The Homeless Millionaire

Harry left again the very next day, which was a surprise. From what he'd said, I assumed he'd stay until Sunday. But over breakfast on Friday he revealed that he had a girlfriend in Vancouver, and that he wanted to spend some time with her in order to recover psychologically. She sounded like someone really nice.

It was cold but reasonably sunny when Harry was telling me about his plans, and raining like hell half an hour later. I could either pilot the boat in the rain to Lion's Bay and back or resign myself to remaining on the island, completely cut off until Harry returned. Harry told me the summer camp would definitely be closing up that weekend, and that he wouldn't be back until Wednesday. That meant five days in full hermit mode.

I decided to be the blue-eyed man of steel and take Harry down to Lion's Bay. Harry applauded, even though this meant he'd have to find someone to take him to the cottage on his way back. But he told me that he'd never had a problem getting a boat ride to the island; it was at most half an hour there and back, and he knew tons of people in Lion's Bay.

The trip down to Lion's Bay was fucking hell. Harry had dug up an old cracked oilskin for me that was far too small; I suspected it had originally belonged to his mother. The sleeves ended well short of my wrists and when I tried to put up the hood I tore its binding. I ended up steering the boat with my head bare.

I got off the boat with Harry and he drove me to the store in his car and then away to Vancouver. I didn't exactly have a ton of money to spend, so I just bought a carton of Rothmans, some snacks, and a couple of newspapers. Then I smoked cigarettes under the awning over the store entrance, waiting for the rain to pass or at least lighten a bit. It magically stopped raining after about forty minutes. It truly seemed like magic: rain one moment, sunshine the next.

I took off that stupid oilskin and walked down to the marina and the boat, passing under the highway. I thought about Peter Schmidt when I did that. I had the feeling that for the rest of my life, whenever I walked under a highway bridge or ramp, I'd think of that asshole. I really hated him for fucking my life up like that, and the fact that I had fucked up his pretty permanently didn't make me feel any better.

I had difficulty starting the motor, and for a moment I thought I was stuck. When it fired up I was so relieved I almost started thanking it aloud. There was no way I could have paddled that boat to the island: it would have fallen dark before I got there. Harry had told me it could be done, but I wasn't Harry.

I got home all right and even managed to get the mooring knots done properly on my first try. My hair had dried, but I had a headache. I carried everything I'd bought into the house and then went round to the tool shed at the back. That was where all the pot we'd harvested was drying. Of course, it was much too moist to smoke but I took the smallest bud I could find, about half an ounce, and plucked some flowers off it into a preheated pan. I put the pan on the counter away from the stove and made myself a coffee, and decided it was time to create something.

I began by having a go at the shotgun and the box of shells once again. This time around, I got all the proportions exactly right, but the box of shells still looked tame.

I opened the box of cartridges and put a couple on the coffee table right next to the box, leaving the box open. I also broke the shotgun open, very slightly. I knew that the new drawing would be much better, because I'd forgotten about a cardinal rule when working on the first one.

A drawing or a painting had to create the impression something had just happened, and also that something was about to happen. This was true for everything: portraits, still life, landscapes, whatever. Everything shown in any picture was static by definition, but it had to illustrate the flow of time. Otherwise it looked lifeless, and even a picture of a rock or stone had to show life. It had to show the story of that stone.

While I was drawing, it struck me that Harry, Harry's father and I were all somehow connected through Peter Schmidt. I'd read somewhere that someone had calculated that anyone anywhere on Earth was separated by at most six other people from anyone else. Seven person-to-person contacts were all that was needed to connect with anyone, anywhere.

An Eskimo who had never left Greenland could be connected to a Zulu in South Africa. For example, one of the sailors on a boat the Eskimo saw once a year had a sister. The sailor's sister worked as a nurse in hospital, and another nurse she was friendly with had a brother who had been to South Africa some time earlier, and had met a local guy there. That local guy, in turn, had a Zulu friend. It took just five person-to-person connections to establish a link between the Eskimo and the Zulu.

It felt spooky the three of us—myself, Harry, Harry's father—could all be connected through Peter Schmidt. Harry had told me the other day that it was likely his father had met Schmidt. He had an administrative job, but he still got involved in important cases. And he'd taken active part in the interrogations of a bunch of truckers who were regulars on the Trans-Canada highway, between Vancouver and Calgary. Yes, there was a substantial chance that he'd met Schmidt.

My second attempt to draw the shotgun turned out fine; the story was there. I decided I'd draw Roch next. I kept thinking about Roch. I had thought about calling him while I was in Lion's Bay the previous day, standing under the store's awning and smoking and waiting for the weather to clear. The post office was right next door to the store, but I had left my address book on the island. I usually took it everywhere, but some of the entries were in ink and didn't want to get it wet.

I drew Roch leaning against the beam of a wooden railing. I drew him three-quarters front, hands clasped on the beam, ass slightly lifted as if he was about to walk away. He was looking at something to his left, and his profile suggested he didn't like what he saw. I had no idea why I'd portrayed him like that, and I really had to comb my mind before I realized I had seen him strike a pose like this when we were staying at his family cottage by the lake.

I kept making breaks to make myself a coffee or tea and munch on a shortbread and smoke a cigarette, so it was getting dark by the time I'd finished drawing Roch. I made myself a plate of sausage fried with onions and a side of boiled potatoes, and drank a beer to my meal. Then I read about the battle of Jutland for a while before the food and the beer knocked me out.

I woke up before dawn and had to take the lamp into the kitchen to make myself a coffee. I stayed in the kitchen for my morning series of coffees: I was too lazy to go back and forth with the lamp in one hand and the mug in the other. Anyway, it was warmer in the kitchen than in the front room. It was raining again, the drops pitter-pattering on the kitchen windows. I hoped the weather would change when the sun came up, because I wanted to draw and paint a whole series that day. I needed good light for that.

But it kept raining, and after breakfast I stretched out on the sofa and tried to have a nap. I couldn't. I kept thinking about my parents and Toronto in general. My life there had been very comfortable, and I found myself wondering why the hell I'd found it so unpleasant. I didn't feel so hostile towards my parents and Josh any more, and at one point even began to regret I'd left the family home. I could have studied at the University of Toronto while living in a big, comfortable house with a big, beautiful garden in the back, eating and drinking far better than I was presently.

It was a relief to fall asleep and stop thinking about all this bullshit. It was bullshit because the moment I returned to Toronto with the teary-eyed hope of a warm reunion, there would be a couple of fights with my parents and Josh would find a way to demonstrate why he was ranked the top asshole in the world, and I would be choosing the appropriate branch of from one of the trees growing in that lovely garden in the back, psyching myself up to have the guts to just hang myself and end it all.

It was still raining when I woke up. The light was too bad to draw, so I attempted a watercolour of the view through the window and fucked it up so badly it was beyond belief. After I'd ripped that picture up and stopped cursing, I had another go and it was just as bad. All the colours were wrong, it seemed I'd completely lost my touch for mixing and diluting paint to produce the effect I wanted.

I took a break and went into the kitchen and checked on the weed I'd left to dry. I had put it in the smaller frying pan and placed the pan on the counter as far from the stove as possible, but some of the vapour from the cooking had settled on it anyway. When I held a fat pinch of pot to my nose and sniffed, I thought I could detect a faint hint of fried sausage and onions. But at least some of it was dry enough to smoke.

I rolled myself a big joint and smoked it and it was a big mistake.

I got absolutely no more work done that day. I spent it smoking joints every couple of hours and wandering around the house without purpose and sitting on the sofa and staring at that second, ugly, fucked-up watercolour. Of course I saw great merit in it, being stoned. I even regretted tearing up the first picture for a while. Pot had the power to make a turd seem profound. That was what happened to me that day: everything had deep meaning, and contained symbolic portents of my future.

I picked up the battle of Jutland book and spent a lot of time examining all the grainy, black-and-white photographs. I concentrated on the portraits of all the naval commanders involved and it seemed to me they were full of shit. They all looked self-righteous and arrogant, and I actually felt evil satisfaction when the caption under the picture stated that the guy I was looking at was killed during the battle.

It wasn't a nice way to end the day.