CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
2000 – LLC Me Part II
I texted my mother the next day and told her I was going to stop by for dinner.
Tell Papá I have some accounting questions for him.
When I got to the house, manman’m was cooking my favorite quickie weekday meal- spaghetti aranso.
I gave her a quick kiss and asked her if she needed any help.
“Non, cherí. M’byen. Papá’s in his office. Go say hi. Dinner will be ready soon.”
I walked upstairs to my dad’s home office to say hi.
“Pierre, cómo tú tá, mijo? Tu mamá me dijo que tú querías preguntarme algo. ”
He took a seat at his antique oak desk- it was, like, one-eighth the size of Hopeton’s mahogany monstrosity.
“So, I’m starting a business venture. It’s in real estate. We’re going to start out small, but I’m going to need to get an LLC.”
My father smiled, walked over to his old wooden filing cabinet and started rifling through folders.
He looked up, said, “Un segundito,” and went back to digging.
After a few moments he found what he was looking for.
“Aha, here it is!” He walked back to the desk and handed me an old manila folder. It held a few official looking documents.
“You already have an LLC,” he told me. “I filed for one for you right after you left for universidad.”
“What?” I asked. “You’re joking, right?”
My father shrugged and smiled. “I expected you’d want to start your own business one day and the least I could do was make sure you were properly prepared. Your company name is PDT Ventures, LLC.”
“PDT Ventures, LLC,” I repeated. “I love it. Wow, Pops, I can’t thank you enough. It’s like you know me better than I know myself!”
He smiled and said, “Voy a asegurarme de que mi hijo tenga las herramientas para construir el mundo que él quiera.”
I laughed.
My origin story.
“Let’s go downstairs for dinner,” he said. “We can discuss your accounting questions after we eat.”
As I walked down the stairs behind him, the first thought that popped into my head was, ‘Mundo’s family buys him property so he can feel established. My father sets me up with my own business structure as a high school graduation present- and doesn’t bother to tell me about it until I come to him.’
Dinner was great. I told my parents all about the company I was starting with Hopeton. They were low key impressed. I knew this meant I’d inevitably have to bring him by to meet them, but I’d deal with that later on. I was sure they’d “get” him, so I wasn’t too worried. But the big news of the night, for my mom at least, was that I planned to apply for grad school for the 2002 Fall semester and had already signed up for a GRE prep course at Princeton Review.
“You don’t need to take the GRE for the Brooklyn College and CUNY applications, but it’s optional for NYU,” explained. “I figured if I took it and got a really good score it would make my chances of getting accepted even better.” My mother, the school principal, nodded in agreement.
“Mesí Jesu!” she said, theatrically.
“I’m proud of you, son,” my father told me. “You’ll be 28 in 2002. That’s a perfect time to start grad school.”
Later that week, I called Mr. Henriques and respectfully declined his offer to set me up in Panama.
“I’m preparing to take the GRE, and I have some small real estate projects in the pipeline,” I explained. “But I’d love to spend a couple of weeks down there in March. That’d be right after my test.”
He told me to check dates with Mundo and once that was confirmed he’d buy me a plane ticket.
Things were starting to feel sane again.
