The Homeless Millionaire

I woke up a couple of hours before dawn with the urgent need to hit the can. The hall was very dark, but I remembered that the bathroom was located right before the turnoff that led to the front of the house. What I did not remember was that there was a casual table next to the bathroom door, with a wooden bowl containing potpourri. I bumped into it and just about managed to keep it from falling to the floor. But there was potpourri under my feet when I exited the bathroom, and I made a mental note to apologize to Richard and Nancy for the mess in the morning.

When I got back to my bed, I found I couldn't sleep. I had several trains of thought running simultaneously through my head; big, long trains loaded with serious cargo. The train that was uppermost in my mind was an express train full of cops, all leaning out of windows to scan the landscape and muttering, where the hell is that Ryman asshole.

It was an extraordinary stroke of luck that I'd met Harry right after my arrival in Vancouver. If it weren't for him, by now I'd probably be locked up in a cell awaiting transport back home for an emergency lobotomy followed by electric shock therapy. So I thought maybe I'd get a start on that by smoking the joint I still had left. I didn't have any beer left, though, and halfway through the joint my tongue already felt like sandpaper.

I pinched the joint out and closed the window - it was really cold outside - and went on another trip to the bathroom. This time, I kept close to the other wall, there were no casual tables waiting in ambush along that route. I put the back of my hand to the wall to make sure I held a straight course. Three steps later, my hand hit something and there was a soft rasp next to my face and a loud thud as whatever it was crashed down to the floor.

I froze. I heard movement down the hallway. Then I heard a door open and the light suddenly came on and Richard's voice said:

"What the f.u.c.k is going on?"

"I'm sorry," I stage-whispered. "I needed a drink of water, and I was trying to get to the bathroom."

"What? Don't whisper, man, there's no one in here but us and you, and Nancy's come awake too. Oh shit, I get it. It's that f.u.c.k.i.n.g print. I meant to put a new nail in, I knew that it was hanging there by the skin of its teeth."

He walked up to me and as he did, I looked down and saw that I'd knocked a picture off the wall. It landed the right side up so I could see it was one of those oriental pieces consisting mostly of beautiful calligraphy. It was shaped like a vertical panel and framed in black steel and it was lucky that it hit the floor frame first before toppling onto its back: the glass didn't break. The nail that it had hung on lay beside my foot, powdered white by the drywall plaster.

Harry picked up the picture and propped it up against the wall while I picked up the nail. I held it out to Richard and he said thank you and took it and said:

"Oh yeah, you said you wanted some water. Come with me."

He led me to the kitchen where he poured some water into a small plexiglass jug and gave it to me along with a plastic glass.

"Can you handle taking this back to your room?" he asked. It was a very polite kick in my balls, but it still stung.

"Yes," I said. "I'm really sorry. Please tell Nancy I'm sorry, too."

"Don't worry about it," said Richard. "Goodnight."

He walked out and I scurried hurriedly after him, wanting to reach my room before he put out the light in the hallway. I needn't have hurried because he left it on.

I shut my door and switched on the bedside lamp and poured myself water and drank. Then I went up to the window and opened it and finished smoking that joint.

I stayed by the window, shivering and smoking cigarettes, right until the sun came up. I started that stoned session off by trying to count how many different places I had woken up in over the last three months. They came to six without counting my home in Toronto. My old home in Toronto was on another planet. It belonged to a different life.

Several cigarettes later, I was still reminiscing about that old life of mine. It seemed totally carefree, and I wondered what the hell it was that had induced me to move away from home. I had really hated living there. But now it seemed like, well... Okay: it felt like home. It didn't in any way resemble the hellhole I'd perceived it to be, back in my old life.

By the time dawn broke, I'd figured it out. I'd been angry all the time back then. So were my parents. So was Josh. We were all angry at each other because we were sick of each other's company, and everyone was carrying a load of mutual hurts and insults acc.u.mulated through all those years of living together.

I had spent three months away, and I wasn't angry at my parents any more. But boy, I could bet my a.s.s they were pretty angry with me, maybe more than they'd ever been.

This line of thought led to a downward spiral, so I got busy. I went to the bathroom and took a shower and regretted I hadn't copied Chaz, and gotten myself a toothbrush and a disposable razor to carry around for assorted emergencies. Then I went back to my room and drank water and smoked until I heard Richard and Nancy moving around.

That happened around half past seven, and I gave them another twenty minutes: when I was leaving, the room was blue with smoke. I left the window open to air it out and went down to the kitchen and sure enough, Nancy was already conducting combat operations in there. We exchanged good mornings and she asked me if I'd slept well which I perceived as an ironical question, maybe because I was still stoned. So I mumbled that I was sorry to have woken everybody up and escaped. Nancy called after me that breakfast would be ready in around twenty minutes.

I got the magic Canadian Tire jacket from my room and went to have a look at the Bella Notte guesthouse.

It was one of those cloudy-with-breaks days, and one of the breaks occurred just as I was leaving the guesthouse. By the time I got to the Bella Notte, sunlight was playing in the leaves of the trees across the street and I even heard a bird begin to trill from a treetop.

The Bella Notte guesthouse looked much bigger in daylight. It had a huge front porch enclosed in glass, with a couple of palms standing between the wicker armchairs. The rest of it was clapboard painted a pastel forest green, topped by a wood shingle roof weathered grey. There was a little Italian flag on one side of the entrance, and a little Canadian flag on the other. The Bella Notte had both bases covered.

It had a totally different air about it than the Montrose back in Montreal. I was really tempted to go in there and ask about the job they'd advertised. But it was a little early for that, it wasn't even eight. So I went back to my guesthouse and ate an absolutely delicious breakfast: fried eggs with bacon and tomato and waffles with maple syrup and toast with some kind of wild berry jam that was just mindblowing. Nancy told me she'd made it herself, from berries she'd gathered in the forest.

After I'd eaten I went back to my room and found it really unpleasant: it stank of smoke, and it was cold. So I went to for a walk in the park across the street. It ended at the railroad tracks running along the waterfront. I stood there watching a tug make its way towards the sea until a freight train rumbled into my field of vision and wiped out the view. It destroyed my mood, because it reminded me of the train ride I took after killing Schmidt.

The Park Pub was still closed; it didn't open until ten. So I spent the next hour wandering around the park without a purpose, smoking and staring at the trees and listening to the various birds exchanging comments about the day. I could hear the hum of faraway traffic and a ship siren that hooted sadly at intervals, and wondered whether that was the tug I'd seen or some other boat. My paranoid pal was quiet, even though over the past day he'd acquired enough material to torture me for at least a week. It was the maple syrup that did him in, together with the homemade jam.

I was by the entrance to the Park Pub, smoking yet another cigarette, at five to ten. Within a couple of minutes, I was joined by a balding guy in his fifties wearing an old military field jacket adorned by a large white peace symbol painted on its left b.r.e.a.s.t. It was my anchor against his peace sign, and we didn't talk. We smoked in silence until the door opened with a cheery greeting from the barman who invited us in.

The peace sign went for the bar counter like a homing rocket. I stopped by the payphone next to the entrance and dialed the number Harry had provided me.

He'd asked me to call at ten, but he definitely wasn't sitting next to the phone and waiting for it to ring. I waited over a minute before my call was answered by a shaky old female voice saying hello in the kind of tone I'd have used upon encountering a grizzly bear or a cougar or something along those lines.

"Good morning," I said, all polite and civilized. "My name is Michael and I'm Harry's friend. He asked me to call around ten. Could I speak to him, please?"

"One moment."

It stretched to at least ten moments, during which I wondered whether I shouldn't have offered my condolences to Harry's mother when she'd answered the phone. Then Harry said:

"Mike?"

"Yeah. Good morning."

"You got me out of the crapper. Listen, hang around there and I'll be coming in about an hour. Okay?"

"You mean wait for you at the guesthouse?"

"Yeah, yeah." He slammed the receiver down. It looked as if I had really interrupted him while he was attending to business in the can.

I went back out on the street before the urge to have a pint defeated my common sense. I had just over sixty bucks left, and an hour to kill. I planned to spend it lying on the sofa in my room and looking at the ceiling, but on the way there I decided I'd visit the Bella Notte and ask about the advertised job, just for the shits and giggles.

The door to the enclosed porch was open and there was no bell push next to it anyway, so I went in and saw that the front door was ajar. There was a broom propped up alongside and I guessed someone would be coming shortly to sweep the porch, and didn't ring the bell. It was a bad move because my presence caused a shock to the woman that showed up a moment later.

She didn't look as if she might be easily shocked, either. She was almost as tall as me and had long hair so blond that it was almost white. She had small blue eyes and big cheekbones and a jaw that could crack half a dozen walnuts at a time. She definitely didn't look Italian, more like Scandinavian. She was wearing a flannel shirt and jean overalls and rubber boots and I guessed I was lucky she didn't grab that broom and started beating me with it.

I smiled and wished her good morning and she wished me good morning too, somewhat doubtfully and in a voice full of iron filings. I apologized for startling her, and explained I'd come to ask about the advertised job.

"I think it's gone," she rasped, then turned her head and shouted:

"Guido!"

"Yes, my darling queen," sang out a voice inside the house.

"Did you end up hiring that guy? The one with nose hair?"

"Yes."

She turned back to me and said:

"It's gone. But you know something, we don't know at this point how this guy will work out. Wait a moment."

She went inside the house and came back with a business card and gave it to me, saying:

"Give us a call in I don't know, two or three weeks' time. Okay?"

"Sure."

"Great," she said. Her tone clearly indicated she wanted me to f.u.c.k off, so I did.

Harry's Volkswagen was already parked in front of my guesthouse when I stepped out into the street.

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