PARKER : 024

PARKER : 024
ONE YEAR LATER
I’M PARKER FUCKING ALTMAN. I can buy and sell people. I’m the meanest, most selfish, most cutthroat son of a bitch in the world. I desire my own destruction. I’m worthless. I’m shameless. I’m abhorrent and wrong and greedy.

I’m thinking this as I watch my beautiful wife sip wine on the patio, near sunset, as our new children’s hospital takes shape in the distance.

I approach from the rear. My hand drags through her long, dark-brown hair, mussing it. She looks up at me with a fake scowl, her exotic eyebrows bunching above her soft eyes. Then she takes my hand and pats it, pulls me close, and gives me a kiss.

“Surveying the empire, I see.”

She nods. She used to bristle at jokes like that, but she’s finally come to realize that’s all they are. Jokes don’t change what we’ve done with her foundation, or our responsible business practices. The irony is that, really, little has changed in the way I allocate funds. Angela’s foundation now gets the lion’s share of my donations, but that money always had to go somewhere. WinFinity always did business responsibly. I learned those lessons, interestingly, from Duncan. He’s an asshole and my best friend, but his family climbed to the top because it understood that good business is always long-term. And I knew from my father that treating people like shit felt awful. Hardly a genius revelation, but it definitely made an impression.

We’ve always believed in win-win. Angela helped me to see the good in what I’d already done. She helped me to be able to look in the mirror and know I was still worth something, regardless of my past.

“Coming along nicely,” she says.

I sit in the chair beside hers. Then I say what I came out here to say.

“I heard from Dad.”

“Just him?”

I nod. Breaking from her mother has been hard for Angela, but it’s for the best. Maria and Bill are still married, but Bill got over himself enough to attend our wedding. Maria refused. Ours was a Hellbound union, she apparently said, for more reason than one. Angela kept the rent secret for as long as we could manage and the one about our relationship for just as long. But the press eventually broke the story and ratted us out. Interestingly, no one seemed to care that we’re technically steps. It’s been mentioned, but in a quirky, almost whimsical way — as if we’re crazy folks doing fun-loving, eccentric, billionaire couple things. Turns out that being family on paper only mattered to Maria.

“Does he want money?”

I shake my head. “Interestingly, no. I can’t decide if he’s playing a really, really long con or if he’s really starting to get it.”

“My mom doesn’t get it.”

I reach out and squeeze her hand. “Your mom thinks the Jews are plotting the world’s downfall. Our patronage of them is just one of many things she doesn’t get.”

“Patronage. Is that what it is?”

I take a sip of Angela’s drink. She pretends to slap my hand away. “Maybe. Or charity. Dad is the perfect amount of proud. He’ll let me keep paying their rent and expenses, without being greedy enough to ruin it by wanting … I don’t know … a Bentley or something.”

“I can see your dad in a Bentley,” Angela says, nodding.

“He’d just keep swearing at it. Telling the Bentley it’s worthless and will amount to nothing.”

She laughs a little, smiling proudly. I’d never have believed there’d be a day when I’d be able to joke about the way my dad used to talk to me, but Angela’s given me the strength to laugh about much of what I see in the rearview.

“So,” she says, “what’s next for this absurd family of ours?”

I look at Angela’s growing belly, where the next generation slumbers, then out across the city itself. My domain. My empire. Our empire.

“Today Los Angeles … ” I begin.

“ … tomorrow, the world,” Angela finishes.

I slouch down, and together we watch the sun slowly set with held hands, dreaming of all our tomorrows together.