The Homeless Millionaire

Harry was up very early the next day. He woke me up with morning kitchen activity: the whoomp of a gas burner being lit, the gurgle of the boiling kettle, the hiss of running water.

It was unfortunate he was up and around so early, because during the night I'd dreamed about women. As a result, my crotch and the inside of my t.h.i.g.hs were a sticky mess. When I heard eggs start to crackle in the frying pan, I slid off the sofa and tiptoed to the shower. I spent a long time in there, washing both myself and the clothes I'd slept in. I was glad that I'd slept in my jeans because of the cold.

This was the first time I'd dreamed about women in what seemed like an eternity. Surely that was a sign things were returning to normal? I worried over this while drying myself. I didn't want them to return to normal. Signing a contract with a gallery wasn't normal. Neither was supporting myself through painting. Becoming normal would be like waving goodbye to all that.

I comforted myself that my circ.u.mstances were far from normal. I was on an island, sharing a house with a pot grower while being looked for by the cops. Wasn't that a textbook example of the first step towards great artistic success?

Harry threw me a curious glance when I entered the kitchen. He was seated over the remnants of his breakfast, drinking coffee and smoking, and he wasn't smoking tobacco. He seemed about to ask me something, so I quickly said:

"Give me a hit, you egoistic asshole."

He laughed and held out the joint. I took a good, long toke and my lungs exploded. I bent over coughing, holding the joint out to Harry. He took it very promptly indeed, and giggled.

"That's the Cambodian bud, man," I heard him say. "Hits you like a f.u.c.k.i.n.g sledgehammer."

I gave him the reproachful eye and coughed some more, hitting my c.h.e.s.t with my fist. I could feel tears on my cheeks. There was a whistling in my ears, and my tongue had swollen to twice its size.

"You could have warned me," I wheezed eventually, and coughed again.

"No way, man. I needed some entertainment. That was why I rolled this doobie in the first place. Now tell me: what the hell were you doing in that shower? You got me wondering whether you'd drowned."

"I washed a few things," I said. "That reminds me: you got somewhere I can hang up my laundry?"

"There's a clothes line in the back. But it won't do you any good today."

He was right. It was another of those grey, drizzly mornings. I said:

"Is there someplace else I can dry them?"

He shrugged.

"Sure," he said. "If it's not a whole lot, you can throw them over the rail on the landing. But the next time you want to do laundry, use the sink here. Better still, take it along with you next time you're in town, and visit a laundromat."

"How about you? Where do you do your laundry?"

"At my mother's. Where else?"

"Where else, indeed," I said, and busied myself about making my breakfast. Halfway through, I discovered I was so high that the eggs and the bacon in the pan appeared to possess supernatural beauty. When I finally sat down to eat, I wasn't surprised to see Harry sitting perfectly still, staring with glassy eyes into the neighboring galaxy.

There was still about a third of the joint left: it had gone out in the ashtray, that pot was pretty moist. I made amends for my shower binge by washing Harry's plate along with my own, and made him a fresh coffee when I was making mine. He didn't seem to notice. After I'd set down the mugs, I picked up the joint from the ashtray.

I took care this time around, and inhaled only small mouthfuls. I used the paperclip Harry had thoughtfully placed on the table to hold the roach, and smoked it down to the last shred of paper. Then I joined Harry in his intergalactic travels.

After a while I got up and got my sketchpad and a couple of charcoal sticks. I returned to the kitchen and sketched him, veering towards caricature. I gave him fried-egg eyes and made his hair extra frizzy and added wisps of smoke drifting up from his ears. That last touch was so stupid it made me giggle. That in turn made Harry get up and take a look at what I'd drawn and he started giggling, too. He departed to pay a quick visit to his room, and returned bearing another joint rolled with the killer Cambodian pot. I gave him the sketch I'd just finished in reward.

That set the tone for the rest of the day. I did half a dozen sketches of what I could see, and what I could imagine. They included another Harry, without the silly exaggerations and extras. I also did another Chaz from memory, and this time I nailed him without any cheats such as obscuring half his face with a raised glass. I drew him leaning against Harry's car, jacket unbuttoned, one hand in a side trouser pocket, the other just about to raise a cigarette to his lips. His mouth was slanted in a friendly sneer, and one of his eyebrows was c.o.c.ked midway between irony and disbelief.

When I showed it to Harry, it actually moved him to speak. He said:

"Oh man. That's the guy, all right. Only you should've given him a joint instead of a cigarette."

"You've got joints on your mind," I told him, and he obediently got up, went out, and returned with another Cambodian rocket.

We made and ate dinner communicating with grunts and nods. It was dark by the time we were done with that, and Harry absconded to his room the moment he was finished, leaving me to deal with the washing up. I didn't mind. I cleaned up in a trance, and even washed the kitchen counter tops and wiped off the whole table, including its legs. I had to make a conscious effort to stop, otherwise I'd have gone on to wipe every stick of furniture in the house.

I looked through the stuff I'd drawn that day and a couple of pieces were actually good enough to show to Chaz. One showed my own left hand resting on the table next to a half-full mug of coffee. It was a hand capable of anything. It could be about to pick up the mug in order to throw it at someone or something. Yet at the same time it was restful and detached. It was a hand whose next action depended entirely on the mood of the viewer, and this meant the drawing was true. I'd somehow managed to show the hand's readiness to do whatever its owner wanted it to do. I smoked three cigarettes trying to nail its secret, attempting to define its magic. If I succeeded, I'd gain the ability to churn out top-quality stuff at the drop of a hat.

But I couldn't. And maybe that was proof ultimate that what I'd drawn was the truth, because truth was elusive by definition. The best you could hope for was a glimpse as it ran off to hide.

While I was gathering up the drawings and generally putting things in order, I realized that this was the last day of October. It meant that I'd been out of my touch with my old world for over a month. For over a month, everyone connected with my old life had been totally disconnected. Neither my family nor my friends knew where I was, or what I did, and what was being done to me.

The thing that was really scary about it was that I didn't miss all those people. I felt no pang of regret, no sadness nor no joy when I thought about them. Someone had said that life was mostly about other people. If that was true, I was missing out on most of my life. But it honestly didn't feel that way. Did that make me a psycho? Was I someone who went through life without any regard for other people's feelings and needs?

I told myself all that shit meant was I was coming down from my Cambodian high. It didn't quite convince me. So I took another look at that hand again, and saw that it was a remorseless hand, a hand without any mercy for whatever it took or destroyed or changed. The coffee mug was trying to escape, but its panic had made it stand frozen to its spot. That was one hell of a drawing, it did what art was supposed to do: throw your own personality right back in your face.

"Five hundred bucks, easy," I said aloud. Then I went to sleep.

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