The Homeless Millionaire

I ended up asking three questions.

Yes, someone had rented the flat: a very nice young lady. Her name was Jane Delacorte. She was a student about to graduate, and she worked part-time.

All that told me exactly nothing. It could still be any Jane. Then Birgit surprised me by saying:

"She'll be moving in on the first of March. We're finally putting a bathroom in here."

She went on to tell me that John, David's plumber brother, had been forcefully reminded of his family responsibilities. He was to spent most of February installing a bathroom on the top floor. There also was an ambitious plan involving a couple of kitchen cabinets and a hotplate. My room really was about to become a flat!

Birgit said she'd be helping John, making me feel sorry for John. She added:

"I think Dave told you I lost my job."

"He did."

"I've already got another one," she said. "They tried to poach me last year, offered a bigger salary. Now they've got me."

"That sounds like a really smooth transition," I said. I cleared my throat, and added:

"But you don't seem happy about it."

"I'm not," Birgit said. "I'm sick of work. No, that's not right. I'm not sick of work. I'm sick of everything that goes with it. The fucking office politics. The fucking masks everyone wears, all those false smiles. When they ask how you are and you say you're okay, they ask if there's something wrong."

"I don't get it."

"You're not supposed to be okay. You're supposed to be fine or better, preferably great. How are you? I'm great! And how are you? Great! That's great! Great to hear everything's going great! Okay, great! See you!"

"I think I see your point," I said. I very nearly pulled out one of my Johnnie Walkers. But before I could do that, Brigit said:

"Well, I'll be going now. Are you sure you want to give this to me?"

"Yes."

She beamed and for a moment I thought I'd have to resort to defensive manoeuvres with the box. But she just picked the picture up and held it in front of her face with the tips of her fingers as if it were a fragile butterfly. She actually started walking while holding it like that.

"Hey, let me roll it up for you," I said. "It's easier to store that way."

"It's not going to be stored," she said. "It's going up right away."

"Really? Where are you going to put it?"

"I'm not sure yet. I'll talk to Dave."

We parted the best of friends. Once again, I regretted moving out of there. Why the fuck didn't John get his act together before I moved in?

It's always a question of timing, my paranoid pal said. He made me jerk so badly I nearly dropped my cigarette. He hadn't been around lately. I suspected he was pissed off at me for fucking up his portrait. Stuff like that tends to rankle a bit even among the best of friends.

I told him it was nice to see him. He got all paranoid when he heard that, and left. I was alone again. It was time to go to work.

I needed to paint another James to replace the picture I'd given to Birgit. I didn't mind doing that. I actually wanted to do that. Repeated scrutiny of that picture had revealed a number of flaws. For example, that hand shadow on the wall was too spooky. That was cheap. It needed to be dreamy, not spooky.

It was time to put my newly-arrived easel to good use. I laid the box down and ripped it open and my lip sagged all the way down to the floor.

There was a miniature treasure trove in there. The box contained my easel, expertly folded, and protected by a padding of neatly arranged clothes. The smell of freshly done laundry hit my nose.

I received six pairs of socks, two thick and warm. I received six pieces of underwear, including a pair of long johns that would keep my balls warm even in Arctic cold. I got T-shirts and shirts and a pair of smart black casual pants that I'd wished I had with me a few times. A plastic bag contained a pair of almost-new moccasin shoes that I'd left behind because I'd thought they'd be of little use.

One of the T-shirts was wrapped around something small and rectangular. In fact, it felt as if I was handling my hidden Rembrandt, in miniature.

It was a framed colour photograph of the kind that get put on mantelpieces. It showed my family, myself included. It had been taken on my eighteenth birthday. I was scowling like hell. Josh had been forced to put an arm around my shoulders, and he made sure it hurt.

Our parents were standing behind us. They too held a similar pose: my father's hand drooped over my mother's right shoulder. It was a different embrace from the one I shared with Josh. Josh was basically making the first move to strangle me; my father's hand was as weary as a runner who has just run a dozen miles.

I wrapped that picture up again. I was moving soon; there wasn't any sense in setting stuff up just so it could be packed again. But I still felt a little guilty about doing that.

There were other little treasures too. Not all of them were well-chosen. There was a clock radio that I hated. The idea was that it was enjoyable to wake up to the radio. But most people, when they set an alarm at all, set it on the hour or maybe half past. They'd wake up to an announcer all excited about a traffic jam somewhere or about a special deal on something they didn't need. If they were really unlucky, they'd get the main news: in Vietnam???

You'd have to be one hell of a sick fuck to enjoy waking up to something like that.

The alarm could be turned off permanently, and there was no denying it was a handsome clock, very modern-looking. Clocks like that only appeared the previous year, they still were a novelty. It featured square red numerals: the colon separating the hours from the minutes blinked rhythmically. I just couldn't handle that.

But I set it up on my night table just the same. I was going to leave it as a parting gift for Jane Delacorte, whoever the fuck she was. I hoped she'd enjoy the blinking red colon.

It was a while before I'd finished dealing with all the stuff brought by the courier. I wanted to set my easel up by the southern window. That meant moving the table. But the table had to be moved to a spot where I could still use the lamp clamped to the tabletop. If I extended it to maximum height, it would be shining level with my shoulder: acceptable, but not good.

Light came from above. That was its nature. I could add as many extra sources of light as I liked???left, right, below???but there always had to be light falling from above.

My only option was to move the easel near the ceiling light. But I'd need an extra source of light too, so that involved moving the fucking lamp, table attached, to the centre of the room.

It took me a while to work it out. I would put the easel next to the table with the lamp, and paint while sitting on a chair. I had a French easel with a neat tray that changed into a drawer when the easel was folded. It had adjustable legs, and I could set the picture as low as my chest. That would ensure I'd have light coming from above, not a lot higher up, but that was fine. Slanted light always made things more interesting.

It worked out just great, as they liked to say at Birgit's office. I spent the rest of the day working on James. Painting him again took me only two hours, and the result was much better than the original. James had a new awareness of what was going on. He wasn't stupid.

The hand shadow wasn't menacing unless someone wanted to see it that way. Many people would see a dream coming true. I fancied this particular James could fetch several hundred dollars???in hand, after the gallery's cut and all that bullshit. If I could do one of those a day???wow! I thought: art, here I come.

When I'd finished with James, I had a dinner composed of cold baked beans and sausage and bread and two whopping big glasses of Johnnie Walker. It tasted so good I was ecstatic. I had to promise myself I'd finish off Captain Morgan before I had any more whisky. Otherwise, I'd have immediately went for a long walk with my old friend.

I killed off Captain Morgan at five past noon the next day. I spent the final twenty minutes preparing psychologically for the execution while smoking consecutive last-cigarette cigarettes. I wasn't feeling so good physically, which was about normal, again. But my mind was super-active, and racing off in a hundred different directions.

One of the directions it chose led to John, David's plumber brother. I'd met him soon after moving in. I'd met him before I met David, for fuck's sake. He'd been fixing something and grudgingly allowed me half an hour in the bathroom. I'd never actually seen him working and I wondered how he would cope with installing a bathroom on the second floor. He'd need to connect hot and cold water and sewage disposal and it looked like a hell of a job.

I hoped that job would turn out well. I hoped that John wouldn't fuck up and that the little witches wouldn't receive a shower of shit when the tenant above hit the can that one time too many. I hoped Birgit's new job would turn out to be much better than her previous job, too. I became aware that lately, I seemed to be wishing everyone well. I seemed to be turning into a fucking angel. It was insane! What had happened?

The very first sip of Captain Morgan sorted that out. I'd finally gotten laid, that was what happened. Getting laid made people nice to other people, even if it didn't always work in reverse.

This reminded me that I really should've called mobile lip Jane. I'd told her I would. I'd told her Birgit had given me her phone number. Of course I said that I'd asked for it. Telling her it was pushed in my face and subsequently banished to the back of a drawer wasn't diplomatic. I was my father's son, and it didn't feel as depressing as it usually did. Getting laid worked miracles.

I got dressed quickly and went to the pub to call Jane from the payphone, and maybe eat and drink something while I was at it. It was still fucking cold, and I regretted not putting on my freshly arrived long johns. My dick and balls did their best to burrow inside my body. I hoped they'd reappear when required. I hoped that I would warm up inside the pub.

I didn't. I was nearing the entrance when I saw mobile lip Jane seated next to the window???fortunately facing away, and she didn't see me. I was sure it was her even though I only saw her back. She was wearing that black leather jacket, with the collar turned up. She was hot. She could probably walk all the way to the North Pole in that jacket.

The guy seated across from her and facing me was the guy I'd seen that first time I bumped into Jane at the pub. He glanced at me and continued talking to Jane and I turned and crossed the street and went inside the park.

When I was sufficiently deep inside and out of anybody's sight, I stopped and lit a cigarette. The cold air made me choke when I inhaled. I smoked it anyway. I was a tough guy. I could take it.

When I finished smoking my cigarette, I went home.