Absolute Zero: Misadventures From A Broad (Val & Pals Book 1)

by Margaret Lashley

  Despite the responsibilities involved, my friendship with Rita wasn’t without its rewards. I finally had someone to talk with besides Friedrich. I also had someone who could read the impossibly complicated notices and letters I kept getting in the mail. I’d shown them to Friedrich a few times. He’d said they were nothing but advertisements. But something in my gut told me they were more serious than that.

  One Wednesday in late September, I brought some of my mail with me to our little kaffee klatch. When I arrived, Rita was already there. I checked the clock and sighed in relief. I wasn’t late.

  “Hello, Rita. You’re early today.”

  “Yes. My trial ended quickly. The defendant was declared incopren…incomputable.”

  “Incompetent?”

  “Yes. That’s it.” Rita looked away, disappointed with herself.

  “I thought we might do something different today.” I spoke cheerfully, trying to appease the self-scolded puppy.

  Rita looked back toward me. She was still chewing on her mistake. “What?”

  I dumped three letters on the table. “I thought you might teach me how to read my mail.”

  Rita shrugged and picked up an envelope. “May I open it?”

  “Of course. Open all of them.”

  Rita opened the first letter. “It is an advertisement from a furniture store. They want to make you a special offer.”

  I laughed, relieved. “I bet they do.”

  Rita didn’t get my joke, which was no surprise. The German sense of humor was as incomprehensible as the Germans themselves. Rita set the advertisement down and opened the next envelope.

  “Ah. This is from the car mechanical. You must make a termine…uh…appointment for service.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Rita opened the last envelope. “This is from the Finanzeampt. How you say it? I don’t remember.”

  “I don’t know. What do they want?”

  “They say you don’t pay your taxes. You are being…charged with tax…what is the word? Elevation? No. Ah! Evasion. Tax evasion.”

  Rita straightened her back proudly. She’d correctly remembered the English words. She sat back and allowed herself the small indulgence of a self-congratulatory smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I was both livid and terrified. I’d trusted Friedrich completely. I’d had no choice. Yet under his stewardship, I’d watched my fortune drain into the pockets of German handwerkers and drunken Poles. My cash was gone. I had fifty-eight thousand dollars left in my once-healthy retirement fund. And now I was being charged with tax evasion.

  Friedrich had always taken care of filing our taxes. But he hadn’t done them right. Now, for some reason, I alone was being investigated. The thought of being charged with a crime in Germany scared me to the core. I’d never even had so much as a traffic ticket back home in Florida. A nagging feeling in my gut told me that solving this wouldn’t be cheap or easy.

  That evening, I waited out on the front steps of the villa for Friedrich to return from work. When I heard his key rattling the lock on the wooden gate, I stood up and nervously brushed the creases from my skirt. As soon as he came through the gate, I rushed up to him.

  “Friedrich! I’m in trouble. Rita says I’m being charged with tax evasion!”

  Friedrich’s square jaw tightened. His sea-blue eyes warned of a coming storm. He faced me, but looked over my head as he spoke.

  “You need a lawyer, not me.”

  “But….”

  “Listen. I just come home from work. I am tired. I don’t have energy to listen to your problems tonight.”

  “But Friedrich! I need your help!”

  “I can’t help you. Not with these problems with the Finanzampt. You need an attorney.”

  Friedrich pushed past me into the house. His face was tired and angry, and he smelled of cigarette smoke. I watched him pass, dumbfounded. I shut my mouth and followed him into the kitchen.

  “Look, Friedrich. I’m not trying to start some petty spat. This is tax evasion! For all I know, I could go to jail for this!

  “How many times do I tell you? I can’t help you. You need an attorney.”

  Something clicked inside my brain. “How do you know?”

  Friedrich’s face grew red and angry. He opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer.

  “Friedrich, I asked you a question. Did you know about this? How do you know I need an attorney?”

  Friedrich stared at me hatefully and took a long slug from the beer bottle. The contempt in his eyes shot fear through me. I couldn’t breathe.

  “Why can’t everyone just leave me alone? I am tired! I don’t want to talk to you. Basta!”

  Friedrich took his beer and marched out the front door, slamming it behind him. For the first time, I sensed that his problems ran much deeper than just the ones between us. I knew Friedrich’s job took a lot out of him. He’d used that excuse to avoid discussions before. But tonight, I’d seen guilt and shame mixed in with the anger on his face. Maybe he had other problems. Or maybe he didn’t want to talk to me because he would have to admit he made a mistake. That was something he was definitely not good at. It went against his German nature.

  If that was the case, I could understood his reluctance to discuss it. But on the other hand, I had a right to expect Friedrich to support me in this. We were supposed to be on the same team. But maybe we weren’t. Maybe that had just been my delusion.

  Since I’d learned German, I’d had the growing suspicion that Friedrich considered me a second-class citizen. When it came to his family, he refused to take my side on anything. He never took me with him to his company’s holiday parties. He talked over me in public. And on the rare occasion we met his friends for drinks or dinner, I felt tossed aside, excluded and forgotten. Even more telling, I wasn’t allowed to say anything bad about Germany, but Friedrich was free to criticize America all he wanted.

  And now he had abandoned me to deal with this tax dilemma on my own. We’d grown further apart than I’d ever imagined.

  ***

  According to Rita, I had two weeks to respond to the latest letter from the Finanzampt – Germany’s version of the IRS. I needed an attorney, fast. Rita offered to help, but her lack of compassion, even for an attorney, was utterly appalling. So, I asked the only other professional I knew. My hairdresser. She recommended a man in a nearby village who spoke perfect English. That had sounded perfectly perfect to me.

  I called the attorney’s office and made an appointment for the upcoming Wednesday. For reasons I wasn’t sure about myself, I decided not to tell Friedrich about my meeting. Not yet, anyway. I told him I needed the car to meet with Rita at her house again. In other words, I told him my first bald-faced lie.

  ***

  I drove along the country backroads of the picturesque Southern Wine Route toward the law office of Mr. Donald Manheim. The name itself was a blend of two cultures. I hoped he would turn out to possess the best attributes of both. I sped past walnut and chestnut trees laden with bumper crops. It had been a pleasant summer and fall, weather-wise. I couldn’t say the same, marriage-wise.

  I turned left and followed Kleindorferweg to the address I’d scribbled on my notepad. I parked under a maple tree ablaze with fall colors. The patchwork piles of leaves crunched as I shuffled through them in the parking lot. A red one clung to my thick brown leggings. I set it free and stepped inside the door of the modest, single-story office building.

  “Frau Fremden?” asked the woman at the front desk.

  “Ja. Das bin ich.”

  “Oh. I forgot! You’re English, ya?”

  “American, yes.”

  “Please, take a seat. Herr…Mr. Manheim will be with you in a moment.”

  I started to sit, but didn’t have the chance. A nice-looking man in a well-made blue suit stepped out of an office and came toward me, his had extended.

  “Hello! Ms. Fremden? I’m Donald Manheim.”

  His English was America
n, not British. So was his handshake. No cold, dead fish. His hand was warm, his grip firm and confident. I felt myself relax a little inside. If anyone could help me, I felt certain it would be this man.

  “Come with me,” he offered, and gestured toward his office door.

  His blue-grey eyes twinkled welcomingly. As I followed him into his office, I noticed a touch of grey in his sandy-brown hair.

  “Have a seat, please.”

  “Thank you. My hairdresser was right. Your English is perfect.”

  He laughed casually, something I’d witnessed rarely in my six long years in Germany.

  “Yes, it had better be. My mother was an English teacher – an American. So, tell me, how can I help you, Ms. Fremden?”

  “Please, call me Val.”

  “Don’t you know by now that such informality is verboten?” he teased.

  “I have been made well aware of the fact on numerous occasions. But humor me, Mr. Manheim. I could use a friend.”

  The attorney’s jovial smile straightened into a more serious, sympathetic line. “I totally understand. Call me Don. It will be our little secret.”

  I smiled weakly. “Thanks, Don. I’m having problems with my taxes. I got a letter saying I’m being charged with tax evasion. My husband always filed our taxes. I had no idea how to do it in Germany. It’s unfathomable enough in the US.”

  I pushed the letter across the desk toward him. He read it quickly.

  “Yes. That’s what it says. Is your husband a CPA, per chance?”

  “No. An engineer.”

  “Why was he doing the taxes, then?”

  “Well, he has a penchant for saving money the hard way. He’s always trying to cheat the system. You know what I mean? Like not pulling permits. Hiring Polish workers. I guess he thought he could save money doing the taxes himself.”

  “Oh. Okay. Did you bring your tax records?”

  “Yes. Here they are.” I heaved a satchel full of file folders onto his desk.

  “I should be able to get through them within a week. Is that acceptable?”

  I nodded. “And there’s one more thing I want you to look at for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “My prenuptial agreement.”

  ***

  A week had gone by since my appointment with Donald Manheim. I’d passed the time in a nervous twitter. I didn’t like keeping secrets from Friedrich, but I also didn’t want to bicker with him about uncertainties that could turn out to be nothing. I’d decided to wait until I knew the facts before bringing up the topic again. Hopefully, I would find out today that the tax issues weren’t so serious. Maybe the whole thing had been a misunderstanding that could be solved with a simple letter of explanation.

  Nevertheless, I’d lied to Friedrich again about why I needed the car. I’d told him I wanted to go shopping in France. I thought about the tangled web I was weaving as I waited in the small reception room in Donald Manheim’s law office. I decided they were white lies.

  “Nice to see you again, Ms. – oops, Val.”

  Don greeted me with the same warm smile and handshake as the week before. I perked up. Maybe there wasn’t doom and gloom in my future after all.

  “Hello, Don. Nice to see you again, too – I hope.”

  He shot me a sympathetic smile as we walked to his office. He closed the door and sat down across the desk from me.

  “What’s the verdict?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Not good, I’m afraid,” he said apologetically. “It looks like your husband neglected to claim your assets on the joint filing statements. As a result, with interest, you owe back taxes of forty-three thousand euros.”

  “What!”

  “On the bright side, the tax refunds you got for filing jointly should more than make up for it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He claimed you as a dependent, unemployed spouse, so you earned a ten thousand euro tax refund each year. That’s fifty-thousand right there.”

  “Oh.”

  The sandy-haired lawyer studied me for a moment. I thought I saw anger flash across his face.

  “He never told you about the refund, did he?”

  I slunk back in my chair. “No.”

  “I was afraid of that. Especially after reading the pre-nup.”

  I sat up straight in my chair and leaned forward. “Why? What does it say?”

  “Well, the long and the short of it is, if you divorce him, he keeps all of his personal assets and his pension, and you keep all of your money.”

  “But we spent all of my money on the house!”

  Don Manheim’s face grew resolute. “I was afraid of that, too. I have to give your husband credit. He may be lousy at taxes, but he’s a great strategist. He set you up perfectly. Legally, you’re entitled to half the profits on the house. But I have to warn you, the real estate market here isn’t looking good. And values don’t go up that much in Germany when you renovate.”

  “So, I’m screwed.”

  “Only if you want to get a divorce.”

  Don leaned over his desk toward me, his resolute face softened at the edges with compassion.

  “Is that what you want, Val? A divorce?”

  I stared back at Don Manheim, but I couldn’t see him. My eyes were too full of unshed tears.

  My husband played by two sets of rules. Heads, he wins. Tails, Val loses.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  As I drove back toward my beautiful winemaker’s house in the vineyards, I realized my once-cozy haven had vanished, replaced with a cold, conniving enemy base camp. I felt betrayed and unwelcome. My gut was hollowed out. I couldn’t wrap my head or heart around what I’d just learned. How could Friedrich do this to me?

  I needed someone to talk to – someone who could help me understand. But I had no one on my team. I was all alone, and it was my own fault. Without Friedrich, my list of friends had shrunk to one; Rita Rudeburg. How could I possibly explain my feelings to a stick insect? I racked my brain. There had to be someone I could turn to for the clear, straight-talking advice I needed.

  Suddenly, the image of a twirling bowtie flashed across my mind. Berta!

  It had been six long years since I’d last seen the old psychologist from New York. I wondered if she was still alive. And if she was, would she remember me? Berta had given me her business card in Brindisi. I vaguely recalled tucking it into my Italian phrasebook all those years ago. I hoped I could find it the little book that had silently born witness to my dreams of la dolce vita.

  When I got back to the house, I ran up the stairs like a thief in the night. I rifled through a chest I used to store books and mementos. I found the phrasebook. I turned it spine-side up and fanned the pages. Berta Goodman’s business card fell out, along with a brochure for the Hotel Bella Vista. The hotel’s cheerful peach color had faded. I wondered about Antonio, Giuseppe, and the others. How had their lives turned out?

  I looked at the clock. It was 3:37. Friedrich would be home in an hour. I called Berta’s number. It rang six times as I bit my thumbnail to the quick. Then the crusty old woman’s unmistakable voice croaked out the sing-song message recorded on her answering machine.

  This is Berta. Can’t you tell?

  I’m not here, so go to hell.

  Or if you’re not a jerk or creep,

  Leave a message at the beep.

  Just knowing that both Berta and her sense of humor were still out there alive and kicking somewhere made me feel a tiny bit better. I left her a message with my cell number. I pictured skinny old Berta in her frog-colored outfit and wondered where she was and what she was doing. Was she playing Vinny on a cruise? Or working as a clown in a traveling Romanian circus? With Berta, anything was possible. I smiled tentatively at the thought of her having fun and wondered why in the world I hadn’t called her before.

  ***

  Since the spat about my taxes last week, Friedrich had taken to coming home, grabbing a beer, and ignoring me. In a way, I�
�d been relieved. I hadn’t had to hide my feelings or play pretend house while I’d waited to find out the fate of my tax situation. All week, I’d left my husband alone to stew in his own juices, and crawled into bed only after I knew he was asleep.

  But tonight was different. I knew what he had done.

  My stomach flopped at the idea I had been duped by Friedrich. As the clock ticked down to his arrival home from work, I began to panic. Should I confront him tonight or hold my tongue? I was afraid. I felt unprepared and alone. As my attorney said, Friedrich had proven to be a great strategist. I’d been completely outplayed.

  I didn’t know whether it was time to show my cards, or hide my hand a little longer. The trouble was, it appeared that no matter how I played it, Friedrich was holding all the trumps. The only thing I had going for me was the element of surprise.

  Before I took Friedrich on, I needed my own strategist. On a more basic level, I also needed access to the car. If Friedrich took that away, I couldn’t get to my attorney’s office. The train didn’t run to Don Manheim’s village. I decided to hold off for another evening. I hoped in the morning I would feel stronger, and clear-headed enough to devise a better plan.

  ***

  Yesterday, I pretended to have a headache and stayed in bed all evening. This morning, I pretended to be asleep. The truth was, I just couldn’t look at Friedrich without wanting to slap his face. I could hardly wait to hear the door close behind him as he left for work. I got up and made a cappuccino. I tried to drink it, but my hand was too shaky. I was pouring it down the sink when the phone rang. It startled me, and I jumped like I’d been stuck with a hot poker.

  “Hello?”

  “Hiya, kid!”

  “Berta! It’s so great to hear your voice!”

  “Ha ha! That’s a good one, kid. My old, raspy voice? You always were loaded with one-liners. How’s it going with that ‘do-over life’ you were after?”

  Do-over life! I’d forgotten all about it. “Oh. Uh…not so good. I think I’m getting a divorce.”