Games

Risk Tolerance #2

wouldn’t think so.” Kerr’s words ring clear: You have immense potential with your career, don’t waste it on something small. “How about you?” she asks, trying to move on fast. “Did you enjoy polluting the world with the gospel of trickle-down economics

on your trip?”

“I did.”

Lili scowls. “You’re a capitalist monster.”

“Thank you,” he says, with an entirely too-satisfied smile.

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Lili takes another sip of her wine. It’s almost empty, and as she sets her glass down,

Aleksandr refills it, twisting the bottle slightly with a motion of his wrist. His watch gleams, the time set too far ahead.

Remnants of his trip.

“You travel a lot,” Lili comments.

“It’s a necessary part of the job.”

“Don’t you find it excessive? Being both chairman and CEO?”

“Why on earth would I work with someone over my shoulder?”

Lili does roll her eyes, then. “Is it difficult, greasing the wheels of capitalism all on your own?”

“I have a firm faith in the power of the individual,” Aleksandr replies, grinning.

With a huff, Lili leans back in her seat—but this, she missed this. She’s done her due diligence to clarify, nothing more

than a shared dinner; she can relax into the sexual tension of argument.

“Does Michael’s wife mind how much you two have to travel?”

Aleksandr looks confused. “Wife?”

“Yes—I’ve seen his ring?”

Shaking his head, Aleksandr laughs. “Michael’s husband works at the firm, one of our managing directors—and you just met him. Andrew, the man you almost made cry at that party.”

“Oh.” Surprised, she recalculates how she’s assessed Michael. It’s disarming to think about him—cold, disapproving—married

to Andrew, with his kind smile, who she’d unintentionally eviscerated. “Oh—oh, that wasn’t . . . shit, I should apologize,

I didn’t mean to do that to him.”

“He’ll be fine.”

Then, she remembers what Aleksandr said earlier: Not just women, Lili.

“Have you—have you and Michael ever, you know—”

Aleksandr pales, clear horror. “Christ, no. Michael’s like my brother, that’s—no. Absolutely not.”

Lili leans in, grinning—she wants to enjoy the sight of him as close to distressed as she’s ever seen him—but their first

course arrives then, a team of waitstaff descending on their table with bright salads, all delicate frisée and extravagant

radicchio. One of the waiters’ white-blond hair shines in the candlelight; the topic of friendship, brothers, makes her think

of James. Back at the party, he’d laughed when she apologetically told him she was sneaking out, with Aleksandr waiting downstairs.

Don’t be sorry, he’d said. Just fix your hair and have fun for me, too.

She clears her throat now. “Just so you know,” she says, looking at Aleksandr. “Jamie and I, um—years ago, we did almost hook

up, back in undergrad. Like, when we first met. It was a disaster, we made out, nothing happened—we accidentally spilled beer

all over the invitation for his mother’s memorial, I found out his mom had just died, and we just talked the rest of the night,

because, you know, my parents . . .” She lets her hands flutter, then fall, leaving the rest unsaid. “But that’s why I was

at the party tonight. He pretends they’re not, but family things are hard for him, with his mom gone, and how his dad got

remarried so fast. Anyway, I love him, a lot—he’s one of my best friends, but there’s nothing romantic between us. Got it?”

Aleksandr smiles, as if warmed by her rambling sincerity. “I appreciate the clarity.”

“Just, you know—in the spirit of transparency,” she mutters; she doesn’t owe him an explanation, but it feels warranted: cards on the table, no miscommunication, after what happened at the party. “How about you and Michael? How long have you two known each other?”

“We grew up together.”

“In Saint Petersburg?” she prompts.

“Yes.” He takes a drink of wine, and clears his throat. “What made you choose your thesis subject?” he asks. A smile, but

still: the clear feeling of steering her away. He has European table manners, she realizes. Fork in his left hand, knife in

his right. It makes the way she shifts her cutlery between hands feel clumsy, American, young.

“I wanted to learn more about how we internalize capitalism,” she says, allowing the shift in topic. “Protestantism was crucial

for that, how it elevated labor.”

“And what have you found?”

“Well, it makes capitalism intimate for us, those religious roots.”

“How so?”

“I mean, when we think work gives us purpose and meaning, it drives us in a way that money alone never would. Capital and

labor dictate our lives, become the ways we understand ourselves as valuable.”

“Do you not find purpose in your work, Lili?”

“I do, but it’s tricky. Think about how completely and utterly accepted it is, that we should find work we don’t just endure,

but love—nobody questions that!”

“Is a moral culture that drives us to excel such a bad thing?”

“No, but it’s an individualizing culture. Individualizing and alienating. It’s all on the lone individual to make money, make

meaning, stay alive, never fall.”

Aleksandr raises an eyebrow. “And you propose what, exactly, instead? People should have everything handed to them?”

Lili makes an irritated sound. “Don’t sound so disgusted—of course not. Obviously, hard work is sometimes necessary, but we

narrate it as this grand undertaking of self-actualization. That whole understanding idolizes individual agency, ignores systemic

factors—laissez-faire economics, neoliberalism, ideologies that’d grind us to dirt if it meant squeezing out more profit.”

“Poor Protestants. You’re laying all of this at their feet?”

“Don’t be reductive,” Lili counters. “Weber blamed them first.”

“I hardly think he blamed them—”

“Without Luther’s vocational calling, we wouldn’t have the idea of work today as a greater purpose.”

“You’re reading Fromm, I assume?”

Lili frowns. She has a well-referenced copy of Escape from Freedom on his dining table. “Yes,” she replies, cautious.

“You’re familiar, then, with his thoughts on an idea’s breadth of influence?”

“Yes—he thinks the influence of an idea depends on how deeply it answers our already established needs.”

“Exactly. Only if the idea answers powerful, preexisting psychological needs will it become a potent historical force, I believe

was his phrase.”

“Your point?”

“You’re very set on examining consequences, rather than roots. I’m curious about what needs are being answered by this Protestant

work ethic, now apparent capitalist engine of misery. That step between work as a means of confirming predestination and work

as a means of secular self-actualization—there’s space there. Perhaps meeting similar needs, but not quite.”

Lili considers him. It’s a thoughtful, even nuanced take; disarming, too—how he doesn’t purport to have an answer immediately,

but rather points to a question, then leaves it open for her.

“What do you think?” she asks, finally.

Aleksandr shrugs. “Fromm would say it comes down to a need for freedom or a need for belonging. A contortion to deal with

the anxiety of isolation.”

Lili is about to probe further—that’s not his opinion, it’s a reference to outside thought—but their waiters return, then.

Solicitous and attentive, they clear the plates, inquiring after their meal, refilling their glasses, setting down the next

course.

“What about you?” Lili asks, once the staff retreat. She dips her spoon into the consommé. It’s strawberry and tomato, a disorienting

combination of sweet and savory. It’s delicious. “Why finance, why all of this?”

“Ah, likely my lack of any real morals,” Aleksandr says, grinning. “A convenient fit.”

“Answer the question.”

He shrugs. “Like you said, capital and labor dictate our lives. I wanted a say in that.”

“You do know money isn’t real, right?” she quips.

Aleksandr stares at her. “I beg your pardon.”

“It’s all a social construct,” Lili says, sipping her wine.

“I can assure you it’s a social construct with heft.”

She waves her free hand, dismissive. “Anyway, so you wanted to play Monopoly on a big-boy board—that’s it? Push aside the

government, crush the proletariat, let the free market expand evermore, rule over it all?”

“Yes, I believe government should leave us alone to compete in an unrestricted free market,” Aleksandr replies, with a smirk

like he’s intentionally irritating her.

“Don’t you ever, I don’t know—want to know something will catch you?” Lili asks, grasping for a new approach; they’ve broached

this topic before. She settles against his side, glass in hand. She feels nestled in this cloister, with him. “It’s all theoretical,

sure, but to know that there were systems, support, that would take care of you, if you fell.”

“For someone so loath to depend on others, you’re very set on interconnected responsibility,” he muses. His arm comes to rest

on the back of the banquette behind her.

“I’m not loath to depend on others.”

“No?” he says, lifting his hand to brush her hair over her bare shoulder.

“I know how it feels,” she returns. “To feel like you’re always about to fall.”

“Yes, so do I. That precarity, that fear of failure—it drives you to achieve.” Slowly, he starts to skim his fingers over

the line of her collarbone. Between bare skin and fabric, his fingers toy with the thin strap of her dress. “The sense that

things are guaranteed makes us lazy. Mediocrity—comfort, security—it’s not what got us to where we are.”

“And where are we, genuinely, Aleksandr?” she asks, irritated but also impassioned with this sense of agreeing on an experience, then diverging so drastically in the solution.

“An age of GoFundMe healthcare? Privatized everything, millions of people dragged down into poverty, the grand neoliberal project realized?”

Aleksandr shrugs. “Survival of the fittest.”

Lili clenches her jaw, laying her hand flat on the table. “As human beings, we’re owed some modicum of dignity—some ability

to meet our basic needs!”

“The world owes us nothing.”

She frowns, taken aback by his cold tone. It’s striking how he shifts from mild amusement to these moments of cold, clear