The Homeless Millionaire

My palms and fingers were coated with dried pus when I woke up the next day. I had been too busy cooking and eating to deal with my paddling wounds after arriving home the previous evening. I remembered that I had a box of Band-Aid in my bag, but sticking half a dozen of these on each hand seemed silly.

I washed my hands while I was making myself coffee, and it hurt. My hands hurt when I was drinking coffee, when I was smoking a cigarette, when I was holding a pencil. There was no way I would be doing any drawing or painting that day.

I made myself breakfast and caught myself hissing theatrically; my hands weren't hurting that much. It was a piece of stupid acting meant to convince a lurking, watching spirit that my hands hurt too much for me to do any work. That spirit inhabited my own self. It was closely allied to my paranoid pal, but like most spirits it stayed silent while watching and sneering.

After breakfast I picked up the newspapers I'd bought on my previous visit to Lion's Bay, when I was dropping Harry off. They were a couple of days old, but that didn't really matter. Both papers had articles about Peter Schmidt's murder, and the murders he'd committed earlier. They were maybe a column long, and there were no pictures.

People were losing interest in Peter Schmidt; a new murder had caught the public's fancy. An Indian hooker got stabbed in Gastown, not far from where I'd slept on my first night in Vancouver. From the sound of it, she definitely wasn't one of those high-class call girls that men sometimes fantasize about. Her age was stated as forty five, and she'd been a welfare recipient. She'd probably been reduced to giving handjobs for a buck or two, and blowjobs for five. What a life! But it was the only life she'd had, and I thought it would be nice if someone did to her killer what I had done to Peter Schmidt.

The Bella Notte bed & breakfast was still looking for a night receptionist, light housekeeping duties. They seemed to be having a hard time finding the right guy. I wondered whether the light housekeeping duties involved dealing with sheets sticky with male and female juice. It wasn't easy to find someone like that. There was a shortage of crazy art school students on the job market.

I put the papers away and smoked for a while and wondered about the Bella Notte. I definitely had to check that place out when I was back in the city, even if the job had been taken. In fact, it was probably better to I wait until it had been taken. Otherwise I might take it myself, and end up neck-deep in unsavoury shit of some kind.

It was one of those cloudy-with-sunny-breaks days outside, with sudden showers that ended as abruptly as they started. I reviewed my indoor entertainment options and none were appealing: I didn't feel like picking up a book after all that time spent reading the papers.

I suddenly remembered that there was a ton of mushrooms in the house, all cleaned and ready to cook. So I ran a check—I'd put them inside the unplugged refrigerator—and it was like I suspected, they were beginning to turn dark and mushy. It was the last possible moment to cook them.

I set about it right away. This involved chopping a ton of onions, and my raw hands really got a workout from onion juice. I told myself this would have a beneficial effect on the healing process. But then I remembered that hardcore Mafia guys dipped their bullets in garlic juice so that a wounded victim would die of blood poisoning. I was rinsing my hands every two seconds after I'd thought that.

It was apparent I'd spend a good hour or more over the fucking stove, so I got myself a beer and rolled a joint from the bud I'd brought in a couple of days earlier. I'd smoked just a little of it: there was enough to keep me stoned for three days and nights. The joint and the beer worked wonders, my hands almost stopped hurting. I was starting to like Kokanee True Ale; that was how far I'd fallen.

I had the bright idea to slice some sausage into mushroom-and-onion mess in the frying pan. There was a serious sausage shortage developing. I hoped Harry would have the foresight to bring some more when he returned. I hoped Harry would return, period. He was a very likeable guy. I had the thought that having three sisters had trained him to be that way. Otherwise his life at home with them would have been sheer hell, with his one-against-three situation.

The mushroom stew I produced actually smelled good, but I'd lost any appetite I had while doing all that cooking. So I left the stew simmering gently on the stove, got myself a beer, rolled another joint, and went to continue my productive day on the sofa.

Whenever I got stoned, my memory took on superhuman powers. I'd remember events that took place many years earlier, and I could recall exactly what happened and who was involved and the clothes they'd been wearing. I remembered, or thought I could remember, what everyone said and did and even the thoughts I'd had at the time. It made smoking pot highly entertaining.

After almost a full hour's entertainment on the sofa I ran out of beer and went to get one, leaving my cigarette in the ashtray. It turned out these were the smartest two moves I could have possibly made. The mushroom stew in the pan had boiled over, and had extinguished the flame on the burner. The kitchen reeked of gas. I turned off the stove and threw the windows open and then stood shivering and drinking beer until the kitchen was properly aired out.

My palms had begun itching like hell, and they were leaking sticky serum. I rinsed my hands with cold water and got another beer and rolled another joint and went back to the sofa. My paranoid pal was busy making notes, underlining the words 'gas explosion' twice.

"Fuck you," I told him, and fired up my joint.

I lolled around on the sofa for the rest of that day, taking trips down memory lane. Not all were pleasant. For example, I remembered exactly the first time Josh hit me. I was four years old at that time.

I had been standing beside him while he was looking through something on his desk in his room, and I suddenly had this crazy impulse to bite his leg. I remembered that I'd thought it would be fun.

So I tried to growl like the tiger I'd seen on TV the other day, and grabbed his leg with my arms and bit his calf as hard as I could. It was summer and he was wearing shorts and it must have really hurt. He shouted and smacked my head, and I was so shocked by the blow that I instantly let go and sat down on the floor and started to cry.

That earned me another smack, and the promise of more to come if I didn't stop bawling right away. I was also promised a full-sized beating if I said anything about that incident to my parents.

That was the first time anyone hit me in my life, and from that time onward I feared Josh and hated him in equal measure.

It started raining in earnest around three in the afternoon, and I spent at least an hour watching the patterns water made on the window panes. I swore to myself I'd have to paint that, capturing the constant, magic fluidity with which they changed. Watercolour was ideal for that purpose: I could use more water than usual and tilt the page to spread the paint instead of using a brush.

Unfortunately or maybe fortunately it was already too dark to do any painting, because I was so excited I wanted to give it a try right away. I smoked several cigarettes increasingly convinced I'd invented a new, breakthrough technique. It was fucking genius! I entered a long and very pleasant mental masturbation session that lasted as long as I was stoned. My paranoid pal was nowhere in sight.

Night fell around me, and I continued to fantasize sitting in deep darkness. Eventually I realized I was hungry. I lit the kerosene lamp and went to the kitchen and went crazy with the stew. I ate three helpings. I stopped when I simply couldn't swallow any more food.

I attempted to have a coffee and a cigarette, but midway through I began yawning so uncontrollably I choked on the smoke. The coughing fit that followed failed to wake me up.

By the time I laid down on my sofa, I was half asleep.