Alexander's Gift

The Playboy- 1

1945

"It's Mr. Russo. He'll be here any minute."

"Mr. Russo?! You mean, Dean Russo?!"

"Yes, Dean, you bum, now go make sure everyone's on their best behavior!"

The frenzied whispers didn't come an instant too soon, but they also weren't necessary, for the entire office hushed itself at the sauntering, smoky entrance of Dean Russo. That is, Dean Russo of Russo Investments, the biggest company of its kind in the nation.

No one dared move a muscle, both out of fear of gaining the wrong kind of attention from the boss's boss, but also out of a kind of reverent awe. The girls- and most of the office was indeed composed of girls- wanted more than anything else to have his attention, and would without fail gaze up at him dreamily, allowing themselves to be taken away by the broad shoulders that filled in the black silk suit, the unusually large hands held gracefully at his sides, and the slightly Southern lilt to his lazy voice as he called out clear and strong, "Well, don't feel y'all have to stop on my account." 

As they resumed their work obediently, an uneasy sort of feeling hung over the office while Dean ambled through to check on people individually at their uniformly bare desks, like a teacher checking on his admiring pupils. However, the girls weren't the only ones captivated by this handsome CEO. The men held a grudging respect and envy for his magnetism and effortless style. The women wanted him and the men wanted to be him.

But Dean was clever enough not to let himself get carried away with all of the momentary admiration, for that's all it was: momentary. He knew full well that the second he left, their heads would clear and they would go right back to despising him. To thinking he was just a good-for-nothing, self-righteous, entitled bastard because he inherited a family fortune.

To be fair to them, they weren't entirely wrong. Dean didn't have to work for his living like they all did. But he wasn't quite a good-for-nothing. And yes, Dean did inherit a family fortune, but he was under no presumptions that it made him anything other than rich. It actually made his teeth clench whenever he saw people who had gotten their wealth just the way he did acting like they were gods. They were the worst kind of people in Dean's eyes. They were dishonest to the world, and dishonest to themselves. Moreover, they looked like fools, only no one had the gall to tell them so.

As Dean finished up his pacing through the aisles and made his way back to the entrance, already he could hear the wonder leaving as quickly as it had come; replaced by the bitter grumblings sweeping over every secretary's desk, and linking arms with every other one until it stood as a wall of disdain, daring him. To do what, even the minds that conceived that wall didn't know.

Dean quickly buried the seeds of indignation that had begun to sprout in the pit of his stomach and flicked his cigarette behind him without so much as a backwards glance and was gone.

###

Dean didn't like parties. So why did he go every night? The dames? The drinks? The attention? Those all should have been reasons why, and Dean supposed he liked all of those things in and of themselves, but they didn't drive him. He went to parties because he had nothing better to do. Now, Dean wasn't about to lie to himself and expose himself as a fool-even if he was the only one who would know it. He wasn't going to pretend he didn't like girls-he liked them a lot. He also liked drinking, most times until he passed out. And he supposed a part of him really did thrive on the attention even when he wasn't consciously aware of it-even when every other part of him hated it. For he was human after all, and no human was good enough to live above it all.

"Hey, Dean, honey, what are you doing here, standing all by yourself like that?" A boisterous, husky voice pulled him from his thoughts, and he knew right away that this voice belonged to a whore.

Blinking away the dream-like fog that had settled over him despite the shrill sounds of the orchestra and undistinguishable din of happy chatter, Dean found that his assumption had been correct. It took quite a while to be able to recognize a whore when he heard one, but a man only had to visit a whorehouse once to know one when he saw one.

Despite the revealing dip in the front of the woman's full evening dress, and the fact she called him by his first name when they'd never met, those were not what gave her away. When Dean looked into her darkly shadowed eyes, the whites of which were streaked pink given a little too much to drink, he glimpsed sly, almost business-like desire. He was used to glimpsing it in the eyes of the men who tried constantly to trap him with clever business propositions. They always wanted something from him. But they were never courageous enough to admit it to him, let alone to themselves. Dean might have had even a shred of respect for them if they were honest with the world. It seemed to him that everyone was living in their own ideal, hoped-for versions of reality. But not Dean. He knew what reality was, and was not afraid to admit it to himself. He liked to think of life in terms of the Western motion pictures he had grown up watching: a few bittersweet moments of glory, a few cheap, but relished thrills, and then a bullet in between the eyes. All the crap Dean heard about a higher purpose and waiting for fulfillment in Heaven was just that. Crap.

But, despite himself, despite her, and despite the cunningly manipulative businessmen, Dean stuck his hands in his pockets and smiled at her the same way she smiled at him. She recognized it for what it was and looped her arm through his to bring him to the bar in the knowing gesture of of two spirits who saw they were the same.

As the night went on, the party became more and more bearable as more and more whiskey burned its way down Dean's throat.

Somehow he found himself sitting at a table with an older man who was dressed in suspenders and a polka dot bow tie, listening to the story of Alexander Soter he had heard from his own parents a hundred times.

"He was the most jerky sonofabitch I ever knew, but was rich enough to get away with it- a billion dollars, I heard- and then one day he showed up to our meeting completely different! I mean, if we hadn't seen his face and heard his voice, we would never have known it was him! He was suddenly a real boy scout- a good man- and . . . Happy! Like, really happy. But then he disappeared and no one's heard from him since." The man hiccuped and stared down murkily at his empty glass, lost in his story. And that's all it was to Dean. Some moronic story that meant nothing.

Despite being born into a boatload of money, Dean spent a few years in Steubenville so that he could get 'streetwise', as his old man liked to call it. Boy, did he have to get wise quick. He's seen enough dead bodies and stared down the barrel of a gun too many times to believe in miraculous fairy tales or mysterious stories of redemption. Being 'good' was a waste of life. Well, that was, trying to be good. There was no such thing as being truly good; it just wasn't in a person, and anybody who said they were was a liar.

Dean decided to stay at the table and slouch in his chair, eyes half-lidded and suit rumpled. He wasn't really all that drunk, it took him a lot more liquor than most people, but he liked to pretend. He could make himself feel giddy or disoriented just by pretending, and this way people wouldn't try to bother him. Why didn't he actually just get drunk? Sometimes he felt like forgetting everything. And sometimes he just wanted to live in the drama of it all. Punishing himself for something he would never quite admit.