The Homeless Millionaire

Tony grinned at me. It was a horrible grin implying that he knew things about me that I did not. My paranoid pal loved it. He was choking with laughter.

I said:

"Hey, Tony. Can you be a little more lucid? If not, maybe we should just drop it and have another drink."

I knew well the notion of key phrases, sequences of words that make people behave like Pavlov dogs. My father used them all the time in his diplomatic work. So did advertising copywriters and everyone else who was trying to pull a fast one.

But my suggestion of having another drink didn't even register with Tony, contrary to my expectations. He was staring at me with wide-open eyes, and his lips were curving in yet another I know-more-than-you-do grin.

Throughout my interactions with Tony, I had kept my habitual scowl off my face. It was wise not to scowl at one's landlord. But now I let it loose, and it had a magical effect. Tony said hurriedly:

"Take it easy, Mike. I mean it's no big deal. You don't remember what you told me?"

"I don't remember much from the final two or three hours of our last party," I said. "I was having too much of a good time to bother remembering things."

Tony beamed.

"Yeah, it was great," he said. "You know, you're the first guy in quite a while who I can really, like, let my hair down with. Be totally open and honest without bothering about all the usual bullshit."

"I'm glad to hear that, Tony. But you know, I still can't remember what I'd told you. Can you enlighten me about that as well as about what I did in your kitchen? I seem to have been really active in your kitchen at some point."

Tony laughed.

"You helped me out with snacks and ice and shit," he said. "Hell, I didn't think you were that far gone. I mean you didn't stagger and you weren't slurring."

"I was on autopilot. I've got this guy that takes over when I can't or don't want to handle things."

"You've got a guy like that? That's brilliant."

"You don't?"

"No. But hey, maybe I've got the wrong kind of guy. I stagger and trip over things and even fall down when I can't handle things. Do you think that if I fired this guy, I'd get a better guy? Like yours?"

"You can't change the guy you were originally issued with," I said. "He's there to stay. My guy may be good at navigation but he's also pretty unpleasant, you know? He gets a big kick out of telling me things that depress me."

"My guy's a little like that, too," said Tony, catching the wave. It was the right time to fire my torpedo. I picked up the joint from the ashtray and relit it and took a hit and passed it to Tony. I blew out a thick smokescreen and said:

"Well, it's good to know I didn’t throw up or crap in your kitchen. I was getting a little paranoid about that. I'm still paranoid about what I told you, though. Did I tell you I, uh, fell in love with a hooker?"

Tony giggled and instantly began coughing because he'd been taking a hit from the joint when I fired my torpedo. When he'd finished, I offered him a cigarette, saying:

"You gotta tell your throat who's the boss. I know I told you some heavy-duty stuff, Tony. You wouldn't laugh while inhaling, otherwise. The time to laugh is right after exhaling. Clears your lungs from the surplus of carbon oxides."

"Man," said Tony. "You're about to trip again, I can tell. You know what you told me? You told me killing people was easy, could be done with nothing more than a penknife or even just a number of dirty looks, given proper dirty look potency. You told me that you could have done the big museum robbery in Montreal, the one that's been in the news, as easily as lifting a finger."

"No fucking kidding," I said. It seemed to be only thing to say. Tony went on:

"You told me you and your pal got stoned and climbed a ladder to the roof of that museum and smoked a joint there before a guy working on the skylights in that roof chased you away. You said anyone who felt like it could get into the museum through those skylights and take whatever, like a million-dollar painting. You said all the stories in the media about some criminal mastermind or super-thief doing that thing were totally stupid, like any high school kid could have done it. You said you would have done it if you had the guts to do it, and the spare time to do it in the first place."

"Really?" I said. "The only thing that stopped me was being too busy with other things?"

"You told me you didn't have the time to scratch your ass in Montreal, what with your studies and helping a friend renovate his house and working as a night receptionist in a fucking brothel. I guess you fell in love with your whore there."

"It wasn't a brothel," I said. "It was one of those guesthouses or hotels that specialize in accommodating amorous couples at short notice. And no, I didn't fall in love with her there, it was someplace else and before I'd even taken that job. And no again, I didn't actually smoke a joint on the roof of that museum in Montreal. But yes, couple of people I know did go up on that roof and smoke cigarettes there—no joints but they still had a great experience, they'd had some magic mushrooms earlier. That's what actually happened."

"Man," Tony said. "You sure do have an imagination."

"Don't you?" I said. "Don't underestimate your own imagination, Tony. Or the guy you were originally issued with. He always has a say."

I managed to confuse him totally with that, which was great. By the time I'd retreated upstairs, he was half-convinced his memories of our last party were as faulty as mine.

All the same, I spent the next day severely sick with paranoia. I couldn't work. I spent practically the whole day walking around my flat and smoking cigarettes or alternately lying on my bed and smoking cigarettes. I had a few drinks too, finishing off the Johnnie Walker that was pretty nearly dead anyway after the session in Tony's kitchen.

I tried to occupy my mind with something else, namely Valentin and his adventures as a hashish smuggler: there were those suspicious sails on the horizon when I'd last stopped reading. But the sails turned out to belong to a dhow transporting goats, and when it passed by their staccato bleating put Valentin into another major depression episode.

He spent two more pages examining his insides and I couldn't believe it, I kept reading only because it was all so fucking ridiculous. Here was a guy who was a rich aristocrat, and he was also very handsome and healthy and young. That had made him depressed—he just fucking couldn't stand it—so he ended up on this boat with a bunch of lowlifes, smuggling hashish even though he, himself did not even smoke the stuff—or maybe that was exactly because why he made that move, because in my experience smoking hashish encouraged appreciating the life you had.

Valentin just had to be totally retarded, his brain had to lack basic nourishment to make him turn his back on the chateau and the money and all the girls who wanted to fuck him. Of course there was this thing about his having killed someone in a fight but he could easily wriggle out of that—rich and entitled people always did—and continue with his easy, beautiful life.

But he didn't want to. He didn't want to! Of all the fools…

But you're exactly like him, my paranoid friend said. Luckily no dialogue between us ensued— just then Valentin's ship encountered another set of suspicious sails and this time around, the suspicions were well-founded.

The sails in question belonged to a ship that in turn belonged to an enemy—a competitor in the hashish-smuggling business. That ship, unlike Valentin's, was equipped with cannon and shortly thereafter, Valentin was forced to surrender with his sails in tatters and half of his crew dead or severely wounded.

The captain of the enemy ship had a big, bushy black beard—a little far-fetched, since he was an Arab—and he took great delight in telling Valentin how much care would be taken while Valentin's insides would be dragged out of his anus and other stuff like that. It had little effect; during his prolonged bout of introspection, Valentin had come to the conclusion, somewhat rightly, that having his insides taken out via his anus was actually mild punishment for all his previous sins. His attitude took the enemy captain by surprise and Valentin's death was postponed while his future executioner came up with a more imaginative way to end Valentin's life.

It was a bad move. Ancient Romans had this saying—carpe diem, seize the day—and the enemy captain should have heeded this advice instead of pondering new ways to make Valentin regret the fact that he was being killed. A French gunboat operating out of French Somaliland intercepted the dhow. Following an exchange of courtesies during which the captain lost his prize-winning black beard along with his jaw following an accurate shot, Valentin was freed.

He was feted at a celebratory dinner aboard the gunboat that very evening. The Blackbeard of the Red Sea had been, in fact, a known pirate and Valentin's French compatriots were overjoyed by the victory. Valentin was promised any assistance he needed to get back home; it was assumed he'd been captured by the Red Sea Blackbeard while indulging in one of those whimsical self-discovery trips that were popular among people who had too much money for their own good. Valentin was good-humouredly advised to visit Venice or Versailles or some other civilized place when the urge to indulge in soul-searching hit him again.

At this point, there were over a hundred pages remaining in the story, so I felt pretty sure Valentin wouldn't take this good advice. There would be a happy ending, of course; guys like Valentin always experienced happy endings; but there would be more heavy shit coming down in the meantime.

As I prepared for sleep, I wondered if that was what would happen to myself.