The Homeless Millionaire

Harry left for the mainland early the next morning. It was a Sunday, and he wanted to spend it with his mother. He promised to return Monday evening so that I'd be able to go down to Vancouver to see Chaz at the gallery on Tuesday, as arranged.

I had a shitload of stuff to do in the meantime. I'd promised myself that I'd take at least a dozen new pieces with me. That would involve drawing and painting at least two dozen pictures on the optimistic premise that every second one would be good enough to sell.

There was no way I was going to be able to do twenty four pictures in two days while really putting all I had into each piece. I would be able to manage half that, if I got lucky. But maybe that was asking a little too much from Fate. The old bitch had been smiling and patting me on the shoulder throughout the previous day, and I knew she liked variety. She was easily bored. Well, I'd have gotten bored too watching all those morons walking around and making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

My paranoid pal was bored and restless as well. He'd been forced to twiddle his thumbs through most of the previous day, and he didn't like that. He was a hardworking guy. So he sprang into action the moment I'd finished breakfast, and completed my routine of drinking a quart of coffee while chain-smoking cigarettes.

He reminded me that I'd achieved next to nothing over the past month: my artistic output was limited to one good piece, the shotgun and the shells lying on the table. He gave me a small lecture about how important it was to paint or draw every day, just so that my hand worked well. This was precision work, as demanding as a neural surgeon's or one of those guys that disarm mines and bombs. My paranoid pal assured me that given my lack of practice, anything I produced that day would be shit, bad enough to inflict serious psychological damage on its creator.

It was another beautiful day, so I went outside to shut him up and check things out for landscape potential. But it was far too cold to do any painting or drawing out of doors. My hand would become stiff and my teeth would be chattering inside ten minutes. My paranoid pal was grinning when I went back inside and started looking around for something I wanted to capture on paper. He'd already scored a small victory, and was looking forward to scoring more.

I couldn't see anything to catch my fancy, I really couldn't. So I ended up trying to draw Chaz from memory. My first attempt ended in disaster. So did the second one. So did the third. My paranoid pal was beside himself with joy. He went off for a stroll, humming a happy tune. So I made another attempt and this time I succeeded, partly because I cheated by obscuring most of Chaz's face: I drew him chugging down a c.o.c.ktail from a big glass. But it was good, maybe not good enough to sell but definitely good enough to give Chaz as a gift: he seemed to have a well-developed sense of humor.

I got myself a beer as a reward, so naturally I drew the beer bottle next - Chaz had raved about my beer bottles, hadn't he? He'd said they were much better than anything Ludo could have done! And Ludo was the hot new darling of the art world. So I set out to kick Ludo's a.s.s, dethroning him in the process.

It came out weird. The bottle I had drawn back at Roch's cottage had been dancing with the joy of its existence. The bottle I drew now was full of menace. It was the kind of bottle you'd put on a poster warning people off booze. It was a bottle that was waiting to be picked up and smashed against a hard edge and pushed into someone's face inside some scuzzy bar.

I had let the way I felt about Ludo guide my hand, and it showed. So I got up and walked around finishing off that beer and smoking a cigarette. My paranoid pal was back from his stroll, but he was quiet. He was looking at the bottle I'd just drawn and he approved.

I got myself another beer and did another bottle, out of sheer curiosity at what would come out of it. This time, it was really lazy bottle. It was a bottle that stood at grandpa's elbow while he dozed in an easy chair. I didn't like that bottle much, and neither did my paranoid friend. He started whispering about daylight ending soon, with my total output so far consisting of a single piece to sell and another to give away.

That put me in a state of light panic, exactly as my paranoid pal had intended. I drew three more pictures: yet another bottle, yet another Chaz, and Harry. The Harry I drew seemed like a seriously f.u.c.k.e.d up person, so I gathered up the last four pieces I'd done and used them to start a fire in the fireplace. It was getting really cold inside the house and it was getting dark.

It was obvious I wouldn't get any more work done that day. I went to the kitchen and spent an hour peeling potatoes and cutting them into long, thin fries - it was good exercise for my hand. I fried them up in a pan, which involved turning over each individual fry a couple of times. I rummaged around until I found a paper bag and put the fries into it together with a tablespoon of salt, then shook the bag until it was all greasy and close to falling apart. I fried three vacuum-packed boneless pork chops while I was screwing around with that bag. They would begin going bad the next day, anyway.

I spent the rest of that day in a food-induced coma, and ended it early. By the time the sun came up the next day, I'd already showered and shaved and was breakfasting on coffee and Scottish shortbread. A shortbread shortage was looming, and I made a mental note to get some when I was in town the next day. It really made me feel like playing with a dog, just like that guy in the picture on the lid.

Then I went through everything I had and found three pieces I could safely show to Chaz. That made a total of four, a little short, and two of them were takes of the view from my bedroom window at Roch's house. This was pitiful, I needed at least two more pieces. My paranoid pal was full of anticipation.

Out of sheer desperation, I drew the bookshelf next, with the scoped rifle leaning against its side. It played nicely off the books. Someone had just walked up to that bookshelf and put away the gun and looked through the books, leaving them in slight disarray. There was a big gap where a fat volume had been pulled out and a book was leaning into that space as if it was pining for its missing companion.

After a bit of thought I added an imaginary pair of leather gloves lying on top of the bookshelf. A couple of glove fingers had flopped over the edge and were pointing downward next to the missing book. This took me forever, because I was working from an image in my mind and constantly had to switch between it and the image that was taking shape on paper. And each time I went back to the image in my mind it would be altered, however slightly, because that's what happens when recalling stuff stored in the mind. So I would have to sit still with shut eyes to refocus and bring the original image back, and f.u.c.k if it didn't get harder every time. But in the end I managed to pull it off and was really happy with the result. That was another piece I could show Chaz.

There really wasn't anything left in the room to inspire me, so I went to the kitchen and got a few potatoes and a knife and tried to draw that. I guess I was attempting to duplicate the bookshelf gimmick in a way, with the knife instead of the rifle. The knife was supposed to be on the verge of jumping at the potatoes to cut them into pieces and of course the potatoes should have been in despair. But it all came out lame, so lame I tore it up the moment it was finished.

I had planned doing a couple of watercolors that day, to put some variety in my offering. But my failure made me too jumpy to f.u.c.k around with water and paint and a paintbrush. So I put away the potatoes and the knife and looked around and finally got a few apples and f.u.c.k.e.d around with them on the table until they seemed to be talking to each other, huddled together in a jolly little group. I did that it charcoal and it came out so well that I decided to try a watercolor. I really needed color to do justice to those apples.

It took me three f.u.c.k.i.n.g hours to paint them. At one point, I was close to stopping halfway through because my hand was starting to hurt. But I gave it some relaxing exercise by using it to drink beer for a quarter of an hour, and eventually I was done and happy with what I'd done. I'd done it right on time, too - the light was fading.

I was ravenously hungry by then and pigged out big time on eggs and bacon and baked beans and bread; I went through two cans of beans. Then I relaxed with a coffee and a cigarette. My paranoid pal was in full retreat, cowering in the corner with arms wrapped around his head. It was a serious misjudgment on his part. He should have been on full alert.

I was just about to make myself another coffee and maybe treat myself to a shortbread when I heard Harry come in.

I'd left my artistic output strewn around on the coffee table and the sofa so I assumed he was looking at that when he didn't enter the kitchen right away. Maybe I was right, and he had been looking at my stuff. But he definitely wasn't thinking about it when he finally joined me in the kitchen. He was carrying a big bag of shopping in one hand and a newspaper in the other. He put the newspaper on the table and said:

"There's an article in there that you should read."

I looked through the paper while he was putting the shopping away. I didn't have to lok far. Page three was taken up by Peter Schmidt, with yet another picture of his fat mug. The main article on that page was the mix of fact and speculation that I'd read before. But there was a sidebar that made a big difference.

The sidebar described a hitchhiker Schmidt picked up at a gas station in Calgary. The two guys at the station store had remembered me well: it was a good description. If Stan and Barbara who had dropped me off at that gas station read that description, they'd be on the phone to the cops within minutes, telling them about the guy they'd picked up in Winnipeg. The trail would end there, thanks to my second-hand train ticket. But that was little consolation, because anyone who'd read that description would give me a long second look when they saw me.

I put the paper away and found that I was already on the receiving end of a long look from Harry. There was no use trying to beat about the bush. I'd told him I'd picked up a ride in Calgary. And I'd even lied that I saw Schmidt there, nearly hitched a ride with him as a matter of fact.

I could see in Harry's face he knew now that I'd lied about that. So I said:

"Sit down, Harry. There's something I need to tell you about."

He nodded, and said:

"I'd appreciate that."

Over the next few minutes, I told him everything. I gave him a straightforward account of what had happened, fact after fact: he did this, I did that. I didn't talk about how afraid and desperate I'd been. I just stuck to the facts.

When I'd finished, Harry said right away:

"What I don't understand is why you didn't just run away. He wouldn't have a chance of catching you, with his weight. You could have then forced a car to stop, and got the cops onto him."

"I had left my bag in the cab," I said. "It contained everything I had."

Harry nodded, and was silent for a while. I was beginning to feel really uncomfortable by the time he said:

"You know you did the world a major service. I know you did the world a service. But the system won't see it that way. The system hates anything that happens independently of the system. The system hates you, right now."

"As long as you're not part of the system," I said.

"No, I'm not. I might be even prepared to swear in court that it couldn't have been you who killed that asshole, because when that happened you were already on this island with me. But we both want to eliminate the possibility of it ever coming to a court case, don't we."

"We definitely do, yes."

I grinned when I said that, because it was clear Harry wouldn't shop me to the cops. More: he was contemplating perjury on my behalf. Harry said:

"You've got to lay low for a while. People have short memories, and in a couple of weeks next to no one will remember all that shit. But all the same, you should consider a few changes. Different hairstyle, ditch that seabag of yours, it stands out. Get something else to carry your stuff in. And don't wear that jean jacket."

"But everyone's wearing jean jackets."

"No matter. You kind of cut a characteristic figure in that jacket. Wear your nice new Canadian Tire jacket instead."

"Okay," I said.

"This won't go on forever. A few months from now, you can look however you like without a care. But right know it's best that you stay here. Out of sight, out of mind."

"But I'm to see Chaz tomorrow. And what about those guys that tried to steal your pot plants? They saw me, all right. I even did some gun-pointing."

Harry pondered that for a while.

"Somehow, I don't think so," he said eventually. "If they go to the cops, they'll have to explain how they met you, and why you were pointing a gun at them. And you know, Peter Schmidt was a major asshole. Everyone in their right mind is applauding what you did. But the system does not have a mind. You need feelings to have a mind, and the system doesn't have any. So you have to hide away for a while."

"I have to see Chaz tomorrow. I promised that I'd bring some stuff, and I'm supposed to sign a contract."

We went over that back and forth a couple of times. Harry could take the pictures for me, but he sure as hell couldn't sign a contract in my name. So in the end, we decided that I'd go with him into Vancouver the next day.

It definitely promised to be an exciting day, that was for sure.

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