Chapter 7
Tim awoke the next morning around 10. He couldn’t be sure of the exact time since he had fallen asleep on the couch and there were no clocks nearby and even though he hadn’t set any kind of alarm, he still found himself woken up by a piercing noise. It was difficult to place as it sounded different than his alarm and only occurred intermittently.
He tried to ignore it and fall back asleep, but whenever he opened his eyes it seemed as if there were small, long shapes darting across the floor. He knew that he drank a substantial amount the night before, but usually that didn’t lead to hallucinations.
Finally, around 10:30 or so he stopped trying to fight it and got up to make some coffee. In his half asleep state he felt his foot brush against something soft and warm. Confused, he looked down to see a ferret staring back up at him in bewilderment. He rubbed his eyes, but the ferret remained there with an inquisitive look. After a moment of thinking, he vaguely remembered the incidents of the night before, but as if they had happened to someone else. There was the restaurant and wine, the long drive, getting gelato and somewhere in between an ill-advised stop at a pet store.
After clearing his head, he surveyed the apartment more carefully. It seemed to be more or less how he left it, with the exception of two ferrets running amok. It occurred to Tim that he should have perhaps asked the pet store what they ate, as a bare minimum. But then again, it struck him as rather reckless of them to sell him ferrets without any other supplies or instructions, trusting him to know what he was doing, which clearly wasn’t the case.
He remembered that he had been intending to transfer the money from the Mexican account into one James didn’t have access to, and in an effort to kill two birds with one stone, decided to call Ryan and have him open up an account to make the transfer into.
Tim savoured the novelty of having absolutely no more plans for the day. Work was a thing of the past, all his appointments and commitments were already taken care of and he was free to do as he wished. The freedom was at once exhilarating and frightening, the dizzying array of possibilities and opportunities provided by essentially unlimited time and money. A strange sense of indecision resulted and Tim found he had trouble prioritizing anything.
He logged into his email and found a response from Janet Meeks of the Affordable City Foundation, the charity he had researched the day before. She seemed enthusiastic for him to come visit their office and hear more about what they were trying to achieve. He made a note to respond to her, but wasn’t feeling inclined to fill up his newly free schedule with more meetings, not just yet anyway.
While he had his browser open, he went onto Expedia and browsed through the various vacation options. He had always had a love of travelling and certainly wanted to see the world now that he had the resources, the only question was how to begin, where to go first, should he take a cruise around the world? Should he go fritter away his money in the casinos of Monaco? What about visiting South America or the Great Wall of China?
There were far too many choices, and he had only just gotten back from a not altogether fun trip to Mexico, so he wanted to plan things out better this time. Before he did any more travelling, he wanted to get his money sorted out, which meant sitting down and drafting a budget. Ryan had said that he needed specifics if he was going to achieve his goals, and while Tim preferred planning the big picture, he did recognize the occasional need for details.
He sat down at his kitchen table and took out a pad of paper. At the top he wrote “Budget”. He stopped for a moment and thought. He then underlined “Budget”. After a few more minutes of thinking, he wrote underneath the heading $47 million dollars. He then wrote down several categories: Charity, Travel, Retirement, Spending, and Mad Money.
Having read about the pitfalls of people who had won the lottery before, he knew that he had to strike a balance between allowing himself some money to just spend for fun, without wasting all his money. He decided that right now having access to the money was a bad idea. He would put all but 1 million into a term deposit locked in for 30 days to make sure that he properly thought things through before spending it.
For the moment, he left the list alone. He still hadn't made his coffee, it was getting closer to lunch time and he hadn't even had breakfast yet. He went into the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker and then called up Laura to see if she was free for breakfast. He could never be sure of her work schedule, but he knew it often wasn't 9-to-5.
Her phone rang several times and he began to think it would go to voicemail, but eventually she picked up. "Hi Tim, how's it going?"
"Hi Laura, I just wanted to see if you were up for getting some breakfast, or lunch, or brunch, you know whatever meal it is that people eat at this time of day," Tim said.
"Sure, want to meet somewhere on Broadway in about 45 min.?"
"Actually," Tim replied, "why don't I come pick you up? I wanted an excuse to drive my new car anyway."
"Yeah, okay. See you in 40 min.?" She asked.
"Okay, see you then."
Tim drank his coffee which by now had brewed and was ready before having a quick shower and getting dressed. He was eager to see what Laura thought of his new car. When he had finished the coffee he drove over to her place, a small basement suite in the heart of Kits that she shared with a room mate. The place wasn't the nicest, but the location was ideal.
When he knocked at the door she was just about ready and invited him in for a moment. He hadn't been over in a while and forgot how homey she was able to make it look on the inside. When she was ready, they headed out to the car which Laura walked right past before Tim pointed it out to her. She liked the colour, but pointed out that Vancouver isn't exactly the ideal city for a convertible.
He explained to her that this wasn't meant to be a rational choice. For once he had just bought something cause he wanted it, without thinking of consequences. The car for him was what getting a horse would be for her at which point she just smiled and nodded.
They decided to go to the White Spot in Kits since it was close by and neither of them was feeling particularly creative in choosing a place. It was surprisingly full for a weekday morning and they ended up waiting about 10 minutes for a table. Tim didn't mind as the coffee had taken the edge off his appetite but Laura was getting pretty hungry.
Finally they were seated at which point Laura ordered waffles with strawberries and whipped cream right away forcing Tim to make a quick decision. He decided to go with a mushroom and swiss omelet. In the meantime, he also ordered a coffee.
While they were waiting for the food to arrive, they caught up on the last few days. Tim told her he had been wanting to get a car like that for a long time and finally found one at a good price so he went for it. It was the truth, if not the entire truth, and she didn't seem to find it unusual.
Their breakfast arrived fairly quickly and their conversation lessened a bit as they focused on the food in front of them. Eventually, once hunger had subsided a bit, Tim asked Laura a question.
“If money was no object, where would you travel first?”
Laura thought for a little while, “I think probably Brazil, it seems like such a fascinating culture. What about you?”
Tim had been thinking about the question for a long while but still hadn't entirely made up his mind, partly because he wasn't particularly inclined to travel by himself.
“Well, I've always wanted to see Eastern Europe, maybe go through Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express or something, but I need to find people to travel with, I've traveled on my own before and don't enjoy it nearly as much.”
Laura laughed, “Well I'll go with you if I ever have that kind of money saved up,” she responded.
Tim thought for a moment, “What if you didn't have to?”
“What do you mean?” she replied, confused.
“Let's just say I have some money saved up and would love for you to come with me,” Tim said.
“I don't know...I'd feel weird having you spend that much money on me.”
“Well don't, I've got plenty of money and I’d really like you to come.”
Laura was silent for a little while and Tim could feel the discomfort in the air. If he told her the truth now then she wouldn't feel bad about accepting the money, but she would also know that he hadn't told her all this time. He decided to keep quiet about it.
“Please come,” he tried again.
She responded a little uncertainly, “what about work? I only just started my new job recently, I kind out doubt they are going to give me time off.”
“Well, how much notice would they need, what if we left in a month?” he asked.
“I don't know, I guess I could ask,” Laura replied.
“Alright, check with your work and let me know. I think it would be fun,” he smiled.
They had both forgotten about their food in the course of conversation and now returned to it, not wanting it to get colder than necessary. Tim felt happy about asking, even if it was only a possibility. Going to the other side of the world and properly enjoying travelling without a delinquent lawyer to find or press to avoid, he felt it would do him a lot of good.
Having a month to get organized also would probably be a good idea, as impatient as he was to go. That would give him enough time to get all of his finances in order, not to mention getting visas sorted out and developing an itinerary. It would all depend on how much time Laura was able to get off of course, so he would have to wait to hear back and concentrate on other things first.
They finished up breakfast and left, Laura had to work at 1:00 and Tim was eager to attend to some other things now that he had a goal in mind. Laura promised to call and let him know once she had talked to her employer so after dropping her off, he drove back home and assessed what he needed to get done.
He called back Janet at the Affordable City Foundation and asked if she had any time that afternoon for him to come down and visit. As it happened, she was free at 3:00 and gave him the address and directions to get there.
He went back to the kitchen table and looked at the pad sitting there, empty except for a hand full of headings. As much as he didn't want to, he realized he needed to get it organized if he wanted to go on this trip. He thought hard about it and decided for the moment he would put $5 million to charity. He didn't like the other categories as they seemed too similar. He crossed out Mad Money and Spending and put down Short Term Spending. Under travel he put $2 million, and under Short Term Spending he put $5 million. The remaining $35 went to Retirement, which he crossed out and put Long Term Saving.
It wasn't perfect, but it was certainly better than he had before. He typed it up and sent it off as an email to Ryan to give him a better idea of his priorities. While he thought of priorities, he had almost entirely forgotten the ferrets loose in his apartment. Perhaps because they were no longer running around and seemed to be hiding somewhere. It occurred to him that normal people probably have cages for their ferrets, but first of all he would need to find them.
He looked all around the apartment, under the bed, in the closet, in all kinds of cupboards and drawers, but to no avail. He worried that they might have escaped the place. Their thin, weasel-like bodies could certainly get through pretty small holes. He sat down for a moment to think about what to do next and heard a very faint noise coming from the bathroom. He opened the door and looked around, but didn't see anything. He then opened the cupboard under the sink and sure enough, they were there.
They had made a kind of nest by tearing up all of the toilet paper and hand towels and were keeping busy gnawing on a bar of soap. This stuck Tim as probably not ideal, but it certainly could have been worse. He left them there for the moment and started calling around to some pet shops to see if any of them would deliver a cage and appropriate supplies for ferrets.
It turned out to be harder than he had anticipated, but he eventually found one out in West Van that would deliver for an extra $50, so he put in an order. In the mean time, he realized he probably should name them if they were going to stick around. He thought about it for a few minutes. He belonged to the the school of thought that dictated that animals named after people are invariably more entertaining than those called, 'fluffy' or 'rex'. The pressing question was, which names were suited for these two new co-inhabitants of his apartment.
After some thinking he settled on Bartleby and Iago. He wasn't entirely sure which was which as they had almost identical colouring and seemed to spend most of their time sleeping together, curled up. For the moment he decided identifying them separately wasn't a terribly pressing issue.
While waiting for the cage and supplies to be delivered, he decided to begin some preliminary research on travelling to Russia. Even if Laura weren't able to come, he would want to go one at some point himself so the research would still be useful.
He turned on the computer and began searching out travel sites and recommendations from people who had been there before. It appeared that the visa process could often take pretty close to a month and involved skirting some soviet rules by being 'invited' into the country by a Russian sponsor and have every night's stay documented before arriving. However, there were agencies in place that would put together the appropriate paperwork for a small fee in addition to the visa itself.
The actual travel process appeared to be fairly straight forward; most people seemed to recommend flying to London and then London to Moscow, possibly with a day in between as long flights are rarely pleasant. In terms of the Trans-Siberian Express, it appeared there were a number of options, depending on what class you wanted to travel, what route you wanted to take, and what stops you wanted to make along the way. The most popular route was quite clearly Moscow to Beijing, but there were other routes available as well.
Tim wanted to stop in St. Petersburg as well, which apparently wasn't a part of the route, but quite easy to get to by plane. It held so much history and literary connections that Tim felt he couldn't come so close and not see it. The train itself was an interesting element as the trip from Moscow to Beijing even without stooping would take the better part of a week. According to the websites, most of the travellers on the express trains were tourists as to locals tended to take the cheaper local trains.
Tim made a note to discuss this all with Laura assuming she was able to come. His phone rang then, it was the delivery person from the pet store who had made quite remarkable time getting to his place. He went to the door and let him in. In addition to the cage and food, there were all kinds of accessories and toys that he didn't know about, as well as a book on ferret care.
Tim payed the delivery guy and thanked him before beginning to unpack and set up everything. It ended up being more work that he had anticipated and took the better part of an hour to get everything organized before he could move the ferrets from their bathroom cupboard home to the new cage. He brought some of the nest material into the cage as well so it wouldn't seem entirely foreign.
When Tim checked his watch he realized it was already 2:30pm and he had his appointment at 3:00. He quickly got changed into clothes that didn't smell like ferret and headed out the door. The address Janet had given him was in a small office building off Cornwall and Arbutus near the beach. Tim found parking easily and stopped by the nearby starbucks to grab a coffee as he had gotten there more quickly than he had thought.
Janet's office was a strong contrast to Ryan's. The opulence of the latter was replaced by the evident poverty of the former. There was no reception or artwork, only a simple door labelled Affordable City Foundation – Janet Meeks. Tim knocked and the door was opened by a frizzy-haired woman in her mid-twenties who invited him in.
Janet offered him a seat next to a cluttered desk. The office reminded him of a small college dorm room. Papers were strewn everywhere and on top of every free surface. The walls were covered in maps of various parts of the city with different areas circled and all kinds of notation that Tim had trouble understanding. While there was only one real desk, there appeared to be various chairs around the office indicating that at least some of the time other people might work there as well.
Janet told Tim about some of the projects they were working on, from subsidized housing to redeveloping some old industrial properties into assisted-living facilities. It seemed her job consisted of lobbying, fund-raising, project management, development planning and a number of other jobs all done mostly by one person. Tim asked about other staff and was told that there were an assortment of volunteers who helped out sporadically, but that she was the only full time employee.
He asked about her budget and what the organization would do if it had more money available. Her face brightened at the idea and she began a passionate speech on the good they could do in the city and changes they could make for the better. Tim concluded both that she was dedicated to her cause and that she was vastly overworked. It seemed to him that if the organization was to be effective it could not rely exclusively on volunteers showing up sporadically for events, it needed a dedicated, permanent staff in order to facilitate the kinds of changes they were after.
Tim told her he was interested in making a contribution to her organization, on the provision that he would be able to have a voice in how the funds were managed.. She responded that while the foundation was eager for resources, remaining independent from corporate interests was paramount for retaining credibility in the field and they were not willing to allow corporate oversight that might derail the objectives they already had in place.
Tim assured Janet that he was not interested in advancing corporate interests of any kind, but rather only in ensuring effective management so that the causes she was already passionate about could be better served. As a provision of his donation, he insisted that she hire more staff to handle some of the day-to-day operations so as to free herself for big picture planning.
Tim got out his chequebook and wrote out one million dollars, dated, signed it and was about to hand it to her when he stopped when a thought occurred to him. The funds could be used to further the goals she had laid out, but he insisted that his name in no way be attached to any public document nor mentioned unless legally required, he wished to have his privacy protected to the fullest extent legally possible.
She agreed and he handed her the cheque, promising to be in contact to hear how things progressed. He shook her hand and left her in her office, with a look of surprise, staring at the figure on the cheque as if in a trance.
Having been able to support a cause he really felt good about, he counted the day a success. He drove back to his place to assess the rest of the day and evening. While waiting to hear from Laura regarding her ability to join him on his travels, he went through the last several issues of the Vancouver Sun, in particular the column featuring Jeremy to see if he had somehow revealed Tim's secret, intentionally or not.
As it happened, the column seemed to have taken a rather mundane twist and focused more about the vapid focus of Jeremy's hair styles and fashion choices rather than anything remotely substantive. Tim breathed a sigh of relief and decided that his fears had likely been misplaced in being outed to the world, at least this early.
He checked on Bartleby and Iago to find them both contentedly sleeping in a corner of their new home. Tim felt an immediate affinity with them for so wisely choosing hibernation in the face of countless other options. He debated trying to take them out of the cage to play with but decided that it was likely mean and, if they were anything like him, being woken up in an untimely fashion might lead to some rather painful consequences. For the moment, he decided he should probably get started on the process of selling his old car, as having two seemed rather excessive, particularly for someone who took the bus half the time anyway.
He opened up craigslist and began typing up an ad before realizing he didn't have a recent picture of the car. So he dug out his camera and went outside to take some pictures to be used as hopefully flattering marketing material. He got seven or eight pictures before going back inside to upload them onto his computer. While he was not particularly concerned about the money, he did want to be rid of the car as soon as possible and he knew having pictures up with the ad would increase his chances.
Tim grew impatient waiting for Laura to call. He suspected she probably hadn't even had a chance to talk to her employer yet, but even still, he had run out of things to do and was becoming restless. He sent off a quick text to ask if she had been able to get the time off and then tried to distract himself with watching television until dinner, which was fast approaching. While he was beginning to get hungry himself, he decided to give the ferrets some food, on the off chance they eventually woke up from their perpetual nap and were hungry. The pet store had included some sort of dry food that was apparently good for them and full of meat, but to Tim's eyes it was indistinguishable from cat food. He poured some of it into a bowl for them and attempted to watch TV a while longer with little success.
In an effort to combat his restlessness, he decided to go for a walk to find a cup of coffee. He had possessed his caffeine habit for so long that it had passed into the category of an actual hobby. He would no longer just get a coffee to stay awake in the morning or in social situations, but rather seek it out as a means of having something to do when bored. It seemed to be a common affliction to the vancouverite's soul so he didn't worry about it too much.
Though it was only the end of August, the trees were already gradually beginning their march into fall. Summer in the city was so short as to be almost ephemeral and the tell-tale signs of a return to the rainy season were becoming apparent. Tim tried to savour the warmth and brightness as a bastion against the oncoming perpetual grey that would blanket the city in only a few short weeks.
He walked up to Dunbar street and opted for the independent coffee shop up the road, but only as a change of pace. Tim did not subscribe to theories of ethical consumerism and found it hard to sustain a reasonable conversation with those who were zealously convinced that their buying coffee from the local chains rather than the evil green siren they were somehow single-handedly ending all oppression, hunger and disease.
As he entered the coffee shop he noticed the proliferation of summer drink specials were already starting to come down in deference to the pumpkin latte. He ordered a iced coffee as a silent protest and drank it sitting outside on the patio. He began to think about dinner options commensurate with his lack of desire to cook and dislike of grocery shopping. As it happened, he was right next to a supermarket so he decided to pick up some ingredients to make a spaghetti, against his better judgement.
The walk home was quick and uneventful and having used up all avenues of entertainment he began to cook dinner, as much out of boredom as genuine hunger. In the midst of pondering his sure to be uneventful evening his phone beeped. It was a text from Laura responding to the one he sent earlier in the day.
'Can get 2 wks off in a mnth. Talk later.'
Tim smiled, the trip was on. Even being a month away there was still lots to do. He turned down the stove and left the spaghetti sauce simmering while he logged on to his computer. He sent off a quick email to one of the sites he had found earlier that offered to streamline the visa process. It would be more expensive to get it done on short notice, but Tim didn't mind. He went to a few airline sites and looked at fare options to St. Petersburg and Moscow. It seemed that Moscow had considerably more international flights going in and out so it would probably make the most sense.
He opened up another window and looked for intensive beginner Russian courses as he didn't want to rely exclusively on English while there and had been meaning to learn another language anyway. A number of language schools offered programs that started in the next week. While he began to fill out the registration form for one of them, he remembered that he had left the sauce on the burner for a long while. He went to the stove and turned it to the lowest setting and threw some pasta into the pot of now very much boiling water. He set a timer on the stove so he wouldn't lose track this time and went back to his computer.
He continued researching the Trans-Siberian Express and the various options. There seemed to be a dizzying array of choices, classes of cabin, train numbers, train routes, train times. He looked at several travel sites and most said that the booking process was still quite archaic and most westerners booked their tickets through an intermediary who could ensure that they were on a suitable train.
Tim knew that he wanted to stop in Mongolia along the way but wasn't very familiar with much of the route beyond that. The travel sites mentioned a Lake Baikal that was apparently popular for tourists as well, but for the most part the route seemed to pass through a lot of small Russian towns and countryside, with much of the economy devoted only to servicing the trains that passed by.
Tim decided to resist trying to plan too extensively before having a chance to go over things with Laura who he suspected she would probably want some input and they would still need to figure out exact times for flights that worked for both of them.
He then heard the timer go off for his pasta and returned to the kitchen to drain it and finish preparing dinner. He felt quite pleased with himself for actually cooking something that took more than a few minutes and was even vaguely nutritious. Perhaps, he thought as he started to eat, he would learn to like Russian cooking while he was there, if he could only get his hands on a samovar.
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