy hole in the wall that called itself a restaurant, and stayed open almost around the clock. They had surprisingly good coffee though, and I ended up having three cups. The caffeine got my brain going again, and after I'd taken a few steps I realized that the banknotes in my pay envelope represented a sequence: four tens, one five, three ones - four one three. But the five had been at the end of the wad: I'd become aware of that when I was paying for the coffee. The sequence in which they had been arranged was 4-3-1.

I spent the rest of the way home watching out for that number. I saw an instance almost right away, on parked car's license plate: the first three digits were 4-3-1. By the time I got home twenty minutes later, I noticed those numbers in various combinations at least ten times. It was f.u.c.k.i.n.g crazy. I went up the front steps to my house and I was about to go in when I realized that Roch's house was numbered 31, and that it was the fourth house down from a residential street intersection.

It was lucky that Roch was sitting in the kitchen and waiting for me, because I'd driven myself into a state approaching panic. However, what he had to say didn't make me happy.

"You've got to come with me today, Mike," he told me. "We're going to have a grand meeting with Michel at the house I'm working on."

"But that's crazy! He's being watched by cops. They'll find out about you and me."

"He's positive they're not following him around any more. Anyway, we've known each other since we were little kids. We used to get together at least a couple of times a month whenever I was living in Montreal. If the cops are watching, it will actually seem suspicious if we stop seeing each other."

"Why are you working on the house today? It's Sunday, family day, right?"

"I'll be going round to their place in the afternoon. I want to finish the last room on the second floor before that, so I can tell the old man the whole floor's done. There's just a bit of touching up left. If you help me out, we'll be done before Michel shows up."

"What time is he coming?"

"Around noon."

I grimaced and said:

"Okay, I'll come with you. Just let me eat something first, and change."

Half an hour later, fed and wearing my other work clothes - old jeans, stained T-shirt, holed jumper - I was following Roch into the turreted mansion his aunt had lived in. My one day, or rather night, off work at the Montrose - and there I was, about to start f.u.c.k.i.n.g around with sandpaper and paint roller and shit. And I did not expect Michel to bring any good news. Had there been any, he'd have told Roch on the phone, at the very least signaled that what he had to say would make us happy.

Michel showed up earlier than expected, at around half past eleven. Roch and I had just finished working: there wasn't much to do, just some touching up here and there, exactly as advertised earlier. I was busy rinsing out the painting stuff in the kitchen, more depressed than ever: I was thinking that to top everything else, I would be going to my first class the next day, three weeks late. There would be some explaining to do. I knew how I'd handle that: I had a cast-iron explanation that I had used previously. 'Urgent family matters' - that was the magic phrase. It had to be delivered in the right voice; if it didn't work, I would add, 'very sad and urgent family matters'. That would do the trick: implying a death in the family is a good conversation stopper.

I fully expected the guys to come into the kitchen, but they didn't. When I turned off the water, I could hear them talking in the front room: they were speaking French, voices low. They stopped talking when they heard me coming. Bad news, I thought. Bad news for sure.

"Hi," I said. Roch glanced at me quickly and turned to the window and plugged himself up with a cigarette, but Michel grinned from ear to ear.

"I've got something for you," he said. He reached into his jeans pocket and produced a small roll of banknotes held together a by a thin red rubber band.

"One hundred and twenty dollars," he said. "Your share. I managed to sell some of the gold trinkets. Hey, Roch tells me you're working nights as a hotel receptionist, checking people in and taking phone calls and shit."

"Actually, there aren't many phone calls," I said. "It's not a hotel, it's a f.u.c.khouse. People go there to f.u.c.k. There's no point in calling ahead of time to ask about a room, because things can change anytime, and we don't do reservations. First come, first serve."

"First come! Ha ha. I like that."

He prattled on like that for a while; I could tell he was working hard to prepare me for something unpleasant. Roch must had heard the bad news already, because he was glumly smoking his cigarette, staring out of the window with unseeing eyes.

I was right. After a minute or so of inane prattle, Michel swiftly changed tack. First of all, he said, there was absolutely no way he'd be able to sell any more of the loot. He'd exhausted all his possibilities, had to drive out to Quebec City to unload most of the jewelry and other small stuff, and it had been one of those I-know-someone-who-knows-someone deals. He'd had to accept a rock-bottom price for what he had, because the intermediaries had to earn their cut, too. He was still negotiating with the museum, but had been forced to reduce the ransom for the paintings to $250,000. A quarter of a million dollars! It wasn't more ten, twelve percent of what the paintings were actually worth.

When I pointed that out, Michel reminded me that I was keeping the Rembrandt for myself: it was the most valuable piece of them all. I had no right to complain, Michel said, and when he was saying that Roch glanced at me in a way that told me he agreed with Michel. So I didn't complain. Instead, I asked:

"All right. Fine. I understand. Thank you for the money, by the way. But what do we do next?"

"They told me they've started talking to the insurance people," Michel said. "That means they've agreed to pay a quarter million, in principle. But naturally all this is going to take a little time. A couple of weeks, maybe a month."

"A month!"

"Mike, a quarter million is still a lot of money. People don't spend an amount like that on a whim."

"What f.u.c.k.i.n.g whim, what are you talking about? It's been three weeks already."

"Calm down, Mike," said Roch. There was a warning in his voice, and I heeded it.

"All right," I said. "I'm sorry. It's just so f.u.c.k.i.n.g disappointing. That's all."

"I'm disappointed too," Michel said. "Roch's disappointed as well. We are all disappointed. Life is one major disappointment. All this joy, all this promise and then you die." Roch winced, and said:

"Cut it out. He's gonna start quoting philosophers if you don't. If he starts quoting philosophers, I'll just have to kill someone, anyone, maybe you."

Michel sighed.

"Okay," he said. "Relax, guys. You think it's been easy for me, selling that stuff this week? I was scared shitless at times. But we've got a bit of extra cash in our pockets today, right? So let's stop griping and celebrate a little instead. Roch, you told me there's a place with Belgian fries around here? Let's go there and do a proper Sunday lunch, with plenty of beer."

And that was what we went and did. I ate and drank until I was close to bursting: the three of us paid thirty bucks - ten apiece. It didn't really improve my mood. Monday would start with with an art history class at ten in the morning, and drag on until six am on Tuesday; when I thought about that, I felt like crying. So I just drugged myself with food and beer until all I wanted was to go to sleep.

I crashed the moment I got home, plunging headfirst into a dark abyss as soon as I closed my eyes.