The Homeless Millionaire

When I heard a car approach the house the next morning, I was convinced it would be her, of course: the Woman in Red. I had gotten up early and was 100% groomed and ready, wearing clean clothes and smelling of Tabac aftershave. I quickly went to open the door, rehearsing assorted opening lines in my head. My plan was to reproach her gently for leaving so abruptly the previous day, to find out her name, to ask her inside—I had a hell of a lot carefully planned.

All those plans turned to shit in a second.

At first I was confused but still hopeful, because the car in the driveway was a Ford Mustang. But it was much older, painted a faded metallic blue, and scratched and dented here and there.

The car had tinted windows and I couldn't see who was sitting inside. I still half-expected to see her opening the door and getting out, looking as beautiful as I remembered her to be.

But the person that got out was an ugly guy with a scraggly black beard. He was wearing black plastic-framed glasses and a beret and a black T-shirt over his jeans. He was probably thinking he looked like Che Guevara in that famous poster. I disliked him right away and wondered who he was, and what he was doing here. Then the passenger door opened, and Roch got out.

"Hey, Mike!" he called. "Surprise!"

"Yeah, it sure is," I said, but much too softly to be heard. So I nodded vigorously a few times to show them that I agreed, that it was a surprise all right.

"This is Michel," Roch said, approaching me and waving at the ugly guy, who was busy getting stuff out of the car's trunk. "A Michael just like you. You're destined to become friends, eh? We've brought tons of booze and drugs. We're going to have a serious party, man."

"Great. You got eggs?"

"What?"

"Eggs. You know, the stuff you eat for breakfast. The things that pop out of hens' asses."

"Fuck!"

Roch turned back to hold a short conference with Michel. They spoke French and I didn't understand a single thing. Then Michel gave me a hostile glance, dropped the bags he was holding at Roch's feet, and slammed the trunk shut. They cursed each other for a few seconds—at least that was what it sounded like—then Roch opened the trunk again, and turned around.

"Hey Mike," he called. "Can you give me a hand?"

"Sure," I said, and walked over to join him, noting that he was starting to grin. He was grinning because the stuff he wanted my help with consisted of one twenty–four and three six-packs of beer.

The six-packs contained Molson Brador, a beer, pardon me, a malt liquor that had appeared the previous year and immediately won many converts because it had 6% alcohol. That was why it was called malt liquor as opposed to beer. People had gotten all excited and invented a new term just because it had 1% more alcohol content than standard beer.

Roch and I carried everything into the house while Michel sped off in the car to buy eggs; he was in a hell of a hurry. We opened a couple of cold beers from the fridge and lit cigarettes. Roch insisted on going out onto the deck. I could swear that I could feel her watching us from the house across the lake.

I was so obsessed with the thought she might be watching us that I didn't follow what Roch was saying, at first. He punched my shoulder, and said:

"Hey. You all right?"

"Yeah," I said. "I mean, not hundred per cent. I caught a bad cold the other day. And I'm surprised to see you. I didn't expect you. Tomorrow, Sunday—maybe, yes. But not today."

Roch glanced at the lake and took a swig out of his bottle, and I just knew he was about to lie to me. He said:

"I have to be in town Saturday night, and Sunday. So I came today. What, you aren't happy to see me?"

I laughed, hoping it wouldn't sound fake. It did, so I said:

"I'm happy to see you, more than that, I'm fucking happy to see you, bringing booze and drugs and joy and goodwill and everything. But I'm still surprised. You came because you want to talk to me about something?"

It was a shot in the dark, but I scored a bullseye. Roch's face changed and he said:

"Yeah, we've got to talk about something. But let's do it later, okay? Let me relax a little. I had my old man breathing on the back of my neck all week."

"No, wait. I've got to know right away. Is it bad news?"

"On the contrary. It's good news. I might have found you a job, a job that pays really well."

"What is it?"

"Later. I'm not hundred per cent ready for that conversation yet."

This was bullshit, but fortunately I had a brainwave. I said:

"It's up to Michel, right? He's the one with the job. Is that why you've brought him here?"

"Fuck! Hold it, will you? No, it's not entirely up to Michel. It's up to me, too. Hey, Mike. Why don't you lose that train of thought for a while and roll a joint? You got any of that hash left? We brought plenty of pot, but I feel like hash."

"Sure," I said. "Sure, there's some left. I'll go and get it." I took a big swig from my bottle and added:

"I'll bring a couple of cold ones, too."

"Great.

By the time Michel returned with the eggs, Roch and I were flying high. We'd switched from beer to the scotch Roch took out from his bag. It turned out Michel had also brought a couple of bottles of wine, and it was revealed that he'd paid for the Brador, too. I began looking at him with more sympathy.

Before long, we all became best friends—the magic of alcohol!— and there was a lot of laughing and back–slapping. We got quite drunk, and we got hungry. The guys had a good laugh at the charred meat in the fridge. They'd brought a fresh supply, and Michel and I did the steaks on the grill while Roch fucked around with the salad in the kitchen.

We didn't boil any potatoes: Roch had brought half a dozen baguettes from a good bakery in Montreal, and we ate one each with the steaks and the salad. We had red wine with that and I got thoroughly bombed. Michel kept rolling fresh joints from the pot they'd brought; it wasn't very good, but there was plenty of it and we got totally spaced out.

But there was a fly in the ointment, a bitter drop in the honey: Roch kept harping on that time when we went crazy stealing things. He made me out to be an expert thief: he told Michel about how I’d carried out six albums from a record store, one by one. It was true, but I wasn’t particularly proud of that feat.

They actually were all shit LPs, and I stole them from the stand that was right by the exit from the store. I wouldn't take one if they were giving them away from free. It was all stuff like Andy Williams singing Moon River, and Pat Boone and Tom Jones and shit like that. I offered all of them to Roch. To my surprise, he took them. He’d even thanked me.

I had no idea what he'd done with them until that evening: he revealed that he'd given all of them away as presents to his numerous elderly relatives. The aunt that had died and left the houses got the Andy Williams, and Roch told me that she'd absolutely adored that record. It made me feel good to hear that I'd actually made someone feel better with my stupid stealing.

We carried on like that for quite a while, drinking, smoking, and swapping stories. It was great fun. I made it to my bedroom on my own legs and lay down and grinned at the ceiling for a while before falling asleep.

Next morning, all the heavy shit came crashing down.