THE AGA PAYS A VISIT
Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - the main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
John Steinbeck
President Shane Simba had no sooner gotten out of the hospital and returned to work than mudslides hit western Kenya, killing some villagers and injuring others. Alexandra went with her husband to the site of the tragedy. She and Shane comforted the shocked and grieving families and went about insuring that earth movers were summoned to the site of the slides.
Alexandra Simba in stricken village with children....
Two days later they played host to visiting Muslim spiritual leader, the Aga Khan. The Muslim potentate spent three days in which he also inaugurated various projects under the Aga Khan Development Network. A garden party was held for the Aga which was another of Alexandra’s beautifully arranged soirees.
President Shane Simba, Alexandra, the Aga Khan, Vice President Daniel Lyon and me in front of the State mansion.....
As a new season approaches, a showing of JAGGERS new fashions, both male and female, was held at the fashion emporium’s new headquarters adjoining the Lewis Lyon Mall in a building specially designed by Sylvia and Bernard’s son, Nat Cougar. It was Leah’s first big fashion show as the executive assistant to her mother, Janice Jaguar Simba who is on the verge of full retirement. I was invited and noticed that Leah seemed to be in her element in the fashion industry. The place was thronged by humans and animals of both genders, enjoying the catered foods and drink before the runway showing. Dodi Dik Dik Lyon clipped along the runway showing several styles designed for hoof stock. Another hoofed model was Eliza Impala, daughter of Irma and Irving. I didn’t manage to enthrall the non-fashion conscious Lachlan in to joining me for the occasion. Alexandra Simba did manage to drag Shane and I joined them. I noticed that Bop Boon, the actress, was on the runway sporting a spectacular ensemble. I decided that either Janice or Leah had invited her to model to soothe the cantankerous baboon and her constant threats to sue Roy Lee Simba and Bertram over some movie role or other. Bop has recently completed her role as the mad Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire among much teeth gnashing on the part of her co-stars, Micah Mbube and Simone Serval. All heads turned when a rather sloshed Ashley Lyon showed up with the equally smashed Chloe Cougar. Fortunately, Sylvia and Bernard Cougar are in their Montana home for the end of summer vacation and weren’t witness to this scene.
A gazelle models at the JAGGERS fashion show....
Shane and Alexandra at the fashion....Leah Simba is in the same row.....
Shane sees Charlotte Elephanti in his office...
Shane finally got around to seeing Charlotte Elephanti as a special favor to Ralph Lyon and me. The elephant matriarch trundled her huge frame into Shane’s office of an early afternoon. She gave me a caress with her trunk but didn’t do the same to the President. I felt his relief. Being a male lion, Shane doesn’t usually have to deal with creatures larger or stronger than he. Charlotte’s visit was an exception. He didn’t offer her a seat realizing that nothing in his office would contain her without being splintered.
“Ms. Elephanti, can I offer you tea or coffee?” he asked, working his paw around his shirt collar in a sign that he was rather tense in regard to this particular audience.
“It’s Mrs. Cape Buffalo and I prefer a martini….a very LARGE one,” she stated emphatically.
Shane cast a nervous eye in my direction. I told the houseboy to bring Charlotte’s drink in one of the glasses we use when hoof stock of a large size have to be entertained.
“You have arrested my sister, Mr. Simba,” stated Charlotte.
I reminded her in one of her outsized ears, that it was ‘President Simba’ and not just plain mister. I was worth my salt that day. She flapped it noisily and said aloud: “He will be called that when he earns the title, Maurice.”
I saw Shane stifle a bit of amusement at that juncture.
“Mrs. Cape Buffalo, your sister has been released under bond. But she cannot kill the Masai’s cattle,” said Shane.
“She has an excuse, Mr. Simba. Evelyn has PMS. The Masai killed two of her boys in the old days before we had these laws and Ralphie was president.”
Among Shane Simba’s great qualities is a sense of the absurd. He managed to bring it into play before the elephant gave him an additional ulcer.
“Mrs. Cape Buffalo, I am going to ask the courts to allow your sister to pay the price for the cattle she killed and nothing more. Just please remind her that she cannot kill cattle or any other creature just because she has uh…well, that thing you mentioned.”
Charlotte had finished her giant martini and asked for another. She received it before answering Shane.
“It’s PMS, President Simba. I’m sure your wife has it too. Most females are afflicted. It’s sort of like musth in male elephants,” instructed Charlotte.
She was warming to Shane which, in Charlotte’s case, can be a two edged sword. Not wanting to offend the matriarch further, Shane listened while Charlotte told him of her life with the white hunter and her relationship with Errol Elephant who fathered her calf, Baby Esther. She didn’t stop there, giving him further details about her years’ long affair with Cappie Cape Buffalo and their subsequent marriage. She was on her fifth martini before she left the young lion president’s office and they were on a first name basis. When she had made her exit having mussed Shane’s mane with a trunk kiss, he sat down in his desk chair and lit a cigarette.
“Maurice, who in pluperfect hell makes clothes for an animal that size?”
“A friend of mine named Weezy Wolfe, the wife of the car dealer, Def Leopard. She sells and designs clothing for oversized mammals,” I reported.
“Maury, you're amazing….you know absolutely everyone,” he laughed.
“I have been around a long time,” I giggled.
Betty dances with Pete in a bistro in NYC.....
Betty had a surprisingly good time with the difficult Pete in New York City. They even went dancing in a bistro one night after dinner at an Italian restaurant. Between junkets around Manhattan to promote her memoirs, simply titled Betty, they worked on his coming campaign itinerary. On the last evening, Betty left her bedroom and went to the small bar in the living room. She was feeling restless and wanted a brandy. She felt a paw slide around her waist in the almost dark room. She was turned around to face Pete.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked.
She poured him a brandy which he upended and held his glass for another.
“Apparently you can’t either. That’s why we’re standing in this dark room getting buzzed,” she laughed.
“Do you want to sleep with me? I’m good.”
“Lions usually are.”
“I forgot you’ve had a plethora. I’m no exception so shall we get it on?”
“I’ve certainly had it put to me in more romantic ways, Pete.”
“It all comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it?”
He held her tightly, his yellow eyes intense. His breath was hot on her face. She was almost suffocating in his grip.
“I’ve never bedded a lion from Tanzania,” she said, attempting humor to help disguise the fact that she was becoming horny as hell.
“We all feel the same in the dark.”
She reached up and kissed him. They were off to the races, their clothing removed before they made it the short distance to Betty’s bed.
In her last gasp before he mounted her, she asked, “You won’t bite my neck, will you?”
“I believe I have more couth than that.”
After, as she lay wide awake with Pete snoring at her side, she felt herself blush in the still darkness of the room.
He was right, she thought, he IS good.
Bertram and Gloria (Chimpo) Baboon were having drinks at their house one evening. Betty and I had been invited to join them. Bertram picked up a copy of Betty’s memoirs.
“Betts, I have just completed this. It is something of a replay of the exposé you wrote about your affair with Shane when you were wed to his littermate,” noted Bertram.
“How do you mean, Bertram? This is my life story not just my interaction with the Simbas,” she argued.
“I suppose I noted the redundancy of your rehashing the particulars of Shane’s spectacular cock.”
There was a moment of extreme discomfort. Leave it to Bertram to be a master at this particular art. Betty, thank goodness, broke the spell by throwing her head back and laughing heartily.
“I’ll bet he won’t bitch or mention it,” she giggled.
“Quite right, it’s most flattering,” chuckled Bertram.
However, both were wrong. Roy Lee Simba, at dinner in the mansion, asked Shane if he had read Betty’s memoirs. The President stated that he had bought it but hadn’t had time to read it. After dinner when Alexandra and Janice were busy chatting, Roy Lee followed Shane to his office where the unread copy of Betty’s book was lying on his shelf. Roy Lee opened it to that particular passage that Bertram had referred to. Shane read and shook his head. When he discussed with Alexandra about speaking to Betty regarding the passage, Alexandra read it and began to giggle.
“What’s done is done, Luv and after all it’s very true and quite flattering. Don’t say a word to Betty. She’s done you a favor. The word is out.”
“Damn, Alex, that’s a weird take on the subject.”
Betty had other fish to fry. The Canadian publication “Hello” magazine came to town to do a spread on the former first lady who had gotten her life back together and written the latest best seller of interest. They stayed a week in which time they took photographs of Betty interacting with her sons, Solly, Jalil, Tarek and Jason. Asked by the magazine if she had a new male in her life, she played it coy.
“I am newly divorced. I plan to take anything to do with romance at a very slow, almost snail’s pace. I want male friends these days and I have them – very good ones.”
When pressed as to who they were she only mentioned my name, causing Bertram’s nose to be greatly out of joint. He sulked for a week.
The
cover of Hello...
Betty
and her twin sons, Jalil and Tarek Simba, kick back on her bed...
Betty and Solly Simba in her car.....
The cover held a very glamorous and sexy Betty causing Pete to take even more notice of his campaign manager. After the heady bedding in Manhattan, Pete subtly shifted gears with Betty. Where he had treated her in a rather cavalier manner before, she would catch him staring at her with his yellow eyes filled with interest and, oh yeah – passion.
“That cover on Hello magazine was sexy as hell, Betty,” he told her just before he made his entrance at a campaign rally in Dar es Salaam.
“For a simian, it was damn good,” she teased, remembering his referral to her looks as apish during one of their first encounters.
“See you in a bit, Cheeta,” he joked, calling her the name of Tarzan’s chimp.
She flicked some lint from the back of his jacket and pushed him toward the podium. She stood there and listened to the crowd go wild as he held forth in his usual eloquence.
Staci Simba Mnyama worked all day at the Kenya Medical Facility assisting her estranged doctor husband, Juma. He was very cold with her though she was his right hand. She went home in the evening to her father’s bush home where she had retreated from her troubled marriage. It was a lonely existence and she often called her cousin, Lee Simba, to join her there. Lee was about to go and attempt to further her education in Nairobi. Staci made a decision when Shane and Alexandra joined her at the house one weekend.
“Daddy, I want to go to medical school. Lee is going to college in Nairobi. I want to go there too.”
“You and Lee can stay in my house in Nairobi, Staci,” offered Alexandra. “It even has a cook and houseboy plus a gardener.”
“Oh, wow, Alex, you really wouldn’t if we did that?” asked the delighted Staci, who was yearning to put some space between her failed marriage and herself.
“Not at all, Staci, I would be delighted if you and Lee would stay there.”
Two weeks later, Staci’s car was piled high with clothes. She and Lee were taking her car to Nairobi and a new life.
Juma Mnyama sat on his desk in the new hospital, holding Staci’s letter of resignation in his paw. He had just received it from the main office. Staci had worked her last day. His colleague Trevor Tau joined him with a cup of coffee.
“What now, Juma?” asked Trevor.
“I need to find a new assistant. Staci and I had planned everything as doctor and nurse together. Shit, it all went to hell in a bucket.”
Two days later, ads were in the major newspapers, summoning experienced nurses to apply at the Kenya Medical Facility on the Mara River.