How to Lose Everything Read online

  I ordered a pepperoni and sausage pizza and Eric got his calzone again. Frank plunked the steaming boxes onto the counter. “Nine marks,” he grunted.

  Eric pulled a crumpled hundred from his pocket and tossed it on top of the boxes. Frank took the money, and it disappeared into the black recesses of the register. As he counted out Eric's change, I thought I saw him cast each of us a quick, scowling glance. But he didn't say anything.

  We sat outside on the stone steps, which were still warm after the hot day, and stuffed ourselves as twilight fell. Honestly, I was starting to get tired of pizza. It was still good, but it wasn't a special treat now. It was just a greasy clump of cheese with oregano. Nothing more.

  “Do you fink . . .” I asked Eric with my mouth full. “Do you fink that Fwank . . .” I forced myself to swallow a lump of cheese so big it almost hurt. “Do you think Frank's noticed anything?”

  “Who? Lardass? Hell no, he's happy to have some regular customers. Doesn't matter to him where the money comes from.” Sauce dribbled out of the corner of Eric's mouth. He wiped it onto the back of his hand and slurped it off.

  “How many times have you been here the past few days?”

  “How many? No clue, maybe every other day. Or maybe every day.”

  “Every day?” Before, we used to have to save up all our change just to be able to afford a single pizza at the end of the week. “You've gotten a calzone every day? Do you always pay with hundreds?”

  “Not always. But if I don't have any change on me, yeah, I pay with a hundred. It doesn't matter. Get a grip, you sound paranoid. Not everything is about us.”

  “What if we get caught?”

  “Juvie. It's not that bad. Or you'd get community service and have to change diapers at a home for the handicapped. I had to do that once. It's not that bad.”

  We walked back to the half-pipe after dark. Pebbles crunched underneath our shoes as we went. In the distance we saw the lights from a train. When we were almost to the concrete blocks, we saw something glowing. It was just a small point that would get brighter, then almost go out, only to light up again right away. The ember wandered a little, lit up, and then dimmed again.

  Sam was sitting cross-legged on the ground with Schulz. Schulz was smoking a joint. Eric was the first to reach them.

  “Sam!” He went to grab Sam's hand energetically, but Sam just held out a limp fist and stared up at him.

  “Schulz! What's up?”

  Just then the train thundered over the tracks. It was loud enough to drown out our voices—or at least it would have been, if Sam and Schulz had been saying anything. Instead, Schulz just handed Sam the joint and they looked at each other. They seemed to be waiting for something. The flame had gone out and Sam had to relight the joint.

  Then Schulz lifted up his head, and we saw it: His left eye was swollen shut, like a boxer's after a fight.

  “What's that?” asked Eric.

  “Are you blind? What do you think it is? It's a black eye, that's what. It's what you get when some asshole smashes your face in.” He really launched into Eric, but when he finished talking, his head sank back down.

  “Yeah. I can see it's a black eye.”

  “They punched him in the jaw, too,” Sam blurted out, and then immediately stuck the joint back between his lips. He reminded me of a baby with a pacifier.

  “Who? Who punched you? Who was it?”

  “Yeah, who?” I asked. I wanted to say something, too.

  “S-S-Strasser.”

  “Strasser? Strasser, that jackass who's always at the sports bar?” Eric knew Strasser from when they were little and their families lived in the high-rises on the other side of the tracks. Eric still hated him because Strasser used to beat him up a lot in grade school.

  “That's the one. This afternoon, on my way home. He and his douchebag friends headed me off at the train station.” Schulz seemed like he was enjoying the attention, maybe even milking it a little.

  “I was going through the tunnel, and suddenly there he was. I wanted to just get past him, so I was like, ‘Hey, Strasser.' Then he shoved me and said he wanted my money. I said, ‘What the hell? I don't have any money.' I dodged the first punch. But then . . . I think I got him once . . . I think. And then his two bitches came, that fat kid Riedler and this other guy, I don't know what his name is. I didn't stand a chance. If he'd been alone, I swear I would've kicked his ass. But one against three? I didn't have a chance! No one would.” Schulz's voice was shaky as he added a quiet, “Right?”

  We all knew that Schulz, thin and fragile as he was, never had a chance against Strasser. But we kept quiet, our silence communicating our support.

  “It's just so fucked up. Three on one! You have no idea what it feels like. It's just so cowardly. If it had just been one on one . . . then I would've . . .”

  “Schulz,” I interrupted. “Why? Why did he come to you for money?”

  “Don't know. He just said, ‘Give me your money!'”

  “Is that exactly what he said?”

  “He said, ‘I heard you got some money.'”

  “‘I heard you got some money’?” I repeated.

  “M-m-money,” repeated Sam.

  “It doesn't fucking matter what he said. Look at my eye! I can barely see anything. It'll be a good three weeks before the swelling goes down. I have to go around like this for three weeks! I look like shit!”

  “But after they beat you up, what happened then?”

  “The sons of bitches stole my watch. My new watch! Fucking assholes!”

  Eric, who had remained silent through all of this, suddenly rose up. Sticking out his chest, he tensed his neck muscles and balled his hands into fists. He looked almost animalistic.

  “I'm gonna end him. We're gonna end him. Listen: We can't let this happen to us. We can't let him get away with it. Strasser's the last son of a bitch that screws with us!” He enunciated the last syllables like a military command.

  “Y-y-yeah!” shouted Sam.

  “I'm gonna talk to Orhan tomorrow. He's got a score to settle with Strasser, too. All the Turks will definitely want to help us. And they know how to use their knives. I know for a fact that Orhan's cousin stabbed someone once.”

  But Schulz wasn't so enthusiastic. “I don't know what that would accomplish. Strasser has people, too. It's not going to accomplish anything.” He looked at the concrete in front of him and hung his head.

  Then suddenly Sam chimed in off-handedly. He said, “Maybe Strasser knows about the house.”

  We looked at each other. Schulz with his busted eye, Eric with his bloodthirsty stare, me with my clenched jaw, and Sam, looking like an overly enthusiastic yet violent comic book character.

  At first no one said anything.

  “There's no way!” Eric said. He lit another cigarette, and I felt in my pocket for the bundle. “There's no way. He can't know about it. How would he?”

  No one answered his question. Sam looked at the ground, which made him look really suspicious. Maybe he had told someone about it. Maybe it wasn't my fault after all. I hadn't told anyone about what had happened at Daniel's party, not even Sam. Besides, Carina . . . she . . . she hadn't been interested in any of it. Maybe she had read the letter, but I definitely hadn't said a word about the money.

  “Sam?” asked Eric, in a way that sounded like Chuck Norris. “Did you tell anyone?”

  “No. No one. I d-d-didn't say anything. N-not a word. I s-swear.” Sam spoke so quietly we could hardly hear him.

  “What about L-L-Lena?” Sam asked. He sounded suddenly aggressive, which surprised Schulz. “Lena knew about it from the beginning. Y-you told her everything!”

  “She's my girlfriend, of course I'm gonna tell her about it. I . . . I have to tell her. But she . . . she keeps her mouth shut. I know she does. What are you saying, asshole?”

  “H-h-how can you be so sure? Sh-sh-she doesn't like Eric, she doesn't like me, but she does like guys with their own cars. How do you know she did
n't tell someone?”

  “Because she's my girlfriend, damn it!” Schulz shouted. “Because she wouldn't do that. And what the hell do cars have to do with anything? I don't have a car. Anyway, what about you guys? Daniel knows, doesn't he?” Schulz looked at Eric. “And Jonathan, you were so stoned at Daniel's party that you can't remember anything about it, you said so yourself. Maybe you told someone while you were shitfaced. Leave Lena out of it, damn it! I trust her, all right? I trust her . . .” He shook his head.

  “I didn't say anything,” I said quietly.

  Then we fell silent and smoked. The train thundered over the tracks. It got quieter, the night got darker, the smoke from our cigarettes curled through the air. I found the constellation Orion, the only one I knew.

  “We gotta go back in,” said Eric quietly but resolutely, as if he was simply stating a truth that could not possibly be discussed further.

  “W-w-what?” asked Sam.

  “We gotta go back in. We can't take the risk that someone else knows about the house and might find more money in it.”

  “Are you crazy? It's way too dangerous right now. Strasser knows about the house, and probably other people do, too,” I said. “What about all the people who might have noticed something? Like Frank. Have you noticed how he's been suspicious of us? What if someone tells the cops? What if we get caught?”

  In the last few days we hadn't talked about the house at all. Once, I'd mentioned it to Sam, who used to talk about it a lot. But this time he just said, “Lips zipped,” making the motion with his fingers, and snickered.

  “You don't get it!” said Eric. “If someone knows about the house, they're gonna want to go in and get the rest of the money. No one's gonna go to the police when they have the chance of finding a few thousand marks. The only question is who it's gonna be. Us, or Strasser and his friends.”

  “I don't know,” said Schulz. “I think Jonathan is right. It was cool at first, but now it's getting dangerous.”

  “Schulz,” Eric said pleadingly. “Schulzie, just think for a second. We'll go inside just one more time and clean the place out. An afternoon, a half hour, and we'll really look. There's more in there. You don't need to get your watch back from Strasser. You'll get a new one. Or would you rather that Strasser got the cash?”

  “So maybe Strasser or someone else knows that we found money,” I said. “But they have no way of knowing where the house is. There are hundreds of houses in this town.”

  “Strasser's a douchebag, but he's not stupid,” Eric said to me. “I know him, I went to grade school with him. He just has to start asking around about abandoned houses. I'm telling you, we have to get in as fast as possible and get the money. It's much safer that way.” He turned to face all of us. “You know, it's much safer if it's just the four of us getting the money than if lots of people know about it. Just think about what would happen if Strasser got the money. Those guys can't keep their mouths shut . . . If they know about the house, you might as well start handing out flyers. It's gotta be us! No one else!”

  “All right, fine,” said Schulz. “You're probably right. Strasser's a fucking asshole. It's our house and our money.”

  I asked, “You think there's still more money inside?”

  “There has to be more. We didn't look very hard, and we still found five thousand marks,” said Eric.

  My stomach tightened. I asked, “So when do we do it?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  We nodded.

  Sam, however, remained silent.

  That night, I brushed my teeth, got into bed, and smoked a cigarette. The dark blue of the cigarette pack has always appealed to me, but the cigarettes themselves were actually pretty terrible. The window was open and everything—the smoke, the cigarette pack, my skin, the walls—shimmered dark blue.

  I tried to imagine who this Hilda Stetlow person was. I tried to imagine what she was like. And how she had wound up with all that money.

  She's sixty-five years old and kind of lumpy. It's hard to imagine a Hilda who doesn't spend every day in a colorful shift dress, with her gray hair pulled tight in a high bun, which unravels and gets messier and messier over the course of her day's work. She's a good-natured woman, but in her old age she has also become a bit senile. She smiles a lot—often because she's happy, but more often because she's confused. Everything about her—her face, her body, her bun—is round.

  The effort that she has to put in to keep up the house and care for her sister has become almost overwhelming. Of course, she's still able to finish everything before the day is over, but it doesn't come to her as easily as it did several years back. Now, in the evenings, when she finally sinks into bed, she is completely drained. Sometimes when her sister calls for help at night and Hilda gets up to go to her, she finds herself thinking a terrible thought, and the only cure she knows of is to cross herself. She wishes that her ailing sister would die.

  Every time she makes the sign of the cross over her chest, she can't help thinking, “If only my son were here! Everything would be different if he were here instead of in America.” She has no idea what he does for a living. But she would much rather have him with her than the hundred dollars he airmails over every month. She always saves the money for a full year, and then shortly before Christmas she drives to Munich and exchanges them for marks. She has done that for years. Hilda Stetlow doesn't trust banks; they feel threatening, so instead of opening a savings account, she hides the bills in every corner of her house. She puts them aside for a rainy day. But that rainy day never comes, and so year after year, the pile of hundred-mark bills keeps growing . . .

  I'd always thought moonlight was corny, or else something for people who didn't have streetlights. But at that moment, a silver light fell into my room. The atmosphere was thrilling. I remembered the crumb of hashish still lying in my pants pocket. There was enough for one pretty sizeable joint—all for me.

  After I smoked up, though, I started to feel anxious. I couldn't think straight, and my image of Hilda Stetlow began to morph. The stout, rotund lady became a haggard, wiry figure . . .

  Her bun is frayed, with the hairs sticking out wildly around her wrinkled face. Her dress is covered with stains: coffee, ketchup, and little bits of cereal. It smells. She smells. Everything about her is chaotic.

  She shuffles through her garbage-strewn apartment, opens drawers, leaves food out, and hides money. Her lawn becomes overgrown, and the bushes sprawl over the fence, onto the street, and into the neighbors' lawns—which leads to a lot of drama, of course. Something changes in Hilda Stetlow. Something's wound her up, and now she's like a ticking time bomb that could explode at any moment. Her neural pathways have been corroded from years of abusing prescription drugs; she's become vicious.

  As the moonlight shone on my face, I put out the joint in the ashtray and let my head fall heavily back onto my pillow.

  Then one day, Stetlow captures the Summers's cat on one of its forays into her yard. She tortures it, kills it, and buries it in her own basement.

  The process of burying the animal is conveniently aided by the fact that the basement has no floor—since Hilda Stetlow, driven by her absurd cheapness, stopped payment on the renovations. The rumor makes the rounds quickly: nasty old Stetlow—that witch—killed pets and kept the dead animals in her basement. Grown-ups whisper when they saw the old woman, children cry, “Witch, witch!” and run away from her, half in fear, half in joy at the thrill of it. When the children yell at her, Hilda Stetlow hisses back.

  Then, one day, Stetlow takes a few too many pills. Her heart pounds in her chest; her thoughts race through her head; she could hardly stay upright on her own two feet. Everything is horribly bent and distorted, like a spring that has been extended beyond its breaking point; she feels strained to the utmost, about to shatter. She goes out into the street, wearing only her dirty shift dress. Everything around her—the asphal
t on the street, the hedges in the yards, and the walls of the neighboring houses—is bent, as if they are under an enormous weight. Hilda Stetlow could see the end coming.

  The phone rang.

  I jumped, disoriented. After the third ring, I finally managed to emerge from my coma-like state and peel myself out of my bed; after the fifth, I picked up the receiver, shivering.

  “Hilda?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “. . .”

  “What? Who's Hilda?”

  “Nothing, sorry, I just woke up.”

  “It's eleven thirty.”

  “Yeah, exactly,” I said.

  “What time do you go to bed? I'm never asleep before twelve.”

  “I, uh, I don't know, Lena. Normally around one.” That was a lie; I hardly ever went to bed after twelve, but that would've made me sound pretty damn lame.

  “Around one? But it's only eleven thirty now.” With just a few quick questions, she'd managed to reveal me as a liar, even to myself. In the space of two sentences she somehow made me feel guilty. It made me think of Schulz. She must do the same thing to him. Schulz . . . me . . . I pulled myself together.

  “So . . . what's up? Did you just call to talk about the ideal bedtime?”

  “I thought you'd be glad I called.”

  “Yeah, of course I'm glad, but . . .”

  “Doesn't sound like it. Whatever, it doesn't matter now.”

  “What? What doesn't matter? Of course I'm glad when you call. I'm always glad when you call me. It's just . . . I was just sleeping, and I had this really weird dream.”

  “About Hilda.”

  “Yeah, about Hilda. Wait, it's not what you think. Hilda's not . . . whatever, it doesn't matter. So whatever, I . . . wait, don't change the subject. You're the one who called me.”