How to Lose Everything Page 9

Then she walked away. I watched her go. The hem of her dress swayed back and forth as she went. I was frozen in place, and I kept standing there after all the commuters had disappeared.

  What was that all about? What had changed? I mean, it was only two days ago that we'd talked on the phone about really personal stuff, about the house, Schulz, the money. And now? I turned over my skateboard and looked at the bottom. When I'd bought it six months ago, there was a picture of a naked woman sprawled out on top of a garbage can. Now, her mud-splattered upper body was scratched up from all the slides.

  Have fun with all the twelve-year-olds. Twelve-year- olds, my ass. She sounded like the pseudo-intellectual girls in my class who were always reading Virginia Woolf and dating older guys with cars. I trudged up the steps and threw my board onto the asphalt. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a bill. The sun was shining; people were coming and going from the stores and the train station. I took the bill and held it up with both hands so that it just covered the sun. On it, an old man in a black beret peered out from his blue, two-dimensional world. At that moment there was a gust of wind, and I let go. The bill flew up, turned on its own axis, dropped a little, and then was lifted up again. It sailed slowly to the ground. I watched it settle on the asphalt. None of the people walking by even noticed the money. I jumped onto my board and rolled down the narrow path to the half-pipe.

  When I got there, Schulz was waiting for me, purple eye and all. “Hey,” he said.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Just hanging out. Waiting for whoever showed up.”

  “It's just weird to see you out of bed while the sun is up. And anyway . . . I thought Lena was at your place.”

  “Nope, not today. Something's changed. I don't see the point of just lying around anymore. Lately I feel really”— he balled his hand into a fist—“full of energy. You know? There's finally something happening.”

  “Are things with Lena okay?”

  “Oh yeah. She's not mad about the money anymore. I actually think she's kind of excited about it. She just doesn't want to admit it. I mean, you know how she used to be all crazy about that guy Thomas and his Wrangler? She's really into stuff like that.”

  “But you don't have your license and it'll be forever until you get it.”

  “Yeah. But who says I need a license to drive a car?”

  “Where are you gonna get a car? Who do you think is gonna sell you one?”

  “Who says it'll be legal? I'm not sure how yet, but I'll figure it out. It'll work. Can't you just see the look on Lena's face when I show up at her place in a car? She won't care where it came from then.”

  I shrugged and got on my skateboard. I was too exhausted to try any tricks, so I just rode up and down the mini ramp. Schulz didn't make any move to get up. He lit himself a cigarette.

  “Eric's a pretentious asshole,” he said, after puffing a few smoke clouds into the sun.

  “He wasn't trying to show off, I don't think. He just sounded kind of crazy. I think he's been watching too many movies.”

  “He thinks he's some kind of gangster. He thinks he can act like some kind of drug lord and everyone's gonna respect him.”

  I rolled up, I rolled down.

  “Come on, you know he didn't mean it like that. Don't hold it against him. He always exaggerates. You shouldn't take him so seriously all the time.”

  “Why don't we go to Munich this weekend, to Terminal? I'm ready to spend some cash,” he said.

  “Because they wouldn't let us in.

  “We can bribe the bouncers. We'll slip each of them a bill and then we're in. Come on, live a little. We could get LSD there, or coke. You want to try and do some coke?”

  It was like Sam had been in a trance for the entire taxi ride. His eyes scanned the guardrails flashing by, moving from left to right and then jumping back again, over and over again. It was like he was reading some amazing line in a book that only he could understand. When he finally broke free from his hypnosis, he started to hum “Some-where over the Rainbow.” His humming was so loud that you could easily hear it over the sound of the engine.

  I peered between the two front seats, trying to catch a glimpse of the meter. The price didn't worry me; I was just fascinated by the fact that we could now afford something that was once so utterly extravagant. I couldn't see the fare, though; the driver's hand was blocking the digits. The car slowed as we got off the expressway. In front of us was my first landmark, the high-rise. I didn't know who owned the building or what it was used for, but for me that was the place where the city started. It was beige, with black windows alternating with sections of white wall on the front. It looked like an enormous piano rammed sideways into the ground. The driver turned right.

  “Wait, where are we supposed to find him?” I asked.

  “In the park.”

  “Sam, the park is huge! Didn't he tell you where to go? You talked on the phone. The . . .”

  “E-Eric said somewhere near the Monopoly.”

  “What the hell . . .” I saw the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror and lowered my voice. “What the hell does that mean, ‘somewhere near the Monopoly'?”

  “It's a hill or something. I couldn't really make out what he was saying, but it sounded like Mo-Mo-Monopoly or Monopolis. Sounded Latin or something.” He gave a shrug and said, “W-w-what do I know?”

  We were driving past a monument. On the other side, the surface of the river rippled with reflections of the sky and the chestnut trees. For a minute I imagined what it would be like to jump into the river and let myself be carried away, all the way to the sea. We could easily live off the money for a year or two—anywhere in the world. We could buy a house, maybe on a beach in the Caribbean or in Asia. Eric could build his business, and we could all work for him. Later we could invest in the stock market and eventually become millionaires. Sam was now bobbing his head, as if to the beat of a song. But the cab's radio was off and Sam wasn't wearing headphones. Just that stupid, ever-present Yankees baseball hat.

  “Why do you keep nodding your head?”

  He didn't respond.

  “Sam! Why are you nodding your head?”

  “W-what?”

  “Why are you nodding your head?”

  “Dunno.”

  Sam looked out the window again.

  The taxi turned right, then left. It stopped at the park entrance.

  “Comes to ninety-two thirty,” the driver said.

  I pulled a bill out of my pocket, handed it to him, and told him to keep the change.

  We grabbed our boards—even though I wasn't really sure why we'd brought them—and got out. Before the taxi drove away, I asked the driver if he knew where the Mo- nopolis was. He just shook his head and took off.

  Sam walked straight to the concession stand at the shaded park entrance. He bought eight beers, gave three to me, stowed four in his Eastpak backpack, and opened the last one. The sun elbowed through the leaves of the trees. It was July, and it was hot, but Sam was sweating way more than he should have been. Damp spots on his shirt stretched from his armpits to the bottom of his rib cage. His face shone as if he'd just come out of a sauna. I asked him why he didn't take off his jacket, which had grass stains and dirt on it anyway. Sam said, “Don't feel like it,” and took a drink. We crossed the stone bridge over the brook.

  Two girls walked toward us. One had shoulder- length dreadlocks and a nose ring. She wore a purple skirt and was taller than Sam and me. The other girl had shaved the left side of her head. I thought she looked about sixteen, but she could have been younger—I wasn't really sure. They were drop-dead gorgeous, mostly because they looked so cool.

  I figured the best way to handle it was to just keep walking straight ahead, then maybe nod and say a word or two right as we passed them. Anything more would be too complicated, too risky. But Sam sped up and headed straight toward them. He made me nervous. Sam stopped abruptly in front of the girls and took a drink. I stayed five steps behind him and
turned the other way.

  “D-d-do you guys know the Monopo-Monopolisaurus?”

  The girl with the half-shaved head kept walking, ignoring Sam like she'd already been through this a thou-sand times before. Her friend with the dreadlocks looked at Sam and—incredibly—smiled. I mean, how often do girls smile when you talk to them? That never happened, at least not at home. Shocked, Sam sucked on his beer like a giant pacifier and wouldn't remove it from his mouth.

  “Sorry, what?” the girl asked. Her nose ring glinted in the sun.

  I came over and stood next to Sam. Behind the girls was a big green expanse, and about a hundred yards away was a hill with a little gazebo on top. The sun poured over everything. There wasn't a cloud in sight.

  Sam moved his bottle an inch away from his mouth, which made it look like he was about to blow across the top to make a foghorn noise.

  “Mono-, Molo, Monolopol, or something. A hill or something, with s-some sort of c-columns, La-Latin or something.”

  The girl laughed, but she was laughing with him, not at him: She actually thought he was funny. I could hardly believe it. She was a half a head taller than him.

  “You mean the Monopteros. It's up there.”

  She turned and pointed to the hill with the gazebo.

  “You guys aren't from around here,” her friend said.

  “Nope,” Sam answered, and I silently thanked the summer, the city, and everything else for what he said next. “We're from B-Berlin. We're here on a school trip.”

  “You're from Berlin?” asked the one with the half-shaved head.

  “Yeah, Berlin,” I repeated.

  “Wow, what's it like?” asked the tall one.

  “Pretty cool,” said Sam.

  “Yeah, Berlin's cool,” I said.

  “Cool.”

  “So . . . you're from here then,” I guessed.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  “Well, there's the Monopteros,” she said, and then they started walking away. “Maybe we'll see you later. We were gonna stop by there tonight.”

  “Cool. Drinks, drugs . . . everything's on us!” Sam said to their backs.

  Luckily, they were already too far away and didn't seem to hear him. Sam had meant it in the nicest way possible, but it definitely sounded creepy.

  Without saying another word, we scurried up toward the hill. Off to the left we heard drumming; here and there birds twittered, and pebbles crunched under the rubber soles of our shoes. The air smelled like sunscreen, cigarette smoke, and freshly mown grass. Sam pulled his sunglasses from his jacket pocket. Once they were on, only the lower half of his face was still visible.

  “Ray-Bans,” he said.

  “Pretty smooth there, playa,” I said.

  He just smiled. For the first time in pretty much ever, Sam seemed genuinely confident and self-assured.

  Once we reached a spot where the hill began to steepen, we took a seat under a small tree. Sam opened a second beer; I opened my first. The drumming was louder, and a tangle of voices floated down to us from the gazebo. On the horizon we could see the towers of a church against the sky. Sam cleared his throat.

  “When's Eric coming?” I asked.

  “I don't know. He said he was coming, though. Whenever he gets here, I guess.”

  “Yeah, okay, whatever.” I fell back into the grass and tried to relax.

  It was getting dark. The sun was sinking behind the towers of the church and the South American drumming continued in the warm evening air—unstoppable, as if someone had wound it like a clock. Sam had been napping for about an hour. I made a few attempts at conversation, but he just grunted. I'd drunk the three beers in my bag and was feeling a little wobbly.

  In the distance I saw someone with a familiar walk, broad and elastic and almost celebratory, except for the duffel bag slung over his shoulder—which forced Eric to bend forward slightly. He was wearing navy blue baggy pants, a green short-sleeved shirt, and a baseball cap turned backward. I shook Sam to wake him. Sam sat up, waved, and shouted Eric's name. But Eric didn't walk any faster, as if it were beneath his dignity to speed up. His pace remained steadily determined.

  “Sam,” said Eric when he reached us. He held out his hand. Sam launched into a stuttering flurry of questions, but Eric turned away, looked to me, and held out his hand as he said my name.

  He dropped his duffel bag and sat next to us in the gradually dampening grass. He spotted the beer, opened one of them with his lighter, and downed a quarter of it in one gulp.

  “Where have you been since the last time we saw you?” I asked.

  Before answering, he looked toward the evening sun, now sunk behind the church tower, and lit a cigarette.

  Then he grinned, puffed, and blew the smoke up into the cloudless sky.

  “Here. I've been here.”

  All Eric had in his duffel bag was a hoodie, two T-shirts, some dirty clothes, a bong, and a plastic bag of weed. Eric glanced furtively over his shoulder before pulling out the enormous bag. Sam and I had never seen so much weed in one place before. I opened it up and the smell was almost overpowering. I reached in and ran my fingers over the bounty. Resin stuck to my fingertips. I tasted it and gave the bag to Sam. It was bitter.

  “That's insane. How much do you have?”

  “Guess!” said Eric.

  “A p-p-pound?”

  “You retard!” said Eric. “Do you know how much a pound weighs?”

  Sam shrugged his shoulders.

  “A pound is way more! That's half a pound.”

  “Half a p-pound? Jesus.”

  Eric pulled some rolling papers out of his pocket and started to work on a joint.

  “We can't smoke a bong out here,” he said. “It's too obvious. I have to be more careful now that I'm in the business.” He wasn't rolling the joint in the normal way. Instead he did this awsome thing that I'd never seen anyone else do; he rolled the joint backward and licked the paper inside out. Then he burned off the extra paper, so that he made a joint using only a single layer.

  The sun had set, leaving only a pale, reddish glow. Someone was still pounding on the bongo across the hill.

  So Eric had been serious. He told us how he'd gone to Zafko, spread his cash out on the table, and requested half a pound.

  “You shoulda seen his face when I showed him the money,” he said, turning the tip of the joint carefully in the flame of his lighter.

  But apparently, Zafko had tried to rip him off after that. He'd disappeared for a minute into the kitchen and returned with a plastic bag full of weed.

  “The faggot tried to give me a QP. He said that was all he had.”

  And the price had suddenly gone up from what they'd agreed on: Instead of one pound for three thousand marks, now it was half a pound for eighteen hundred.

  “But it's okay,” said Eric. “I'm gonna make twenty-two hundred from that eighteen. Not bad for a beginner. All I've gotta do is sell each gram for ten marks.”

  He puffed a cloud of smoke into the air and handed me the joint. The past few days he'd been wandering through the park asking people who looked like potential customers whether they wanted to buy any weed.

  “How much have you sold?” I asked.

  He took a drink.

  “Well, I'm just getting started, but over the past two days I've gotten rid of about a quad.”

  “A quad? A quarter ounce?! If it takes you two days to sell a quad, it's gonna take months before you can empty the bag.”

  “That's some shit math. I know I've still got a ways to go. There's a learning curve, and anyway I'm just getting started. Any business takes a little time to really get going. Anyway, at least it's a plan. You always talk shit about everything.” His voice thudded in my ears as I studied the ground. He took another drink, inhaled, and then breathed out slowly.

  “It'll work,” he said, more quietly. “It'll be fine.”

  “You're fucking crazy!” Sam shouted. Eric and I were totally shocked. Sam reached over and
grabbed the joint from my fingers.

  “Chill out,” I told him. It was dark, but Sam was still wearing his sunglasses. He sucked on the joint like it was an inhaler—like he needed it to survive.

  He said, “Shut up,” and began to bob his head again to a rhythm only he could hear.

  “Eric,” I said, “we're going to Terminal on Friday. Schulz is organizing it. You should come.”

  Eric nodded; he didn't seem very interested. He told us about the people he'd met in the park over the last few days. One of them was a guy named Joe. “He's got crooked teeth and he's short,” said Eric. “Looks like a rat and always talks about how he's got gypsy blood in him. He says he's a thief. But he's a funny guy, hits on like every girl that walks by.”

  Apparently Joe still owed Eric thirty marks for three grams of weed. He'd promised to give it to him the next time they ran into each other. Joe told Eric that he was never far from the park. But that was yesterday afternoon, and Eric hadn't seen him again since. There was someone else who everyone called Coconut or just Coco. I asked Eric if he always walked around with a coconut or something. “No,” Eric replied. ”One time he just took too much LSD and never came back down again. Now he's convinced that he's a coconut. But still, he's really cool.” Eric had also sold weed to a couple of skinheads. And in the mornings, around sunrise, there were always a few people coming from Terminal, still high out of their minds, who sat in the park to smoke a joint and come down. “There's some really messed up shit that happens here,” said Eric.

  Eric packed up his duffel bag and stood up.

  “Let's go up to the top,” he said. We got up with him.

  A paved walkway wound around and led to the gazebo. Just past the first bend, some sort of Goa trance music rattled out of a stereo. Sam bobbed his head faster. The stereo gradually overwhelmed the sounds of the few remaining bongo drummers. After the second bend, I lit a cigarette.

  When we finally got to the top, we saw about fifteen people sitting in the gazebo. Candles were set up everywhere. The two girls we'd met on the bridge were already there. The hippie girl with dreadlocks was smoking weed out of a pipe (improvised from a plastic Coke bottle). The girl with the half-shaved head was wrapped in a purple shawl. A big batik cloth was spread out in front of them. A wiry guy covered in tattoos danced around. He'd taken his shirt off and his head was shaved bald except for a tuft at the back, which was gathered into a high ponytail. “That's Coconut,” said Eric.