The Venture Capitalist (29 page)

“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 again. 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.”

“Turnabout is only fairplay I suppose, even when it relates to Ms. Jameson.”

“I must tell her you paid her a backhanded compliment.”

“Which is better than backhanding her.”

“You and Nathan would be
throwing down
in an entirely different way if that were to happen.”

“In an effort to preserve the relationship I enjoy with my only sibling, I suppose I’ll have to refrain from backhanding Ms. Jameson.”

“Uh oh! Tracey’s paging me. Talk to you later?”

“Later.”

I’ve finished the email when my cell phone pings. It’s a text from Keisha.

Oh, I forgot. I’ll be over after the store closes at nine. Be prepared to have all the apparatuses in the Grotto dusted off, Sir!

My submissive is back.

I enter the Grotto a full fifteen minutes before Keisha is set to arrive. I take a deep breath, breathing in the scent of leather, clean sheets, and a mixture of cleaning products that my friends’ company uses to sanitize my playroom on a biweekly basis. When I got Keisha’s text earlier, I immediately called to have a thorough cleaning.