The Homeless Millionaire

The next day, Roch and I made a pact over breakfast: we would work on the houses all week, and generally behave like model citizens. We were motivated by guilt and fear. No matter what precautions we took, contacting the museum greatly increased our chances of getting caught. The cops had most likely spent the last week checking out people they had in their files, because the first thing any bureaucracy did was check its files. They'd have drawn a blank—none of us had a police file—and they'd be very eager to pounce on a new lead. We would provide them with that when we contacted the museum.

Roch and I agreed that the wise thing to do was lay in some supplies. That was the recommended course of action when anticipating a siege. We set off for the nearest supermarket, and I asked Roch why he didn't bring the car.

"Mother needs it today," he said.

"Yeah, okay, but why don't you have a car of your own? You have to deal with all those houses and get supplies and shit."

"I get supplies in the Toyota. I'm holding out for the old man's Impala. Right after he'd bought it he started getting posted all over the place, and that car spent ten years standing in the garage. He promised it to me, you know. Said he would be getting a new car. But then he started driving it around, and decided he liked it. He tried to bribe me with a used Ford someone he knew was selling, perfect condition, but I said I'll wait for the Impala. It makes him feel guilty, so he's generous with money."

"Smart."

"Yeah. By the way, we went to the house yesterday. The old man thought you did a beautiful job, and you're officially hired to do the house we're working on this week. I haven't shown it to you yet, have I?"

"No."

"It's where my aunt used to live. There's still lots of her stuff around. It's got a phone, and there's a place right around the corner that has beer on tap and good fries. They do them Belgian style."

We spent a good couple of hours shopping; there was a regular department store above the supermarket, and it even had a section with art supplies. I bought a box of charcoal and some paper; the sheets in the sketchbook I had taken to the cottage were too flimsy for watercolour.

We also took full advantage of the fact that booze was much cheaper there than in our corner store, and ended up with so much stuff we could hardly carry it all. Roch decided we would take a cab; it turned out his conscience-ridden old man refunded the fare when the cab ride was necessitated by house renovation work.

"You're a new employee and I had to take you shopping," he explained.

"You're the boss."

"Fucking right."

We got home, unpacked, and tasted some of the stuff we'd brought: fresh baguettes, ham, lettuce, and wine. The store had Beaujolais on special and Beaujolais goes down pretty easily, and when we finished the bottle Roch made a small speech.

He reminded me that his old man was an efficiency expert, and that he, Roch, could not but pick up some of the techniques and tricks of the trade. That made him the efficiency expert in our little company, and as such he declared there wasn't any sense in our working on the houses that day. We simply wouldn't be efficient.

"What's more," he said, wagging a finger in my face, "Alcohol on the job can lead to accidents. I won't allow that. I'm the boss here."

It was fine with me. We spent the day lazing around, eating, drinking, and smoking the joints Roch brought from upstairs at regular intervals. After the second joint, I got going with the tubed watercolours I hadn't had the chance to try out at the cottage.

I painted a still nature number, using the fruit and vegetables we'd bought as models. It turned out fucking awful and I tore it up and became depressed, luckily just for a short while. It was difficult to stay depressed with pot and Beaujolais around.

We set out for work at half past eight the next morning, like model citizens. We went to the house we'd worked on the previous week. The kitchen needed another coat of paint to make it perfect, and then there was some cleaning up and moving stuff around. We finished that around three and by the time we'd had our lunch, it was nearing five. So we knocked off for the day and went home to drink wine.

We'd bought six bottles of that Beaujolais; it had been really inexpensive, most likely because they were clearing out old stock before the annual Beaujolais Nouveau event. There was a single bottle left around ten that evening, and Roch said he'd get more the next day. So we drank bottle number six before going to bed.

We set out for work at half past nine the next morning, like hungover model citizens. The house Roch's aunt had lived in was further away than the one we'd been working at; it took us over a quarter of an hour to walk there. The walk cleared our heads and once Roch had shown me around, he left to get his mother's car. He was to get a couple of new scrapers and painting trays on the way back. The paint was already there, a dozen cans containing a gallon each, and when I looked at them I felt faint.

While I waited for Roch's return, I examined the furniture in the house. It was really nice: it had been handmade a century earlier, and it had been made to last. It spoke of an age when life was too short to waste time making trash.

It was a while before I saw Roch park the red Corolla in front of the house. I helped him carry stuff inside and discovered that in addition to the painting supplies, he'd bought food: fresh French bread and a hunk of Montreal smoked meat, lettuce, onion, tomatoes, and no less than ten bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau. It had just come on sale at a very competitive price. Special price or not, it had to cost a packet and that didn't make me happy: I'd already spent well more than half my cash the previous day. However, Roch had a nice surprise for me.

"The old man left a fifty for you," he explained. "So I took the twenty that you still owed me after painting that other house, and spent another twenty on your behalf, for a total of forty. So here's a ten, and I also got you a couple of packs of cigarettes."

"I bought a carton yesterday."

"Did you? You don't want them?"

"Don't be a moron."

We decided to start off lightly, with the turret room on the first floor. Yeah, that house actually had a turret in one corner. On the ground floor, it formed an open dining alcove; on the first floor, the space had been shut off into a circular room with wallpapered walls overlaid by intricate bamboo panelling that was dark with age.

We didn't attempt to prise that panelling off the wall; it would have likely broken up into a thousand pieces. It was a fucking horror, scraping the wallpaper off without doing any damage to the panelling.

While we were working, Roch told me his aunt used to drink tea in that room. She would go there once or twice a day and spend up to half an hour doing nothing but drinking tea, surrounded by bamboo. The wallpaper actually depicted slender bamboo branches, it was bamboo trip all the way.

By late afternoon, we still hadn't finished with that fucking wallpaper. Roch looked at me, and said:

"I hate this panelling."

"So do I," I said.

"No one's ever going to drink tea in here again."

"It's unlikely," I agreed.

We ripped the panelling off, and had the walls scraped clean by early evening.

On Thursday, I gave that room two good coats of paint, helping Roch sand down the door jambs and window frames while the first coat dried. The interior doors in that house were beyond salvation; they had bent with age, just like people. And just like people, they had to be replaced.

At the end of the day, Roch pulled out a couple of joints and we smoked them in the former tea room, admiring our work. Then I said:

"You're seeing Michel tomorrow night, aren't you?"

Roch nodded.

"You haven't been in touch with him in the meantime?"

"Of course I haven't been in touch with him. That's what we agreed on: no communication until Friday night. You know that."

"I guess he's talked to Denis."

"Yeah. Denis was due to have his checkup today. He's probably called the museum, by now."

"What time to do you expect to get home from the bar? After you've talked to Michel?"

"I don't know. Depends on what he'll have to say."

Roch and I did our best to chill out that evening. We tasted the newly bought wine, our new Beaujolais Nouveau, and agreed it somehow wasn't quite as good as the Beaujolais Vieux we'd had the previous day. We killed a couple of bottles anyway. It was the only way we could relax enough to go to sleep, even though we were both pretty tired.

Right before I fell asleep, I wondered what I'd be doing the next evening. I could be on top of the world, drinking myself stupid. I could also be sitting in a hard chair, watched by hard eyes while I answered questions. Very difficult questions, where the wrong answer meant years in jail.

I wished that I believed in God.. I'd have had someone to ask for help.