The Altruists

by Andrew Ridker

  “We’re not in high school anymore.”

  “People will come.”

  “We’re not even in college.”

  “Francine Klein. We are having this party. Never—and I mean never”—and here Marla arched her back—“underestimate the appeal of lifting taboos in a controlled environment.”

  One week later, the Kenmore Square apartment accommodated its first social gathering since Arthur Alter attached his name to the lease.

  * * *

  • • •

  Half an hour before the party, Francine drank alone, sequestered in her room, having dressed, or undressed, into a conservative nightgown that could safely double as legitimate pajama-wear if the party went bust. At nine o’clock only a few nervous first years from her program sat on the living room couch, throw pillows resting on their groins. “Don’t lose faith in me,” Marla told her through the bedroom door, behind which Francine was pretending to read. “Don’t lose faith. And don’t you dare go to bed, unless you’re bringing someone in there with you.” Sure enough, by eleven the living room was full of PhD candidates, some well into their thirties, mingling in their bras and briefs, inventing reasons to touch one another on the thigh and shoulder.

  When Francine stepped out of her room, having gathered from the swelling noise that a party was in fact taking place, Marla, considerably drunk in a satin kimono, shouted, “Francine Klein, everybody!” A smattering of confused applause rose and quickly drained from the room.

  The party was all skin and id. Repressed wishes materialized throughout the small apartment. Overdressed Jungians gown-and-gloved to Prince. A first year and his TA had become entangled on the couch, her nipples and his erection straining confidently against the glosses of fabric that contained them. Sex-deprived Francine stirred with a contact high. The sensation of her thighs grazing one another beneath her nightgown was enough to flush her cheeks a telling pink.

  “This is your apartment?”

  A stranger was leaning on her refrigerator. He was draped in a bedsheet tied toga-style at the left shoulder. The bottom hem hung halfway down his calf, where it abruptly conceded to a pair of black dress socks.

  “Do I know you?” she said, ducking into the fridge for a beer.

  “I’m a friend of Marla’s.” He nodded toward the living room, where a kid with a farmer’s tan was inspecting the fabric of her kimono.

  “Marla, right. The great facilitator. Don’t tell me you’re from—”

  “Cincinnati.”

  “Dayton.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Do all Ohioans here know each other?”

  “All us expats? Sure. I was going to say, we haven’t seen you at the meetings.”

  “Ha. Don’t think I got that invite.”

  “Consider yourself invited. We gather Sundays on the deck of the USS Constitution and play euchre.” He tapped his can against Francine’s. “I’m Dave.”

  “Francine.”

  “Messner.”

  “Klein.”

  Dave Messner resembled at least three different boys from Beth Abraham Synagogue in Dayton. He was large of ear and wide of forehead. The lower face a tribute to nostrility. He was twenty-eight and already male-pattern balding, an easy Type III on the Hamilton-Norwood scale. But when he smiled, as he smiled now, his features softened into something gentler.

  Messner was in finance. He said it could be stressful, at times, but that he enjoyed the intellectual stimulation. Francine heard stimulation. “For now,” he explained, “I’m at the Boston branch of a boutique brokerage firm . . . Ha. Try saying that three times fast.”

  “Boston, boutique, broker,” she slurred. “Blah.”

  “Can I get you another?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, shaking her can. “I’m—” But she found it empty.

  “Drank that pretty fast for a member of the tribe.”

  Francine blushed.

  “I’m sorry! Sorry. Joking. Truly. Here, let me make it up to you.” Messner fetched a beer from behind her and attempted to open it with his teeth. Foam shot up his nose and across his face. Francine laughed.

  “Oh, this is funny, huh?”

  “A little.”

  “I hereby rescind my apology.”

  She laughed again, and wiped his face with a dishcloth. “Apology or not. You are forgiven.”

  “Many thanks.” He smiled.

  “Well all right, then.”

  They surveyed the rowdy apartment. A quartet of ABDs in briefs had written names on index cards and affixed them to their sweaty foreheads: B. F. Skinner, Wilhelm Wundt, two Erik Eriksons.

  “You probably have to keep an eye on things,” Messner said, “and I might not get another chance. I want to ask: Can I call you?”

  “Call me?”

  “To talk sometime.”

  “But I’m here, now.”

  “I know. But it’s your party. You might have to rush off somewhere—”

  “In this tiny apartment?”

  “—and take care of something. I don’t know. Still . . . can I? Call you?”

  Good question. According to the terms of her arrangement with Arthur, she was, technically, single until his return. Informally separated for the duration of his stay abroad. Free to explore for a limited time. But did she want to? Arthur, out there in the bush—she envisioned a scene collaged from National Geographic and The Gods Must Be Crazy—certainly wasn’t getting any. Should she?

  “I think you can. Yes. I think you probably can.”

  He uncapped the pen dangling from a string taped to the fridge, the pen with which Marla had written QUINCY MARKET and SWAN BOATS and OLD NORTH CHURCH, and took down Francine’s number on his palm. “I’ll call,” he said.

  “I’m sure you will.”

  Outside Boston was ideally dark, the Citgo sign in its third blackout year, stars overhead like neurons firing.

  * * *

  • • •

  By early June their calls had become routine. By the end of the month they were, in Messner’s words, “seeing one another.” He took her on dates. This alone was a revelation. Dates he paid for. At restaurants. He was a selfless gentleman, everything Arthur was not: communicative, civilized, interested in her studies. Willing to treat himself, and her. He possessed the humble demeanor of a boy who’d been bullied in high school and the confidence of a man who’d triumphed anyway. He quickly committed himself to Francine, attended to her every need, read and expressed concern over each micro-expression manifesting on her face. He said he cared only for her, and his work, in that order. “This is the happiest I’ve ever been,” he confessed, “going to the office in the morning and seeing you at night.” He was a bighearted, serious man. Seriousness: that’s what he and Arthur had in common. But where Messner’s seriousness bred success in the form of reliable American currency, Arthur’s brand of agitated sobriety made him something of an absurd figure. An underground man, raving at the sky.

  She wasn’t sure how Arthur fit into all of this. Messner was accelerating the course of their relationship, and Francine didn’t know what it meant. She was single, after all, but only temporarily. Was temporary singlehood really singlehood? Was freedom still freedom if it came tagged with an expiration date? She talked to Arthur, semi-regularly, on the phone, and they wrote letters. But the calls were always awkward—the pressure to make the most of their limited connection crippled conversation—and the letters took weeks to arrive.

  “You and Davey are adorable,” Marla told her one evening after Francine returned alone from dinner with Messner, her belly warm with angel hair and scallops. “Does he know about your boy abroad?”

  “Were you waiting up for me?”

  “Does he?”

  Francine sighed. “No. And, Marla, I’d appreciate if you didn’t say anything.”

/>   “Ooh, I’d never.” She smiled. “Our secret.”

  “Good.”

  “One thing, though. Has he . . .”

  “Has he what?”

  “Okay. He hasn’t.”

  “Hasn’t what?”

  “If you don’t know what I’m getting at, he hasn’t.” Her lips curled into a Cheshire grin. “Davey’s a nice boy,” she said. “But he has his preferences.”

  It wasn’t long before Francine found out. On a bright summer day in June, the indisputable daylight exhibiting itself in flares across the rippling Charles, at his request Francine bound Messner, gagged him with a rubber ball, and applied gentle pressure to his throat while dripping hot paraffin candle wax on the stockbroker’s shorn chest.

  * * *

  • • •

  When Arthur first left, the quality of Francine’s work, as well as her overall satisfaction with life—for an academically minded young person like herself, the two were inextricably linked—had shot up so fast that she woke each morning in a kind of electric delirium. Feverish, frantic. All this free time! She could study as late as she wanted, eat and sleep according to her schedule. No more nursing Arthur’s ego back to health after a perceived slight at work. No more trips to the Army/Navy for used socks, two dollars for as many pairs as you could carry in your hands. She made friends and apprenticed herself to a dynamic young professor who wore jeans and whose class was dedicated to dismantling On Human Nature piece by piece.

  But since meeting Messner, her grades had dipped. He laid claim to her evenings, halving her study time. Soon she was performing at the same sub-satisfactory level that she had when Arthur was around.

  The young professor asked to see her one afternoon after class.

  “Are you all right?” he asked. “You seem . . . distracted.” He looked Francine up and down and nodded. “Mm. Distracted.”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ve been busier than usual.”

  “Boy trouble?”

  “Um . . .”

  “Remember,” he said, putting his hand on her wrist. “You have so, so much potential. You deserve someone great.”

  “Okay.”

  He looked her in the eyes. “Hey,” he said. “Never settle.”

  Her mentor’s unexpected lechery aside—she knew that when a man says “never settle,” he means “never settle for anyone but me”—Francine felt that on some level he was right. She was distracted. Messner had a hold on her. Was this the cost of romantic entanglement? A dulling of one’s ambition, a hold put on potential? Marla, too, was right: Messner was a nice boy. Too nice, Francine thought. He bullied her with his niceness, sending gifts, surprising her at work. He gave her unsolicited financial advice, and always during foreplay, imbuing the proceedings with a weird, transactional feel.

  He was the kind of guy who couldn’t stand for silence. Like if they were walking around Franklin Park and she was quietly admiring the scenery—she’d always had a thing for calm, green places, where social custom called for silence—he’d turn to her and say, “Is everything okay? Is everything all right?” He needed constant affirmations. And he took offense if Francine ever objected: “Sorry for caring,” he’d say. “Sorry I’m trying to be a good boyfriend.” He used the word boyfriend every chance he got.

  * * *

  • • •

  In August, Francine’s father died. Amid the myriad complications that ensued—the two trips back to Folsom Drive, the wrangling of her mother’s moods, Arthur’s patchy sympathy call, the apologetic bailing on the lab where she’d been working that summer—she told Messner that she’d have to take some time apart.

  “What?” he said, over the phone. “Why? I’m coming over.”

  “Don’t. Listen. Something’s happened.” She shook her head and told him about her father.

  “Francine. Wow. Thank you for telling me. It’s good to know you trust me. I’m coming over.”

  “Dave—”

  He was there twenty minutes later.

  “Don’t you have work?” she asked him.

  “I took off.”

  “I didn’t think that was allowed.”

  “This is more important. I’m your boyfriend. I’m going to help you through this—this—tragedy.”

  “Dave, you’re not—look, it’s not just my dad, okay? I’ve been meaning to talk to you about us.”

  “Death makes people crazy.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “Don’t worry. Don’t worry.” He got up and began to pace. “I’m going to help you. You need a level-headed person around.”

  “I want to deal with this myself.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying. Lie down.”

  “I know what I’m saying.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Water?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll run out and get you tissues. And tea. Do you drink tea? What kind of tea do you like?”

  “Dave. Dave. It was two weeks ago.”

  He blinked in disbelief. “Two weeks? . . . Two weeks?! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “I’ve been busy. Things have been a little hectic, as you can imagine.” She was fighting to control her breath. “And I need some time alone. To think.”

  “Alone time is the last thing you need. You need support. The presence of loved ones.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need, please.”

  “But I—”

  “Please. Go. I’ll call you in a few weeks.”

  “What you need and what you want may well be different—”

  “Go.” With her index finger she reminded him where the door was.

  “All right,” he said, backing away. He palmed the doorknob. “One thing: Is there any money?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Did he leave you any money? Answer the question. This is important. I know it’s blunt but it’s important.”

  “Please leave.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Leave!”

  “I have some information.”

  She exhaled loudly. “What information.”

  Messner took his hand off the knob. “Listen. You can kick me out but I’ve got this tip. And I want to help you. I want to share it. If there’s money involved, you need to hear this. Can I stay?”

  “Five minutes.”

  Messner hurriedly explained that a friend of a colleague knew for a fact that big things were due from the presently undervalued Z——— Group, a conglomerate with subsidiary companies in everything from microprocessors to consumer foodstuffs, and that if she let him, Messner would invest the money for her, rounding out the primary investment with some stable, long-term stocks. He was doing the same with his money. “This is life-changing information. Deus ex machina stuff. You’ll be thanking me for this in fifteen, twenty years,” he said. “Trust me. Don’t put it in a shoebox under your bed.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Yes.”

  Francine huffed. “There is some money.”

  Messner’s eyes widened. “I knew it.”

  “It’s not much. A small amount. Most of it is with my mother.”

  “It won’t be small for long.”

  “Answer me something, Dave.”

  “Okay.”

  “And be honest.”

  “Always.”

  Francine exhaled. “Are you good at your job?”

  Messner smiled. “The best.”

  “And you know what you’re talking about?”

  “I do.”

  “And the money stays in my name, under my watch?”

  “Fran. Fran. Yes. All of the above. Trust me.”

  “Okay. Okay. Come by tomorrow and we’ll talk. But I need some time right n
ow. I still think we should take a break.”

  “Whatever you say.” He smiled. “But let me know if you change your mind.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Guilt metastasizes. Mutates. Travels. After placing her financial future in Messner’s capable hands, guilt sailed through Francine’s blood vessels and took distant, lumpen forms: guilt about not spending time with Marla, guilt about how much she ate. Guilt about not doing coursework, guilt about doing coursework instead of other things that needed doing. Guilt about guilt, guilt for feeling guilty in the first place. She came to believe that her initial guilt, the guilt from which these other guilts grew, had to do with the fact that she could not be the kind of person who did not feel guilt, the kind of pleasure seeker who regretted nothing. She did not consider the guilt that Messner had planted in her in exchange for helping with her father’s money. She never allowed herself to believe that his generous advice had been a deliberate ploy to guilt her into seeing him again. Because the longer her father’s money was under his care, and the more it appreciated (slowly, but surely) in value, the more she felt she owed him. She was indebted to him. Beholden. Which resulted in more guilt, and more time at his side. By the time she drove Marla’s Ford Vengeance to pick up Arthur from the airport on a frigid, slush-gray December afternoon, there was nothing in her life she did not feel guilty about.

  When Francine saw Arthur outside the airport, standing above the snow-trimmed curb in the fog of his warm breath, she was struck by a guilt more powerful, and more tender, than any she’d ever felt with Messner. Seeing Arthur in person, through the frosty window of her car, she remembered, with affection, Arthur’s determination, his passion, the way he charged at life headfirst and wore his faults for all to see. He was everything that gentle, insidiously caring Messner was not. She loved this deranged man waiting in the cold.

  She beckoned him into the car. He met her lips with a cold kiss.

  “You’re freezing,” she said.

  Arthur nodded. “Yeah.”