The Homeless Millionaire

When I woke up the next morning I was thinking about Fiona's party again, and this made me so angry I jumped out of bed right away.

What the fuck was going on? I resembled a neurotic debutante about to be introduced to the Queen. I examined my face thoroughly for signs of madness while I was shaving and found so many I stopped counting. I launched a major self-therapy effort the moment I returned upstairs.

I told myself that I was an expert party participant. I'd been going to them from the age of four. In my last year at high school, there was a party practically every weekend. The host was invariably a young guy whose parents were away. There were almost always twice as many guys as there were girls, and practically all of those guys were talking among themselves and occasionally darting a look at the girls. Some of the girls giggled when that happened and some did not, and all gradually became sad and went home early.

I was basically the only guy to approach those girls and talk to them and dance with a few of them. I felt automatically compelled to do that and after a while I worked out that this was caused by the sadistic party training program I'd been subjected to from a very early age. Party Rule Number One was to ensure everyone was having a good time, and this applied to guests as well as the hosts.

This rule was drummed into my head very early on. My parents would ask why I hadn't tried to talk to that sad little boy or girl alone in the corner of the room. Sad little boys and girls were my responsibility. It was my duty to make them feel good. My parents asked me how would I feel in the same situation: wouldn't I greatly appreciate someone approaching me, and engaging me in conversation?

Somehow, it escaped their notice that whenever they dragged me along to their their social functions, I indeed spent most of my time there standing alone in a corner, feeling unhappy. The only people to approach me on those occasions were my parents, most often my mother. They'd tell me to straighten my tie or comb my hair or stop making faces or something like that. Sometimes, they asked if everything was all right. Everything was wrong, but I always lied and said things were fine and they fucked off to resume hobnobbing with other people.

Yes, I'd definitely received special-forces-grade training where parties were concerned. I could handle any party that came my way.

But you hadn't been to a party in quite a while, said a voice in my head. I took a look inside and yes! - my paranoid pal was back.

He was grinning like a maniac. He was really happy to see me. He was really happy to see I was happy to see him, too. We were getting on like a house on fire after his long absence.

I knew better than to ask him a question. He pretty much always answered my questions with questions of his own, and some of these were very uncomfortable. It was better to keep quiet, and let him do the talking.

It was also good to get active when he was around, so I examined my bottles and decided I wouldn't be taking the big Johnnie Walker to Fiona's party. I needed that for my own, private use. I'd take a bottle of champagne and a handful of joints, instead. The problem was, I didn't have any champagne. I'd have to go to the liquor store. Problem solved! I could see my pal was impressed by my quick thinking.

It was raining outside, a steady drizzle, and I dragged out my breakfast as much as I could and then drank three coffees and smoked half a dozen cigarettes and hit the can twice. On each occasion I examined my face in the mirror for signs of madness and couldn't find any. I looked so sane and normal it was frightening.

Noon came and went, and it was still raining and I decided I'd give it one more hour: then I'd go out even if the rain changed into a thunderstorm. This excused me from having to attempt a picture - an hour was far too little time for that sort of thing, I was sure I needed that much to deposit a couple of half-assed attempts in the trash while getting over the initial hump. I would have to work my ass off to get any inspiration. It would be like trying to start a fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together and the very thought made me want to cry.

So I gave all this shit a miss, and inspected the remaining unread paperbacks. They all promised to be stupid in the extreme, and I really didn't know why the fuck I'd chosen and bought them. In the end I selected the one whose cover showed a guy and a girl. One of the guy's hands clutched the girl's, and the other held a handgun pointed up at an angle and they were both looking up too, eyes wild. It seemed there was some sort of threat in front and above, maybe a king-sized King Kong.

The book was entitled 'The Bucharest Transfer', which ruled out King Kong, and there was a tiny helicopter hovering just under the B. I guessed that made Bucharest the helicopter's port of origin and given that Bucharest was the capital of Romania, a Communist country, it was likely to be a spy story. The helicopter contained Communist baddies who wanted to gun down the hero and the woman he - I couldn't tell whether he was dragging her along against her will, or if she went with him willingly. She didn't look happy, in either case. I wouldn't feel happy either with bad guy helicopters hovering back and front.

I armed myself with a coffee and cigarettes and cracked the book open and sure enough, the very first page had the guy assembling a pistol in preparation for a major move. He was seated in a hotel room in Bucharest and there were two plainclothes Romanian cops keeping a watch on him at all times because a Westerner in Romania always attracted this kind of attention from the government.

But the hero was a very resourceful guy. He ordered food from room service, and he did it because he knew it would be delivered by a guy that resembled him, similar height and build and all that crap. When the food arrived he brained the poor bastard and tied him up and gagged him. Then he changed into his clothes and left, pushing an empty food trolley and thus evading the slow-minded and flatfooted Romanian cops.

The chapter ended there and it was a real fucking bummer, because the author did one of those switches back in time and put the hero in some fucking office where a guy was lecturing him about the mission the hero was to undertake. The guy was to smuggle some ultra-important documents out of Romania together with a Ministry of Defense secretary who had agreed to copy them, and bring the aforesaid copies to the freedom-loving West. She had her heart set on living in London or New York or someplace like that. She wanted to wear minis and have her hair done by Vidal Sassoon and to marry a millionaire.

It just so happened that the hero was a millionaire. He'd joined the Secret Service out of an inborn love of adventure, inherited from ancestors who had successfully pillaged many foreign lands. He was full of dash and just enjoying his money and maybe playing the stock market didn't quite do it, for him.

From that point onward it was obvious a torrid romance was scheduled midway through the book, and this was also the point at which I noticed it had stopped raining outside. So I put the book away - the guy's name was Stewart Grange or Stew to friends, I couldn't believe it, it was the most stupid name on Earth.

The air seemed to be full of rot when I went out and I walked really fast, as fast as I could make it without slipping on the wet leaves clinging to the pavement. I started to get short of breath after maybe five minutes and got a stitch in my side after another five, and since it was still a long way to the liquor store I stopped and smoked a cigarette to give my lungs a lesson. I ran a check on my pal while I was doing that and he'd gone absent again. It really was mystifying. Was he cooking up something big? It made sense to stay out of sight when preparing a big one.

The liquor store was on East Hastings, a street that also featured numerous bars. I gave the people inside envious glances as I went by. The lineup at the liquor store was just horrific. The whole town seemed to be busy buying alcohol. I took along plenty of money and unfortunately that inspired me to buy two bottles of fucking expensive champagne. It was Dom Perignon, they had no other champagne, just a lot of sparkling wines pretending to be champagne.

I was motivated to buy two bottles because I really wanted to crack a bottle of champagne on New Year's Day, and I would be lucky to get a couple of glasses when the clock struck midnight at Fiona's place. All that walking I was doing persuaded me that I was going places and that I deserved to drink a bottle of champagne. I had a show coming in the spring! A show of my own!

It really helped to be thinking about this stuff on the way home: it started raining again. I promised myself I'd smoke a joint as soon as I got back inside my cave. It made me highly motivated and I got home in record time without falling on my ass and breaking the precious bottles.

Everything changed the moment I stepped inside the house. It was almost like stepping inside a mausoleum containing the remains of everyone I'd ever loved. A heavy cloak of sadness seemed to be suspended over the front door and it descended to envelop me completely by the time I climbed the stairs to my room. I had the totally insane thought that something really bad happened to the Noyces and that this was an instance of B-movie telepathy where people know exactly what's going on, but they dive into the shit anyway.

I was beginning to go mad again, and my good pal was nowhere to be seen. I put away the precious bottles and rolled and smoked the promised joint and after a while I began to relax.

I lit a cigarette and got up and walked around the room and said out loud:

"I'm now going to draw an apple. And fuck you."

My pal didn't respond.