The Homeless Millionaire

The sun was just starting to rise when we left Montreal, driving north in Roch's mother's bright red Toyota Corolla. It was new and smelled new; I asked Roch why his old man was driving a thirteen-year old Impala. He told me that the Impala was almost new too, in spite of its age. His father had bought it on the eve of a string of faraway postings; it had spent most of its thirteen years in a garage.

"It's good he held onto it," I said. "It's a beautiful car."

Roch didn't answer. He wasn't in a good mood that morning, and I didn't blame him. He hadn't slept at all during the night. That was why he had brutally woken me up at four in the morning: he wanted to get to the cottage as quickly as possible, and crash there.

I asked him what had kept him from sleeping; he shrugged and said he had to take care of some business. He seemed tense, and it reinforced my suspicions that there was some mysterious shit going on. Badgering a tired, tense driver with questions wasn't a good idea; I decided I'd try later, when he'd rested.

We stopped at a supermarket to buy stuff, but it was still closed. Roch said that was the last big store we'd pass before we got to the cottage, so we had no choice but to wait until it opened at eight. Roch dozed in the car, while I walked around the empty parking lot, smoking cigarettes.

It was a grey morning, it looked like rain, but as time went on the clouds lightened, and began to clear. The parking lot began getting busy: when we drove up, there was only the occasional delivery truck cutting across the lot to unload at the back of the store building. There was a bus stop nearby, and close to eight a whole bunch of people got off a bus and walked to the store. I guessed they were going to work.

I started trying to wake Roch up at eight sharp, and had to keep at it for several minutes before he opened his eyes, yawning horribly. We got Cokes from a machine by the store entrance and smoked a cigarette apiece before going in. Roch wasn't in a talkative mood, and neither was I. While I was walking and smoking on the parking lot, I made up my mind that he'd simply been to a party; it had been Saturday night, after all. I felt hurt he didn't take me along, and had to remind myself that if it wasn't for his generosity, I'd be on a bus to Toronto, returning home with my tail tucked between my legs.

I spent over thirty dollars in the supermarket, almost exactly half of what I had. Roch had warned me it would take me half an hour on a bicycle to get to the nearest store from the cottage, and that it was very expensive. I bought food and cigarettes and five tubes of paint: blue, red, yellow, black, and white.

I loved painting with tube watercolour: it was much better than using hard paint cakes. The paint from the tube had the consistency of thick toothpaste, it was a bit like painting in oils, but without all the stink and fucking around with turpentine. I also bought the biggest unlined notebook I could find, and a couple of hard pencils. They had no charcoal sticks in that store, which was a pity because the ones I'd taken from Toronto had all broken up into bits and pieces.

My food included two ten-pound sacks of potatoes and several big cans of apple juice (it was on sale). Of course, I acquired a twenty–four of beer as well. Roch also bought tons of stuff, so we wheeled out trolleys out into the parking lot and unloaded them directly into the trunk of the car. I caught Roch glancing at me with new respect when he saw all the art stuff I'd bought.

We arrived at the cottage just over half an hour later. It wasn't that far, but the last stretch was over a forest track littered with broken branches: some were so big we had to stop, and pull them to the side. Roch's family hadn't been to the cottage even once that summer: the infamous crazy aunt had died in May, and ever since then they’d been busy with the inherited houses, which were all in varying degrees of neglect.

I began to see why asking me to help get the cottage in shape made sense to Roch's old man. I anticipated a busy day of raking and sweeping dead leaves, lots of cleaning this and that. I hoped I wouldn't have to deal with rotting corpses of squirrels and mice who had decided to turn the cottage into a mausoleum.

The cottage was located near the southeastern end of a long, narrow lake. It was completely isolated except for another cottage across the water, around a couple of hundred of yards away. There was a huge front deck supported by wooden pillars, and a flagstone path weaving its way down to a wooden pier. There was no beach, the shore was a narrow strip of mud and stones.

As I anticipated, the deck was covered by a thick layer of rotting leaves and twigs. We actually had had to clear the way up the stairs and to the door before we could go inside.

We began by clearing the front deck from trash. Then I helped Roch wheel out an enormous gas-powered grill: it was big enough to cook a dozen steaks at a time. Roch connected the gas bottle and checked the grill was working. Then he showed me the kitchen, the bathroom, said see you later, and crashed out in one of the bedrooms.

It was a big place, that cottage: a family could live there year–round, no problem. There were four bedrooms. I was given the one at the very end of the connecting hallway, which suited me fine. After I'd carried my stuff in there, I got busy sweeping dead leaves and twigs and stuff from the area around the house. There were tons of dead beetles; it was as if they all came there to die.

The kitchen was equipped with an espresso machine, so I opened the ground coffee Roch had bought and took a fifteen-minute break every hour to reward myself with a triple espresso and a cigarette. Three hours later, I caught myself grinding my teeth with eyes popping: it was one wicked espresso machine.

Roch emerged from his bedroom in the late afternoon. By that time, I had the potatoes boiling and was warming up the grill. We basted barbecue sauce on a couple of big steaks and I stood guard over them, smoking a cigarette and drinking a preliminary beer, while Roch prepared a bowl of salad in the kitchen.

Armed with fresh beers, we sat down to eat at the picnic table on the front deck. I launched my probe into Roch's mysterious behaviour about midway through the meal. I said:

"What were you up, to last night?"

He kept chewing his food much longer than he actually needed to before he swallowed, and said:

"I spent half the day supervising the plumber working at one of the houses. Had to drive out to Canadian Tire to get some stuff he needed, got the wrong stuff, had to make the trip again. Then I made sure he finished doing what he was supposed to do, and spent a lot of time cleaning up the mess he'd made. I went to the family home for a shower and dinner and had a fight with Heloise, you know, my younger sister. The little bitch is stealing stuff from my old room. She sells it at school and spends the money on sodas and candy bars and movie tickets. Her face is fucking covered with pimples, you'll see for yourself, you'd better not sit across from her at meals or you'll lose your appetite."

"Oh man. Thanks for the warning."

"After that, I went to house number two and sandpapered and painted a door. Saturday night, and I'm painting a door in a dirty old house. I'm painting all the fucking doors in that fucking house, and they are all full of cracks and dents. I have to fill them with plaster, wait for it to dry, sand it down. Why the fuck did I ever agree to this deal. Nothing but work, work, work all summer. Fuck! I just can't stand it any longer."

"Why didn't you ask me for help? I wouldn't want any money."

"You were busy looking for paid work."

"I'd found a job. I told you that. I could've helped you out yesterday."

"Ah, fuck it. Never mind. Do you like the salad?"

"Yeah. Nice dressing. You used mustard, right? Colman's English mustard?"

"Right. I wasn't going to fuck around with garlic. Too much work."

He threw his head back and shouted:

"Too much work!"

His voice bounced off the tree trunks and echoed around the lake. I said:

"I think you need another beer."

"Fucking right I do."

We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking beer, smoking the black hash Roch had brought, and cleaning this and that, lazily talking about various experiences we'd shared while we were at school together. Roch dwelt for a while on the shoplifting, which I found unpleasant: I wasn't particularly proud of that episode in my life.

What happened was that we'd discovered we could steal small items from stores without getting caught, and went into a stealing frenzy that lasted six months or so. We often took stuff we didn't need, just for the thrill of it. Predictably, it ended with us getting caught. After tearfully pleading a pardon from the shopkeeper and the cops he'd called, we never did it again.

Roch claimed he'd enjoyed that quite a lot. He’d said he was sorry we'd stopped stealing. I didn't believe that, I remembered well that he’d been just as frightened as I was. We could have been expelled from school. But when he said that I kidded him along and said yeah, that was fun, I'd enjoyed that too.

By the time evening rolled around we were beat: from the work, from the beer, from the hash. We smoked one last joint on the deck, the view was breathtaking: the sunset turned the water into gold. I thought I saw someone or something move on the deck of the house across the lake, but it was difficult to tell in this light.

Roch spent a while giving me detailed instructions on how to operate and generally conduct myself during the two weeks I'd spend on my own. I could use the bicycle in one of the bedrooms, but I'd have to pump some air into the tires. There was no phone, if something happened I would have to make a trip to the nearest town, five to six miles away. I could add variety to my stay and to my diet by fishing: there were a couple of rods, all kitted out, in a closet. There was plenty of bass in the lake, early morning was the best time.

Roch told me that if I took the time to weed and rake the vegetable patch to the side of the house, I would earn plenty of brownie points with his mother. Of course they wouldn't be planting anything this year, but that was exactly what would make it count. There was no better way to ingratiate yourself with someone than by going to a lot of totally unnecessary trouble on their behalf.

By the time the stars were beginning to show, we were both yawning twice a minute. As we were preparing to go to bed, Roch said:

"Just look at that. So quiet, so peaceful, but you bet your ass that there are a hundred animals or insects or whatever humping each other within a hundred feet of where we are. And another hundred getting killed and eaten."

I should have listened more closely to what he'd said.