The Homeless Millionaire

I woke up the next day not feeling too well but the moment I realized it was Monday I sprang out of bed as if it was on fire. I didn't want to lay there thinking how nice it would have been to still have a job to go to, at the office.

It was grey and gloomy outside, and just a few minutes past eight on my watch. All that walking I'd done the previous day had really tired me out, and I'd slept for nearly ten hours. I drank mug after mug of scalding hot coffee, smoking like a maniac and bracing myself for what was to come. This was to be the first day of my big test, the test that would determine whether I could really make it as a professional artist.

The house was quiet: not a single sound disturbed the morning stillness. Had they all died during the night? They hadn't: returning from by bathroom run, I heard signs of life from behind the bedroom doors. The little witches had started a half-whispered dialogue, and there were a couple of wet coughs from their parents' bedroom. I ate a hurried breakfast and rolled and smoked a joint, standing at the open window and planning my day.

I was determined to get started on the portrait of Fiona's father. I also had to go to the bank: I had less than twenty dollars left in my wallet. Luckily, Robinson & Klein had an account with Royal Bank, just like me. I could go to their branch and deposit the check and take a couple of hundred in cash without waiting for the check to clear.

I decided I would do that on my self-set lunch break. Then I made myself a fresh coffee, smoked a cigarette, and got down to work.

I laid out the three photographs in a row on the table and stared at them with the intensity of a lonely man selecting a mail-order bride. Fiona's father wasn't an easy man to read. His boardroom portrait displayed power, intelligence, and competence, which was a given because he was posing for a boardroom audience. The photo with the fish was all about control and success, with a hint of boyish joy. The picture where he was seated and talking to his wife was the only one that wasn't posed, but it was a two-thirds profile and that made it more difficult to read.

I was missing the key that would unlock those three pictures, three faces to reveal what lay behind them. And discovering what lay behind them was essential if his portrait was to be any good. On top of that, I still hadn't decided if I'd work with charcoal, pencil or watercolors. Fiona hadn't specified a preference: it was all up to me. And I was still committed to making it a freebie, which gave me the moral right to go the quickest, easiest route.

The quickest, easiest route was charcoal. With a bit of luck, I could get it done within a couple of hours. With a lot of luck, I could get it done in ten minutes. A lot of luck meant every single touch, every single stroke had to be exactly right. But as Robinson had observed the other day, luck wasn't really luck. Luck involved plenty of preparation, and I'd done very little over the past few weeks. My artistic output had been limited to fooling around with a pencil for a few hours at the office, and some stoned doodling in the evenings.

The wise thing to do was to warm up my hand a little, just as one would warm up a cold engine. I smoked another cigarette, staring at the blank sheet of paper. Usually it resulted in various shapes beginning to appear, and all I had to do was to trace them.

But it didn't happen that morning. The sheet stayed blank. After another cigarette I decided I'd simply draw my room as seen from my seat. It was a sparsely furnished room without complicated decorations: easy-peasy.

It wasn't. I couldn't get a single line right. I thrashed the sheet and switched from charcoal to pencil and tried again. Same result, the room that emerged on paper could be any room, anywhere. It suggested that its inhabitant had as much personality as a wet piece of cardboard. What was worse, I got some of the proportions wrong and the perspective was skewed, too. It definitely wasn't a promising beginning.

I had another go with the pencil, drawing different subjects from memory. Drawing from memory was more forgiving, because the evidence I'd fucked up wasn't right in front of my face. But it wasn't forgiving that morning. I couldn't get anything right. The connection between my brain and my hand was all screwed up.

I kept trying, taking breaks now and then to walk around the room smoking and cursing under my breath. The Noyce gang had become fully awake in the meantime. The witches weren't doing any squealing or giggling: they must have been feeling really sick. Some kind of hoarse-voiced exchange was taking place between Birgit and Dave. They'd opened their bedroom window and when I stood in mine smoking a second joint, I gathered they were arguing who was more sick. I listened with interest and found out it was an intro to the real issue at hand: who would get up to cater to the kids' morning needs.

Eventually, Dave did. I heard him coughing on the landing: then he opened the door to the kids' bedroom and asked something and was answered with complaining wails. I wasn't even thinking about drawing anything any more, I was thinking about strangling the little witches, choking them till their eyes popped and their tongues hanged out. I didn't feel bad for thinking like that. A couple of years earlier, Roch and I had agreed during a smoking session in the school's washroom that everyone thought about killing someone at least once a day, on the average - usually someone near and supposedly dear.

It was no use trying to continue my artistic efforts that morning; my hand was aching already, anyway. So I dressed and went to the bank with Robinson's check.

I passed the office going there - that was the shortest route - but didn't feel weepy this time, just angry. There was a long lineup at the bank for some reason and I became even more angry. I deposited the check and withdrew two hundred in cash. Then I bought the day's newspaper and went into a bar that had just opened for business.

They had no Toby on tap and I almost left but then I thought fuck it, and ordered a coffee and a double brandy. I went to a table by the window and smoked and drank and stared at the street. It wasn't raining and there were quite a few people out and about. I noticed a guy resembling Fiona's father; I really had to get going on his portrait. I had told Fiona it would be ready the coming weekend, and it was promising to be a difficult task. My paranoid pal whispered it could turn out to be impossible.

This reminded me of the little witches, and I looked through the rental ads. There wasn't a single ad that sounded promising. Mr. Chance was being an asshole. Maybe he disliked Mondays as much as the next man.

I skip-read the news: there was nothing about Schmidt or the Montreal museum robbery. They'd caught the cop killers, though. They were nabbed in a fucking restaurant. They went to eat there the other evening and got handcuffed for dessert. The article didn't say whether they'd paid the bill. It did say they tried to resist. This gave the arresting cops a good excuse to vent their feelings, and beat the shit out of the arrestees.

They got the cop killers! That meant Detective Moore wasn't as busy. It meant that sooner or later, he would call Robinson & Klein to arrange a tete-a-tete with me at the police station. I wondered what his reaction would be when no one answered the phone at the office. He would probably go there, and find the place locked up. He didn't have my address, so he would likely hit Robinson next. He didn't seem to be the kind of guy who would give up easily when he was after someone's ass.

It would be perfect if I managed to find a new place in the meantime, and moved out without leaving a forwarding address. I could even lie to the Noyces that I was returning to Toronto for a while! Then I remembered that Harry and I had talked about the possibility of my staying at his friend's farm, out of town.

I paid my bill and got plenty of change - I decided I'd call Roch after I'd spoken to Harry. There was a payphone in the bar's vestibule. I called Harry twice, waiting for a full minute each time for someone to pick up the phone.

I called Roch - I had no difficulty remembering his number, this time - and he picked up the receiver on the first ring. He sounded totally fucked up and I asked what was wrong.

"I've got the flu," he croaked. "The phone's right next to my bed. Man, I feel like shit."

"Maybe you are a shit," I said.

"Maybe," he agreed.

I told him the seasonal flu was also visiting Vancouver. I also told him I'd lost my job and got commissioned to do a portrait and was determined to give the full-time artist thing a good try. I added I had to find a new place to live in the nearest future.

"It was okay when I was out at work six days a week," I said. "But staying at home all day, day after day, is going to drive me crazy. And I don't want to start killing little girls."

"No, that would a bad idea," agreed Roch. Then he totally shocked me. He said:

"Why don't you move back here? I mean you don't have a job to hold you down."

I was silent for a moment. Then I said:

"I am supposed to have another show in the spring at this gallery here."

"So? You can return to Vancouver in the spring with stuff for your show."

"All this going back and forth is going to be expensive," I said.

"Yeah... But I'll give you a really good break on the rent."

"That's great. I'll seriously think about it. How is Michel?"

Roch understood right away what I really meant. He said:

"He's in a bit of a dead-end situation. I mean he's got a roof over his head and enough money, but he isn't getting anywhere with the rest."

"Oh," I said.

"He's okay, though. He'll be okay, maybe things just will work out a little bit worse than he expected."

We talked of this and that and kidded around for a couple more minutes, then we disconnected. I went back inside the bar and got myself another coffee-and-brandy.

I sat down and drank and smoked and turned over what I'd heard from Roch in my mind. The Montreal cops weren't getting anywhere close, that was a relief. But it sounded as if Michel was running into serious difficulties selling the stolen paintings. I hoped he wouldn't start trying too hard to sell a few. He would be asking to get caught, and I'd already given my share to Roch anyway.

I loved the idea of moving back to Montreal for a short while, but it would be crippling financially. I wasn't going to hitchhike across the country any more. Hitchhiking could be very risky business. It was also far too slow.

A Vancouver-Montreal return ticket cost a small fortune, train or plane. The whole thing was feasible only if I somehow came into more money. I recalculated how much I could hope to get from the Space gallery. Sadly, even the most optimistic estimate didn't make the trip possible. I cursed myself for declaring I'd do the portrait of Fiona's father free of charge.

I paid up and left the bar and did some serious shopping. I bought art supplies and a couple of paperbacks and most importantly, two forty-ounce bottles of Johnnie Walker. I was definitely going to work very hard all week.

I also got a couple of cartons of cigarettes and a pouch of cigarette-rolling tobacco to disguise my purchase of a hundred cigarette papers. I ended my spree by buying a drip coffee maker and coffee filters and two pounds of the strongest ground coffee I could find. I couldn't stand to drink instant coffee all day.

I was so loaded with stuff by that time that I had to take a cab home. I was really burning through my money in a hurry.

I went up to my room determined to work very, very hard.