Money

More bad luck today, although this particular stroke was inevitable:

CAD VISA 4512-****-****-****

Current Balance: $1.27

I was talking about Crispin Glover yesterday, and Ben, and Willard. I know how Willard felt in the end, when everything fell away. There he was, no job, no family, no home--nothing but a giant rat. And then his giant rat turned on him, too. Hell, I'm one step ahead of him. My giant rat has always hated me. Bit me just this morning, she did, when I tried to scratch her behind the ears.

I could keep putting off the inevitable for a while, I suppose. I could ask my friends or family for a loan, but what would be the use? By next month, it would be spent, and I'd be in the poorhouse again. And it would be worse than ever, because I'd owe my friends. A faceless credit card company is one thing--the Royal Bank can wait. A friend is quite another. I could sell every last drawing I've got, and buy myself a week or two. My beloved Meiji bronze rats, they'd fetch a thousand dollars between them, I think--I could go almost a month on that. And then what? This again? No. I need a permanent solution, not all these desperate measures. I shoo the wolf from the front door, and he's round the back in an instant.

Complaining won't help, of course. A miracle...I need to engineer some sort of a miracle. They don't just happen, after all. That's where people go wrong. They sit around waiting for lucky breaks, when there just aren't that many in the world. You've got to make your own good luck, that's the thing. You've got to--you've got to--well, if I knew how to finish this sentence, I wouldn't be broke, now, would I?

First, I've got to catch up on work. I've been taking on more work than I can handle, in hopes of keeping the bills paid, and now everything that hasn't got a press deadline is at least a month late. How unprofessional can I get? I've got to finish everything on my plate before I bite off anything else. And after that, once this ridiculous mountain of work's all behind me? After that...that's when I'll build my miracle. What will it be? I've sent portfolios to everyone I can think of. Nobody wants me at the moment. That's fine--there must be something else I can do. Something that doesn't involve crawling back to Sweden with my tail between my legs, that is.

I could...

I could...

I don't know. I just don't know.

Okay, here's one. I'm writing two books at the moment, both for a very small publisher who can't afford to give me an advance. I could try and sell them to someone else instead, someone who could keep the roof over my head while I worked.

No--isn't there any way I can save myself without screwing somebody else?

I'm going to take a nap now. When I wake up, everything will be different. The New York Times will have written favourably about my ink drawings, raising their value from fifty dollars apiece to five hundred. There'll be twenty messages on my answering machine, all from galleries wanting to show my work. Wait, no--nineteen will be from galleries, but the twentieth will be from my landlord, bearing good news: my apartment won't be sold, after all, and I can live here as long as I like. Urban Fare will have discovered that they've overcharged me by fifteen percent on every order for the last eight months, and will send me a huge box of food to compensate. There'll be cans of tomatoes and cans of soup, bags of lettuce, loaves of bread, and pounds and pounds of delicious meat. There'll even be a bag of crisps, because I like those, and I haven't had any in ages.

My neighbours will have ordered pizza, but gotten the wrong kind. They wanted pepperoni and onion, but they got pepperoni, bacon, and olive. Rather than sending the delivery back, they'll go out for dinner at the revolving restaurant, and on their way out the door, they'll offer me their pizza. I will eat the whole thing, except for two slices I'll feed to Stella.

My ex-boyfriend, the one I had before I moved to Salt Lake City--the one I never wrote to because I lost his address in an airport bagsnatching--he'll have found my website, recognized me by my rat pictures, and written me an e-mail. We'll resume our friendship, which was much more viable than our romance. There'll be hundreds of things to talk about, everything we've done for the last few years. We'll never lose touch again.

The picture I've been working on all afternoon, and despairing over, will suddenly make perfect sense. I'll strike the perfect balance of reds and greens and yellows, and everyone who sees it will have their breath taken away.

And then, there's Steve. Good old Steve. He'll be all over the news when I get up, after a tragic (and gruesomely spectacular) accident with a kitchen sink garbage disposal. He'll still be alive, but unable to see, speak, or piss standing up. I will get on the roof (which is strictly forbidden) and sing gleeful victory songs until I am removed by the police. It will be the happiest day of my life.

Or, at the very least, I'll be less tired than I am now.