The Homeless Millionaire

The next day, I woke up with the worst hangover I'd ever experienced in my short but eventful life. There were a couple of guys working with steam hammers inside my head; also, while I slept, an old, dirty, smelly cat had crawled into my mouth and died. I could feel its fur on my tongue.

I opened my eyes with some difficulty, and saw an unfamiliar, dirty white ceiling with a damp spot in the corner. I was lying on a big mattress that had been laid on the floor of a large room, and there was someone lying next to me.

I turned my head and saw a mass of wavy black hair; a couple of strands had strayed onto my shoulder. Judging by the smell, it was a girl. I was still wearing my T-shirt and my underpants, but I didn't know whether that was good or bad.

I slid off the mattress, careful not to wake up the girl. I had no recollection of bringing her up to my room and no recollection of what had happened the previous evening. I needed a drink very badly. There was a can of Coke standing on a small metal folding table by the big bay window that overlooked the backyard. I slithered up to the table like one sorry lizard and found out the can was empty.

I picked up my jeans from the floor, and looked at the sleeping girl. I couldn't see her face: it was covered by her hair. She was sleeping in her clothes, a white blouse and a long, black skirt with printed red flowers. The hand on the pillow next to the jungle of black hair had short, stubby fingers. She likely had short, stubby legs, and I was glad I woke up wearing my underpants.

I tiptoed out of the room, closing the door softly, and looked around. I was standing on a big landing that featured several closed doors, all badly in need of some fresh paint. I tried the door next to mine, and hit the jackpot: it was the bathroom.

It was like something out of a goddamn museum. The far wall was occupied by an enameled bathtub with brass taps and a handheld shower whose grip was porcelain or maybe even ivory; it was hard to tell, because it was coated with dirt. The hand basin had been crafted to resemble an overturned seashell, and had separate taps for hot and cold water.

The tap squeaked miserably when I twisted it open; I took the precaution of letting water run for a while before drinking any. I wanted to wash my face and realized that my soap, toothpaste and toothbrush were still in my bag. I had to locate my bag; that was the priority.

I splashed cold water over my face, stepped back onto the landing, and went down the stairs. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but the stairs creaked, groaned, and moaned like something out of a horror movie. They actually moved under my feet: it was as if was treading on something that was alive.

When I finally made it downstairs, I couldn't see my bag anywhere, yet I could swear I'd put it near the staircase, right after I'd arrived, when I was stone-cold sober. I was hit by anxiety and fresh shame: I needed a cigarette. Luckily I turned out to have a crumpled pack of Rothmans in my jeans. The pack contained exactly one broken cigarette. I tried to look on the bright side: instead of just one cigarette, I had two. I lit the half with the filter and inhaled deeply.

"Pssst!"

I turned and saw Roch standing at the far end of the entrance hallway; I remembered that the kitchen was located at the back of the house, with a door leading straight out into the backyard. Roch beckoned for me to come closer, raising a finger to his lips. So I crept over as quietly as I could, letting Roch usher me inside the kitchen. As soon as he'd closed the door I said, keeping my voice low:

"Roch, I'm sorry... I'm really ashamed. I—"

He cut me off with an imperious wave of his hand.

"Did you fuck Martine?" he asked.

"Martine? Who is Martine? You mean the girl with a haystack of black hair?"

"Yes, yes, yes. Did you fuck Martine?"

"Actually," I said, "I think I didn't. Can't remember a lot from last night, but I'm positive I didn't. I mean I would remember something like that, for sure."

"Did you check your dick?"

"What!?"

"Did you look at your dick this morning?"

"Uh? Yeah, sure. When I was taking a leak. Look, Roch, I had to piss into the hand basin. I was afraid of using the toilet. It looked too dangerous. But I washed out the basin really well."

"Very smart," he told me. "That toilet's blocked. Jean-Pierre lost his glasses in there when he was throwing up. The idiot that found him with his face in the bowl flushed it, he said it seemed a good way to wake Jean-Pierre, and now the pipe's blocked. I'll fix it later today. But fuck all that. Listen, Martine has crabs. She's already passed them on to a couple of guys. I had her swear she wouldn't fuck you before I let her into your room, but she's a sex maniac and a liar. So you didn't fuck her? Smart. I always knew you're a smart guy. How do you feel?"

He talked like a fucking machine gun, hundreds of words a minute.

"I don't feel too good," I told him.

"Right." Grinning maniacally, he pulled out a folded paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and sprinkled a thin line of white powder on the kitchen counter. There was a plastic red straw lying on that counter, and I instantly knew how Roch's machine-gun act came about.

"It's great speed," he told me. "Pick you right up. Go on." He handed me the straw.

I bent to the peer pressure. I snorted up, half the line for each nostril. My nose burned. Whoosh! I could suddenly hear birds singing in the backyard. When I turned around to Roch, I was grinning maniacally, too. But I still felt remorse, so I said:

"Look, Roch, I'm really sorry that—"

"Pffft. You did nothing bad. Did you see what Jules did? No you didn't, I had already taken you upstairs. Jules climbed that big tree in the backyard. Then he took off all his clothes and threw them down and hung from a branch making monkey noises. I laughed so hard I pissed myself, I had to go change my pants. Man, you should have seen that. People were in hysterics. But then this asshole next door came out into his backyard and started shouting something about the police. Most people left right after that. Some went to sleep."

"What about Jules?" I asked.

"Oh, he fell off. He was swinging from the branch holding on with just one hand and making obscene gestures with the other."

"Was he hurt?"

"No, he wasn't high up, his feet were maybe a couple of yards from the ground. A couple of girls were tickling his soles and he fell on top of them. It was hilarious. I think he's sleeping in the room next to yours."

"You're not renting out any rooms?"

"Not here. This house is like a hundred years old, man. And it's never been renovated. The city catches you renting a place like that, they'll fine you so heavily you'll be crying all the way to the bank. It's not worth it. It's gotta be fixed up, first."

"I haven't seen much furniture," I said and instantly regretted it, because it seemed to make Roch uncomfortable.

"My aunt, the aunt that died, did not live here," he said. "I don't know why she kept that house, she became a little crazy as she got older. It was costing her a fortune in taxes. There wasn't much furniture here, just the bed I sleep in now, some tables, chairs..."

He broke off and looked me in the eye and grinned.

"I sold some," he said. "This guy came around, said he’d buy the downstairs sofa and the matching armchairs. And a few other pieces as well. You know the deal, you buy a broken chair for a buck, fix it up, and suddenly it's a valuable antique, because it's seventy years old. Or something. Whatever. I made nearly two hundred dollars, man. Two hundred, you dig? And got rid of some awful shit at the same time. You should have seen that sofa. There were at least two families of rats living in there. How's your hangover?"

"My hangover? What hangover?"

He grinned even wider, and slapped my shoulder.

An hour or so later, I left the house looking very respectable. I was wearing a shirt and a tie: a narrow black knit number with the knot loose. My collar was unbuttoned, I didn't want to appear too respectable. I needed a job, any job, washing dishes and serving beer was just fine, I already had experience.

My bag and boots had been successfully located in in a downstairs closet; Roch had put them there while I was busy getting drunk. He took off my boots before dragging me up the staircase because I kept kicking him and saying I want to party.

Martine and the others were waking up by the time I left; actually, that sped up my departure. I didn't want to face any of these people after making a fool of myself and getting catatonic. I was very grateful to Jules for putting on his little show. That would be the thing people remembered about the party, not the asshole from Toronto falling over himself in a corner.

After a couple of hours I was dead beat—the speed wore off—and ravenously hungry. I hadn't found a job; people's faces froze up when I talked to them, as if I were insulting them by considering myself worthy of a stupid little part-time job, doing stupid tasks that could be handled by a congenital moron.

When I came to my twelfth or maybe thirteenth bar/restaurant, I didn't ask about a job. I sat myself down at a table by the window, lit a cigarette from my fresh pack of Rothmans, and ordered a beer. Then I ordered another, and also a pastrami bun with a side of potato salad.

While I was eating, I tried to work out why people acted offended when I asked them about a job. Eventually I decided this was because I was looking hungover. No one would want to employ a guy who drank himself stupid in the evenings. Who knew, maybe they could smell booze on my breath. I decided I'd put off job-hunting till the next day, and instantly felt better.

I had a relaxed third beer and three cigarettes after my meal, looking at life go on through the window. The sun was beginning to set and the light was just beautiful, warm and soft. I watched other people go about their lives regretting I couldn’t start painting that scene. There was something different in the way they walked and talked, a certain swing that was missing in Anglo–Saxon, dull, plodding Toronto.

I had lived for a while in Rome and Paris, and Montreal was a little like that, even though it had the standard shitty North American architecture. But I didn't enjoy Paris. Paris was the shits, literally, The pavements were covered with dog turds. Walking down a street in Paris was like stepping through a minefield, and the stink was fucking awful.

My bill in that restaurant eventually came to nearly nine dollars. I felt obliged to leave a ten. The waiter had been nice to me, and I'd worked in a restaurant myself and knew that these guys depend on tips. The place where I worked lunchtime shifts had this Armenian waiter, a guy that arrived fresh out of the Soviet fucking Union. How he'd managed to get out of there was a mystery. Anyway, he basically lived from tips: they paid him five bucks, under the table, for ten hours of running around and getting abused for the shitty food which the poor guy didn't cook in the first place.

He'd have probably been a better cook than the one they had, a fat middle-aged woman who was always mildly drunk. The restaurant's specialty was cod in beer batter, and boy, did she ever use a lot of beer in that batter. But she overcooked everything, everything tasted like shit, the famous beer-battered cod was always frizzled into a blackened little plank. She would hide it under a thick layer of tartare sauce, and yeah, I have to admit it, she made great tartare sauce. But that was about it.

On the way home I stopped off at a depanneur, which was what they called convenience stores in Quebec, and bought some food that didn't need refrigerating: a bag of apples, a few candy bars, and a sliced loaf of whole-wheat bread. After some consideration, I also bought a six-pack of Labatt's 50. At the checkout, I added a pack of strong mint chewing gum and a couple of packs of cigarettes.

It came to nearly eight dollars! At that rate, I'd be out of money within a couple of weeks. I promised myself that I would go down to the university administration building the very next day, and pay the tuition in full.

There was nobody home when I got there, which was a big relief: I had been dreading another party. I wanted to get a good night's sleep, and then embark on a fresh job hunt the next day all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

I went to the bathroom and cautiously tested the toilet: it seemed to work okay. My respect for Roch and the quality of his speed increased greatly. I tested the bathtub's hand-held shower and it seemed to work okay too, so I got a can of Ajax, some steel wool, and a couple of rags from the kitchen and spent over half an hour getting that bathtub clean.

When it was all nice and shiny, I stepped in and washed myself thoroughly. My dick looked okay, and I couldn’t see any invading crabs in the undergrowth. I thought about some of the girls I'd seen that day and my dick started to stiffen. So I thought about Martine, and immediately my dick started to shrivel.

"You're a smart guy," I told my prick.