Maurice & Friends

Those of her friends who felt that Betty could make no more blunders were sorely disappointed when she went to the law offices of Leoparde & Bonobo and asked Bo Bonobo to file a legal separation from Shane Simba. Once he had picked his jaw from the desk where it had rapidly descended, he asked her if she was sure of this move.

“You are the President’s wife and carrying his cub, Betty. Please rethink this matter,” implored Bo, who was her long time friend and attorney.

“Bo, Christine and Micah Mbube have just vacated my home on Leoparde Drive. I want to return there and I want to share my son, Solly, with his father. This is the only thing that will bring Shane Simba to his knees,” she announced, lighting a Kool.

“Should you be smoking in your condition?” asked Bo.

“Just do my bidding. My health habits are none of your business,” she snapped. “And another thing….I want this duly reported to the media from your offices.”

Citizens picked up the Masai Mara Daily and Kenya Post the following morning to find the headlines reading: FIRST LADY FILES FOR LEGAL SEPARATION FROM THE PRESIDENT: Will take up separate residence in her former home.

That morning at the State House, all stepped gingerly around Shane whose jaw was set as hard as a diamond mine. He made no mention to us of the situation. I noticed that various minions from the mansion apprised him of Betty’s activities and the beginning of sending her personal effects to her home on Leoparde Drive. He stayed late at the office, working at his desk.

“Maurice, you go on home. You don’t have to stay late just because I do,” he said.

I took the bull by the horns and spoke, holding my breath and gut as I did so.

“I’m very sorry about how things are with you and your family at the moment, sir.”

He looked up from his busy work with a glint of tears in his eyes.

“So am I, Maurice, I never wanted this to happen. Betty and I are both at fault here, probably mine is the greater.”

Betty got moved into her beautiful home on Leoparde Drive which had been leased by Micah and Christine while they completed their savanna residence. She waited for Shane to come. In the interim she suffered the pangs of the damned over the memories of her courtship and marriage to him which had taken place in the back yard under the tulip tree. Recollections clung to the house like an odoriferous and cloying perfume. She placed an emergency call to her old friend, Wilda Wildebeest, who came to offer her solace.

“Do you think I’ve made a mistake in this separation, Wilda?” she sobbed.

“Fucking ‘A’, Betts, what the hell were you thinking, or were you?”

In the middle of the night with Babs sitting by her bed, she would ring the mansion and be told that Shane was unavailable.

The lonely Betty in her bath on Leoparde Drive....

Fortunately, her sister Gloria and her new husband, Bertram Baboon arrived in the Mara from a fortnight in England. They had read the story as far away as Britain and were prepared for whatever might be her condition when they came home. Gloria found her sobbing in her bathroom, having taken a shower and bursting into tears in the midst. We all rallied around her as best we could - even Lachlan whose patience had grown as thin as a leaf of aging lettuce.

Only two had the kind of influence on Shane Simba to make him change course – one was his daughter, Staci, the other his lover, Jane Leoparde. When it had hit the news that Betty was incarcerated in the Exotic Animal Hospital for severe depression and dehydration, Staci and Jane prevailed upon Shane to step in and take charge of a deteriorating situation. Shane, accompanied by his guards, strode the hall to the Presidential Suite in the clinic. He walked in the room where Betty lay with an IV drip in one arm, pulled up a chair and sat down.

“Betty, I am having your personal furnishings brought back to the mansion. You will also end the legal separation. I will return to the mansion and live alongside you with Solly. We have both made big enough fools of ourselves and Kenya. It has to stop NOW!!!”

It was the neither the warmest nor fuzziest edict to come across the pike but it was music to Betty’s ears. She had lain in the mire and despair of her own actions, having no idea how to extricate herself. Thanks, greatly in part, to her nemesis, Jane, she now had recourse to living again with the husband who fueled her obsession.

Lachlan and I had Gloria and Bertram to dinner shortly after Betty had vacated her home next door and moved back to the mansion.

“Do you think things can become any pithier than they have been with Betty and Shane?” asked Bertram, with greatly raised brow.

Bertram has never been an admirer of flaunting one’s untidy and stained linens in public or anywhere else, for that matter. He has always endured his extreme loneliness with dignity and aplomb. Lachlan answered him.

“That couple is in some deep trouble. There will be many fences to mend before they can ever straddle them again,” he answered.

With her usual amazing powers of recovery, Betty got on her feet once more and did some soul searching. She was still in therapy with Lachlan.

“What can I do to make amends?” she asked him.

“The opposite of what you have been doing,” was Lachlan’s brusque response.

Lachlan, who is also Shane’s psychiatrist, read him the riot act.

“You espouse your devotion to Kenya - its well being and good image,” he snarled. “Yet, you continue your disgraceful affair and Betty gets bent out shape and abuses her pregnancies. You two very badly need to get something right at this point.”

Shane sat sadly nodding his head in agreement with Lachlan’s summary. That same night, Shane returned to his wife’s bed. It was not a passionate or sexy return – but it was a start in Betty’s mind.

Betty kept to her diet of fresh vegetables, chicken, fruit juices and five cigarettes a day, one being smoked with her one cup of morning coffee. She was rewarded at her first sonogram with the imaging of a cub that seemed to be flourishing. Dr. Frank Tigeres, realizing that the first lady had been through the mill, offered kind words and encouragement.

“May I buy you a drink?” asked the green-eyed Leland Leoparde of Cate Ocelot.

Cate, a talented and very attractive psychiatrist working for Lachlan at the mental health center, had been seeing Chris Simba recently. Upon further exploration of their druthers, Cate had realized that Chris had an aversion to having more children. Cate, whose emphasis was on working with the young, very much wanted her own children someday. Now here was this handsome leopard male inviting her for a drink. She accepted gladly. He picked up their drinks and she followed him to a booth which offered a modicum of privacy in the frenetic Friday night atmosphere of the Watering Hole Pub.

The day the media had broadcast the fact of Betty and Shane’s legal separation; Paulette Poodle’s beauty emporium had been swamped with appointments for beauty procedures by a wishful female public desirous of being the next wife or lover of the sexy and enigmatic President of Kenya. Lucy Cougar was among them. When little more than a week later it was announced that Betty was once again living with her husband in the mansion, many despaired at the expense of having ‘prettied up’ for a newly single Shane. Some less solvent females had spent a week’s salary to make ready.

How short the memory of the public is when something more exciting comes along. With Kenya it was a fresh insurgency from the Somalis. It took the focus off of the first family’s marital carnival to matters of security. Shane immediately remobilized his military and joined them on the base that was less than five miles from our border with Somalia.

He had been up for twenty-four hours straight joining his troops on some of their patrols. He was dead tired and went to his quarters for a cleansing and refreshing shower. The shower curtain was opened revealing his naked form.

“How are you Mr. President?” asked Jane with amusement lighting her eyes.

“Oh Janie, thank God you’re here. I was afraid to even call or ask you after all the shit went down with Betty and her cell phone,” he said, stepping out and hugging her to his wet body.

“Did you think I would miss the opportunity to watch you boost your own legend?” she inquired, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him.

When Chris Simba called to ask Cate Ocelot for a date, she was lukewarm and turned him down.

“Chris, I don’t think our goals are the same.”

“Goals?”

“Yes, I want children of my own one day and you seem pretty adamant about not wanting to father anymore.”

“What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China, Cate? I asked you out to dinner not a fertility dance.”

She slammed down the phone and made for her bedroom to complete her primping for her first evening in Leland Leoparde’s elegant bush home. Chris ended up at the pub sharing a night of heavy drink with his half-brothers, Simon, Alexander and Dick. The four siblings bemoaned a female population whose main objective seemed to be getting them to the altar. They all became gloriously shit faced and ended up in a gang bang at Simon’s townhouse with several lush females whose numbers included a hooker or two.

Sloane Simba with the apple of his eye, daughter Georgy.....

“Daddy,” began Georgy Simba propped on her father’s lap. “I think Mommy is in love.”

“And what makes you think that?” asked Sloane.

“Because Carly and I are invited to her boyfriend’s house too. That means love, doesn’t it Daddy?”

“It does sound on the serious side, Georgy.”

“Where is Caroline this weekend?”

“Not coming here, Georgy. We are not getting along these days.”

“Daddy, I don’t want you and Mommy to marry anyone but each other, promise me?”

“Georgy, that’s not reasonable to ask of us. Mommy and I are great friends now but we are no longer in love with each other,” explained Sloane.

Tears welled in the little cub’s blue eyes.

“Caroline is not a good cat, Daddy. She’s cross and really crappy,” wailed the distressed Georgy.

“Where did you learn the word ‘crappy’?” asked her father.

“At school,” cried Georgy. “I like the word….it works for me.”

“Oh I see,” said Sloane giving his pretty daughter a big hug. “How about a triple ice cream at Ben & Jerry’s?”

“Yeah, Daddy, that would be great.”

Pleasing the precocious Georgy was a simple matter for now but the day would come when ice cream wouldn't suffice mused Sloane.

Betty Chimpo Simba was not all happy about the turn of events that led her husband to war again, probably thrown, as before, with his lover, Jane. However, realizing that she had made major mistakes in her handling of the situation, she decided to sit tight and concentrate on a healthy pregnancy. This time she did visit hospitals close by that were receiving the wounded. She gained a photo opportunity and article that made the front pages of the newspapers. She also instigated a Sunday prayer vigil at the First Church of the Ascending Predator which focused on offering blessings for Kenya and her troops.

Betty visits the wounded in a military hospital in West Tsavo...

Staci Simba did her part by flying with Luke Leoparde as he transported additional supplies to the front. Ashley and Luke had pledged the safari club planes into service for their part in the war effort. They flew daily to the front. This time Shane pressed everyone into service and declared a long delayed war on Somalia. He addressed his nation from a televised area in the main headquarters of the military base. His strong and elegant rhetoric galvanized Kenyans. We buckled down to a time of siege. Things were hectic at the State House with Vice President Daniel Lyon taking Shane’s place. I worked with Sloane Simba and Daniel to hone war time regulations and changes in our government.

Our President, Shane Simba, declares war on Somalia in a televised press conference...

The next time Betty visited the wounded troops she took the scene stealing Solly with her. Solly, with his gregarious and outgoing personality, was a big hit with the soldiers who were able to fathom their surroundings. The green eyed son of Shane Simba and Betty held all who met him in thrall. He became, swiftly, one of Kenya’s most effective ambassadors, even going with his sister, Staci, to Nairobi to visit the hospitals there. He bounced about the back of the plane flown by Staci with Luke Leoparde in the co-pilot’s seat. His energy was too great to be convinced of the need for seat belts.

“Ladies beware!” laughed Luke. “Here comes the future Shane Simba.”

“Of course he will be,” giggled Staci. “He is Daddy’s clone.”