The Homeless Millionaire - Volume 1 Chapter 103 November 19th 1972

Sunday got off to a slow start. I stayed in my room until noon, waiting for the Noyces to conclude their bathroom routines and move downstairs. I wanted to empty my pissbottle, and didn’t fancy running into them with it in my hand. For a while, I amused myself by imagining myself meeting the little witches from the room below, and offering them a drink of my new home-made lemonade.

They had a fight that morning over the names they wanted to give to their Ken dolls. For some reason, both had chosen Charles. There was a long and increasingly loud dispute which of them had thought of the name first; then another, about whether thinking of a name first automatically granted exclusive rights to its use.

I wondered what had made them so fixated on that name; then I remembered there had been something in the paper about a very well-known Charles – the Prince of Wales – accompanied by a photograph. Most likely they’d shown him on TV as well, dressed like a prince and doing princely things, with disastrous effects on female imaginations the world over. My suspicions were confirmed when the argument below escalated into a screaming match.

“I am the Princess of Wales!”

“No, I am the Princess of Wales! I am! I thought of it first!”

“Then I am the QUEEN!”

“I am the Princess of Wales AND the Queen!”

The fight was broken up by Birgit, who advised the two princesses they’d be assigned scullery maid duties instead of going to see a movie if they didn’t stop. It worked. They dropped their claims to the crown, and finally did their bathroom thing while I waited patiently, drinking a coffee and smoking and glancing repeatedly at the half-full bottle.

I really needed to find a place where I could access the toilet without fear. From what I’d seen in the rental ads, if I looked hard enough I could find a room with a private bathroom for the same money as my wonderful studio.

Unfortunately, I was stuck where I was for a while. The Noyces were giving me a break on the rent, so I’d have to play nice and give them a two-month notice. And it would be a while before I could do that, because I needed to get my rent up to date first. I calculated that I’d have to wait until March – next year! – before I could actually make a move. And even then only if I lived a very frugal life, spending next to nothing on entertainment.

This reminded me it might be a good idea to call Harry. I hadn’t spoken to him in a while and who knew, maybe there was an ounce of prime pot waiting for me.

The moment the Noyces assmbled for breakfast, I executed a commando raid on the bathroom, capturing the objective and holding it for half an hour while the enemy below stuffed their faces with eggs and bacon – I caught a whiff when I was going to the bathroom, and it made my mouth water. I felt really hungry by the time I’d showered, but when I retreated to my room and examined my food supply, my appetite disappeared. I was tired of breakfasts consisting of bread and corned beef and apples. I needed a change.

I still had a couple of bucks left from Klein’s tenner. I was in the process of making up my mind where to spend them when I heard the stairs creak. A moment later there was a knock on my door. My room was fine: I had aired it out, the empties were out of sight, and my pisspot was pretending to be an ordinary, empty plastic bottle.

“Please come in,” I said.

The door opened, and David Noyce put his head inside.

“Hi,” he said, and grinned.

“Hi,” I said, all smiles. We beamed at each other for a little while. I didn’t mind, it was a nice change. I’d been scowling heavily when he knocked because I was thinking about spending money on a solid breakfast somewhere; thinking about money was guaranteed to make me scowl. I had under sixty bucks and two weeks till my paycheck.

“We were hoping you would pop around for a drink yesterday afternoon,” said David, and I instantly knew what was going on. They’d downed a few, felt like a smoke, and started pining after the lodger with the pot.

“There was a luncheon party at the office,” I told him. “It went on and on.”

“How is it working out there? You like it?”

I told the Noyce that I liked it very much, and that my employers seemed to like me too.

“That’s great,” he said. “That’s really great.”

“Yeah, it’s working out good,” I said.

“Fantastic. I mean, really good to hear.”

“Yeah.”

There was a short silence and he just couldn’t gather the nerve to ask me for a joint. So he asked me instead whether everything was all right, and assured me he was ready to help if it wasn’t. I thanked him profusely, and still didn’t offer to roll a joint. Eventually he retreated, visibly disappointed, and my paranoid pal got active and informed me I’d just gotten myself a black mark in the Noyce book. It was wise to keep landlords happy, he told me, particularly landlords that extended credit to bankrupt tenants.

He had a point. Feeling slightly paranoid, I decided to hide in my room until the Noyces took off to see a movie, as advertised earlier. I rolled myself a joint and smoked it cautiously by the open window; after that, bread and corned beef and apples tasted good again. I drank several coffees and smoked half a pack of cigarettes while looking at the beer bottles I’d drawn the night before. They were good. I seemed to have a special talent for drawing beer bottles. If I didn’t watch it, I’d become known as the beer-bottle guy.

So to provide a counterpoint, I sat down and drew David Noyce’s head sticking out from behind the door. It was a good likeness, but somehow he turned out looking very disappointed, almost horrified, and it was a while before I’d worked out that I’d projected my thoughts about his failure to score a joint onto the paper.

I had drawn him in charcoal, and when I tore the page out of my sketchbook and dropped it on the others it dawned on me I had the perfect ending for last night’s beer bottle series. Four bottles, three, two, one, none, a horrified face: wot, no drink left? That joint I smoked by the window had made me really stoned, and I giggled over that for quite a while.

The Noyces finally left around half past two: there was brief drama when the girls wanted to take the two Charleses along, and were refused. I listened to that and swore to myself to never, ever have any kids. My paranoid pal pointed out there was little danger of that: I hadn’t even dreamt of any women for a long, long while, to say nothing about scoring any. My libido was just dead. I knew why: stealing a million-dollar painting and killing someone generated plenty of stress down the line.

But my paranoid pal was quick to observe other people didn’t have that problem. All those guys that shot other people left, right, and center were reputed to be great c.o.c.ksmen, screwing a dozen women for every guy killed. Was it all a lie? Maybe the act of killing made them excited s.e.x.u.a.lly. Maybe they were thick as planks, with next to no imagination and all the sensitivity of a block of wood. Maybe all of the above. Whatever: it didn’t work that way for me, quite the opposite. Clearly, I wasn’t cut out to be a thief and a killer.

This thought actually made me feel better and shut up my pal, and I got dressed and went to the A&W. Prior to pigging out, I called Harry from the entrance payphone. After a long, long wait I got his mother.

Harry was out. He’d left just before I called, and wouldn’t be back for dinner: I could hear she felt disappointed. In fact, he wouldn’t be back until next weekend: he was actually back on the island, making sure the cottage was ready for the winter. I left my name with her in the hope that he’d call her in the meantime, and get the message and set about organizing a bag of weed for poor artists with little in the way of entertainment.

I ate a burger-and-fries combo and bought another to take home. On my way back, I also bought the Sunday paper and a pack of cigarettes – I was running low. I was also running low on other supplies, and I had fifty two bucks to last me twelve days. All the same, after a short hesitation I bought a paperback novel along with the paper. It had a damaged cover, and had been discounted to 39 cents.

I got home and went through the paper line by line, page by page, like one of those decrepit guys that sat all afternoon over a single beer in the bar I’d worked in, back in Toronto. There was no mention of Schmidt. There was no mention of the Montreal museum robbery. There were at least three rental ads that sounded really good. I promised myself I’d stop reading the rental ads, it made as much sense as reading restaurant menus while locked up on a bread and water diet.

The paperback novel was about an airport cop. The title made that clear: it was Airport Cop. The advertised airport cop was a former army and police hotshot forced into the job by cruel life. He had an ex-wife he didn’t miss and a kid he did miss, and couldn’t see. He carried a concealed flask of cheap bourbon and a thirty-eight revolver that was so old the finish had worn off here and there. On top of that, he was losing his hair and his walkie-talkie didn’t work. All he wanted was to somehow make it through the next ten years and retire and sit in a deckchair somewhere warm and drink beer all day.

But as it happened, Mr. Chance rolled him a doozy. The day began with the airport supervisor giving him shit for drinking on duty and threatening to fire him. He had barely finished having a drink and a smoke to steady his nerves after that conversation when two thieves attempted to steal someone’s luggage. Our hero outran them easily in spite of drinking a pint and smoking two packs every day, somewhat aided by the fact that the thieves were carrying heavy loot, and ran to the wrong escalator. It deposited them sprawling at the panting cop’s feet.

Our hero did not have time to congratulate himself however, because a bunch of terrorists chose this moment to try and hijack an airliner. It was silly of them to attempt this before they got on board, but they panicked when they saw our hero running and waving his gun around. Bullets meant for him made short work of the two thieves, and our hero put his army hotshot skills to good use by executing all the terrorists with his thirty-eight. He did catch a bullet in a non-lethal spot though, and it all ended with him getting an early retirement and a bonus and a medal he could wear on his chest while he drank himself to death on that deckchair.

Of course, there was some kidding around near the end about him straightening out his life. He’d received a couple of great jobs offers and some TV chick that had been covering his heroics was practically in love with him. Even his ex grumpily got in touch, and promised to send the kid his way.

But somehow, as I put that book down, I knew that wouldn’t happen. That day at the airport, Mr. Chance had given him a really hot run. It couldn’t go on forever. The jobs wouldn’t come through because of something or other, the TV chick would fall in love with another hero that was younger and had more hair, the kid would be traveling to meet his pa on a bus that went off a bridge and into a river.

And the airport hero would retire to the life he’d wanted all along: sitting in a deckchair somewhere warm, and drinking and smoking until his heart stopped.

It was good that the novel ended when it did.

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