An August Harvest

by Ben Marney

  “It’s not that I don’t like to drink. I love wine, but I’m not allowed to drink it anymore.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Are you a recovering alcoholic?”

  “No, it’s a little more serious than that. A few years ago...” she paused and took a breath, “I had a liver transplant and I can’t drink alcohol because of the immunosuppression medication I take daily.”

  I stood there, holding her in my arms with my mouth open, speechless.

  She looked up at me. “Are you okay? I understand if that changes things between us.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Instead, I bent down and gently kissed her. When our lips touched...it took my breath away. It felt like I was floating and my entire body started tingling.

  When I leaned back, her eyes were wet and tears were rolling down her face, “So...are you a Coke, Pepsi or Dr. Pepper kinda gal?”

  Melissa pointed at the bottle on the table. “Either open that bottle of wine or get off my damn deck and go home!”

  “Whoa! Grant, she’s kinda of bossy.” Marshall said, grinning. “I like her!”

  “Me too,” Brenda said.

  “I’m serious. Just because I don’t drink doesn’t mean you can’t,” Melissa pleaded. “My friends drink around me all the time.”

  I opened the wine and filled Brenda and Marshall’s glasses, but filled Melissa’s and mine with Diet Coke.

  Donna and Charley soon tired of our conversation, curled up together in the corner of the deck and fell asleep. Like I had hoped, Melissa, Brenda and Marshall bonded quickly and it didn’t take long before he started telling her embarrassing stories from our childhood.

  “They fell down at the finish line?” Melissa asked, giggling.

  “Yep! It was the district track meet and the stands were packed. I was right behind him and saw the whole thing.” Marshall was laughing so hard he could barely get out the words, “One minute he was running and the next minute, he was flat on his face with his gym shorts at his ankles with his bare white ass shining for the entire student body and everyone else in the stands to see! Including his own mother and father!”

  “Ha, ha, ha,” I said. “And you call yourself a doctor? You should be ashamed for laughing at a tragic event that could’ve damaged me psychologically for years. Ok...now, it’s my turn.” I lifted my hand to my chin and thought for a moment. “What about the time you filled your lunch thermos with your father’s vodka, got half the football team drunk, and you and me expelled for three days?”

  “You’re the one that got us caught,” he said, grinning, “You drank most of it and Coach Head saw you staggering down the hall!”

  After an hour or so of laughing and hearing way too many of those stories, Melissa excused herself from the table to go check on Molly.

  “I really like her.”Marshall said.

  “Grant, she’s beautiful, brilliant,” Brenda added, “and the attraction between you two is obvious. I guess I don’t see the problem.”

  “There’s really no problem, I like her a lot, but…”

  “But what?” Marshall asked, leaning toward me.

  I shrugged. “It’s got to be more than a physical attraction. I can’t explain it, but those feelings I told you about are still there...every time I touch her. Earlier today, I kissed her for the first time, and I honestly thought I was going to faint. I broke into a cold sweat, I got dizzy and light headed. Just from a kiss.”

  “I did, too!”

  We all looked up to see Melissa standing in the doorway. “When you left, I had to go lay down and I cried for twenty minutes.” She sat down at the table. “Marshall, I agree with Grant. This has to be more than just a physical attraction. Can you think of any medical reason this is happening?”

  “When did it start for you?” he asked.

  “The very first time we touched,” she replied. “It felt like...like an electric shock.”

  I looked at her. “Exactly.”

  “Then it happened again when we made eye contact.”

  “Really?” I said. “You felt the shock just from eye contact?”

  “Yes.”

  “I only feel it when we touch.” I thought for a second, “Wait, that’s not true. Once, my heart actually skipped a few beats when you looked at me. What the hell is it, Marshall? What could possibly be causing this?”

  He looked over at Brenda and they both started laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  Brenda reached across the table, took one of my hands and took one of Melissa’s. “Are you listening to what you two are saying? When you touch, you both feel a bolt of electricity; when you make eye contact, your heart skips a beat and you feel a shock; when you kissed, you broke into a cold sweat, felt dizzy and got light headed, and you,“ she looked at Melissa, “you had to lay down and couldn’t stop crying?”

  She let go of our hands, sat back and took a sip of her wine. “As a board-certified doctor of psychology, it’s my official medical opinion that what you two are describing is something that is very rare, but does happen. You may have heard of it before.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “It’s called…” she smiled at us, “…love.”

  “But we just met!” I said. “We don’t even know each other!”

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Brenda said, still smiling wide. “I said it was very rare, but it does happen. It’s called...love...at first sight.”

  Melissa’s eyes were sparkling when she looked over at me. “I guess that could explain it. After all, she is a doctor.”

  I leaned over and kissed her for the second time.

  “Whoa!” Marshall yelled. “I think I felt a little jolt!”

  9

  The Stained Glass

  I peeled the back off of the two round sticky back labels, attached one to her blouse and the other one to my tee shirt.

  Melissa leaned in, squinted her eyes and read the small round label attached to my shirt. “Old Town Trolley Tours? Are you kidding? We’re taking a tour of Saint Augustine? Grant, I grew up here.”

  “I know you did,” I said, grinning, “but I didn’t. This way, I can see all the historic sites, I don’t have to drive and worry about finding a place to park, and we can jump off and on whenever we want.”

  Her smiling eyes glistened as she looked up at me. “Hmmm, I’m having second thoughts about you.”

  “Oh really? Why?”

  “Well, if this is a Texas boy’s idea of how to spend our first romantic day together...I can’t help but wonder what you may have planned for tomorrow?”

  “Well, ma’am, don’t you worry your pretty little head about that,” I said in my deepest Texas drawl, “I got that all planned out, too. I figured tomorrow we could do a little yard work, cuz your flower beds could use a good weedin’.”

  “Are you serious?” the uber driver asked. “I’m not sure I can do that. All the routes are supposed to be posted on the app, so they know where I am.”

  Dr. Hollingsworth rolled his eyes. “How much do you normally make a day doing this?”

  “It varies, but usually a couple hundred a day...maybe three on a good day.”

  Jerry handed him four one hundred dollar bills. “Consider this your lucky day. Sign out of the app. I want to hire you for the day. Now that that’s settled, stop talking to me and follow that trolly.”

  Jerry gritted his teeth when he saw Grant put his arm around Melissa, but his blood boiled when Grant leaned over and kissed her. But what shocked him the most was when Melissa, only a few minutes later, leaned over and kissed him back.

  He followed them for over four hours that day. Every time they jumped off the trolly, he would get out of the Uber car, pull his baseball cap down low over his eyes and slowly walk behind them, watching their every move.

  Their public display of affection was a disgusting sight, and it was not like her to do that sort of thing. She had dated other men before and this wasn’t the f
irst time he’d followed her, but this was the first time he’d seen her act like a common whore in public.

  He wasn’t sure how he was going to do it, but somehow he had to put an end to this.

  The others were easy to bluff, chase away or buy off, but Grant was too smart, apparently rich and wasn’t going to be easy to get rid of. But there was no way he was ever going to let it go. He’d worked too many years for it.

  If it hadn’t been for that damn transplant, it would have all been over by now, but...what were the odds?

  Everything had been going exactly as he had planned since college, when he discovered it on their first date.

  “Where?” Jerry asked.

  “I promise, it will only take a few minutes,” she told him. “I give blood every six weeks.”

  “Jake told me that you were rich. Why would you want to do that?”

  She frowned up at him. “My father is rich, very rich, but not me. Anyway, I don’t do it for the money, I do it because I have AB negative blood. It’s extremely rare. Only 1% of people in the world have it, and I want to help them if I can.”

  Jerry was in medical school at that time and not doing very well, barely passing. He knew he wasn’t really cut out to be a doctor, but he liked the idea and prestige that came with the title. He didn’t have the stomach for anatomy and was repulsed at the sight of blood and surgery, so he decided that if he could somehow skirt through medical school, he would specialize in psychology. He figured he could bullshit his way through his psychology classes, but he knew he was never going to make any real money as a doctor.

  He had met Melissa on a blind date as a favor to one of his fraternity brothers. She was part of a double date deal, so he agreed to take her out. When he first saw her, as he had expected, she did nothing for him. She wasn’t his type; she was short, maybe five-foot, brown eyes, mousy short brown hair. She had a pretty face, but was just sort of plain. He liked them tall, blonde and leggy, with blue eyes and big boobs.

  After he dropped her off at her dorm, he did some research on her father and discovered what she meant by “very rich”. He also found out that her father was in his mid-seventies, a widower and Melissa was his only child. He calculated that at the most, in maybe ten years he would be dead and…Melissa would then be the very rich one.

  The next day, he began talking to some of his brainier fraternity brothers, who were also medical students, about just how rare A.B. negative blood was.

  His plan solidified during one of those conversations. “Honestly, a person with that rare of blood would be wise to bank a lot of it for emergencies,” his fraternity brother said. “If they did that they could live a normal life. The only real downside of having blood that rare would be if they ever needed an organ transplant.”

  “What difference would that make?”

  “Come on, Jerry, just think about it. Only 1% of the population has that blood type. The odds of finding a healthy donor organ with that blood type would be astronomical, almost mathematically impossible. But of course, we’re only talking about the heart or the liver; you can live on one lung or one kidney.”

  “But if they developed heart failure or liver failure?”

  He shrugged. “I’m afraid that would be a death diagnosis for this blood type. The odds are just too high to find a matching donor.”

  For the next three years, Jerry dated Melissa exclusively, spending as much time as he could with her. He spent the rest of his time studying just enough to get through medical school, and what little time he had left, he spent doing extensive research on the causes and treatment of fatal liver failure.

  After the trolly tour, Melissa had me drive her to her favorite place. When I pulled up to the gate, she leaned over me, so the guard could see her. “Hi, Frank!” she called out.

  “Well, hey there, Miss Melissa,” he said, smiling. “I haven’t seen you here in a while.”

  “Would it be okay if we go to the dining hall? I want to show my friend the glass.”

  We were at the back entrance to Flagler College, the part of the college that used to be the Hotel Ponce De Leon. And the glass she was talking about was the eighty-seven windows that Louis Tiffany himself had installed there in 1888. They are estimated to be worth today at about two hundred million dollars. We bought a Coke, found a table with a good view, and sat there in awe.

  “You are the first person I’ve ever brought here,” she said.

  “I’m honored. Why is this place so special to you?”

  “My father loved this place and used to bring me here when I was a little girl. And then when I got so very sick, I used to come here to pray and think. This has always been my private place to talk to God. I was here when I got the phone call. It was a miracle; he answered my prayers and told me about it right here.” Across the table, I could see the rainbow of colors from the bright sunlit Tiffany glass reflecting in her eyes.

  I took her hand. “You almost died, but God answered your prayers with the transplant?”

  She looked down. “Yes I came very close, within days, maybe hours, but I wasn’t praying for a transplant. Everyone told me that was impossible.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. You said God answered your prayers and it was a miracle. Wasn’t that miracle the transplant?”

  “I thought so at the time, but I’m not so sure of that now. I’m beginning to think there’s more to his miracle. I’ve always had a feeling that there had to be more to it.”

  I tilted my head and lowered my eyebrows. “Miss Scarlett, frankly...you have lost me. You’ve got to keep in mind you’re talking to a Texas boy. You might want to slow it down just a bit.”

  The corners of her eyes crinkled when she laughed. “I promise I will explain it to you some day, but in the mean time...are you always going to be this way?”

  “What way?”

  “Adorable.”

  “Adorable? Yuck! I was going for ruggedly handsome, suave and sophisticated. But you think I’m adorable...where did I go wrong?”

  “You’re doing it again,” she giggled. “That’s enough about me. I’d really like to know more about you. Were you born in Huntsville?”

  I spent the next hour telling her about growing up in Huntsville and how I met Rita and Marshall. She was stunned to find out that I was an architect like her father, and even more impressed with Marshall for what he and his father did helping me start my business. She was also amazed when I told her a few of Charley’s psychic stories, and burst out laughing when I told her the story about my father and the prison riot.

  But when I told her about the plane crash, she crawled in my lap and cried with me as I held her in my arms.

  We went to dinner at a small little joint that specialized in gourmet hamburgers, then finished the day strolling along the beach.

  “I don’t know how to say this without it sounding rude or insensitive, but I just can’t seem to put you and Jerry together. How did that happen?”

  We found a good spot, spread out a blanket and sat down on the beach. “I never knew my mother; she died giving birth to me. My father raised me as best he could, but he was in his mid-fifties when I was born. I loved him and he was a great father, but he was very old-fashioned. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup, lipstick or even fingernail polish.” She held up her hand, looked at her manicured nails and smiled. “He never did understand this.”

  I leaned back on my elbows and laughed. “When Audrey was five, she wrote a letter to Santa asking for the Barbie fingernail polish kit. I thought it was so she could paint her Barbie dolls’ nails, but it was for her nails. I can still remember how excited she was when she opened that present. When Rita saw what I’d bought her she gave me one of those ‘what in the hell were you thinking’ looks. It said right on the box for ten years or older, but I’d missed that. So Rita took her to the kitchen table, painted her nails bright red and hid the kit away. After that, ever so often, she’d pull it out and paint them again for her, but after a few mont
hs, she stopped asking for her to do it. It was a short-lived faze.”

  “I got my first manicure in college,” Melissa said, smiling. “Don’t get me wrong, he was a great father, just a bit too strict about certain things. I couldn’t wear shorts either–only pants or knee-length dresses.”

  “What about when you went to the beach? You did go to the beach, right?”

  She laughed. “Well, Dad would have preferred me to wear one of those long beach dresses you see in the old pictures from the 1930’s, but I was allowed to wear bathing suits, but only unflattering one piece suits, never a bikini. As you can imagine, I was the brunt of a lot of jokes in school and wasn’t very popular. Connie was my only friend.”

  “Is that why you went away to college instead of going here?”

  “It was the only real argument I ever had with my father. He was a big part of Flagler College; their lead architect for any renovations that may be needed and he was a major benefactor. You’re an architect, so I don’t have to tell you how much he loved every square inch of that building. When he was there, he was always staring up at the rafters, studying its design. It was almost like a church in a way. So naturally, he had always assumed I would go there. When I told him I wanted to go to UCLA, well...”

  I laughed. “I gather he didn’t take the news very well.”

  “That’s an understatement. For the first few weeks, he wouldn’t even talk to me. Then he threatened to cut me off and not pay for it.”

  “So what changed his mind?”

  Her eyes twinkled in the moonlight. “Wilhelmina Hickenbottom.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Mrs. Hickenbottom was our oldest living resident at that time and also one of the richest. When my mother died giving birth to me, Dad stopped working. He closed his business and fell into a state of deep depression and if it hadn’t had been for Wilhelmina, there’s no telling what might have happened to both of us.”