Two Euros for “Schatzi”

Two Euros for “Schatzi”

In July, Meidling smells of hot dust, exhaust fumes, and the slow decay of marital patience. The sun hits the pavement until the asphalt goes soft enough to trap a heel, and inside her Trafik on the Niederhofstraße, thirty-four-year-old Claudia sits in the crossfire of a plastic oscillating fan that simply reorganizes the boiling air.

For the past three weeks, she has been running a shadow economy. It is highly specific, entirely illegal, and deeply satisfying. It is the “Schatzi” tax.

The bell above the door jingles, a pathetic sound choked by the humidity. Herr Kmenta waddles in, bringing with him a localized weather system of stale Ottakringer beer and Pitralon aftershave. He is sixty-two, possesses the damp, reddish complexion of a man whose liver is working overtime, and wears short-sleeved shirts that cling to his stomach like wet paper around a boiled ham.

He is her most loyal customer. He is also the reason Claudia occasionally considers arson.

“Servus, Schatzi,” he says. He leans heavily on the glass counter, leaving a smear of forearm sweat right over the display of scratch cards. “The usual. Memphis Light. And make it quick, the heat is murdering me.”

There are three things wrong with this sentence.

First, he does not smoke Memphis Light, he smokes Memphis Blue. He has smoked Memphis Blue every day for four years, yet he insists on calling them ‘Light’, forcing Claudia to engage in a daily pantomime of correction.

Second, the heat is not murdering him fast enough.

Third: Schatzi.

Some women want structural equality; Claudia just wants direct financial compensation for the burden of being perceived.

“Memphis Blue, Herr Kmenta,” she says, her voice as flat as a dead cardiogram. She turns to the shelf.

“I said Light, Schatzi. You young girls, always with the ears somewhere else,” he chuckles, a wet, rattling sound in his chest.

Claudia does not sigh. Sighing is for amateurs. She pulls the pack of Memphis Blue. She scans it. The register screen shows €6.00.

She presses a sequence of keys with the fluid grace of a concert pianist. Manual override. Miscellaneous item.

“Eight euros,” she says.

Kmenta digs into his pocket, pulling out a fistful of coins coated in lint. He never questions the price. His brain stopped updating the cost of living somewhere around 2008. He just complains about the government and hands over whatever is demanded.

“Eight,” he mutters. “Criminal, what they do to us smokers. Here, Schatzi. Keep the copper.”

He slides two two-euro coins, three ones, and a sticky smattering of fifty-cent pieces across the glass.

Claudia sweeps the money into her palm. The metal is warm from his thigh. It is disgusting. But the extra two-euro coin slips smoothly into the left pocket of her denim shorts, bypassing the till entirely.

This is not theft. It is a toll. It is the cost of operating a male ego in a public space during a heatwave. Exactly two euros. Not one-fifty, not five. Two euros is the precise market value of unearned intimacy in the twelfth district.

“Danke,” she says, handing him the cigarettes.

“Next time, listen better, Schatzi,” he says, tapping his temple. He winks. It is a terrifying facial spasm. He turns and shuffles out into the blinding white light of the street, leaving behind nothing but the sour smell of cologne and the greasy crescent of his sweat on her counter.

Claudia sprays glass cleaner on the smear and wipes it away with a paper towel. She reaches into her pocket, her fingers closing over the heavy, ridged edge of the coin. It sits there, solid and absurd, alongside fourteen other two-euro coins she has accumulated since last week. The fan reaches the end of its rotation with a dry, plastic click, blowing the smell of hot newsprint against her face.