Tears on a Sunday Afternoon - Michael Presley [6]
“Can I have a drink?” I asked, hoping to end the conversation. I suddenly realized that I would never get what I had come there to ask for.
Mr. Malcolm picked up the phone and spoke briefly into it.
“I see you’re not interested in talking about your love for my daughter, so we shall move on. I offered you five hundred-thousand dollars the last time you were here, to change your son’s surname to mine and you refused. Today, I’m willing to offer you a million dollars and a condo on Miami’s South Beach. What do you say, Donald? One million dollars transferred into the bank of your choosing; no strings attached.” He smiled, his cosmetically whitened teeth glistening.
My voice trembled with anger. “Sir, I told you before and I’ll tell you once more, my son is not for sale.”
“Donald, why don’t you think about it? I recognize the fact that you have nothing. The car you drive belongs to my corporation. The house you live in is owned by my daughter. Even the platinum American Express card belongs to the corporation. A man has to own something, Donald, or else he’s not a man. When I was your age…”
Here he goes again, explaining my failures and extolling his virtues. I purposely rolled my eyes in my head. He ignored my action and continued.
“Life was never easy for me. Granted, my father was a rich man, but he made sure that I worked hard to understand the importance of earning your keep. After graduating from Howard University where I received my MBA, he started me in management. There was no preferential treatment given to me because I was his son. Sometimes I wished that I were back in college with the Benz and access to unlimited cash. He warned me that it would stop when I graduated, and it did.”
I looked over at the clock; it was after four. I doubted I would be able to get to the zoo with Emerald, but I planned to try.
“From that time on, I had to work for everything I got.”
There was a welcomed knock on the door.
“Come in,” Malcolm said.
A maid dressed in a black and white uniform came in with a tray with two glasses, a carton of orange juice and a bottle of cranberry juice. Malcolm pointed to the cranberry juice and the maid poured him a glass. I strained to see her face because I wasn’t sure that I had met her before.
“Orange juice,” I said, making sure I didn’t drink the same thing he was drinking. I needed something stronger, but whenever I drove with Emerald, I tried not to drink any alcohol.
She poured the juice, turned around and gave it to me. I recognized her. Her name was Jessica and I had fucked her in the garden two weeks before my wedding. She looked at me, her eyes unwavering, as she put the juice carton back on the tray and left it on the table.
“Anything else, Sir?” she asked Malcolm. He shook his head and she quickly left the room, quietly closing the door behind her.
“She gives a great blow job,” Mr. Malcolm said. “I guess you don’t know about that because all you did was fuck her in the garden.”
I had taken a big gulp of the orange juice that had now made its way through my nose in an unflattering display of shock.
“Donald, Donald, you fail to realize the power of money.” He handed me a tissue from the box on his desk.
I took it and wiped my nose, rolling the tissue in a ball and reaching over and dumping it in the small, empty wastebasket.
“You knew all this about me and you allowed me to marry your daughter?”
“Donald, my only child is a lesbian. I have tried to deny that ever since the time my wife caught her kissing her girlfriend; she had just turned fifteen. I did everything to get her away from women with those tendencies. Throughout high school I paid so many young men to take her on dates. Do you know what it’s like to be a multimillionaire with one child and have that child be a lesbian? Now you see why you’re such a Godsend.”
There he was, so calmly admitting that he had played me for a fool. One of the main reasons I had married