The Homeless Millionaire - Volume 1 Chapter 117 December 5th 1972

I was at the office at ten to eleven the next day. I fully expected Robinson to rush out as soon as I’d showed up, but he surprised me. He lingered for close to half an hour, sitting at Klein’s desk and sipping tea, and occasionally getting up to refill his cup in the annex. I sprang up and offered to do it for him, but he waved me away.

“It’s all right, my boy,” he said in a tone that indicated something was very wrong. I asked him about Klein.

“No change since yesterday,” he said. He grimaced, and added:

“One doesn’t know whether that’s good or bad.”

He played around with his cupful of cold tea for a few more minutes while I sat at his/my desk trying to look alert and dutiful. It was hard, for there was absolutely nothing for me to do. The phones were silent. Outside, it had begun to snow: fat white flakes drifted down in slow motion. There was no wind, not even the slightest breeze, which was highly unusual.

Robinson stood at the window and contemplated the snowfall for a few minutes. Then he turned round and approached me with a newly decisive step and said:

“I’ll be going now, old boy. Same drill as yesterday: handle the phones, and the mail when it arrives. I’ll be back around five. It should be a quiet day, so you can lock up for an hour and go somewhere for lunch. Do you good to stretch your legs.”

He didn’t give me any lunch money this time. When he thanked me after I’d helped him with his coat, he sounded like someone accepting condolences.

The moment he was out I went to the annex and made myself a fresh coffee and lit a cigarette. I was feeling pretty sure Klein was in a bad way, and I wondered what would happen if he died. It really spoiled my mood, which had been surprisingly good when I woke up that morning. The whole Schmidt business suddenly seemed of little importance, like a passing cloud. Unfortunately, my great artistic success felt that way too. It was as if the bad and the good cancelled each other out.

The office was deadly quiet; outside, the snow kept getting heavier. Looking at it made me think about Christmas, and thinking about Christmas made me think about my family situation. They expected me to come home for Christmas. They’d probably been expecting me to call with the promise that I’d be there.

But there was no way I’d be going home for Christmas. The thought of having to buy a present for Josh was revolting. I couldn’t even imagine myself sitting at the Christmas table with f.u.c.k.i.n.g Christmas carols playing in the background.

I couldn’t imagine myself talking with them. With a shock, I realized that I couldn’t imagine myself talking to Roch, either. I couldn’t imagine connecting with any of the people I’d been close to! It was as if an invisible wall had slammed down between us.

I didn’t really have anything to say to any of them, and wasn’t interested in what they had to say to me. Not even when it affected me directly.

I smoked another cigarette and rinsed out my mouth with cold coffee and went back to my desk. I got out a pad and sharpened a couple of pencils. I felt like drawing a magnificent tree standing in the middle of a barren wasteland. It was such an obvious and primitive reflection of the way I felt that I drew the telephone standing on my desk instead.

It was bad. It should have looked as if it was about to ring, or had just been put away. But that vibrancy just wasn’t there. It looked dead, and the secret of a good picture was to make everything look alive, including dead birds and rocks and furniture.

I tore the phone drawing up into tiny pieces and dropped them in the wastepaper bin. Emptying the wastepaper bins when they were about half-full was one of my duties at Robinson & Klein. So far, I’d only had to do it once. Very little was wasted at that office. I was calculating whether the confetti I’d made of my drawing qualified that particular bin for emptying – that’s how bored I was – when the entrance doorbell tinkled.

I spun around feeling hot with the realization it might be Detective Moore, eager to ask questions about my whereabouts on the night Schmidt was killed. But it wasn’t him, it was Jane, Jane of the leaking sailboat.

I wasn’t even capable of greeting her. All my effort was focused on keeping my jaw from hitting the floor. She saw that, and it pleased her. She grinned while she was brushing off some of the snowflakes clinging to her hair and shoulders and said:

“You weren’t expecting me, but here I am. I’ve got something for you.”

“Maybe I don’t want it,” I said. I wanted to throw her off balance in revenge, and I succeeded. She colored slightly and said:

“Fiona told me you’ll be doing a portrait of her father from a photograph. She was to drop it off today, but it turned out I would be in the neighborhood. So I brought it for her.”

She gave me a small, stiff envelope of the kind used for passport pictures. I didn’t know what to say so I opened it, and slid out the photo. It was a black and white photo of a guy in his forties, three-quarters front.

“That’s no good,” I said. I put the photo back inside its envelope, and held it out to Jane.

“It’s black and white,” I said. “Does she want me to paint him in black and white? Could be difficult.”

She didn’t take the photograph back. She said:

“I understood you were to draw it. A drawing is black and white, isn’t it?”

“I need to see him in color anyway,” I said. “And a drawing isn’t black and white. It’s a thousand different shades of grey. Some so dark that they’re black, some so light that they’re white. And a black and white photo lies about shades. Red is too dark, blue is too pale. Go on, take it.”

She took the photo back and said:

“Fiona will be disappointed.”

“Disappointed with what? That I want to do a good job?”

“Never mind.”

I stared at her. She was making me angry. I didn’t really know why the hell I’d ever been attracted to her. I said:

“Tell Fiona I need a color picture. She can call me if she wants to know why. She has my number.”

She nodded.

“So do I,” she said. “Goodbye.”

She left and I spent the next half an hour smoking and wondering why the f.u.c.k I’d been so unpleasant to her. She’d wanted to see me, that’s why she agreed to running an errand for Fiona. I’d wanted to see her, too. But when she showed up I came close to biting her head off.

To take my mind off it all, I called Harry. He confirmed he would be at the Park Pub at seven that evening. I put the receiver away and tried to determine what I should do about the Schmidt business and couldn’t. I just had no f.u.c.k.i.n.g idea what to do.

The best move would be to change jobs and homes. The best, safest move would be move back into the family fold in Toronto. My status there would be much enhanced by the success of my first show. Of course that would also mean Josh putting extra effort into being an asshole, but I could deal with that.

I could stay there producing stuff for my solo show in the spring. Then catch a plane to Vancouver, bask in glory and collect some serious cash – there was no reason to expect my show would fail – there was no reason why Vancouver cops would maintain an interest in interviewing me for so long.

It was a plan that made sense, except it didn’t. The very thought of waking up at home in Toronto made me feel suicidal. All afternoon, I kept trying to think of another way, a good move, and couldn’t.

Robinson returned at twenty past five. He seemed grimly determined about something, and he told me right away I could leave. It had stopped snowing, the streets were covered in thin, freezing slush and as I walked and skidded home I conducted a quick review of my finances and decided to treat myself to dinner at the pub. I was getting sick of the A&W.

When I got home the ground floor was lavishly lit in a way that suggested guests. My paranoid pal had gotten active in the afternoon, and when he saw all those lights he started dancing around and punching air. So I changed my mind about entering the house, and went straight to the pub. I had the premonition the other Jane might be around. I couldn’t stand the thought of having to face another Jane that day.

There was a girl that resembled her at the pub and when I saw her I almost ran out of there. But of course it wasn’t the other Jane, it was just someone that looked like her, and I had vegetable soup that had come from a tin and a meat pie and then bangers and mash. Then I smoked a couple of cigarettes and was just about to get myself another beer when Harry showed up.

He was wearing a long brown leather jacket that probably saw action at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917. When we finally sat down with fresh pints, I saw he had a small enameled metal pin in the jacket’s lapel. It was a round Volkswagen logo.

“Got it when I was buying the car,” he told me. “It’s my personal answer to all those assholes wearing peace signs.”

“Your answer? A Volkswagen logo?”

“They irritate the shit out of me, preaching peace while throwing rocks and setting things on fire.”

“You’re responding with a Volkswagen logo?”

“Yeah. The design fits. The guy that made Volkswagen happen fits, too.”

“I don’t know who made Volkswagen happen, as you put it.”

“Hitler. Yeah, really. It was his idea. A car for the masses, that’s why it was called Volkswagen. He got Ferdinand Porsche, the guy that later designed the Tiger tank, to design the car. The Beetle, not what I’ve got.”

“He wasn’t a bad painter, either.”

“Who? Porsche? Stands to reason. He was a brilliant designer.”

“I meant Hitler.”

“Hitler was a painter?”

“Yeah, he kind of switched careers. Anyway, f.u.c.k him. Harry, I have no idea of what to do about, you know, my situation.”

“It’s a straightforward choice,” Harry said. “You try to disappear, or you stay put.”

“Disappearing will mean quitting my job. And disappearing is expensive. And, it’s another two weeks before Chaz pays me.”

Harry nodded thoughtfully.

“Sounds like you cannot afford to disappear for a couple of weeks,” he said. “And then it will practically be Christmas. Holidays, New Year’s Eve… Can’t you move back home for a while? You’d be safe there.”

“No,” I said. “I spent a lot of time thinking about it this afternoon, and I just can’t. Trust me.”

“Your folks must be interesting people,” said Harry.

“You wouldn’t want to find out.”

Harry nodded again.

“Yeah,” he said. “Most people are nice on the surface. But scratch a little bit deeper…”

“It’s always mud when you scratch deeper. That’s the nature of things.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I had this thought. I’ll ask my official employer if he can help out.” He smiled crookedly.

“Your employer? You mean that friend of yours that helped you with developing new weed varieties?”

“Same guy. Like I told you, he has a big operation. Grows herbs for pharmaceutical companies, all those glasshouses, it’s pretty labor-intensive. I can ask if he can put you up for a while in exchange for labor. Maybe you can even work full time, I’ll find out.”

“I don’t really need to. Besides, I need the time to produce plenty of pictures. Chaz wants to give me a show in the spring. Exclusive, no other artists.”

“Michael! This changes everything. I didn’t know that.”

“Well that’s what he said, anyway.”

“That’s a real chance you’ve got there, you can’t waste it,” said Harry. “This whole Schmidt thing will blow away. You just need to lay low for a few months. Yeah, if Simon agrees to take you in, that would be ideal.”

“I could even pay him rent,” I said. “As long as it’s reasonable.”

“That’s probably not an option,” Harry said. “He has bunkhouses for the hired help. Can you live with that? I mean, sharing living space with people who work at his farm? They’re f.u.c.k.i.n.g throwbacks, man. I know, I’ve been there. But at least they’re not drunk throwbacks. Simon doesn’t allow drink.”

“Now that could be a major problem,” I said.

“Let me talk to him,” Harry said.

“Thank you.”

“No problem. No problem at all.”

The apparent lack of problems led us to drink two more pints each. Then we shared a joint Harry had brought, standing by his car. We agreed to get in touch the next day.

I watched him drive away – he was very good, anyone would have sworn this was one very sober driver – then began walking home. I got there and got to my room without having to talk to anybody: the Noyces seemed to be deep into their evening TV routine. If they’d had any guests earlier, they were gone.

I’d bought a couple of bottles of Toby at the pub, and I had those after smoking another joint. It was fat and I smoked it all by myself and I spent the hour before bedtime staring at the darkness outside the window and seeing all sorts of things there.

Living in a bunkhouse with a bunch of throwbacks. Why not? It would be a new experience.

I went to sleep hoping Harry would score with his friend.

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