By Connor McDonough

“The police will be here in ten minutes,” she said, putting the phone down on the receiver. 

Benjamin Whittaker looked his friend over. She wore gray sweatpants with a matching ratty sweatshirt, had dark bags beneath her eyes that stood out against her porcelain skin, and hair was long enough to be tied. Mary Marston’s fleeting youth reminded him of the day he first saw her. 

She walked around the meeting of Brown University’s Sphinx Club like she owned the place—and perhaps in a way she did. To call her a legacy would have been an understatement; her family had a building named in their honor. As President of the club, she dominated the topic of discussion that night, gay marriage. She often grew bored rallying the bleeding hearts of the college students and would take up the negative position for her own entertainment, “Well, let us remember that the U.S. is still a federal republic. A laboratory of states even in this globalizing world.” The other club members listened and nodded, remembering that as Ivy Leaguers, they were bound to at least the specter of tradition.

After she adjourned the meeting, other members swarmed her like basketball players fighting for a loose ball. It was Ben’s first meeting, having joined the club at the behest of an older man he was dating. He found himself unable to take his eyes off her. During the post-meeting social at the Grad Center Bar, she shined among the others like the neon beer signs on the wood-paneled walls.

“Benjamin?” she said, snapping him from his reverie. 

That night was nearly five years ago. He looked at her now, kneeling beside an open suitcase, looking up at him in the dilapidated Providence studio apartment. An old couch and a bed were all the furniture she owned. A “BROWN REPUBLIC” flag was tacked to the wall above the bed, a play on the California flag replete with an orange star on the top left and a brown bar at the bottom. She finished zipping the suitcase and pushed it under the bed.

“You think you can remember the lines?” she asked.

“It’s not exactly the script of Casablanca, but I’ll deliver a worthy performance,” he quipped, trying to cheer himself up.

She smiled. A news broadcast roared from the small television on a folding TV dinner tray. Brian Williams spoke atop a roof on the other side of the world, “Today just outside Downtown Baghdad there was an IED explosion killing three American troops and leaving another in critical condition. Today’s attack adds to growing concerns of a power vacuum leaving various insurgent groups vying for power after the ousting of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Regime. The Army announced they are planning for a protracted counterinsurgency…”

“That’s one way to get your college paid for,” Mary mused.

“Not everyone had the opportunities we did,” Ben said. 

“Oh, please. You’re a first gen from Appalachia. Undergrad hasn’t made you nouveau riche just yet,” she said, smiling.

Ben thought about that life and how far away it seemed. After freshman year, he never went home; the university gave him special permission to stay on campus over breaks. He worked internships over the summers and eventually landed full-time work at an architecture firm his junior year. His mother and grandmother made it to graduation, both proud, although confused by his new life so clearly demarcated from the old.

“You’re not getting maudlin on my account, are you?” she asked. 

“No, just thinking.” He paused before continuing, “this all somehow seems beneath you. You should be going to work at a hedge fund or law school in Boston. Just because your dad messed up doesn’t mean you have to pay for it; I should know,” he said, referencing the father he never knew. 

“You sweet boy,” she cooed. “I do have a debt to pay. It makes financial sense, not to mention the larger symbol. Paying usurious fees is no way to start a life. I’ll earn my freedom and own my labor. Our loans would eat away at an entry-level salary.” She opened a cabinet next to the fridge and continued speaking over her shoulder, “Real wages haven’t risen since Woodstock, but university has increased thirty times. The banks own us even if we just go for an ordinary upper-middle class life.”

“And you have no intentions of that?” Ben asked.

She shook her head.

Her father, Henry Marston, was the head investment manager of a regional bank. He took some of the bank’s money to make a private trade on a stock tip he got from an old fraternity brother in finance. Fate’s cruel hand worked in tandem with the invisible hand of the market as the bank’s largest client pulled their money at the same time the tip didn’t pay off. He lost a percentage of the embezzled sum, beginning a process of taking from one client account to pay another while sustaining continued marginal losses. He could only keep it straight for so long before a forensic audit was conducted, uncovering years of similar misappropriation of funds. The misadventure of it all was that Henry didn’t need to work, and he most definitely didn’t need to take risks on stock tips. The Marston family fortune was set. And it would be once again, albeit with a large chunk taken out, once the legal proceedings were over. In the meantime, the family would lose control over the board of the North Star Corporation that Mary’s great, great grandfather had started over one hundred years ago.

The fallout began Mary’s junior year as her friendship with Ben blossomed. Assets were seized and accounts frozen, including Mary and her four siblings’ college funds. She was forced to take out loans like the majority of students. She didn’t mind; to her it was an interesting obstacle to be overcome. Ben remembered nights of Mary alternating between crying on his shoulder for her father’s situation and pacing the room like a war general devising ways to pay down her loan. 

“The entire plan isn’t in place yet, but it doesn’t have to be. I have this step down and it lends me the perfect space to lay it all out for one year. My own personal jubilee,” she said, eating a granola bar she found in the depths of the cabinet.

“Just come with me on vacation to Venice for a week, before I job-hunt,” Ben said, knowing it was too late.

“It really is a great move,” she answered.

“A King’s Gambit,” he said.  “I can’t thank you enough.”

Ben would never forget that night genius struck and his life changed forever. Mary walked the studio apartment with dried tears on her cheeks, thinking. While mulling over the options, her mind scanned the more conventional exit signs: the Peace Corps, working for the university, nonprofits, moving somewhere to save on cost of living. 

The idea hit her like a thought transmitted from space, “Ben! Our payments are based on a market-valued percentage of our taxable domestic income. I think I still have the papers!”

He looked at her blankly, suppressing a yawn. 

“Don’t you get it? This is our ticket to freedom!” She stood up and grabbed him by the shoulders as if to physically place the logic into him. “A percentage of your domestic income,” she repeated slowly.

“Yes, a percentage. That way your whole paycheck doesn’t get swallowed up by the interest of your loans. It stays proportional. Those poor kids who made all that money then lost it in the dot-com collapse. Who’s to say we won’t be in the next bu—,” he managed, before she cut him off.

“If you make zero domestic dollars, then the bill will be zero times the percentage. Zero times anything is always zero! Then after twenty-five years, they expire,” she said, with her sky blue eyes opened wide.

Ben sat down on the bed and stared at the radiator enveloped in lead paint, jutting up from the wood like a domesticated Lock Ness Monster.

“You marvelous bitch,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. As his new life flashed before him, he started to laugh uncontrollably. 

“And I know how much you love the South of France—you’d get hired tomorrow by any hotel on the Mediterranean. A demure American at the front desk,” she said.

Ben stood up and took her by the arms, “And you’ll get hired anywhere with the MBA. We’ll have permanent tans, no more sprays.”

  “This isn’t about me, Ben,” she said stepping back.

“What do you mean? You’re the one who thought of it,” he said.

“I need to stay here and rebuild my family fortune. I’m going to think of something else for my loans. I’m in a different situation.”

“You’ve investigated everything, and this is the best by far, Mare.” He made the exaggerated sad face she loved.

“Don’t give me that. I’ll think of something,” she said.

A month passed before she called Ben over and laid out the plan. She’d need two months to get everything in order. He was amazed by what she told him. At the conclusion of her presentation, she asked if he could stay until fall to help out before leaving for France. Of course he would. She would alleviate 298 of his payments instead of the full 300. 

As he remembered all the events leading up to tonight, he realized he wasn’t talking. He imagined the blue lights making their way across the city to the apartment.

“Any minute,” she said, looking out the window and breaking the silence.

“Do you even have a history?” he asked.

“No. But I did pop in to the counseling center for some documented sessions. After laying out Daddy’s situation, I went back for a second session and gave them something about a recurring dream.” She paused and squinted her eyes at the distance before continuing in a thespian’s voice, “I’m on a sandbar with my father. As the tide starts coming in, I run across the sand bridge to shore. The water gets higher with each wave, and I get farther away from him, but his voice gets louder somehow. When I’m back on the white sand of the beach, I allow myself to turn around and look for him but can’t see anything with the naked eye. I fear he drowned. So I try with binoculars. And there he is on the deserted island cut-off by the sea, emaciated, with a gray beard, looking despondent.”

“You’re awful,” Ben said through Mary’s laughter. 

“Oh come on, it’s too easy. I gave them everything: daddy problems, a prison angle, and a dream so Freudian it almost seems written.”

“You know you don’t have to do this, right?” Ben asked.

“I know I don’t have to. This is the greatest opportunity of my life. It’s been four generations since my family built from the ground up. I’m old rich enough to hold my own in conversation and young enough to get my finger on the pulse of an industry to build a juggernaut. The only thing available to me previously was a consultancy and maybe eventually the head of a department at North Star.”

“You really do see it as an opportunity?” he asked.

“Absolutely. Having everything has given my family a life of leisure for over a century now. No scars to be found on them from the climb from struggle to wealth. For three generations my family only had to worry about stewardship, gently guiding the controlling interest of the business and our fortune. My father, bless his heart, had some stars in his eyes about leaving a mark. He leveraged the controlling interest of the board for his venture. Once the assets are unfrozen, he will be rich again with his leftover shares and single board seat.” She walked to the window with her arms crossed, continuing, “But his misguided journey was all theoretical, not practical. There was no thrash in him, no endurance of a self-made person. You need that to build a fortune the way he was trying to. Without it, he was just gambling that others could take his dream across the finish line.” She took off her slipper and smashed a spider on the window frame before continuing. “When it came down to it, he had no actual ambition—the resulting damage of the generations.”

“But not you, you have that?” Ben asked.

Mary nodded, and he knew she was right. She had the iron will of a Russian Oligarch who made a fortune through any means necessary. 

Mary scanned the room with hands on her hips. Ben was surprised to see her fingers pointed backwards to her rear and not the more masculine frontwards. He saw a vision of Mary in this pose as a mother, looking over her children playing at the park. He hoped Mary would have a family eventually but knew she needed to justify a decision like that under a larger purpose. 

A car door shut in the alley, and Mary walked to the window. “Here we go,” she said, letting her hair fall before tousling it with her hands. In the bathroom she ran water across her face and smeared her mascara before sitting on the tattered leather couch in the center of the room. She began to sob.

It sounded so real to Ben. He checked himself over after hearing the knock at the door and took a deep breath.

“Officers?” he said opening the door. 

Two uniformed police stood there looking uninterested. 

“We got a call about someone in crisis?” the shorter one asked.

“Yes. My friend. She’s in here,” Ben said, gesturing to Mary on the couch in the middle of the room, and the two stepped in.

Ben cleared his throat like he was performing in a high school play, “She’s been going through a tough time and has sort of,” he paused, lowering his voice to a whisper, “hit her tipping point.” He stood up straight before finishing, “She doesn’t have any weapons or knives.”

“All right, what’s her name?” the officer asked.

“Mary Marston.”

“How do you think she’ll react to being put in handcuffs?” the tall one asked.

“Handcuffs?” Ben asked, startled.

“Ya. Anytime we transport someone to the hospital for mental stuff, we handcuff ‘em. It’s policy,” he said, shrugging.

“Oh. Well, it shouldn’t be a problem,” Ben said

“We’ll take her right out.” The two walked over and began helping Mary to her feet. She rose at a snail’s pace, like her sadness was a weight-vest keeping her down.

One officer took hold of Mary’s arms and placed them behind her back with the care of someone moving fine china. Once the handcuffs were on, he looked at the flag above the bed. “Brown, huh? Schoolwork stressing you out?”

Ben waited for her response before realizing he should answer, “School’s never been an issue for her.”

“You kids are too hard on yourselves,” he said shaking his head. “We’re going to go to the hospital now, okay?” he said, addressing Mary like she was an elderly woman with dementia.

Mary nodded as they began walking to the door. She wore hard-bottomed slippers with no laces. She had done her research. 

“Does she know your number or a family members? She’ll need someone to call to pick her up.” 

“Yes, yes she does,” Ben said, distracted by the site of Mary being perp walked. He handed the officers the jacket Mary had set aside.

“She’ll be in touch,” the officer said, leading her out the door. And just like that it was done.

“I love you, Mary, I’ll get you soon!” Ben called out down the hallway.

But that wasn’t true. Mary had devised a plan to get her loans expunged by being committed to a mental institution for a year. She reasoned it would take a few months to feign the mental break, a few more to establish a diagnosis, and some more months of restorative treatment to prevent future episodes. After twelve months, the lender would cease collection per federal law.

Ben knew she would decide her next move long before discharge. A business plan may even be developed before the doctors discover the symptoms she laid out for them like breadcrumbs.

He got the suitcase containing the last of her valuables and the keys to the storage unit from under the bed. She reasoned the unit would be her only monthly expense while on the inside. As Ben stood up, he found the eyes of the bear on the Brownifornia flag looking him over.

He walked over and removed the thumbtacks from each corner of the polyester flag before folding it up like the last honor guard member of a conquered army. He marched to the door holding the flag to his chest with one hand and pulling the suitcase with the other. 

Mary Marston was his first wealthy friend, but a term like that seemed to fall flat now. She was royalty, a queen who refused to live as a serf.