Chapter 8 – Martin Lewis

I was angry and Leo could see that I was angry—coming to me out of the blue at the inn, telling me we had to talk. Coming to me only days before Muriel was taken to the hospital. We hadn't talked for years. There was nothing I had to say to Leo. He'd gotten a big slice of the Lewis inheritance. He had nothing to complain about. I just wished Dad had had something else to give him but property on the square. It kept the issue right under our noses. More than that, I wish that Dad had kept it in his pants—especially around Leo's mother. Dad must have known it would be a constant embarrassment to Muriel and me. Well, to me certainly.

Muriel. She'd never been with me on this—on Leo. "Family is family," she'd said. "He's as much Dad's child as we are. And his mother was a wonderful woman. You thought so too until you found out that she'd had a child by Dad. She never made claims on us. Leo didn't either, for that matter. Dad chose to leave the café to him. I'm glad he left something to Leo; it's not his fault he was born."

"But do you know what he is? What he does at the Club Copa?"

"Oh, good lord, Martin. This is the twenty-first century. Take a look at the Lewis genealogy one of these days. Some of our ancestors were rightfully swung from trees, not just attached to branches of the family tree. We've been in the South for generations. I'll bet that Leo's not the only black person who has budded on our family tree."

I had to remind myself that she didn't agree with me when Leo appeared at the reception desk of the inn and asked to see me in private. "I don't think Muriel is available to join us," I said. I didn't want to be double teamed here.

"I don't think it would be wise to include her either," Leo said. "I don't think she'd appreciate us talking about her."

"Talking about Muriel? You'd best come back to the office."

I could have fallen out my chair when he told me he'd come because Muriel was seriously sick—that she needed a new kidney. And didn't I know that? Didn't I know something needed to be done—now?

"God," I mumbled. "No, I didn't know. I didn't see it. I've been so busy. Tourist season and all."

"You haven't noticed that she's been looking ill?"

"I thought it was about Buddy. About Buddy leaving her and going to Memphis. I didn't want to intrude."

"Buddy's gone to Memphis to try to make more money—to help cover what it's going to cost to get a new kidney."

"What . . . what can I do? What can we do?" I looked up into Leo's face and saw it soften, relief to flood in. I'd used the word "we." I couldn't believe I was talking about Leo and me doing anything together. But this was Muriel. And I'd been such a fool not to have noticed that anything was wrong. "She didn't say anything to me."

"She didn't say anything to anyone but Jaivon and Tracy Patten—Tracy because she's a registered nurse and Muriel needed her help."

"Jaivon? Our porter?"

"Yes, Jaivon. He's been getting her medicine for her. And he's finally told others. And as far as doing something, we need to raise money—and fast. Emily Goodwin and I've been talking. We have some ideas."

He had told me of his ideas, which I thought were only a token approach, but I was in such shock that I couldn't think straight. All I knew was that I'd let him and Emily plan, but that I was off to the bank as soon as Leo left to see what could be done in the way of a mortgage on the inn.

And then, within days, all hell broke loose. An ambulance was roaring up to the door, and the EMTs were wheeling Muriel out on a stretcher. Jaivon was at her side. Jaivon, the young black hotel porter. He was the one who found her and whose hand she was clutching.

Jaivon, who I hadn't really noticed much around the inn. I couldn't even remember when we'd hired him—or even what all of his duties were. I just knew that when something needed done, we'd call for Jaivon, and there he'd be. Just like the old days of Savannah, I realized bitterly.

For two days I sat in the hall at the hospital as they worked to stabilize her. Those days were a haze. What I did know, though, was that both Leo and Jaivon were with me there. The lesbian SCAD student, Tracy Patten from across the square also was there. She was the one running around, finding out whatever there was to know, and sharing what she could find with us. I was surprised to find that she'd been a nurse before deciding she'd rather be an art photographer. For now, she was an angel. And I'd never make disparaging remarks about her lifestyle again. I'm sorry to have to say I'd been hard about that before—just like I was about Leo.

The first sign of hope was the night Olive Odom called the residents of the square together to meet on money-raising schemes at the General's Café. And speaking of angels, Olive was magnificent at the meeting. It's like I'd never seen her before—literally. I'd been doing a lot of that—not noticing people I should have noticed—I realized. I resolved not to continue doing that.

Not only was Olive in full control when I'd always thought of her as passive and withdrawn, but she also was beautiful—radiantly so. Why had I never seen her before, never had seen her so "with it" before?

And she was doing this for Muriel.

It wasn't just that. Watching Olive was causing me to react in my body. I could feel myself going hard. I wanted her. That was a revelation. I'd been so busy with the hotel that I hadn't made any effort to pursue a woman in years. That doesn't mean I didn't have tensions. I just took care of them myself in the privacy of my bedroom.

I'd once been so randy and had enjoyed sex so much. Not even knocking up that little black sweetie, Shawna, had stopped me until the burden of this hotel had fallen on my shoulders. For the first time in years I felt the need for a woman. And I was directing that need toward Olive.

And then I had her. Or maybe she had me. It seemed that she seduced me more than the other way around. Who knew she could be so sexy and sensual and could take the initiative like that? Who knew that a sweet young women could give the blow job she gave me?

After the meeting I ran across her in front of Emily's house when I was returning to the inn. I wanted her so bad. She was flushed and beautiful; it seemed she was ripe for the taking. I offered to walk her back to her apartment, fantasizing that there could be more.

And then there was more, There was everything. Before I even was aware of it, she had unzipped me and was stroking my cock. I'd never imagined she could be like that. So beautiful and open to sex like that. Then I was inside her, bareback fucking her—totally out of control. Lost inside her, trembling at the feel of her shuddering under me again and again. And then tensing and unloading inside her before I could withdraw—before she'd let me withdraw.

I apologized to her profusely. But all she wanted to do then was sink between my knees, take me inside her mouth, her luxuriant hair cascading over my thighs, and suck me to a second ejaculation.

Never before had I been so lost with a woman. Never before, after we had moved the action to her bedroom. Even after, near dawn, I showered and left her apartment, my balls aching from our wanton coupling, I still wanted to just turn around and bury my cock inside her again. Wanted to receive another divine blow job. To give her that pleasure in kind as I did in her bedroom before she was writhing under me, begging for having my cock inside her.

The next morning, after Muriel was taken away, there she was, at the hospital, when I arrived. Leo showed up too. But Jaivon was missing. Even when I returned to the inn, looking for him to give thanks that never could measure up to what he'd done for us—what I'd learned at the hospital that he'd done for us, I couldn't find him. He was gone.

That day had been the first I'd been able to meet with the surgeon who had magically appeared to take over Muriel's case—to find her a kidney that matched and to perform the transplant. I thought the hospital had brought him in, but the administrator said they hadn't. They said I couldn't have found a finer surgeon—the best to be had anywhere in the vicinity of Savannah.

When I met with the doctor, I asked him both how he had come to take the case and, with trepidation, what his services would cost. It didn't matter what he'd say about cost—Muriel deserved the best and we'd somehow find the money for it—the whole square was behind this. Muriel and I truly were blessed by that.

Imagine my shock, though, when he said that there was no surgeon's fee—and that he came because Jaivon Johnson had asked him to.

"Jaivon's mother has been my family's housekeeper for decades," he said. "Three years ago, at our beach house, while Judith and I were at a cocktail party, our twin boys decided to swim out into the ocean on a surf board. They have a nanny, but she was busy changing the diaper on the baby. Dottie, Jaivon's mother saw the boys in distress in an undertow from the kitchen window. I don't know how she did it, but she swam out to them and brought them back safe. So, Mr. Lewis, when Dottie or any of her kin asks me if I can help a dear friend of theirs, I will do it—and not charge for it."

For three days thereafter, all of us—everyone on the square—searched for Jaivon. But he was gone.

After meeting with the doctor and visiting Muriel, who was so hooked up to machines that she couldn't do more than raise her hand a couple of inches to acknowledge my presence—which was enough—we went back to the inn. We. Olive was with me. She stayed with me at the inn, in my bed, that night and most of the succeeding nights. We fucked like neither one of us had had a yesterday nor could count on having a tomorrow.

Despite the tension and exhaustion, the sex was great. Who would have known that the Olive I once had known—and overlooked and dismissed as too virginal—could willingly and enthusiastically give such great head?

I was smitten. I was hers.