Alan got it for a song, and was delighted by his fortune.
He was drunk on the wood, of course, and would have paid much more had
the realtor noticed this, but Alan had spent his whole life drunk on
trivial things from others' lives that no one else noticed and he'd
developed the alcoholic's knack of disguising his intoxication. Alan
went to work as soon as the realtor staggered off, reeling with a New
Year's Day hangover. He pulled his pickup truck onto the frozen lawn,
unlocked the Kryptonite bike lock he used to secure the camper bed, and
dragged out his big belt sander and his many boxes of sandpaper of all
grains and sizes, his heat strippers and his jugs of caustic chemical
peeler. He still had his jumbled, messy place across town in a
nondescript two-bedroom on the Danforth, would keep on paying the rent
there until his big sanding project was done and the house on Wales
Avenue was fit for habitation.
Alan's sanding project: First, finish gutting the house. Get rid of the
substandard wiring, the ancient, lead-leaching plumbing, the cracked
tile and water-warped crumbling plaster. He filled a half-dozen
dumpsters, working with Tony and Tony's homie Nat, who was happy to help
out in exchange for cash on the barrelhead, provided that he wasn't
required to report for work on two consecutive days, since he'd need one
day to recover from the heroic drinking he'd do immediately after Alan
laid the cash across his palm.
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