The Homeless Millionaire

I woke up around noon feeling that I was about to die and spent at least a quarter of an hour getting my breathing right.

When I did, I got up and lit a cigarette even before my first coffee was ready. I all set to do a lot of coughing, but it didn't happen. That cigarette went down really well, and that was when I realized I was still drunk.​​

Tony was still drunk as well, from the sound of it. He was already fully mobile, repeatedly climbing and descending the stairs in a manner that suggested grievous disability. I stood with my ear to the door, listening to what was going on, and I honestly couldn't work out why he needed to climb the stairs every other fucking minute. Even a retarded insect was capable of better planning.

I drank a couple of coffees and decided not to put my life at risk by taking a shower. Tony was still going up and down the stairs every few minutes, and I simply had to go and talk to him about that, and hopefully make him stop. I was beginning to dread the plaintive squeal of the third stair down from the first floor landing.

I began my preparations by going into my very private and very tiny bathroom to tidy myself up and when I saw myself in the mirror, I almost changed my mind about confronting Tony. There was a risk of his having a heart attack when I did. I nearly had a heart attack myself. In the mirror, I looked like a hungover, very evil zombie.

I washed my face twice with cold water, and it helped a little: I looked less evil. So I did it again, but unfortunately this failed to improve my face any further. I was stuck with it, for a while.

Drinking another coffee and smoking another cigarette, I formulated a strategy. I decided that I'd exit my room when Tony was navigating his way downstairs. His back would be turned and he'd be much lower than me. I'd have full strategic advantage.

I executed this plan the moment I finished my coffee. Carrying a smoking cigarette, I emerged from my room and crept across the landing to the stairs like a fucking commando. I timed things perfectly: Tony began another of his descents to the ground floor just as I was ready to run down.

I went down really fast and I must have sounded like an avalanche because when I saw Tony staring at me from the foot of the stairs he had a panicked look about him.

"Hey, Tony," I called out the moment I saw that. I made it sound like he was my dearest pal.

He didn't answer. He looked at me in what I felt was an increasingly hostile silence as I climbed down the last flight of stairs. He was wearing his glasses, unframed glass lens connected by metal bands pretending to be gold. Those glasses made him look dangerous. They were the best weapon he had.

He said:

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

I gaped, for a brief moment. When I recovered, I said:

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

"You were going on and on about work last night. Like you had an urgent job you had to go to. I remember that very well. So don't try to shit me."

"I wouldn't dream of shitting you, Tony," I said, stepping gracefully off the last stair. "What I was talking about was your job, not mine. I was worried about your going in to work today."

"Well I didn't," Tony said triumphantly. He sounded pleased, like a minor god that had just noticed the thunderbolt he'd hurled hit its intended target.

"You told them to fuck off?"

"I told them to fuck off. I told them I was so sick of meaningless meetings that I'd developed a fever. Well, maybe I was a little cagey about the meaningless meeting business. I kind of implied it. Anyway, I told them my doctor advised me to stay away from the office for a couple of days. I told them that if they didn't immediately grant me paid sick leave I'd sue their asses for inhuman treatment and win. I made it sound as if I were joking, you understand. But I wasn't, and they knew that."

"What did they say?"

"They said that I was an invaluable asset to the company and that they were granting me two days' sick leave, fully paid."

"You're shitting me."

"I shit you not."

"You must be a very powerful man, Tony."

"Well I suppose I am, in some ways," he said, swimming in a sea of modesty. Then his face grew stern, and he demanded:

"What the fuck are you doing here, anyway? You want to make another phone call?"

"God forbid," I said fervently. "No, I wanted to ask if you were all right. I mean I heard you running up and down the stairs."

"I'm running up and down the stairs to get straight."

"Oh."

"When you run up and down the stairs, you burn plenty of calories. Alcohol is composed of calories that are extra easy to digest. You burn them before you burn any calories from food. So when you exercise, you sober up and at the same time you make sure your hangover won't be as bad. Got it?"

I was silent for a while. Then I said:

"It sounds like you miss those meetings, Tony. It sounds like you're a real firecracker at this sort of stuff."

"Yes, I'm actually not bad," he said. Then he caught himself, and peered at me with new suspicion.

"Can you tell me what the fuck you meant by that remark?" he said.

I felt a hot wave of irritation, and replied:

"You just knocked me out with that argumentation. I mean, the point is to burn calories, right, and there are easier and more pleasant ways to burn calories than running up and down the stairs. You could try sex or masturbation and if that doesn't do the trick, you could go for a walk. Hell, you could try all three. What do you think, Tony? "

I was about to turn around and go back upstairs to my flat when I realized that I'd just grossly insulted my landlord. I'd just presented him with the grounds for kicking my ass out on the street. So I stopped and turned around and said:

"I've drawn a portrait of you, Tony. Would you like to see it?"

It hit him right between the eyes and kept going until it hit the back of his skull. Then it bounced off, and started rattling around in his head.

"A portrait?" he said.

"Yes."

"Of me?"

"Yes."

"You drew my portrait?"

"Why don't you come and have a look," I said. I began climbing the stairs. After a while, Tony followed.

The final flight of stairs—between his floor and mine—seemed to give him extra difficulty. He ascended the last few steps looking at me as if I were some sort of sick fuck about to chop off his head. Well, I couldn't really blame him. That was usually the effect zombies had on normal people.

I opened the door to my flat and moved away keeping my hands in plain view so that he could see I wasn't holding an axe or a hammer and invited him to go inside.

He did, with a glance over his shoulder that told me he expected that axe or hammer or whatever to show up anytime. He was twanging with tension when he refused my offer of a coffee or a cigarette.

I went to get my tube and I could read Tony's mind, he was thinking that I was getting a rifle or a sword or some other weapon that would fit inside the tube. Which maybe I was, in a sense.

I got his portrait out of the tube and gave it to him without unrolling it and pointed at the table.

"Why don't you put it there," I said. "I'll fix the light for you."

I fucked around with my kickass lamp while Tony unrolled the drawing. It was a small comedy show because the ends kept rolling up on him. I took mercy on him and helped him secure the ends with assorted heavy objects. Then I stepped away and lit a cigarette and did my best not to look at Tony.

Tony was very quiet for a while. He probably didn't expect to get something like that from a zombie. That portrait was good. It wasn't great, but I suspected that Tony wouldn't like it if it was great anyway. He wouldn't mind a great landscape or a nude or whatever. But great portraits were almost always disliked by their subjects.

A great portrait showed who a person really was. And almost everyone liked to think they were better than who they really were. It was just basic human nature. I'd heard the saying that truth is beautiful very many times, but it was still a lie. Truth was neither beautiful nor ugly. It was very, very ordinary. Painting Truth would involve a lot of grey and a selection of other shitty, unexciting colours.

The trick in making Truth attractive and palatable was to show its manifestations, and not Truth itself. A portrait of a murderous asshole who'd raped and killed a dozen women could make people think: what a jolly guy. Maybe The Laughing Cavalier showed such a guy. The cavalier portrayed definitely had fought in a war or two; that was what cavaliers did, in those days. He'd done his fair share of raping and pillaging and killing.

Franz Hals, one of the top twenty of all times, got it exactly right. The cavalier he'd portrayed wasn't really laughing: it was just his upturned moustache that created that impression. Under the moustache, his lips conveyed wry amusement, at best. And there was a wariness in his slanted eyes that suggested his right hand—out of view—might be holding a pistol. He could very well be wondering whether to shoot the guy that was painting him right away, or maybe wait till later. It was an attitude natural of a cavalier who'd run into plenty of hostile guys in the course of his cavalier career.

"I'm fucking floored," Tony said hoarsely, jerking me out of my reverie: while I was thinking about Franz Hals, I'd gravitated to the front windows. It was a bad, or maybe a good moment to do so.

I saw Roy Maddon or at any rate someone who looked a lot like him walk past on the sidewalk across the street. He was wearing a baseball cap whose peak obscured his face, so I couldn't be sure. I watched him walk away. His hands were in his pockets and he was hunched over and walking very fast. He was probably cold and I felt that way, too.

Tony said:

"Fuck. Is something wrong? Hey! I just said I love your drawing. Michael?"

"I'm sorry, Tony," I said, turning around to face him. "I guess I was overcome by emotion."