The Homeless Millionaire

The next day was a Saturday, and it began with sadness gripping my throat and hanging inside the house like an invisible cloud. I thought it could've been caused by a bad dream, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what I'd dreamed about.

I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep when Harry came down; I just couldn't handle the good-morning routine. It required sounding upbeat and optimistic, or positive at the very least.

I listened to Harry moving around in the kitchen and wondered what the fuck was wrong with me. It wasn't the Viper visit or the fact the cops were looking for me: I was cool about that before I fell asleep. And I'd been neck-deep in shit before, and stayed in good spirits in spite of that.

So, if it wasn't something that had happened, could it be something that was due to happen? But of course, said my pal. He was fully prepared to write out a list. I didn't want to deal with that, so I finally opened my eyes and sat up on the sofa and looked around and right away I knew why I felt so sad.

I was leaving this place. My life on the island had come to an end. It had lasted for a month that felt like three because it was packed with new experiences of all kinds. A number of important firsts had taken place: I had signed a contract with an art gallery, pointed a gun at someone, harvested a field of pot, learned how to handle a boat with an outboard motor and the proper way to take a shit in the woods...

It was a long list, and I got up and went straight into the shower instead of having a coffee and a cigarette first. I didn't want to talk to Harry, I wanted a bit of privacy to reflect on all that stuff. Also, I needed a piss, and this was best performed indoors while taking a shower.

The flame in the gas heater started sputtering just as I was rinsing off: it was time to swap the gas tank for a fresh one. We had a spare, so that wasn't a problem. But I felt a fresh wave of sadness because the flame going out seemed to symbolize my island life. It was over.

When I was rubbing myself dry I remembered the trip I'd taken the previous night, all that stuff about Jung and his meaningful coincidences theory. He'd have liked that business with the flame going out, I was sure.

Harry was still in the kitchen when I entered: he was sitting over an unfinished coffee, and smoking like a maniac. There were five butts in the ashtray before him and the air was blue with smoke. We exchanged good mornings and I got his permission to open a window but closed it almost immediately. It was very cold and damp outside, the kind of air that instantly cut to the bone.

Harry said going down to Lion's Bay in a boat would be a fucking horror in that weather. I agreed. It postponed my departure by a day. I still had a day of island life left.

We were out of bacon, so I fried a piece of sausage to go with my eggs. Harry departed for one of those productive walks in the woods while I was doing that; he returned trembling with cold just as I was cleaning my plate with a piece of bread. He washed his hands and then went straight to the booze cupboard and got out the Seagram. He treated himself to a family-sized shot before examining the level in the bottle with a critical eye.

"I think it's time I got that rum from my room," he said. "And maybe rolled a joint while I'm at it."

"You've got a bottle of rum in your room?"

"Sure. A couple, actually. It's rule number one when living on an island: always keep at least one bottle of booze stashed away."

"Is it the dreaded Captain Morgan?"

"Sure it is. Captain Morgan has what it takes." He departed, and I cleaned up after my breakfast and treated myself to some rye as well, and lit a cigarette.

The stage was set for one of those let's-get-drunk-and-stoned sessions at the kitchen table. Harry came back with the rum and two joints instead of one, in order to spare himself having to go and roll another right after smoking the first one. The weather continued to be awful and there really wasn't anything else to do but sit and brood on things, or get stoned and drunk together.

We went down the second route with gusto. We knocked back some more rye and smoked the first joint. It was rolled with the Cambodian pot, so we were busy visiting various galaxies next. At one point I looked at Harry and wondered what kind of aliens he was dealing with: were they different from mine? I then surprised myself by saying:

"You know, Harry, you never told me how you turned from a law school student into a pot plantator. How the fuck did that happen? Did God send down someone to tell you that was the way to go?"

Harry grinned at me and said nothing. I could tell he was mentally switching gears, so I waited patiently. Eventually he said:

"It started in law school, man. It was law school that made me the man I am today."

We sniggered like a couple of wiseasses. Then Harry said:

"It's true. I got into smoking pot in a big way in my first year. Everybody was fucking smoking pot. All those future lawyers—judges, prosecutors, whatever—we were all stoned, most if not all of the time. And you know, it cost a bit and smoke wasn't that easy to get, either. So I got a nice little plot of weed going as soon as spring rolled around. I was here with my parents—they had the room upstairs, and I slept on that fucking sofa—and it was tricky. It was like, hey, our Harry sure likes to take long lonely walks in the woods. I switched to taking the boat and pretending to go fishing instead, but a couple of times my old man wanted to come along too and I had no choice but let him, right? Man, there was more cloak-and-dagger stuff going on than in a spy movie."

"They never found out?"

"No, though a couple of times it was close. Real close. Anyway, when it all ended I had almost a pound of pot. It felt like it was going to last forever, so I handed out a lot of freebies to friends, and a lot was gone in a blink of an eye. I stopped the freebies and instantly it was like, can you sell me some? Guys were fucking begging me to sell them some pot! I didn't want to do it. I'd give a joint to the desperate ones, and tell them to fuck off. I was a fucking law student and I knew selling pot was serious stuff. Cops might turn a blind eye to a bit of weed in your pocket, but selling is a different story. They come down on you like a ton of bricks. And there also was another thing."

"What? Here, have some throat lubricant."

"Thanks. You see, I chose to study law because I believed in the law. And that belief kinda disappeared after I'd studied it for a while. Law turned out to be yet another thing that could be changed and twisted like a deal on a used car. It purported to deal with the truth of the matter, it assumed there was one absolute, objective truth that could be arrived at, you dig? And that just wasn't possible. Absolute, objective truth is an ideal. Ideals can't be attained by definition. The whole law system is fucked from the start, dig? And then you also got everyone using law as a tool for their own ends, and everyone, and I mean everyone, breaks it daily. Including judges and cops. You try to find parking space in a hurry to attend court, you break the law at least once along the way. A very minor law, but still. And if a cop happens to nab you, what do you do? You try to wriggle out of it. You explain yourself in a way that justifies what you've done, and appeal to the cop's personal sense of justice. And what happens? Justice isn't done; he lets you off because you're a fucking judge. Fuck! Yeah, it didn't take me that long to figure out law was no longer something I believed in."

"So you dropped out, and turned to growing pot?"

"Well, not right away. I switched to corporate law, first. I thought maybe I could handle that. It's mostly about numbers, you don't get all those sordid, muddy human stories. It pays much better, too. But it was kinda soulless and dry and I quit after a single semester."

"What did your old man say to that?"

"Oh, he was okay with it. I mean he knew what law is like, and he was relieved he wouldn't be paying tuition and so on. And I officially got a job right away too, with a friend running a specialized farm a few miles out of town. He'd converted it into a herb-growing operation, contracted by a couple of pharmaceutical companies. Incidentally, he is the guy who helped me develop my hybrid. Fuck! It really hurts to have lost that harvest, man. In more ways than one."

"You can say that again."

"Yeah. Anyway, it was my Mom that got on my case when I dropped out. She'd had a perfect scorecard until then, all her daughters educated and married to educated, successful men. She kinda expected me to become the next Prime Minister or something. She's started getting on my case again, now that Dad's no longer around."

"She wants you to get, like, a regular job? Nine to five?"

"Naw, I already officially got a job helping run this farm operation. She wants something bigger from me. Much bigger, man. She wants me to be the king of the hill and married to a queen and producing princes and princesses she can coo over, and spoil so that they turn into pains in the ass."

"That's a tall order."

"Way beyond tall, man. So fucking tall you can't see the top without a fucking telescope."

And so it went until it was dark and time for dinner. The rye was gone by then, and so was half of Captain Morgan. The food took the edge off the booze, and we conversed soberly for a while about plans for the next day. Harry was of the opinion that Sunday was perfect to look for a place to rent.

"Most landlords start by advertising in the Sunday paper," he told me. "So there will be many new ads. And they'll be at home and expecting calls, you can get the whole business wrapped up by the end of the day. I gotta drop in on my Mom too, it being a Sunday. So we leave early in the morning, no matter what. Prepare to get cold and wet."

I was silent, working hard at making it the most expectant silence Harry had ever heard. He did. He said:

"Remind me to pay you first thing in the morning. Then if we fall overboard or something I'd have already paid you, dig?"

"I do," I said.