LEAH TALKS WITH ROY LEE
Condoms aren't completely safe. A friend of mine was wearing one and got hit by a bus.
Bob Rubin
Leah, having realized that she was in love with a male, not her husband, took the problem to the parent she knew would understand the most. Her dad, Roy Lee Simba, had been married six times, unsettling various family situations in the process. Now he was happily wed once more to the love of his life, Janice Jaguar, Leah’s mother. Father and daughter were sitting together on the spacious veranda that backed the Simba estate on Leoparde Drive. Janice was spending the afternoon at her fashion emporium, JAGGERS.
“Dad, I badly need to discuss something with you,” announced Leah, lighting a cigarette.
“Go for it, Baby Girl.”
Leah was neither Roy Lee’s baby nor from his youngest litter, but the lion superstar had always felt a special bond with this daughter.
“Dad, I’m in love with another male.”
Roy Lee lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly, the wispy smoke rings curling above his head.
“That’s always trouble, Leah. I’m sure you know that. You have five kids which is your greatest problem. You and Ash had a lot going for you. Is it irreparable?”
“I think so, Dad. I love him but not in the way I love…….” She broke off the remainder of her sentence. It hung in the atmosphere like a bird with fluttering wings poised in mid flight.
“Who, Leah? Do you mind saying?”
“I might as well, Dad. It’s Trevor Tau, the new malaria doctor for the government.”
Roy Lee sat deep in thought for a while.
“That’s who you were dancing so closely with the night of the fundraiser. I remember now. Go slowly and easily with this situation, my girl. You are young and have a lifetime ahead of you. Feel out your real emotions and make sure it’s not just an infatuation for this chap. You have a lot of shared history with Ash plus five kids. Does this doctor chap love you back?”
“Yes, Dad - it seems, very much.”
They sat quietly, drinking their sundowners and smoking companionably until they heard the front door open and the houseboy greeting Janice who had arrived home. When Janice burst upon the scene, warmly greeting her loved ones, the topic changed entirely. Leah’s dilemma wasn’t mentioned again.
Three Kenya Wildlife Service rangers lost their lives when they were gunned down by a gang of suspected poachers during an operation in the Tana River District, about 215 miles southeast of our capital, Nairobi. Shane, Betty and I attended their funerals. We visited those injured in the hospital in Nairobi. Later, returned to the State House, Shane made arrangements for their families to receive posthumous medals of courage for their sacrifices. He would have a ceremony for the wounded when they recovered and were able to travel to the State House.
Caroline Cheetah Simba was finally pregnant by her second husband, Sloane. She was delighted and decided to give up her job as President Shane Simba’s press secretary. Caroline, after trying for months to achieve this goal, didn’t want to risk the chance of miscarriage.
I was in charge of finding a replacement for her important career slot. I began to receive résumés from hopefuls. One such was the leopardess, Amy Chui (Swahili for leopard). She was currently the main administrative assistant at the Lawrence Leoparde Center for the Arts. She was invaluable to her boss, Christine Cheetah Mbube, the director. Amy was also a contract player of small roles at Baboon-Simba Studios. In short, she was very efficient and most photogenic – a plus for a presidential press secretary who would field questions from the media when the President wasn’t around. She was also single, with morals that resembled Swiss cheese, having had affairs with the married Ashley Lyon among others. When she was interviewed, Shane was impressed with her competence and hopefully - nothing more. Amy had called into play her big guns the day she sat before him, dressed to the nines in obviously expensive wear and smelling faintly like a French whore.
Another interviewee, who was doomed from the start, was the bodacious Dodi Dik Dik Lyon, who Shane scorned for having given his underage daughter, Staci, some hashish, thus enabling her to crash her car into the State House gates. The interview with Dodi was short and not necessarily sweet.
To make a long story short, after a week of interviewing many applicants, Shane asked me to call Amy. Needless to say, she was thrilled pink.
Amy Chui, the chosen one.....
Lucy Cougar, to use a much worn phrase, had taken something seriously that was poked at her for recreational purposes. Ashley Lyon had thought nothing of his one night stand with the youngest daughter of his parent’s best friends. For Lucy, however, it was a budding romance to die for. She went about her workday, waiting for the phone call that didn’t seem to arrive.
Ashley was beginning to grieve profusely for his estranged wife, Leah. He was not prepared for what she had to tell him, which occurred at their home on Leoparde Drive of a late afternoon filled with threatening thunderclouds on the horizon. Leah had poured herself a Scotch – not her normal drink of choice. Ashley looked on in dismay, realizing this selection for a sundowner didn’t augur well for their discussion. A deafening clap of thunder was heard on the distant savanna, silencing the birds. .
“Leely, let’s end this separation. I adore you and need you back. I have seen the last of Tookie,” he announced, attempting to take her in his arms.
She put out a paw and stopped him.
“Ash, I’m not coming back for a while. I have to think about things,” she began, failing to express the rest of her thoughts.
“Leely, get the necessary surgery for a donated uterus if that’s what you want. I suppose we can monitor the pregnancy.”
“That’s not a factor any longer, Ash.”
“Will I be too impertinent if I ask what factors exist at the moment?”
He was rather overwhelmed and attempting to keep the sarcasm from his voice.
“Someone else, Ash,” she announced, beginning to cry.
“What?” he asked, shock on his handsome face. He fell heavily into an Adirondack placed next to where Leah sat.
“Jesus, Joseph and Mary!! Leah, you can’t mean another male----you’re having an affair?”
“I can’t think straight at the moment, Ashley,” she said, rising from her chair, going to the garden gate and running straight for her parent’s home just down the street. Ashley sat stunned, gulping his Scotch. He went to the kitchen, brought the bottle out and drank shots straight up until, in drunkenness, the intense pain eased in his chest. He placed a call to his best friend, Luke Leoparde. Luke ended up coming for his pal and taking him to his own bush home, where he passed out on the guest room bed.
Amy Chui primped in the female powder room at the State House. It was her first day on the job as press secretary for President Shane Simba. She patted her hair and straightened her mini skirt, pushing her cleavage into a more outstanding position in her low cut jersey top. She made her way on spike heeled sandals to Shane’s office. The scent of his Dolce & Gabanna cologne greeted her as she sat in the chair before his desk.
“Mr. President, what can I do for you today?” she asked coyly, crossing one silken clad leg over the other, revealing a great deal of thigh.
“For starters, Miss Chui, please don’t come to the State House as my media representative dressed like a hooker,” he snapped.
Lee Simba and Staci Simba check out the wand.....
Staci Simba was in a botheration. She had apparently, in a state of inebriation due to too much wine, failed to take her birth control pills two nights in a row. She had forgotten to close the bathroom door and sat on the edge of the tub studying a pregnancy test wand that read positive. Her housemate and first cousin, Lee Simba, slipped in the room and stood over her.
“Oh my gawd, you’re preggers!” yelped Lee. “Who’s the daddy?”
“Juma,” managed a distraught Staci.
“He’s sexy – marry him,” enthused the air headed Lee who was all about romance and instant drama.
“Shit, Lee. I have a career to pursue. I’m not even going to tell him. He’d want me to have them.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to tell Daddy.”
Lee was so aghast at this thought; she almost toppled backwards into the sunken tub.
“You’re going to tell Uncle Shane? Have you lost your last marble?” shouted Lee, leaning against the wall in her final stages of shock.
“He knows I’m on the pill and sleeping with Juma. He’s the only one that can take me to the clinic and say I’m having some other procedure. The paparazzi and reporters will be all over me if I try it on my own,” moaned Staci.
The meeting in their garden had two diverse reactions on Ashley and Leah Lyon. Leah called in sick three days in a row and refused to take phone calls. Her mother clucked over her and trundled nourishing soups and hot drinks to her bed. Ashley Lyon hit the pub and proceeded to get as drunk as a road lizard. He took various and sundry females to bed. He remembered neither locations nor any of the enthusiastic bed partners he fell upon. They were all a seemingly endless drunken blur. He managed to make Lucy Cougar blissful yet again on one very boozy occasion. It was evident that the heavy consumption of liquor did not diminish Ashley’s copulatory abilities in the least. Once more, Wally Warthog stepped up to the plate as his protector and keeper.
Shane confesses to her dad, Shane, in the bush house....
Shane Simba sat in the library in his bush home. It was silent and empty except for the skeleton staff and his daughter, Staci, who sat near him, wringing her paws.
“I got pregnant because….” She began.
“I am well acquainted with the ways one gets pregnant, Staci. I would like to know who the father is,” said Shane, trying to maintain his composure in the face of his daughter’s astounding announcement.
“Juma….They’re Juma’s, Daddy.”
“And he refuses to take any responsibly?”
“No, Daddy, he would want us to marry and I am not ready for that yet.”
“So you want an abortion?”
“Yes, Daddy, I came to you because I thought it was best. You always said I could come to you for anything, remember?” her voice faltered and trailed off, potential tears barely kept at bay.
“Of course you can, Pumpkin. I will talk to Frank Tigeres about performing the procedure and it will all be kept from the media. But, please promise me you won’t be so careless again. You have a great future ahead of you.”
She got up and came to sit in his lap like the days past when she was a motherless cub and he was her only anchor in a daunting world.
Dr. Juma Mnyama stood in Shane Simba’s office, having been summoned there. He started to sit in the chair that faced Shane’s desk.
“Don’t feel free to sit, Mnyama, this is not a social occasion,” said Shane, his voice glacial and matching the expression in his intense light eyes. “Do you like your job as the Director for our AIDS program?”
“Of course I do, President Simba. Why do you ask?”
Shane stood up and leaned against his desk, paws on the polished surface.
“Then never go near my daughter, Staci, again or you will be dismissed post haste,” snarled Shane.
“What is this about, Sir?”
“I don’t fancy being grandfather to your cubs, Mnyama. Now get the hell out of here before I fire your ass on the spot.”
Juma, being a great deal more shocked than intimidated, backed out of Shane’s office and headed for the facility on the river. He drove at break neck speed attempting to call Staci on her cell phone. There was no answer.