The Homeless Millionaire

I waved the shovel in a deprecatory manner, and said:

"I was on my way back when I saw them around the house. Sorry that I didn't, you know, do something. I just couldn't think of anything I could do."

"And that was very smart," said Harry. "There was nothing you could have done except gotten us even deeper in shit."

He grimaced and took a big swig from his glass and corked his mouth with his cigarette.

I put the shovel back in its spot and went inside. It was as cold inside the house as it was outside, and I kept my jacket on. I went straight to the kitchen and got the kettle going and activated the rye bottle. I smoked a cigarette while the water boiled and then made two coffees and took one out to Harry. He was still standing and smoking in the doorway, and his glass was empty.

"Why don't you come inside the kitchen, Harry?" I asked. "It's warmer in there."

He didn't say anything, but I heard him follow me inside. He sat down at the kitchen table and I sloshed three fingers of rye into his glass and helped myself to some, too. I sat down and said:

"You know, for a moment back there I wished I had the twenty two with me."

Harry laughed hoarsely, and said:

"F.u.c.k! It was lucky you didn't. We'd both be dead by now."

"They took all your dope?"

"Yeah," he said and stared gloomily at his glass and had a swig. Then he said:

"Well, not all. They left me about half an ounce for my personal use, as they put it. Really big-hearted guys. They paid me, too."

"They paid you for the pot?"

"Well, not exactly. They paid what we'd agreed on, for ten pounds of skunk. And they took nearly eight pounds of Cambodian. Easily worth twice as much."

After a diplomatic pause - I'd actually picked up this gimmick from my Dad - I said:

"But you didn't come off so badly, did you? I mean, I didn't expect them to pay you anything. I thought they'd just grab everything, and leave."

"Hell no," Harry said wearily. "We'd been doing business for a couple of years now, and they'd like to continue. I'm one of their best suppliers."

He threw back the rest of his rye and added:

"Drink up and let's get going on that door. Otherwise we'll freeze to death in here."

It was nearing two in the afternoon by the time we were done with that f.u.c.k.i.n.g door. The hinges had been ripped out along with the bolt, and we had a hell of a time aligning the lock. It was lucky Harry had some stuff left over from repairing the roof, including a couple of two-by-fours, or we'd have been completely f.u.c.k.e.d. That house was over half a century old, and we had to replace the jamb that held the hinges: it had cracked right down the middle for most of its length. Then we screwed around with sealant for what seemed like an eternity. If it wasn't for the rye, we'd have probably just sat down and started crying halfway through.

But eventually the door was in place and no draft was coming through and there was a big fire crackling in the fireplace. We made and ate an enormous dinner of steak and potatoes and salad with Italian dressing. We cracked open the Very Old Seagram to go with the coffee, and agreed that it was indeed very good booze. Then Harry said he'd go back to his room for a nap and some heavy-duty thinking about his new financial situation. I quickly said:

"Listen, Harry, you don't have to pay me the five hundred. I need money to rent a room and so on, but let's make it a loan. Once Chaz peddles a few pieces of mine, I'll pay you back."

He snorted and said:

"Oh, come off it. I can afford to pay you what I promised, no sweat. But it's a long time to the next harvest, and I'll have to come up with something in the meantime. Have to relocate the fields too, those assholes that ripped us off are sure to come looking again next year."

"I can come up, and help with that."

Harry shook his head.

"Stick to painting, pal," he said, and left. I heard him go inside his room and throw himself on his bed so hard the springs screamed in protest.

I really felt like following his lead: I'd been up since three in the morning, and it had been one of those exciting, eventful days. But it was only just starting to get dark, and I knew that if went to sleep I'd wake up again in the middle of the night. So I went out and got more firewood and then made myself more coffee spiked with rye and sat down in front of the fire, smoking a joint and looking at the flames and thinking about my situation, financial and otherwise.

It was pretty clear that the island era was coming to a close. I'd be leaving that place soon, for sure. The outside world had come calling and busted down the door to make sure I got the message. Yeah, the door was fixed, but the message stayed with me and it was loud and clear.

I was reminded of an article I'd read a while back. It was about a world-famous head doctor called Carl Jung; I seemed to remember he was a friend and protege of Freud's. He'd come up with this notion of synchronicity: events that were connected by meaning tended to occur together. They weren't related by cause, but they were closely related by what they meant.

Jung had called it meaningful coincidence, and either him or the guy that wrote the article thought that could explain why witchcraft sometimes seemed to work. A symbolic ritual was an event that could create other events with the same underlying meaning. Someone would be pushing pins into a f.u.c.k.i.n.g doll, and someone else, somewhere else would feel actual pain.

Sitting in front of the fire and getting high, I was reminded again of that number or sequence of digits: 4-3-1. I was sure that if I could crack that code and understand what it meant, I would spare myself lots of future grief and maybe even set myself on the path to success in life. I was so inspired by that thought I went to the kitchen and treated myself to the Very Old rye and it was a mistake, because it knocked the bottom out of my high.

I now saw clearly Jung had been talking up his a.s.s, because he'd forgotten everyone including him perceived things a certain way. It was just the old human obsession with looking for, and finding patterns even where there were none. It was just the way human brains were wired, that was why I was seeing that number everywhere.

And that's why there was so much disappointment around: people were constantly convincing themselves they could see a pattern here, and another there. They'd start making predictions and get all excited about what would come next. And then they would be disappointed, because Fate would come around and kick the shit out of all their expectations. The old bitch liked her entertainment; she liked to keep things interesting. And there was nothing as boring as constant happiness, even constant misery was more interesting than that.

I wondered for quite a while what the old bitch had put in store for me. My paranoid pal advised me the possibilities were practically endless: I'd made them so by doing all the things that I had done. He made a misstep there: I pointed out that if I was the maker of my own fate, I could also turn things around.

Fat chance, sneered my pal. He began to enumerate all the occasions when I'd f.u.c.k.e.d up things just as they were starting to go well, and I knew it was going to be a very long list. So I put away the rye - it just wasn't up to the task, not even after six years of training. I got out the big Johnnie Walker and gave my pal the old one-two, right in the face.

That got him good. He shut up: the sudden silence made my ears ring. I quickly drank a couple of glasses of water to suffer a little less in the morning, then smoked a cigarette and waited until it was time for a pre-bed piss. I went outside for that, and pissed off the porch. It was amazing, it was a very starry night, Fate must have gotten bored with all the clouds and rain.

I stared at the stars for a while smoking another cigarette and I was reminded that there were all those guys around looking at them too, and seeing bears and fish and lions and twins and so on. They would go nuts looking for patterns, calculating the angles between the stars and the planets and what they meant and then write horoscopes, predicting the future on the basis of what they thought they saw.

It was all horseshit, of course. But some people took that stuff seriously, and after reading it they would go and look for a pattern that fit, and of course they'd find one if they looked hard enough. That would convince them horoscopes were gospel, and then they'd say shit like they have to stay home because indications are great misfortune would happen if they ventured outside, and talked to people.

I'd actually heard something like that from a girl I knew back in England. She was the daughter of the Canadian trade attache, and we went to school together. I'd been attracted to her initially because she had a s.e.n.s.i.t.i.v.e, thinking face, and I was happy when she'd agreed to go out with me one weekend. But when the weekend came around and I called her, she started babbling about Uranus being a bad boy in her chart for a few days. She didn't want to go out with me because her horoscope warned her of conflicts with other people. It definitely came true, because we had a fight over the phone and I never talked to her again.

I went back inside the house very determined to establish some positive patterns in my life.

I washed my hands and face in the kitchen sink, and brushed my teeth. The water seemed to make a lot of noise going down the drain.

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