If you’ve read my post about living with a real-life serial killer, you’ll probably get that my life is far from perfect. There is also a lot going on in the background that I just can’t talk about. At least, not yet. For one, I work under the table for a kind of mafia boss. I get paid (sporadically) in cash, so I’m not on the books. I’ve got no bank account, no proof of address, and if I’m honest, I’m just a step away from being homeless, should my job suddenly fold.
I do keep trying to escape. It’s just not fucking easy. I’ve been homeless in the past, and having been there, hell, I’ll hang on to the rancid bathroom I live in with Malta’s version of Norman Bates for as long as I have to if I can help it.
Homelessness isn’t just about not having a roof over your head. It’s about having no clean clothes to wear to a job interview, even if you can miraculously get one. It’s about your teeth feeling furry as hell 24/7. It’s about having no address to use as a point of call, or open a bank account to get paid.
Once you’re out of the system, you really are out. The only reason I survived being homeless the first time was because a very nice woman called Alison once helped me put all the pieces of my life back together again. These days, though, there are no Alisons.
In this case, I tried to be smart. I applied for a job in an exclusive hotel on its own private island. As long as I could get there, I’d have the basics of work and an address to sort out all the rest. I got the job. A night after, I even dreamed of waking up there with all the hopelessness of my current bathroom life behind me.
However, it wasn’t to be. I did the math, and I realized that it just wouldn’t work. What I’d spend to get there, how much of a levy they would charge me for accommodation, how short the season would be, before leaving me homeless at the end of it all over again. It seemed like a way out, but really it was just another dead end.
The only problem was that I’d accepted a job offer put to me, and as the days counted down to my supposed start date, I just couldn’t see any way to politely say “hey, sorry, I don’t want this actually.” So I did a bad thing. I created an email account in the name of my late father, and informed the said hotel that sadly, I had passed away.
To me, this strategy was perfect. I mean, who questions you fucking dying? Well, as it turns out in 2025, some people bloody do. Today I was at work grilling three sea bass, and Derek, who works on the bar of my restaurant, came into the kitchen holding out his phone. This only ever means that the boss wants my ass for some reason.
“Andy!” Said boss growled to me as I took the phone handset. “I heard you died.”
“Died?” I tried to say meekly.
“Yes, you’re dead.”
And in my head, I suddenly saw a nightmare vision of my potential private island employer passing on their condolences to my current boss via Facebook, and the subsequent unraveling of my giant lie.
That said, it’s not the lie unraveling that I fear. What I fear now is my boss knowing that I tried to make a break for freedom without giving him any kind of heads-up beforehand.
For this, there will be consequences.
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