The Homeless Millionaire

I arrived in Vancouver a few minutes past midnight. I slept throughout the journey, slept so hard that I didn't wake up until almost all the passengers had got off the bus. By the time I collected my wits and got up and grabbed my bag I was the only person left on board, except for the driver who had leaned out of his seat to give me a curious stare.

I almost ran down the aisle and got off the bus. It had stopped right in front of a big combined bus and train terminal. There were plenty of people around in spite of the hour, maybe because this was a Friday night. I was ravenously hungry, and when I noticed an A&W sign featuring a stupid-looking bear waving a mug of root beer I immediately started walking there. I hesitated before going in because of my money situation, but the smell of French fries was too much. I went in and blew almost two bucks on a Papa Burger combo. I wolfed it down so quickly a couple of people at a neighboring tables started glancing at me.

They were hippies or pretending to be hippies, either way they were a bunch of stupid f.u.c.ks for buying into that shit. There were three girls and just a single guy. The girls all had long flowing hair and headbands and after looking at me a couple of times and giggling among themselves they stopped paying attention, but the guy kept on staring at me, maybe because he was facing me across his table and didn't have to turn around.

He had shoulder-length dirty blond curly hair parted in the middle, but no headband, which was a minor point in his favor. He had a long, narrow face that ended with a pointed chin and a small mouth that seemed to be permanently twisted in a condescending smirk. But his eyes, deep set and dark, were warm and intelligent. They were thinking man's eyes, eyes that had seen a lot and thought about what they had seen.

It bothered me that he was looking at me, and I was glad when they all got up from their table. But the girls embraced the guy, one by one, and then they left together leaving him behind. He looked at me again and walked up to my table and while he was doing that I really regretted that I'd stayed to finish my root beer seated, I should've left right after I'd finished with the food. But it had felt nice to have just finished a big meal, and I had no reason to hurry anywhere. I couldn't really start looking for a room to rent at one in the morning, and there was no way I'd be spending money on a motel.

"Hey there," he said, stopping at my table and looking right into my eyes. "My name's Harry. You just arrived?"

"Yeah," I said. "And now I'm leaving." I lifted the mug to finish my root beer and he held out his hand palm outwards and said:

"Hey, no, don't do that. I'll split myself, sorry for bothering you."

He was already turning away when I said:

"My name is Mike."

He turned back and his smirk mutated into a standard smile. He said:

"Nice to meet you, Mike. You take care, you hear? And don't worry, everything's gonna be all right."

I snorted and said:

"Sure. Sure it will. Thanks."

"Hey," he said gently. "You gotta believe in something to make it happen. You don't believe in it right from the start, you might as well give up and save yourself some time."

He got me right between the eyes with that, because I had used the same exact line myself many, many times. This was during the long round of arguments I had with my parents when they were trying to convince me to follow what they called a 'normal' career. I told them there was no way I could apply myself to doing something I did not believe in, and my old man had treated me to a long speech about the hardsh.i.p.s of his job. He said half the time he had to follow instructions that made no sense, but had to convince other people that they did. He said it kept him awake at night but that was the price he had to pay for being a successful diplomat.

I had the feeling he wanted me to commiserate, and maybe get on my knees and thank him for all the sacrifices he was making for his country and to ensure a comfortable life for his family. But instead I told him he'd just convinced me to never, ever consider a diplomatic career and that made him really angry. That particular talk changed into a shouting match, and I'll always remember his angry red face when he was shouting at me that the ability to compromise was the most important thing in life.

What Harry had said to me immediately established an instant connection between us, no doubt about that.

I said:

"Yeah, sure. What do you think about compromises, Harry? You think it's cool to compromise?"

He blew out his lips and shook his head and looked at the ground before saying:

"Man, life must have kicked you real hard in the b.u.t.t to talk like that. No, it's not cool to compromise. It happens anyway. Life's one big compromise. It's a f.u.c.k.i.n.g ocean of compromises. So if you start out compromising, there's no way you'll ever get to the other shore. The place you want to be."

It sounded like he was going to get mystical on me, so I laughed and said:

"Sure. You want to join me for a cigarette? He actually grinned at me and I saw he had surprisingly nice teeth for a hippie, the hippies I'd met to date always had rotten teeth. He said:

"A cigarette? Like, smoke some tobacco? Sure, man. Sure. You know what, there's a this nice little park across the road. Let's go there and sit down and have a smoke in peace."

He winked at me when he said that and I knew this was an invitation to share a joint. So I followed him out of the A&W and across the road and into the park. There were other people around, we passed a couple necking on a bench and I could hear some kid demanding they pass him the bottle and others shushing him.

Harry and I sat down on a bench that wasn't in view of any other people and I offered him a cigarette. We smoked and talked and I gave him the broad strokes of my personal picture: I had left home and was looking for a place to stay, and a job. He didn't talk about himself, just asked a few questions and asked them gracefully enough for me to answer. Then he pulled out a motherf.u.c.ker of a joint, it must have taken a couple of long papers to roll it. It was the biggest joint I'd seen in a while, maybe in my entire life until then, I swear.

"It's hash, he told me. "Lebanese blond. Doesn't make you sleepy. You like hash?"

I told him I liked hash a lot, especially the kind that didn't make me sleepy. So we smoked the joint - it took a while - the kids drinking nearby must have caught a whiff, they laughed and one of them said something sure smelled good. Then another kid said it sure as hell wasn't p.u.s.s.y, and then told them the joke about blindfolded lesbians in a fish market. It was so old it had whiskers touching the ground, but they all laughed like maniacs. Laughter comes easy when you're a kid.

They left right after that and we finished smoking the joint in peace and then smoked Harry's cigarettes. He smoked Rothmans, just like me, and then I pulled the brandy out of my bag and things got really buddy-buddy from there.

By the time we'd finished the brandy everything was set. Harry would let me camp out at his place for a couple of nights, and there was a possibility he could fix me up with a job. I tried to find out more about that job, but it seemed to make him uncomfortable so I didn't press it. I was glad to have found a place to stay.

Harry's place was in Gastown, which wasn't far - we walked there in a quarter of an hour. It turned out to be in an abandoned warehouse. There was a bunch of other people staying there, in cubicles constructed out of old packing cases and pieces of drywall and plywood and sheet metal. It didn't look like a great place to stay, especially since we were to share a mattress. Luckily it was a big one. I had a strong aversion to anyone touching me after all that shit that went down with Peter Schmidt.

Harry explained this was just his temporary home whenever he came to town. He had a place north of the city, and a car. The deal was we'd drive up there in the morning, he had stuff to do there and there was a chance I could help him out, and not for free. I agreed to all that and Harry went to sleep while I sat on the edge of the mattress and smoked for quite a while. I'd slept on the bus so I was rested, and I was also stoned out of my gourd. The brandy and the hash made me feel good, so good that I was relaxed in spite of the surroundings and the whispers and muted giggles and stifled m.o.a.ns from a couple that were f.u.c.k.i.n.g not too far away.

The warehouse was right next to the railroad and at one point during the night there was a lot of noise, metal m.o.a.ning and clanging and screeching while the railroad guys moved cars around in the marshaling yard. They stopped around four in the morning by my watch and I finally lay down on the mattress, as far away from Harry as possible. It was a while before I fell asleep, and it seemed to me I'd hardly slept at all when Harry shook me awake.

It was around eight o'clock and it was raining cats and dogs, I was surprised that I'd slept through the noise the rain made on the warehouse roof. I was stiff with cold and had a runny nose but Harry seemed to be fine, even though he was dressed more lightly than me: he just had a jean jacket and jeans and a T-shirt, and I'd pulled on my freshly-washed jumper before going to sleep.

His car was parked a few blocks away and on the way there we stopped at a donut shop and ate a few each along with plenty of hot coffee while we waited for the rain to end. Harry spent a long time counting his change when it came to paying so I just paid for him, it wasn't a fortune. On the way to the car, I stopped at a convenience store and bought cigarettes and a couple of newspapers. Harry was curious about that, so I told him I wanted to look at the classifieds for a room and a job. I also wanted to see whether there was anything about a dead trucker being found on the highway, but of course I didn't say anything about that.

I had been expecting Harry's car to be a clunker, and was shocked to see that it was an almost-new Volkswagen Variant fastback. We got into it and got onto the good old Trans-Canada highway which ran north along the shore of what Harry told me was Horseshoe Bay. After about twenty minutes, we split from it down a road that continued north along the shore. A train passed us along the track between the road and the shore, going in the other direction, and I shuddered involuntarily because it reminded me of what had happened just a day earlier.

Harry noticed that, and spoke soothingly about us not having far to go and indeed, maybe ten minutes later we turned off the road and stopped in a tiny hamlet called Brunswick Beach. Harry parked the car on its only residential road, and we walked down a track between houses to the shore of the bay. He had a boat there, with a small Evinrude outboard motor. He told me we would take it to an island in the bay called Anvil Island.

I didn't like that: it made me too dependent on him. So I demanded that he tell me the score, there and then. There was some hemming and hawing and deep eye-to-eye contact before he did.

He had a little outdoor plantation of marijuana on the island. It was nearing harvest time, and he could use my help. He had a cabin on the island, the former summer home of his long-suffering parents; his old man was a sailor, and used to keep a sailboat. His and his wife's arthritis had put an end to that. They let Harry live there in exchange for taking care of the place, and since there was hardly anyone else on that island, ever, he took this opportunity to start his little agricultural enterprise. He had three fields of pot plants concealed in the forest, and he offered bed and board and an ounce of good pot per week plus five hundred bucks in November, when the harvested pot had been sold. Was I interested?

I was more than interested. It was perfect. I would be out of anyone's sight for over a month.

We were both grinning from ear to ear when we shook hands on the deal.