Chapter 46 2012
Necessity is the mother of invention.
My feet had grown. My skates had not. And I had no money to buy new ones. All my life I’d been rich, money not something I thought about or that ever concerned me, and suddenly I understood how essential it was.
I attended the school for free. I didn’t pay for my lodging, food, schooling, or coaching, but anything beyond that was my responsibility.
I couldn’t ask Profe. He had so little.
I thought about asking Meryl, but that also felt wrong.
Already she’d done so much. At the time, I didn’t realize exactly how much.
Only years later did I discover she’d lied to Mother about the school offering me a scholarship.
They hadn’t seen fit to offer money to a student who came from as wealthy a family as mine, believing it set a bad precedent.
When they turned down her request, Meryl offered to pay my tuition herself and asked the school to keep it a secret.
Esma was also in a tough spot. Her father had been injured on his construction job, which meant the family was living on the meager income her mother earned as a housekeeper, which left nothing extra to send Esma.
Esma’s family hadn’t always been poor. They’d only ended up that way because of another stupid war.
She came from Kosovo, and her family was Albanian, but the Serbians had seized the territory, so her parents lost their gym along with their home and ended up in a refugee camp with thousands of other displaced Albanians.
The institute, upon hearing of their situation, offered Esma, a young, promising skater, a scholarship, knowing it would give her a chance at a better life.
“But aren’t you all Kosovan?” I’d asked when Esma explained it my first week at the institute.
“Yes. But the Serbians hate us, and we hate them. It’s been that way for thousands of years and will probably go on being like that forever.” She looked at me with her great big eyes. “Someday, I’m going to be a great enough skater to get my family out.”
I remember thinking it seemed like an awful lot of responsibility for a ten-year-old.
It was Heinrich who came up with a solution to our financial problems.
“Enough!” he declared at lunch one day.
We had just come from the skate shed, where I’d tried on every pair of retired skates even remotely close to my size, including the men’s skates. The problem was my feet were very wide for how stubby they were. I hadn’t been able to wedge my fat feet into a single pair.
“I’m disgustingly rich,” he said, “and I’m sick and tired of the two of you being so wretchedly poor. It’s putting a serious crimp in my happiness.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you,” Esma said, “but your happiness was already pretty crimped.”
It was true. I returned to the institute to find Heinrich and Esma in very bad moods.
Heinrich had broken his ankle and was in a cast. And Esma had just received the news about her dad.
On top of that, in order for them to qualify to skate as a pairs team in the 2014 Olympics, Esma needed to become a German citizen, which meant jumping through a whole bunch of bureaucratic hoops, including becoming emancipated from her parents, which had deeply upset her mom.
“Making money is part of my DNA,” Heinrich said. He came from a wealthy German banking family. “Every man in my family has the gift.”
“And the women in your family?” Esma shot back. “They don’t have the gift?”
Heinrich reddened. “No. I mean they might. They probably do. I was just talking about myself and the men,” he sputtered. He was obviously still very lovesick. “What I’m trying to say is that I’m good at making money.”
“Good for you,” Esma said with an eye roll.
“And since the two of you are broke, and I’m bored.” He lifted his cast from the floor. “I think we should use my genetically inherited talent to make you not broke.”
“I told you,” Esma said, “I’m not taking money from you.”
I nodded in solidarity. While I didn’t know a lot about money, I knew taking it from a friend wasn’t a good idea.
“I’m not suggesting I give you money,” he said, “but rather that I provide you the startup capital you need to make money yourselves.” He nodded as if approving of his own idea.
“And I’ll take a ten percent cut.” He tilted his head as if considering something.
“But you also need to let me invest some . . . half . . . of the profits. And I want ten percent of the money you make on the investments as well.”
Before we could weigh in on the matter, his brow furrowed and he added, “And I want a one-third say in your business decisions.” It was as if he was negotiating with himself.
“What kind of business are you talking about?” Esma asked.
Heinrich’s plan turned out to be simple and brilliant, and that day, over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, PhePhe (the initials for Patch, Heinrich, and Esma doubled) Enterprises was born, importers of whatever you wanted from America.
Esma wasn’t happy her initial was last, but she agreed EphEph and HepHep didn’t sound as good.
Heinrich explained making money was all about supply and demand.
And luckily, in Czechia, there was a high demand for American products and a limited supply.
Esma knew everyone, so she was in charge of finding out what people at the institute wanted—iPhones, laptops, Tiffany jewelry, Oakley sunglasses, Nintendo Wiis.
I conveyed the list to Profe, and he bought and shipped the order to us.
We marked each item up a flat 50 percent, which covered the shipping costs and provided a nice profit.
It took less than a month for us to earn enough for me and Esma to buy new skates.
I will never forget the expression on Esma’s face when she got hers.
They were the first unused pair she’d ever owned.
It was the same expression Scarlett O’Hara had when she declared, “I will never be hungry again.” It felt like the greatest moment in the world.
Word got out, and by the time the holidays rolled around, we were importing gifts for everyone from the food delivery driver to the groundskeeper’s cousin, and we quickly started making more money than we needed.
I sent my extra profits to Boodo. Esma sent hers to her family.
And as was written in our bylaws (a single handwritten page that outlined the terms Heinrich had negotiated with himself), Heinrich kept half to invest. He was particularly keen on a company called Netflix, which had recently converted from DVD-by-mail movies to online streaming.
It turned out to be a very good choice.