Prodigal Son (3 page)

Alana had been twenty-three years old, fresh out of USC, and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen when he met her. She was the only child of Gary Tallon, one of the biggest music producers in Hollywood. Her father’s career had started with the Beatles, and he had been vocal and unhappy when Alana moved to New York and married Peter. He had spent years trying to convince his son-in-law to move to L.A. and come to work for him. But it was a world and city that didn’t appeal to Peter. The thrill of the financial world was a drug to him, and he was addicted to it. Peter knew nothing about the music business. The tinsel of Hollywood and her father’s scene was entirely foreign to him, although he was well aware that Alana always missed it. She flew out to see her father regularly in L.A. and took the boys with her. Her mother had died when she was fifteen, and she was unusually close to her father because of it. Gary liked
Peter, but Peter was an unfamiliar breed of animal to him, and over the years, Gary had always acted slightly suspicious of him.

Peter appeared to be conservative in his looks and demeanor, but his father-in-law was also well aware of the enormous risks he took in business. They had always paid off for him and his investors. His father-in-law had placed a few million dollars with him over the years, and had done well with the investments. Until now. He had lost all of it when Whitman Broadbank declared bankruptcy. It had been only play money to him, so it was going to have no impact on his life, but he had been calling his daughter every day to ask what Peter’s plans were. All she had been able to tell him so far was that Peter was planning to sell everything, which didn’t surprise her father. He knew how heavily Peter’s fortune was involved in the stock of the firm. When that went, Peter would have almost nothing. It was no mystery to him or anyone who knew their business. And no one expected this to happen. Peter had almost no liquidity as a cushion and too few other investments. He had taken better care of his clients.

“Well, that’s it. It’s over,” Peter said as he sat down in a deck chair next to her, looking grim. “I brought all my stuff home. Twenty-one years in six boxes.” He looked pained as he said it. It was an ignominious end to a brilliant career, for now at least. He wanted to go down fighting, but there was no fight here. “I’ve got to go out to Southampton and meet the realtor tomorrow. I’ll leave my car on the lot there. You can follow me in the Bentley and drive me home. I’m going to sell that next week too.” The Ferrari was at the house in the Hamptons, and he was planning to give that up to the dealer too. He had released his time share in the plane earlier in the week, at a huge
penalty, which was still better than the expense they could no longer afford.

Alana’s breath caught as she looked at her husband. At thirty-eight, she was just as beautiful as she had been at twenty-three, maybe more so. She knew everything about her father’s business, but very little about Peter’s. And she thought the world of finance was boring. It was a lot more fun being in L.A., when Stevie Wonder or Mick Jagger came to have dinner with her father. She had grown up around all of them. And Peter had always known what his parents would have thought about her, she was spoiled, and she had grown up in a rarified glitzy atmosphere light-years from their conservative small-town world. But Peter knew that there was more to her than his parents would have noticed. She was intelligent as well as beautiful, and she was a good mother to their boys, and had been a good wife to him. She had always been willing to meet his investors and put on a good show when they entertained them. Her father had sent her to boarding school in Europe for two years, and she spoke French and Spanish fluently. She had enrolled their boys at the Lycée, so they spoke French too. And she was on the boards of Juilliard and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before she had married Peter, she had wanted to become a dramatic agent, but had become Peter’s wife instead. And after fifteen years, he was still in love with her.

Alana was a spectacular-looking woman, immaculately groomed, with a model’s body, and always expensively dressed, thanks to him. Alana was no stranger to luxury or money, and had never been denied anything. All the love Gary had once lavished on his wife before she died, he poured into Alana once he was alone with her. And before Peter had married her, her father had informed him that if Peter
ever broke her heart, he would kill him. Peter had no doubt that he meant it, he was a little rough around the edges, but a brilliant businessman, and he had an incredible talent for and insight into the music business, of which he was the indisputable king.

“I’m sorry,” Alana said sadly, as she looked at her husband. She knew how hard all this was for him, but it was for her and the boys too, or it would be, once all the changes in their life became evident. She had no idea where they were going to live, and neither did Peter, which was frightening for all of them. Being poor in New York didn’t sound like fun to her. Alana had never been poor for an instant of her life, and her father had a Midas touch in business. He had never been through anything like what had just happened to Peter. She reached out and touched his hand, and he smiled ruefully at her.

“I’m sorry too. We’ll put Humpty Dumpty back together again sooner or later. I promise. It’s just going to be a little rocky for a while.” He was trying to wrap his mind around it too. “At least we have each other.” That was still what mattered most to him. Alana and their children. This was tough, but it wasn’t a tragedy, just a very trying period to get through, and a whole life to rebuild.

She looked deep into Peter’s eyes then. “I was talking to Daddy today, and I think he had a pretty good idea,” she said, trying to look hopeful. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy to convince Peter. He was a proud man, this was a hard blow for him, and he had never been crazy about L.A. It was a foreign land to him, too far from New York, which had always been the hub of his career. But now everything had changed. And she didn’t want their sons living in poverty while Peter struggled. “He thinks we should come out and stay with him for a while. He says we can have the guest house.” It was a house
bigger than most family homes in the Hamptons, and Peter knew what came with it. An army of servants, every luxury imaginable, and a fleet of expensive cars.

Her father had always been very generous with them, but Peter didn’t want to be beholden to him, and never had been. The only way to survive with a man like Gary Tallon was to be independent of him, and Peter no longer was. That was a very dangerous position to be in, and he didn’t want to hurt Alana’s feelings when he said no, but she could already see it in his eyes. Peter had no desire to move to L.A., and stay in her father’s guest house, or worse, be supported by him while he was out of a job. For a long moment, Peter said nothing, while Alana went on. Her long blond hair fell heavily past her shoulders while she lay on the deck chair in short white shorts with a pink T-shirt. He could see her nipples through the shirt, and her long legs on the deck chair. She flew to L.A. every three weeks to get her hair colored, and every three months, they wove in extensions to thicken her mane of silky blond hair. After fifteen years in New York, she was still deeply attached to L.A., and everything about it.

“Daddy says you can work for him, if you want to. Or you can just take it easy for a few months. He’s going to call you about it. And there’s a Lycée in L.A., so the boys will hardly notice the change, and they love Grampa Gary,” she pleaded. He was the only grandparent they had, and their grandfather doted on them. They were the sons he had never had, and they loved meeting all the rock stars in his business. He arranged backstage passes at every concert they wanted to go to. For them, it would be like moving to Disneyland. But for Peter, it sounded like moving to hell, and selling his soul to Alana’s father, which was something he was determined to avoid at all costs.
He was going to extricate himself from this mess. He didn’t want her father’s help, however well intended.

“I appreciate it, sweetheart,” Peter said calmly, “but I need to stick around here while everything gets settled. I can’t just run off to California, and live off your father. And I need to see what opportunities open up here.”

“Daddy says there won’t be any decent jobs for you here for the next year or two. We might as well be in L.A. until things get better. He says there’s nothing for you here. Why not work for him? He’ll find something for you to do.”

“I don’t want a mercy job, Alana. I want a real one, in my business. I don’t know a damn thing about the music business. I have nothing to offer your father.”

“You can help him with his investments,” she said, still pleading, but she could see she wasn’t winning.

“I’m sure he’d be thrilled,” Peter said cynically. “I just lost him a bunch of money when Whitman folded. He doesn’t need me for his investments.”

“He wants to help us,” she said quietly, with a look of determination in her eyes. This was a battle she didn’t intend to lose. “We’re not going to be able to afford a decent place to live, once you sell the apartment,” she said with a tone of desperation. “What are we going to do?”

“I’ll figure out something,” he said softly. He felt beaten as he sat watching her. He was beginning to realize just how unhappy she was going to be without money, and he didn’t want to be on the dole to her father. Peter had no idea how long it would take him to get back on his feet. And her father was right, it might take him a year or two to find something in his line of work. People were being fired at all
levels in the financial world. “I want us to stay here,” he said firmly, as Alana looked at him with sorrow in her eyes.

“I want to go home,” she said quietly, and just as firmly. “I told my father we would. You can’t support us here, and I don’t want to move to some shit place where we’ll all be miserable. They boys will hate it, and so would I. That’s not fair to them when my father wants to help us.”

“I grew up simply in a small town. It didn’t kill me,” Peter said, feeling frantic and as though he were about to drown. He knew that if he let him, his father-in-law would swallow him whole and own him, and Alana was setting him up for that.

“We could move to the country for a year or two,” Peter said, sounding desperate.

“You hated growing up in a small town,” she reminded him unkindly.

“For very different reasons. I had trouble in school, I was dyslexic, and I had a brother who made my life miserable. And I didn’t get along with him or my parents. Our kids might be happy in a small town. It might be good for them. There’s more to the world than just New York, L.A., and Southampton. Maybe this would be a good time for them to see that. At least for a little while.”

Alana’s eyes turned to steel then. She was still a daddy’s girl, her father was rescuing her, and she wasn’t going to let Peter stop him. Peter could see that it was what she wanted, even more than she wanted her life with him.

“I’m going home, Peter, and I’m taking the boys with me. We don’t need to be poor. They don’t need to discover what it’s like not to have anything they’re used to. My father wants to be there for us, and take care of us, and you too.”

“I’m a grown man, Alana. I wouldn’t do it even if he were my father. I can’t live in L.A. like a gigolo, while your father pays the bills. I’ll take care of us, and we’ll work it out.”

“I’m not going to live in poverty, and deprive our kids, to feed your ego. We have no other choice. You’re telling me we’re dead broke. My father isn’t. He can afford to support all of us, so our life won’t be affected. I want to go home.” There was iron in her voice.

“What happened to ‘for better or worse, for richer or poorer’?” Peter asked her bleakly. “Or did I miss something? Was it ‘for richer or richer’? Why can’t we just suck it up for a while till I get back on my feet?”

“Why should our kids suffer because you lost your job, if they don’t have to? The kids love L.A., and the Lycée out there is just like the one here. I called them this week, and they’ve got room for both boys. Ben and Ryan will be happy there, happier than they’d be in some mythical small town, or living in poverty here. I won’t do that to them.”

“Or yourself. Is that what you’re saying?” He was starting to look angry, as defeat and frustration welled up in him. He wanted her to stay. “If you have to give up the Bentley, you’re going home to Daddy? That’s pathetic, Alana. No, actually, it’s disgusting. Fuck the Bentley. We need to stay together right now.”

“Then come with us, and forget New York for a while.” Or forever, if she got her way, Peter thought to himself. She had wanted to move back to L.A. for years, and Peter never agreed. Even with his back to the wall now, he didn’t want to. His life was here. But the life she wanted, under her father’s wing, was there. This was the opportunity she had been waiting for, and she didn’t want to miss it. It was now or never.

“I will
not
be supported by your father,” he said in a voice quavering with emotion. This was a loaded subject for him. It made him feel like an even bigger failure to go to L.A. with her, and have her father take care of them financially. Peter would rather starve. But Alana wouldn’t, and she was also thinking of the boys and their comfort. She didn’t want them deprived, if there was no need for it. Her father had offered to pay for everything. It was the opportunity Gary had been waiting for too, to get his little girl to come home, and even bring her boys. And he was more than willing to support Peter in the bargain. Her father’s fortune hadn’t been impacted by the upheaval on Wall Street, and he had sound investments and an enormous business, owned several oil wells in Southern California, and had huge real estate holdings. The only one who didn’t want to benefit from any of it was Peter, who felt completely emasculated by Alana’s deal with her father, and humiliated to go out to California with his tail between his legs.

“You don’t have any choice,” Alana said as she stood up, and looked at him. “I’m not staying here in these conditions, with no money, nowhere to live, no prospects, and you out of a job, maybe for a hell of a long time.”