The Homeless Millionaire

In spite of my relatively young age, I'd already known for a while that certain events could alter one's life completely, change it so deeply that nothing stayed the same. I got a taste of that when we were jumping around Europe, moving home every couple of years. New country, new language, new school, new people - the list of various novelties was very long. But all that stuff was nothing with the change I felt when I woke up on Boxing Day.

I was lying in the same bed, in the same room, house, city, country, and continent. The light was grey, like the day outside: this also was standard for late December, it had been that way for a while. I had a slight hangover, nothing that a small scotch wouldn't mend - that too had been a feature on preceding mornings. But everything seemed different. It was almost as if I'd entered a different space, a parallel reality.

I got up and went through my morning routine step by step and it was as if I were doing everything for the first time. The way I smoothed out the pillow when making my bed seemed to be full of mysterious meaning. When I stepped under the shower, it was as if I hadn't taken one for years. I kept an eye out for my pal and he was absent, nowhere to be seen: very strange.

It took me a couple of coffees and a joint and three cigarettes to figure out that nothing had changed except me. That was why I was experiencing everything in a new way. I was the one that had changed.

The moment I realized that, things stopped being strange. I ate breakfast, and it definitely wasn't a mystical experience. Then I got myself a fresh coffee and a glass of scotch and lit a cigarette and returned to the paperback I'd started the previous day.

I had to sip on that scotch frequently to get through the story told by the old Indian guy - on my first attempt, he'd actually made me stop reading and call my parents, that's how bad he was. But what he said sounded pretty good to the two guys, the hero and his friend, and they started making plans to have a go at the city of gold and get rich and party their brains out afterwards. This inspired them to have a little party right away, and during that party the hero's friend blabbed something about the city of gold to some people they ran into in a bar.

They laughed him and the hero out of town, and informed them that the old Indian had been telling that story to everyone for years and years. If his audience bought him enough drinks, he would also reveal that he'd been actually born on the moon, and descended to Earth on one of those moonbeams only guys born on the moon could see and use as means of travel.

The next fifty pages or so were about the two guys, the hero and his friend, agonizing whether the city of gold really existed and trying to find some proof that it did. Naturally, no proof was forthcoming. If there had been any solid proof, the city of gold would have already had an airport and a high-speed rail connection. There would have been plenty of people eager to visit a real city of gold.

Anyway, after fifty pages of that the guys finally got their shit together and set out in a canoe, exactly as advertised on the cover. I couldn't wait to get to the anaconda business - I kind of hoped they'd at least get a good scare, they deserved it - so I kept reading and sipping scotch and coffee and smoking. They capsized the canoe a couple of times, losing more than half of their supplies and their only gun. They also ate some wild fruit that looked good but gave them severe shits, and this made them come to the brilliant conclusion that good looks could be misleading.

The anaconda duly put in an appearance, and it was most disappointing. It hung from the branch and swayed over them threateningly and hissed and flicked its tongue and generally seemed ready for some serious business. But a single whack on the nose with the paddle made it change its plans, and I felt so let down I had to get myself a fresh drink.

Soon after the anaconda episode the hero and his friend saw a skeleton lying on the river's shore. This raised some serious questions, and they began arguing about the voyage. The hero's friend wanted to turn back, possibly because he'd already spent a few years in the jungle and knew well what could happen. The hero, feeling extra heroic after scoring on the anaconda, wanted to go on - it was clear they would, there were at least eighty pages left.

I put the book down and went downstairs to steal more ice and refill the empty ice trays and had the thought it would be nice if I created a Christmas present for Harry. I decided I'd draw his portrait from memory, and went back upstairs and got going after securing all the necessary supplies.

I chose pencil - charcoal seemed kind of cheap: if I got lucky I'd be done in half an hour and surely Harry deserved a little more effort than that. I drew him standing on the pier on his island. He was in the act of untying his boat and held a coil of rope in one hand and had just happened to glance up from what he was doing to check the weather.

I knew I had a corker halfway through. This wasn't just Harry preparing for a boat ride, this was a guy setting out on his journey through life and looking for portents in the sky. It had the same depth of meaning as my stolen Rembrandt - well, less than that, I was no Rembrandt, but still there were multiple ways to view it, several stories contained in that single picture. I had managed to capture one of life's fundamental truths or maybe even more than one, who knew. I wasn't sure because that drawing took me nearly four hours and I was pretty drunk and stoned when I was done. My hand hurt like hell.

I had lots of Chinese food left over from my Christmas feast and I carried it all downstairs and dumped everything into a big saucepan and warmed it on the Noyces' state-of-the-art electric stove. I ate straight from the saucepan - the generous guys at the Chinese takeaway had issued me with three pairs of chopsticks, maybe because I'd ordered so much stuff. Eating dinner took a while but wasn't boring at all because for me, using chopsticks was always entertaining in itself.

I carefully removed all traces of my activities in the Noyce kitchen, as diligently as I'd been covering up a murder. Then I went back upstairs with fresh ice and saw that I was close to killing the first big Johnnie Walker. I made myself a very weak drink and stood over Harry's portrait and dropped cigarette ash all over it while I was gloating over my talent.

I cleaned the ash off and rolled up the portrait and put it in my tube. I was accumulating artwork all right, but I still didn't have a single piece done for the show. I ran a check on my paranoid pal. He wasn't there! It was fucking amazing.

It was already nearing eight in the evening and I decided I'd find out whatever happened to those two dimwits looking for the city of gold. I made myself comfortable and and rejoined them while they were still arguing over proceeding versus turning back. They fucking went on and on, both of them kept revealing large chunks of their biographies for one reason or another, and only stopped when night fell and it was time to give everything a rest.

Our hero was woken up in the hour before the dawn by menacing rumbling noises coming from a distance. He became aware of a strange smell hanging in the air and was contemplating what it meant when the earth shook a couple of times, waking up the hero's friend. For once, there agreed quickly that this was an earthquake, closely linked to a forthcoming volcano eruption. They were off in their canoe in under a minute.

They kept going downriver, paddling like crazy to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the rumbling noises that were becoming louder by the minute. Then, after a number of turns in the river and some really retarded dialogue, they suddenly emerged from the jungle and into a huge clearing.

There was a big step pyramid in that clearing, and each of its stacked platforms had numerous openings suggestive of entrances and windows. The top platform appeared to be built of gold. Being the top platform it was the smallest, but there was still a hell of a lot of gold involved. A big golden obelisk stood in each of its four corners, and an even bigger obelisk stood in the center. The hero had the thought that maybe this was the Earth station for the moon transit system described by the old Indian.

Disregarding the growing danger, the hero and his friend instantly stopped trying to escape and went ashore to check out all that gold. They were nearing the pyramid when the invisible volcano in the distance stopped farting around and growled and exploded with such a roar that the two greedy idiots couldn't hear themselves screaming. Then the earth started shaking and the pyramid fell into pieces and a stone sailed down and brained the hero's friend, splitting his head like a watermelon. The hero was knocked out by a smaller, non-lethal piece.

When he regained consciousness, everything was over: the smoking ground felt solid, and silence reigned over the jungle. He checked on his dead friend and then his surroundings, and found pieces of gold scattered all over the ground. He squeezed as much as he could into his pockets and went to the river shore and found out that he was short one canoe, and all of the remaining supplies.

So he sat down on the ground, and spent a few hours and six pages feeling sorry for all the bad he'd done, and very sorry for himself. Then he became aware of a new noise and in due course a helicopter appeared right over the clearing. It was carrying a couple of scientists on their way to investigate the volcano and descended to evaluate the clearing as a suitable landing ground and of course the hero was spotted and rescued. No one asked him what he was carrying in his bulging pockets. The scientists were in a great hurry and not interested in having a look around the clearing, and it all ended with the helicopter taking off and the hero craftily asking about their exact geographical position.

He was evidently planning to come back and the last page carried confirmation that he really did. It featured an ad for a new book featuring the same guy. The ad suggested he'd be visiting casinos and making friends with aristocrats and bedding assorted beautiful women while staying one step ahead of a murderous gang that somehow had learned he knew the location of a city of gold, or what remained of it anyway. I promised myself to steer clear of that novel.

I drank a couple of mugs of tea while I was finishing that book, and all that remained was the evening bathroom stuff. It felt pretty luxurious, coming and going to the bathroom as I pleased. I was looking forward to doing that at the flat I'd rented from Tony.

Boing! My paranoid pal was back. He was facing me and mouthing something; the new me was having hearing problems. He seemed to be repeating the same two words over and over again. They totaled just three syllables, and by the time I went to bed I'd worked them out.

The words my pal kept repeating were Salmon Arms, Salmon Arms.