The Homeless Millionaire

The next day brought a change, but only weather-wise: it was raining when I woke up in the morning. I still wanted to throw up whenever I thought about drawing or painting something.

It took a superhuman effort to convince myself this wasn't an emergency calling for Johnnie Walker. After I'd done the morning routine, it took another superhuman effort to get a pad and a pencil. I tried to sketch my room and I was close to groaning whenever I drew a line. What was worst of all, it was turning out rather well so that I had no excuse for dumping it and wallowing in the warm mud of my misery instead of working.

I dumped it anyway halfway through: I didn't like the thought of showing the world what my home looked like. I tried to think of something else for my upcoming show.

While I was doing that, I stared through the back windows. There was no hint of the city ending as abruptly as it did, less than half a mile away. There was a lot of intervening trees, including a bunch of coniferous specimens that reached higher than the roof of my house. They hid the view of what lay beyond, yet they also told me what that view was like: more trees. I could still see the mountains in the distance, in spite of the rain.

I couldn't think of anything at all to draw or paint. There was beauty in the view through my windows, but it wasn't the kind of beauty people wanted to see. They definitely wouldn't pay money to have that kind of beauty hanging on one of their walls at home. I had to think of something else.

I couldn't. There was no way I'd be doing any apples or bottles, I'd done too many already. James was seated on the kitchen counter, giving me the glassy eye, but I didn't want to do James again either. I needed to do something new.

I couldn't. Maybe there was already too much newness involved, because of my move. Maybe my mind wanted to cling to what was familiar for balance. Whatever. I couldn't think of a fucking thing. It drove me crazy for a while and then I gave up and I picked up The Hashish Runners and started reading about Valentin.

I'd stopped reading about Valentin because I got angry with his stupidity, and the way it paralleled my own. I felt a little vindicated when I resumed reading, because a few pages in I discovered Valentin was much more stupid than me, after all. He agreed to captain a dhow running hashish across the Red Sea and into Egypt and at this point the author hurriedly revealed that Valentin was, in fact, an accomplished sailor. There was just no end to his talents!

What fucking killed me were Valentin's mental trips over the next twenty or thirty pages. He was having orgasms over sunsets and sunrises—one sunrise was a page and a half long, with at least a couple of paragraphs devoted solely to the way the sand dunes changed colour as the sun rose in the sky.

While Valentin was staring at the landscape and rubbing his balls, his crew were conspiring against him. About half of the guys he had on board had been bribed by rival hashish smugglers, and the only unresolved issue was when to cut Valentin's throat.

Like most disputed issues, it was resolved unsatisfactorily for the conspirators. The first guy who had a go at Valentin had his head cut off by the old family sword. The second guy, after some hesitation, unwisely tried to strangle Valentin. His efforts were rendered null and void when Valentin threw him overboard without even bothering to draw his sword. This move was wildly applauded by the sharks that had been following the dhow, hoping for food.

That particular bit was encouraging—full of brisk action, it raised my hopes for more. Unfortunately the moment the dhow docked and delivered its illegal cargo, Valentin fell in love with a chick in the tavern where he was getting drunk—I wondered about that, wasn't he among Muslims?—and there was a lot of purple prose about how he felt, and how he thought she must feel.

I didn't need that. I knew how she felt. A guy like Valentin dropping by, and falling in love with her! It was the chance of a lifetime. But of course she fucked around with him the way women usually fucked around with guys who were completely besotted.

This went on for another twenty pages that I had difficulty reading and mercifully ended when one of the numerous admirers of the chick in question challenged Valentin to a duel. Of course Valentin turned him into a corpse with effortless skill, but then all the friends of the newly deceased started coming out of the woodwork and there were forty pages of juicy action.

I particularly liked the bit where they dropped a basketful of cobras onto the sleeping Valentin's belly. But what they hadn't foreseen was that Valentin would go on sleeping, and that the bored cobras would depart to look for action elsewhere. Well, one stuck around, but Valentin gave it the eye when he woke up and then cut its head off with the family sword while it was still apologizing for the intrusion.

At this point, I envied Valentin. I'd have liked to be the kind of guy who could look a cobra in the eye and have it twist itself into knots with shame and embarrassment. Maybe one had to have half a dozen titles to pull off a stunt like that.

Tony was around. I could hear him moving downstairs. I knew he had a hell of a hangover from the frequency with which he made himself hot drinks—he had one of those whistling kettles, and it whistling constantly. It made sense to give him space, and anyway I was a little pissed off at Tony. How dared he go to a party when he'd promised me drinks and a chinwag!

He came up to my flat at a very opportune moment—I was beginning to have enough of Valentin. Of course I stopped reading as soon as I heard him come up the stairs, but when he knocked I still waited a couple of seconds before inviting him to come in.

He was cheerful and grinning from ear to ear and it didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce he'd been having the hair of the dog, and liking it.

After we'd exchanged the mandatory how are yous, he said:

"Are you busy right now? If you like we could have a drink downstairs and I'll tell you what's what around here."

"That would be perfect," I said.

"Come on, then."

I followed him downstairs and to my surprise he led me into the living room—somehow I'd assumed we'd be having one of those sessions in the kitchen. He'd laid out a proper spread.

There was a brother of my Johnnie Walker present, a younger brother, still full. There was a bucket of ice and two professional-looking tumblers. There was a plate of ham-lettuce-tomato sandwiches, side plates, napkins, salt and pepper. There was a bowl of salted peanuts and another of potato chips.

"Wow," I said. It pleased Tony enormously. He grinned from ear to ear and said:

"Let's get started. You want ice?"

It was a difficult question. I swallowed and said:

"Not in a small scotch. And I think I should start with a small scotch."

"I don't serve toy drinks," Tony said flatly.

"Okay then. One cube, maybe two if, if—"

"Two cubes. Okay."

Tony poured and actually, I'd have liked three cubes in that drink. He handed it to me and pointed at an armchair and commanded:

"Sit down. I'm going to give you a comprehensive rundown on what goes and what doesn't around here. You might want to take notes. You want to go get a notebook?"

I realized then that he was already slightly drunk. I said:

"No, I think I can manage without a notebook, Tony. Good party last night?"

"Terrific," he said, with plenty of emphasis. He drank half his scotch in a gargantuan gulp and stared at me and when he got his breath back he said:

"I'm in the process of making an important discovery, Michael. I'm discovering that being divorced is fun. I'm discovering that being divorced is actually better than being single, never married."

"Really? Why?"

"You got the stamp of approval," Tony said. "A guy that's never been married, well, maybe there's something wrong with him. But a guy that's been married—that's another story. He's been given a pass by the female brother, I mean sisterhood. At the very least, he can be expected to know how to fuck."

"I think I get it," I said.

"You know, when I was still married I had other women come onto me as well. Much more than when I was a bachelor."

"Interesting," I said. We both refreshed ourselves, and then I added:

"But you know something? What you told me doesn't make me enthusiastic about getting married."

"Don't ever get married," Tony said. "It's hell."

"Here's to hell," I said, raising my glass.

"Here's to hell."