The Homeless Millionaire

My next day started with a loud bang and crash coming from the staircase. It was followed by Dave and Birgit shouting, and accusing each other of dropping a suitcase. I couldn't work this one out: a suitcase usually was carried by just one person, wasn't it? Maybe they'd dropped one suitcase each.

I stayed in bed for a while: I didn't need to take a leak, and I had plenty of entertainment. It was almost like a radio show. It culminated with the two little witches having hysterics because Birgit wouldn't let them take the two Charleses along. They screamed and wailed as if they were being tortured and eventually Birgit had to capitulate. The lamentations instantly changed into squeals of joy cut short by Dave shouting from downstairs that the cab had already arrived, and that he would appreciate everyone getting their act together.

The front door slammed shut and I got up and crept up to my front window. I was just in time to see Birgit herding the little witches into the back of a taxi. Its trunk was open and a guy that had to be the cab's driver was loading a suitcase inside. The amount of pushing and shoving he did suggested the trunk was already pretty full.

Dave appeared in my field of view, walking with a bulging travel bag in each hand. He was going too fast for his own good and slipped and very nearly fell, swinging the bags wildly. Birgit helpfully advised him to watch his step and I could almost hear him gnashing his teeth. They had another argument after Birgit had got in and Dave tried to put one of the bags in her lap. After that, he took care to brush clean the bottom of the bag he took with him into the front seat.

Finally they all drove off in the cab and I felt a great wave of happiness watching it disappear down the street. This was careless of me. Happiness always activated my paranoid friend. It was like waving a red flag at a bull.

He instantly came to life, and informed me it was high time I checked myself into a mental institution. The Noyces had been nothing but nice to me. They let me fall behind with the rent, and invited me for drinks. They'd made a point of going to the gallery to look at my pictures, and praised them. They'd even tried to help me get laid. And here I was, avoiding them like the plague and wetting myself with joy when they went away.

I made an honest effort to understand what was behind all this because thinking about it silenced my paranoid pal. I found the answer midway through my long, luxurious, indulgent bathroom session.

The answer was buried way back in time. It was dated to the period when I was looking for answers by reading various philosophers. It was formulated by Schopenhauer—who else?—and it involved two hedgehogs.

Schopenhauer's story described two hedgehogs on a winter day. They were cold, and tried to share body warmth. So they huddled together, but the closer they got to each other the more painful it got, because they pricked each other with their needles. They were forced to perform a complicated little dance to work out a warmth-to-pain ratio that was agreeable.

Schopenhauer said this was exactly what took place in relationships between people. The closer you got to someone, the more painful it got. He'd even quoted the British phrase—keep your distance!—as a literal warning against getting too close for comfort. There was an optimistic aspect: you could have a positive relationship with almost anyone provided you'd gauged the distance accurately.

Chances were I'd have liked the Noyces had I been living somewhere else, and met them at a social function. We might have even become friends. But I was sharing a house with them. That was already close enough for me, and I didn't want to get any closer.

While I was shaving, I realized with a start that this was probably why I disliked my own family so intensely: I'd been cooped up with them for most of my life. I'd been away from them for four months with next to no contact and already I disliked all of them less than I had when I was still living with them.

This cloying closeness wasn't the only reason for my dislike: I'd have still thought Josh was an asshole even if he'd been living on Mars for the past ten years. But it definitely was a factor.

I'd really bought a ton of food the previous day, and I had a princely breakfast of sausage and bread and pickles and beer: I'd bought a six-pack of Tuborg at the liquor store. My paranoid pal had been knocked out by my Schopenhauer argument, but he woke up the moment I opened that beer and got his notepad ready. I decided to smoke a joint after breakfast just to show him who was the boss and when I was rolling it I discovered that I didn't have that much pot left and remembered that I still had half an ounce left with Harry.

I decided that I'd call him right away. I didn't need to go out to do that, I could do it from the house now that there were no Noyces lurking around. They'd told me I could use their phone for local calls, even long distance as long as I called collect.

I went downstairs and called his mother's house from the hall phone and no one answered. I went back upstairs and smoked two cigarettes and went downstairs and tried again. No answer. It dawned on me that this was a Saturday preceding Christmas Eve and that most likely, both Harry and his mother were bobbing around in a sea of other shoppers in a Christmas buying frenzy.

I returned to my room and examined my pot supply with a critical eye and worked out that it would easily last a week provided I didn't start each day with a joint. A joint in the morning would necessitate numerous joints throughout the day and that way I'd burn through all the pot I had pretty quickly.

I rolled a joint to reward myself for all those cool, clear-headed calculations and smoked just half of it and got going on the series I'd envisaged when I was walking in the park the other day. I knew it wasn't going to go well the moment I drew the first line. I persisted, and wasted a charcoal stick and three sheets and stopped and tried to work out why things were going wrong.

It was a grey day outside, and getting dark; but when I switched on my kickass swingarm drafting lamp I couldn't get anything right, either. And it wasn't my hand, there was nothing wrong with my hand: it drew everything I wanted the way I wanted it. The problem was buried deep inside my head and I didn't feel like digging for an answer.

I put my drawing gear to the side and got out the silly Christmas cards I'd bought the previous day. I'd bought a pack of twelve cards and I really didn't have that many people to send them to. I got out my address book and went through it page by page. I had more than a dozen names there, many dozen in fact, but hadn't ever written most of them and hadn't been in touch with almost all of them and if they got a Christmas card from me out of the blue it would make them wonder what the fuck was going on.

Basically, I had two cards to send: one to Roch, and one to the family household in Toronto. I contemplated sending separate cards to my father, mother, and brother, but the idea of writing a card to Josh and giving him my best wishes turned my stomach. After some hard thinking, I decided I'd also send a card to Roch's parents as an extra apology for all the ruckus caused by my sudden departure from Montreal. That made three; I still had nine cards left.

Robinson and Klein! That made five, and it also meant that I'd have to call Robinson about Klein's address; I had Robinson's, he'd given me his private card. I got it out and went downstairs and called him right away, suspecting he'd probably be out, caught up in the Christmas shopping madness.

I was wrong. He was in, and he answered the phone very promptly, as if he'd been waiting for it to ring. He sounded a little odd so I went into full Christmas mode right away and wished him everything he'd ever hoped for. I said I missed working at the old office a lot and that I had really enjoyed it. No wonder, sneered my paranoid pal, everyone would enjoy a job that consisted mostly of drinking coffee and smoking.

As it turned out shortly, my pal came awake for a good reason. Robinson sounded even more shaky after I'd praised the good old times at the office. I told him I wanted to send him a card and that I wanted to send one to Klein too, but did not have his home address. Should I send it to the office address? If not, could he give me Klein's home address?

There was a short silence after I'd said that. Then Robinson said, sounding more shaky than ever:

"I don't think it's good idea, old boy. No, it's definitely a bad idea."

I was completely stunned. I didn't know what to say. Asking why seemed inappropriate. We were both silent for a while. Then Robinson said:

"Abel died last night. He'd just returned home from the hospital, and he died in his sleep. I suppose we should all be grateful for that, himself included. It's a good way to die, or maybe the least bad. Let's be thankful for small mercies."

I was totally shocked. I stammered out a few clichés about how sad it was and how badly I felt about it and so on.

"Yes," Robinson said. "He was a good man. Well my boy, it was nice to hear from you. I hope you'll have a nice Christmas and especially that New Year brings you plenty of success. Working hard, I hope?"

"Yes," I lied. "Yes."

"That's good. Your future is in your hands. Make sure to keep them busy."

"I will, thank you," I said.

I asked about the funeral but Robinson said Klein had always wanted a private ceremony and his widow was respecting that wish: even Robinson wasn't invited. We exchanged goodbyes, and I practically ran back upstairs to my room and treated myself to Captain Morgan straight from the bottle. I had to have the alcohol hit me before news of Klein's death really did.

Then I followed Robinson's advice and kept my hands busy writing the four cards I wanted to send. It took me nearly two hours and I used up eight, because I wanted perfect calligraphy. That still left me with four cards. I wrote one to the Noyces and went downstairs and put it on the phone table, where they usually put their mail. There was a leaflet from a Chinese food takeaway there: somehow, it had escaped my notice when I was calling Harry. I took it with me upstairs.

It was too late to attempt any forays to the post office and anyway a visit to the post office would be hell squared: it was better to wait until the Christmas frenzy was over. So I sharpened a pencil, and drew Klein.

I drew him sitting in the office with his hooves on John A. Macdonald's former desk. He was looking through a magazine with a half-smoked cigar in his mouth. It was cocked at a jaunty angle, and it was clear that he was enjoying himself. He'd closed a great deal the previous day and was going to close another one that day and the advertisement his wife had art-directed looked really sharp.

It took me nearly three hours with the pencil and my hand ached like hell when I was done. I had to smoke using my left hand and attempted to heal my aching right by wrapping it around a glass of Captain Morgan. Halfway through my cigarette I went to give Klein's portrait a proper look and it was good, so good that I started to cry. He was alive in that picture and he was dead and it was so fucking sad I couldn't stand it.

I fortified myself with more Captain Morgan and rolled Klein's portrait up and put it into the tube that already contained Detective Moore. It felt like sacrilege, putting those two guys together. I picked up the leaflet and went downstairs and called the Chinese takeaway and ordered a huge meal. They told me they were very busy and that delivery could take up to an hour. I told them that I was fine with that. It gave me plenty of time for numerous aperitifs.

I returned to my room and put the leaflet into my night table drawer. It had become a sort of repository for my precious things, documents and money and stuff like that. Then I opened one of the two big Johnnie Walkers I'd bought at the liquor store, along with Captain Morgan.

Klein deserved that.