The Homeless Millionaire

I was woken up by shouts coming from downstairs. I was instantly fully awake; I got up, tiptoed to the door and opened it slightly, listening hard.

A male voice was delivering an angry monologue in French. I couldn't understand what what was being said; I could make out a word here and there, but couldn't make out any sense. After a minute or so, the voice fell silent and I heard Roch speak: he sounded guilty and apologetic. This provoked another angry outburst that ended with something that I understood—tout suite, right away. There were heavy footsteps, and the front door slammed.

I dressed quickly and went downstairs. I found Roch in the kitchen. He was seated by the table, rolling a joint with a melancholy expression on his face. There was a small plastic bag full of pot next to his elbow.

"Good morning," I said. Roch shook his head.

"Not so good," he said. "A shitty morning, in fact. But we will make it better, eh? Sit down and let's smoke this joint. Then I have to tell you something."

"Tell me now."

"No, no, no. First we smoke, then we talk. Sit down, mon ami, and don't say anything for the next couple of minutes, okay? I have to collect my thoughts."

I sat down and we smoked in silence for a few minutes. It wasn't very good pot, but Roch had rolled a fat joint, and started working on another one even before we'd finished the first one. I was properly stoned after those two joints, and so was Roch.

"Beer?" I said, getting up. There were only a couple of Labatt's 50 left in my six-pack, but I discovered there was a bottle of white wine, too; Roch must have put it there.

"Beer or wine?" I said.

"Non, non. Beer. We have to talk before we get drunk."

We sat at the table drinking and smoking cigarettes for a while before Roch said:

"You heard what happened, didn't you?"

"I heard someone shouting at you. I didn't understand a fucking thing."

"You better learn French fast if you want to live in Montreal, Mike. Never mind. That was my father shouting at me. He was angry about your staying here."

I had never really met Roch's father. I had seen him from a distance a few times, that was all. He was a big, powerful-looking man, always wearing a suit and a hat with the front brim pulled low over his eyes: it was easy to imagine him holding a tommy gun in the crook of his elbow. He looked like a very effective efficiency expert. It definitely wouldn't be nice to be at the receiving end of his anger.

"I'm really sorry, Roch," I said.

"I'm sorry too," he said. "But being sorry isn't enough. He wants you out, immediately."

"Jesus! You hadn't told him I was staying here?"

"I didn't. He would have said no, so I didn't."

"But why? What's the matter? I just sleep here."

"He doesn't care. He wants you gone as soon as possible."

"Fuck!"

"I agree."

"But why?" I heard a whine enter my voice, and detested myself for it. Roch said:

"He is worried that something will happen to you here. I told you that this house isn't safe enough to rent out rooms. He said that if something bad happens to you here, like that fucking staircase falling apart under you, your parents will sue the shit out of him. And he's probably right, okay? That's what would happen. From what you told me about your parents, I think that's what would happen."

"My parents don't know that I'm staying with you."

"What?"

"I told them I'd stay at the YMCA. I'd stayed there before, and actually their hostel here isn't bad. I was to call my home and tell them what's happening after arriving, but I didn't."

"Why?" He was starting to sound like a journalism student with this 'what' and 'why'. He'd probably ask 'when', next. I said:

"Because I'm never going back. Don't argue with me. Don't try to talk me out of this. I've made up my mind a while ago."

"Fuck! When?"

"A while ago."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't get the chance. There was this party, and then you weren't home whenever I got back. I was out a lot, too. I had to finalize things at the Ecole, and I was looking for a job. Where the fuck were you? I thought you would be around, working at fixing this place up. That's what you told me, that you were fixing it up. Actually, I was hoping that maybe I could get a job with you."

I hadn't been hoping for anything like that. But pot had a way of opening new information channels and starting new trains of thought.

This particular train of thought made Roch fall silent for a while. He did say merde quietly a couple of times, shaking his head, but that was it. Eventually he said:

"You have to call your parents. Fuck, man. If something does happen to you—not your fault, completely random, things like that do happen in real life—if something bad happens to you, I'll be the one that has to call your parents with the news. Do you understand?"

"But why should anything bad happen to me? This pot is making you paranoid."

"There is no 'why'. It could be something completely random. I remember you giving me a lecture on how everything in the world was random. Actually, I remember you giving me that lecture more than once."

It was true. I'd met Roch around the time I was reading various philosophers, trying to understand why my life felt like wading through shit. Reading those philosophers often felt like wading through shit, too: most of them were really boring. The one guy I did like was Schopenhauer. He wrote well, and had a wicked sense of humor. Anyway, the upshot of all this reading was that whenever I got stoned I would start to talk like a fucking philosopher, and most of the time I got stoned together with Roch. He’d caught a good earful of my bullshit.

"Yeah," I said reluctantly. "I can see your point. But I gotta tell you something. I'm wiped out. I've got twenty bucks left after paying tuition, ten cash and ten in my account. Well, eleven, but I have to leave a buck for banking charges.

"You need a a loan. Let me think." I could have kissed him when he said that. I said:

"I've already found a job. Problem is, I don't start until the middle of September. But I'll be making at least fifty a week. Maybe more if I get lucky with tips."

"What's the job?"

"Night receptionist at a small guesthouse."

"Congratulations. You were lucky to find that, you know. Anglos aren't popular in this town."

"Well, the guy who hired me is Anglo, two hundred per cent."

"You know they are talking about cutting English-language courses at the Ecole."

"No! Where did you hear that?"

"It's in the papers. French papers, of course. But don't worry. They'll never do it. It's just talk to show how much they hate the English. They'll never cut the courses because they need all the rich Anglo kids, some come all the way from the States. Kids like you."

"Yeah," I said. "I'm a rich Anglo kid. I'm practically a millionaire, what am I saying—a fucking billionaire."

Roch started giggling, I joined in, and we both had a serious pot-induced giggling fit. When it passed, Roch said:

"I can lend you fifty bucks. I still have some some money left over from the furniture sale."

"What did your old man say about that?"

"Nothing. I told him that I had some guys take it away to the rubbish dump, and that it cost ten bucks."

"You fucker! You got an extra ten out of this?"

"That's right."

"Then maybe you can lend me sixty bucks, not fifty."

"Fifty. It’s almost half of all I've got right now."

"Roch, you are an angel."

"I know," he said. "Let's smoke another joint."

So we did. We also had some of that white wine. We talked some more and Roch agreed to let me stay a few more days, on the condition that I slept downstairs. The problem was how to get the mattress down.

I was for sliding it gently down the stairs, but Roch said there was no such thing as sliding the mattress gently down some stairs. It always snagged on something somewhere, bent and then straightened out unexpectedly, and subsequently went down like a ton of bricks.

Roch told me that getting it upstairs was a horror. It had involved a long rope and two guys holding the mattress upright downstairs, while up on the landing Roch and another guy pulled on the rope, and manoeuvred the mattress over the banister. Roughly half the banister was in pieces by the time they'd finished, and Roch spent hours putting it back together. He just nailed the supports to the floor, and the handrail to the supports. All in all, it was a hell of a lot of work but everyone was in full agreement that this was the right way to do it, much safer than dragging it up the stairs. That staircase was a disaster waiting to happen: most likely, it had to be completely torn down, and rebuilt.

"I'll have to use a fucking ladder to get to my bedroom," Roch said. "Fuck! The old man says this will legally be my own house once it's fixed up and everything. But you know, sometimes I regret moving here. I regret agreeing to that deal and committing myself to at least a year of filthy slave labour. And then what? Live here with tenants over my head, hassle them for the rent money beginning of each month, run around unblocking toilets and washing windows and vacuuming floors—fuck! And every time someone moves out repaint the room, and repair all the damage. Oh fuck man, I really regret that move.”

His tone reminded me of one of those philosophers I'd read, or tried to read when I got serious about finding my way through life. His name was Kierkegaard and he was a gloomy Danish guy who basically believed everything turned to shit in the end. I said to Roch:

"Whatever you do in life, you will regret it. To begin with, you'll regret being born many, many times. If you fall in love, you shall regret it. If you don't fall in love, you'll regret it too. If you get married—you will regret it. If you don't get married—you'll regret it. If you have children, you'll regret it. If you don't have children—"

Roch started laughing when I got to the children: he was probably thinking about his father, and the money he'd swindled out of him. It made me think about my own parents and how the things they’d said about me proved Kierkegaard right, and I started to laugh as well. We finished the wine and decided the time was right to deal with that mattress. We weren't going to let that stupid fucking mattress cause us any trouble.

Roch and I went upstairs, one at a time: the noises that staircase made seemed more horrific than ever, maybe because we were stoned. Anyway, it was clear that staircase + mattress = disaster. When we got to my room, we looked at the fucking thing and discussed heaving it out of the window and into the backyard, then carrying it back inside the house. But it quickly became apparent the mattress was too big to fit in the window. It was a spring mattress, not foam, and the difference impressed itself clearly when we both banged our heads against the metal bolts holding the springs to the mattress frame.

We ended up manoeuvring it out of the room and onto the landing. After a prolonged and exhausting struggle, we managed to lay it fairly gently on the railing of the banister. It was balanced precariously there, with most of it hanging out and Roch desperately holding onto the other end. I carefully crept down the stairs and stood underneath: when I raised my arms, I could just about touch the edge of the mattress.

"Okay," I said. "Let it go, but slowly. Gently does it. I got it, now let me guide it to the ground. Hey, take it easy, not so fast, I—"

The mattress slid out of my grasp and hit the top of my head, knocking me over. It dropped like a rock, hit the floor end first, then toppled over and smacked the floor with a clap like thunder, raising huge clouds of dust.

"Hey," Roch said. "Are you okay?" I was lying on my back and nothing was hurting too badly. I had taken worse spills riding my bicycle.

"I'm fine," I said, raising my head.

We both started laughing, and Roch took a step forward and leaned on that fucking banister. There was a loud crack and then he was sailing through the air, mouth open and eyes popping out—he looked so idiotic I couldn't help laughing even harder. He fell onto the mattress, but instinctively held his arms in front of him to cushion his landing, and that was a mistake: he hurt his wrist.

"I think it's sprained," he announced, trying to flex it and making faces. "I'll put on a compress and bandage it. In the meantime, why don't you run down to the depanneur and bring a fresh six-pack? Then we can relax with a joint and work out all the details."

"We have a lot of details to work out," I said.

"Yes, a lot. Maybe you should get two six-packs. Oh! I get it. Just a moment." Grimacing horribly, he reached into his jeans pocket with his injured hand and pulled out a couple of mangled banknotes. He examined them for a little while.

"Get two six-packs and a pack of smokes for me," he said, giving me a five.

The depanneur was located on the corner of the block, maybe three hundred steps away. I'd covered half the distance when a beautiful vintage Chevrolet Impala passed by, going in the opposite direction. I turned around to look at it because I loved the way the rear of that car was designed: two metal wings arching over red tail lights shaped like eyes. I saw the car stop in front of Roch's house. His old man got out, there was no mistaking him even at that distance. He went inside.

I found a convenient tree growing next to the pavement and positioned myself next to it, smoking a cigarette and looking at my watch every couple of minutes. Roch's father left fairly quickly, after just eight minutes and a bit. He walked to his car with a very determined step, got in, and drove away.

I went on to do the shopping. I bought what Roch requested, plus a frozen pizza and a pack of smokes for myself. I added a small cardboard tray of plums and a big pack of potato chips. It all got quite expensive, I had to add five bucks of mine to Roch's, and received very little change.

I was expecting Roch to be in a foul mood following his old man's second visit; I hoped the extras I'd bought would cheer him up. But he was all smiles when he opened the front door. He told me he’d been watching out for me, I was gone for a long while and he got anxious. Then he said:

"Everything's set.. Come in, and I'll tell you."