The Venture Capitalist

by EnRose, LaVie

  I’ve heard that name and believe he is one of Keisha’s brothers, and perhaps Nina is a sister-in-law?

  “No.” Clara Lee is likely queen of the mono-syllabic response before her daughter, but her daughter is also persistent.

  “Was it Mrs. Searles?”

  I understand why Keisha is questioning her mother’s choices in the midst of her diagnosis. She is afraid that her mother has and will continue to seek out others, rather than her own daughter for support. Keisha, like me when faced with my mother’s cancer, wants nothing more than for her to get better—to beat this thing that has invaded her body. Death is inevitable for us all, but Keisha needs reassurance that she’s going to have her mother in this world a while longer.

  “Sit down and finish eating, Keisha,” Clara Lee says. “We’re both being rude and ignoring poor Tristan.”

  Keisha obeys her mother.

  “Don’t worry about me, Mrs. Beale. I’m the one to blame for monopolizing Keisha’s weekends for quite some time now. I’m sorry for taking her away from you in your time of need.”

  Keisha doesn’t touch her food again. Hell-bent on making amends to assuage the guilt I’m sure she is now feeling, Keisha says, “I’ll borrow Jada’s car and take you for your pre-op and your surgery Wednesday morning.”

  “You should just keep the SUV,” I say. “I’ll use the car service this afternoon, and I have other cars should I need one later.” I’m almost certain she won’t refuse this gesture.

  “Thank you,” she says, gratefully. “Then it’s settled, Mama. We’ll ride over there together Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning.”

  Clara Lee drinks a sip of lemonade. “You don’t have to do that. I have a ride over on both days.”

  “Yes, I do. There’s no way I’m letting you do any of this alone.”

  “Then I may as well tell you the second part. You know Pastor Johnson’s been a widower longer than I have and we’ve been close friends ever since your father died. Now, I’m not trying to replace your daddy, but the pastor is a great man and I told him I would marry him three weeks ago before all this mess happened.”

  Keisha doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then she lashes out in a bitter tirade before either her mother or I know what she’s about to say. “So, all those times he was over here for Sunday dinner, he was after more than just Sunday dinner?”

  “Keisha!” Clara Lee exclaims, appalled.

  “Sweetheart,” I say using the voice I employ with her in the Grotto. She responds to her mother’s scolding or my gentle warning, I’m not quite sure which.

  “I’m sorry, Mama.” She is contrite, yet fully aware of the gravity of the situation. “You want me to stay here with you until then?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Clara Lee says. “William should be by directly after he visits the other sick and shut-in.”

  Momentarily forgetting her sincere apology, Keisha inquires, “He’s staying here?”

  Clara Lee stiffens and glares at her daughter. “I offered him the guest room, I’ll have you know. And even if he was staying in my room, it would be none of your business. We are two grown-ass people who can give an account for our own actions.”

  My submissive is operating at the height of hypocrisy right now. I intervene as much to save her from saying some other wholly inappropriate thing to her ailing mother, as to break the awkward silence between them. “Let us at least clear the table, since you’ve done us the honor of cooking all this food, Mrs. Beale.”

  Clara Lee is grateful. “That’s so sweet, Tristan. I’m going to make you a nice plate to take with you for later.”

  Keisha looks as if she wants to interject on my behalf, then watches in amazement as I graciously accept her mother’s offer.

  “My housekeeper is off today, so I’d be delighted to take some food with me for later.”

  Clara Lee prepares me two plates over-flowing with food, bags them and bypasses Keisha to place them in my hands. We kiss Mrs. Beale goodbye and we’re pulling away from the curb when the Reverend arrives, taking the parking spot we vacate in front of Clara Lee’s home. Reverend Johnson toots and waves, but only I am cognizant enough to wave back.

  Keisha is still shell-shocked by her mother’s news. I’ve never pegged her as being malicious to anyone so I don’t believe she snubbed the pastor on purpose. I rest my hand on her knee as I drive, hoping she derives some modicum of comfort from my gesture. I give her some time alone with her thoughts as we hop back onto the freeway headed back to the condo.

  Keisha eyes the food I’m carrying as we board the elevator. There’s a look of disbelief on her face and something else I can’t quite discern.

  When we’re in the condo’s kitchen, she takes the bag of food from me and heads to the trash can. I bum-rush her and take it back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You don’t want to eat anymore of what’s in here. You just took Mama’s leftovers to be nice.”

  “No I didn’t. And I don’t care if it’s seasoned with crack, I’m eating the rest of this later,” I declare, jutting my chin out with the same stubbornness she’s displayed with me on more than one occasion.

  Later in The Grotto, we’re deep into a scene when something happens with Keisha I’ve never seen before. I of all people should’ve recognized what she was experiencing, but I ignored it, which would soon prove to be to my detriment.

  I bind her hands with leather cuffs to the headboard and blindfold her. She is immobilized on the bed with a spreader bar between her ankles, and I’m working her over with a flogger.

  The pleasure I derive from the rosy blush that sprouts up on her ass and back, gets me so carried away, I decide to goad her with a pop culture phrase that also has a clear sexual connotation.

  I’m about to continue flogging her, but she stutters.

  “J-j.”

  That’s odd. Keisha’s never stuttered that I’m aware of. I move to the console and turn off the music.

  I turn her onto her back and I notice as I’m holding her that she’s trembling. A fine sheen of sweat has broken out on her forehead. I hold my ear to her mouth trying to discern what she’s having such a difficult time saying.

  “Keisha!”

  Her breathing is shallow and for a moment I wonder if she’s having a stroke. I call to her, repeatedly, but she doesn’t answer.

  “Baby?” I recognize fear in her undilated, reactive eyes when she finally opens them. I drop the stupid flogger, hovering over her face. “Keisha?”

  She gasps and struggles, pulling at her restraints.

  “Keisha… Fuck!” I release her hands and feet with a swiftness I wasn’t aware I could execute.

  She writhes on the bed, wheezing.

  I run to the vanity in the ensuite and retrieve the oxygen tank I keep in the Grotto for this very reason. Frantically, I run back to the bed where Keisha is still flailing and lower the mask over her mouth. Within short order, a steady stream of oxygen flows into her lungs, and her breathing begins to normalize.

  With hands still shaking from her ordeal, she touches my hand as I hold the mask, and she finally calms to a regular breathing pattern. A few minutes later, she is relaxed and alert, but lying spent on the bed.

  “Keisha, what happened?”

  She blinks, and I patiently wait for her to gather the strength to answer.

  I gently remove the oxygen mask and cradle her to my chest. “Why didn’t you safeword when you realized you were having an adverse reaction?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  I laugh with disbelief. “Why are you apologizing? I should be apologizing to you for not recognizing sooner that you were in distress.”

  “It’s just been a long day. And I’m worried about my mama.”

  I hold her close again. “As you should be under the circumstances. Why I wasn’t cognizant of it before you had to bring it to my attention doesn’t say much for me as your Dom. Shall I have Dr. Sandoval , my neighbor who
drew your blood, inquire if your mother’s doctors are top notch?”

  “Mama is even more independent than I am. She’ll ask for our help if she needs it.”

  I leave her on the bed for a moment as I retrieve our robes.

  “Wait, aren’t we going to finish here?”

  “Are you insane? You almost fainted on me. Strenuous role-play can wait until after your mother’s surgery.”

  I dress her in her robe as if she is a child, then slip into my own. Before she has a moment to protest, I carry her out of the role-play room and into my bedroom.

  Keisha and I have had kinky sex and vanilla sex, both actions which only amounted to fucking. For the first time since I was a teenager, I make love to a woman.

  I justify it by insisting it’s in response to the episode Keisha just had in the playroom, and because I am sensitive to her mother’s diagnosis. When I come screaming her name, intrinsically, I know that one, or both, of us is well and truly doomed.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Pastor Johnson and Keisha stay with Mrs. Beale until the nurse wheels her into surgery. They re-join me, Mrs. Thelma Searles, Javier Beale Jr., Jada and Nathan in the waiting room. We’ve each consumed enough coffee to stay awake for a week. The level of anxiety is also palpable. Keisha paces, unable to find any comfort in the waiting room furniture.

  Pastor Johnson reads his Bible in the corner, his lips moving ever so often, in silent prayer. Javier either has a man-crush on Nathan or he’s convinced he’s dreaming and he’s going to wake up and he won’t have spent hours in a waiting room with the point guard of the Chicago Buffaloes. Mrs. Searles glares at Keisha and Jada as if she is profoundly disappointed in them, for reasons I am totally unsure of. If it’s our ethnicity, the little old lady is going to have to get over it.

  Javier’s wife Dr. Nina Beale and Clara Lee’s oncologist, Dr. Horace Jane, whom I secured to treat Mrs. Beale with her or her daughter’s knowledge, burst through the double doors. We crowd anxiously around them. I stand behind Keisha, gently holding her shoulders.

  “As I explained earlier, we went in with the hope that we’d only have to do a lumpectomy but after assessing the situation we agreed we had to remove the entire right breast,” Dr. Jane says to us all then turns to Keisha. “Your mother gave us permission to perform a reconstruction so we were also able to harvest some flesh for a skin graft. She’s in recovery now.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Jane,” Javier and Keisha say almost simultaneously.

  “Glory to God,” Pastor Johnson says.

  “We’re extraordinarily pleased with the outcome,” Dr. Jane says and smiles before he leaves.

  Keisha’s sister-in-law, who seems to love throwing her weight around, says, “Even I can’t circumvent the visitor’s policy in recovery. Besides Javier and Keisha, we might only be able to finesse a brief visit for Pastor Johnson.”

  “Girl, please,” Jada says. “We’re all just here for moral support. We’ll see Mama Beale when she’s in a regular room.”

  Looks like I’m not the only one Ms. Jameson dislikes.

  Nina presses her lips together but doesn’t respond. Then she pulls her husband into the corner and gives him what for, despite trying to disguise it with an occasional teeth-clenching smile. The acoustics of the room carry the hisses issuing from her succinct enunciations. Javier raises his hands in a gesture of surrender so automatically, we all know that he probably does this often. If a man ever needed a ball gag and a flogger, it is Javier, Jr.

  When I tire of Dr. Beale’s theatrics, I bend to Keisha’s ear. “You just say the word and I’ll call in a favor with the hospital administrator.”

  She turns and whispers back, “Could you? Mrs. Searles and Mama are like sisters. She would really brighten Mama’s spirits.” I immediately get on the phone and make the call.

  “I’ll take Pastor Johnson back first,” Nina announces.

  “No, let these children see their mother first,” Pastor Johnson says. After a brief debate, Nina motions to Javier, who defers to Keisha.

  “You go on,” she says to her brother.

  “Just a second, Dr. Beale,” I say. “Dr. Guyton has given Mrs. Searles permission to visit.”

  Nina wants to protest but thinks better of it when she sees my take-no-prisoners, Dominant demeanor. Just the mention of the hospital administrator’s name should’ve done the trick.

  “I’ll take Javier in first and come back for Mrs. Searles and Keisha,” Nina says, and she and Javier disappear through the double doors.

  Keisha turns to me and throws her arms around my neck. “Thanks,” she says, and gives me a kiss on the lips.

  Mrs. Searles walks over to us with tears in her eyes. “Thank you for pulling strings for me, young man. Clara Lee is my best friend.”

  “It was my pleasure, Mrs. Searles,” I say, clasping her hand.

  “Oh, call me Thelma,” she says with an impish grin.

  Keisha executes an elaborate eye-roll, and I don’t have to hear her say it audibly, because her expression says loud and clear, “here we go again.”

  I’m becoming very effective in charming little, old black women.

  “Would you like me to send Ms. Beale’s mother some flowers, Mr. White?” Darryl asks when I return to the office.

  “No. She isn’t dead.”

  Darryl withers under my glare. Then I ease off. “Sorry, Darryl, I just can’t abide that sentiment.”

  “No problem,” he says.

  “People need something useful when they’ve had major surgery.”

  There were times when I wished I could attach a head of hair to my mother’s scalp after she lost hers. She truly hated wigs, despite them being the only way she could look relatively normal after her many bouts of chemotherapy.

  Clara may be fortunate in this respect, because radiation therapy may be all that is required for her post-surgery. If it isn’t, I’ll make sure she has some of that weave Keisha introduced me to when we first met. I smile recalling how exasperated she was with me that day trying to explain it.

  Darryl is eyeing me with not a little curiosity as I stand before him lost in my own headspace. This shit happens entirely too often these days. I need to take a chill pill—another one of Keisha’s silly demands when we first met.

  I mentally shake myself. “Okay, here’s what I’d like you to do. Call up one of those locum tenens staffing services and hire a registered nurse to care for Mrs. Beale during her recovery.”

  “I’ll do that right away,” Darryl says. “Will there be anything else?”

  “Have finance and accounting open up a purchase order for Dr. Horace Janes, an Oncologist at the University of Chicago. And Ms. Beale nor her mother are to ever hear anything about this from you. Okay?”

  “Understood, sir.”

  Keisha is nothing if not a dutiful daughter. She adopts an inconceivable schedule in order to provide care for her mother in the only way she can given that I have sent a nurse to take care of dressing changes, dispensing medication and other healthcare needs. Keisha becomes her mother’s cook, housekeeper, and errand runner when she’s not working ten hour days at KSR. And even on those days, Keisha makes the trek to her mother’s home just to make sure she hasn’t fired the nurse and resumed doing everything herself.

  By the time Keisha gets to my place, she’s inevitably too tired for anything but missionary sex in a quasi-sentient state. In deference to Keisha and her mother, I wouldn’t dare insist we go back into the Grotto while her mother is recuperating, and I’m sure she welcomes the hiatus.

  The episode that occurred the last time we’d been in the Grotto is concerning to me, despite my agreement with Keisha’s assertion that it was an aberration. While I am eager to get back into my role play room, I will proceed with caution and allow her to decide when that should happen. I am a man of multifaceted sexual tastes, and I’d like to think Ms. Beale has become a like-minded woman. This situation shall pass when Keisha’s mother becomes fully ambulatory agai
n. I’m sure of it.

  My thoughts of our situation are put on hold when Darryl buzzes me that Keisha is on the line.

  “Hey, Tristan. Guess what?” She sounds happy, and it is my hope that my handling of the major stressors in hers and her mother’s life has contributed to that.

  “I’m sure I couldn’t possibly guess what.” I stop working on the email I was drafting when Darryl put her through.

  “You’re such a spoil sport.”

  “I thought you said I was practically normal now compared to the way I was when we first met.”

  “You have improved, but even normal people can be spoil sports.”

  “Regardless, I don’t have the gift of mind-reading, so you’re going to have to tell me what, because I can’t hazard a guess.”

  “Mama’s cancer free and can resume most of her regular activities.”

  “That’s wonderful news.” I twirl my desk chair around and gaze, grinning like an idiot, out of my office window. The Chicago skyline is partially obscured by a long-hanging cloud cover, but the view is still stunning. “So, what’s Clara Lee decided she wants to do first now that Janes has sprung her?”

  “Bake,” Keisha says. “She’s got a list a mile long of people she wants to thank with her specialty confections.”

  “Might I be on that list?”

  “Do you have no shame?”

  “Why would I be ashamed? Your mother throws down in the kitchen.”

  She giggles. “I need to stop saying certain things around you. Do you ever slip and say ‘throw down’ in your boardroom?”

  “I may have told a new client that I expect them to ‘throw down’ on their profit margin so they can pay me back ‘like a boss’.”

  She laughs riotously. “You really need to stop before you make me pee my pants.”

  “Are we changing the terms of our agreement to include golden showers now, Ms. Beale?”

  “Eww! No way.”

  “Just checking.”

  “Listen, I’ve got to go. We’re laying down tracks for that new act we signed last week, and you remember I have to stay late tonight. Jada took all the late shifts while Mama was recuperating, so it’s my turn now.”