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Money Talks

Mike Schneider


    The 2018-19 Rolling Hills High School Lady Bobcats basketball campaign ended in full last Sunday afternoon, when Coach Joshua Stamper finished giving out varsity letters, and numerous other accolades, at the annual awards banquet. It had been the Lady Bobcats most triumphant, and heartbreaking, season as the girls went 25-1, bringing the state championship game down to a 51-50 edge, before a buzzer-beating rim-roller by the Mason City Lady Trojans went around three times, amid deafening silence, before falling the wrong way, taking the Bobcats dreams of the coveted title through the net with it.
    Calling it a year to remember would be a colossal understatement. Three girls made all-state, nearly everyone was all-county, and all-conference. But Zoya van Haarken led all the others, making first team All-America, and shattering state records for career and season points, conference records for those, plus blocks and assists, and school records for everything. She is heading to UCONN in the fall on a full ride, not that she really needs it.
    I was attending the banquet as the volunteer videographer for our local cable channel. It was my 12^th
year videographing Rolling Hills sports events.
    Wafa van Haarken came up to me at the desserts table prior to the presentation ceremonies, as I was getting a second helping of chocolate chip cookies. After looking around to make sure no one was within earshot, she said, “Did you hear my
Zoya is going to UCONN?”
    “I did and I’m happy for her but mostly I’m happy for me,” I replied.
    “Happy for you! Why you?”
    “Because I won’t have to see your bejeweled fat ass at games or banquets anymore.”
    “Good to know you’re still the same dumb, stupid jerk you’ve always been, and always will be.”
    The daughter of Syrian immigrant parents, Wafa looked like a lot of high school basketball moms—cellulite and make-up increasing, hair dye added, along with some fancy, and in her case very expensive, jewelry to shift attention away from her ever increasing signs of aging. But 19 years ago she was a knockout—slender with long legs, a golden complexion smooth as a pond on a windless day, jet black hair, and eyes dark enough to steal your heart. Married to Luuk van Haarken, heir to a Dutch tulip fortune, she stayed home pursuing her career as a top clothing designer, while he split time between Amsterdam and Rolling Hills.
    On one of Luuk’s extended trips Wafa became lonely. I walked past her eating alone in a restaurant and, apparently, said just the right thing. Although today I couldn’t tell you what it was, before I knew it I was getting the short tour of their mansion in the Heights that ended in the master guest bedroom. It was a tender night; one I still remember. Then in the morning she dismissed me, rather coldly.
    “Last night was a mistake,” she said. “Don’t try to contact me.”
    I didn’t but a month later she showed up at my door. I invited her in, hoping for a repeat.
    “Hi. I’m surprised you found me. How are you?” I asked.
    “Pregnant.”
    “Oh my God! And you think it’s me?”
    “I know it’s you.”
    “Well, I don’t think it’s me. Probably someone else.”
    “There was only one other, and he used a condom.”
    She said her religion forbade abortion. Her husband had been gone not quite a month when we got together, wouldn’t be home for two more, and would divorce her, taking all his multi-millions with him, if he ever found out.
    “When I told him, he expressed no thought of it being someone else’s,” she said. “What I need from you is your word that you will never tell anyone we were together, and never claim the baby.”
    “Never claim the baby. Don’t you think that’s a bit much?”
    “No, because I’m prepared to pay you.”
    “What makes you think I’d ever accept money in place of a child?”
    “It’s very simple, I can pay you enough to change your mind.”
    “No, you can’t.”
    “Three thousand dollars a month?” she said.
    “No.”
    “Then $5000.”
    “Damn! That’s $60,000 a year.”
    “Yes it is.”
    “Goddam, Wafa! You and your rich ass fucking husband. Everything is money to you Heights people!”
    “Not everything, but here’s how it’s going to work. You will agree to never lay claim to the child, never tell anyone it’s yours, or that we spent a night together. If you do, you’ll pay me three times the amount I have paid you by that point, but not less than $500,000.”
    “Good grief!”
    “Do we have a deal?”
    “Yes, dammit. We have a deal.”
    “I knew we would. My attorney will call you when she has the papers ready to sign. She will also need your bank information. As for us, we don’t need to ever see each other again,” she said.
    But that was before I was a sports videographer, and the baby turned out to be Zoya.
    “Well, for as dumb and stupid as you think I am, Wafa, I did make one kick-ass basketball player, and a smart one, too. The superintendent tells me she’s brilliant, thinks she might even be a potential Rhodes scholar.”
    “All from my genes, not yours,” she said.
    “Whichever one of us they’re from, I’m glad she got them.”
    “Goodbye, Steve. Hoping to never see you again.”
    “Just keep making that deposit every month and you never will.”
    “Gladly,” she said, turned and walked away.
    
Not having Zoya in my life has never been a problem.
    What does occasionally gnaw at me, though, about the whole Zoya thing, is that while she has already paid me more than a million dollars, I will never have the pleasure of seeing the expression on Wafa’s face, if I were to tell her ‘dumb stupid jerk’ me was pronounced safe from a vasectomy 2-1/2 years before we spent that night together.

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