THE BARGAIN
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.
Aristotle
It was easy to see that Shane Simba was especially enthralled with his son, Solomon Figan Simba, called affectionately ‘Solly’. The little male cub was growing like a weed and as bright as a new penny. He had begun a very specialized kindergarten in the Mara run by two very strict human school marms who doted on Solly and found him to be as potentially brilliant as his father. Miss Anders, the descendant of a British colonialist family, was one who truly admired the presidencies of the two lions. She had followed Ralph Lyon’s and now was enamored of Shane Simba’s. She naturally paid special attention to Shane’s son. Miss Wangarĩ, a Kikuyu spinster, was the other head of the kindergarten. Like Miss Anders, she was also an admirer of the new age in Kenya.
The popular Solomon "Solly" Fiban Simba.
Solly’s green eyes shone with intelligence which was a good match for his loving and entertaining personality. Betty, realizing Shane’s fixation on the son she had given him through the French procedure, struck again. She also understood that he wanted to please her in her acquiescence to his love affair with Jane Leoparde. He wanted no marital shock waves that would rock his beloved Kenya. Betty had lost one cub, possibly due to bad dietary habits while writing her book. She and her husband had almost come to a parting of the ways over that tragedy. Nevertheless, she knew his focus was on the presidency and possibly his lover, the lioness. With that firmly in mind, she approached him one evening during a thunderstorm that rocked the bush house. He had just returned from his sojourn in Mogadishu and was feeling unusually mellow.
“You’ve got to be kidding, Betty!” he said, when she told him of her desire for a final pregnancy utilizing her donated uterus. “You suffocated the last one.”
She sat close to him, taking his paw in her hand. “Shane, I will be perfect this time. No books, fresh veggies – the whole nine yards. Just give some DNA. That’s all it takes from you. I’ll do the rest,” she begged.
He sat staring at her in complete perplexity and then he relaxed slightly. He decided to do some bargaining of his own.
“Betty, you know I still see Jane and there are her children that are mine also?”
“Yes, I know this. I haven’t given you a lot of grief about her, now have I?”
“If I consent to this cub, will you continue to bear with me on the Jane issue?”
“Yes, I promise, Shane.”
“Then go for it, Fifi. I’ll speak with Frank Tigeres tomorrow.”
An extraordinarily loud clap of thunder rent the air as he spoke those words. Lightening tore down the trunk of a tree near the house, burning it to cinders. However, I must not get too dramatic. I have to admit that no fumes of a sulphuric nature gathered in the misty air.
It is difficult to know if they truly realized the implications of the diabolic pact they had each made. One thing was sure – there was no doubt in Dr. Frank Tigeres mind the afternoon he extracted the DNA from Shane Simba. He was unusually silent with the President and shook his head as he walked the sample to the lab.
“Jane, you will hear that Betty has been impregnated again. Don’t get upset. She asked for another cub and I agreed.”
He and Jane were in her bush home one evening, Luke having gone on safari to Namibia. Little Andrew was in his lap with Catherine in Jane’s.
“Shane, my goodness, didn’t she kill the last one with her smoking and coffee drinking?” asked the astonished Jane.
“She promised she would take care with this one.”
“And you believe her? What else did she promise you, Shane?”
“That she wouldn’t interfere with us, Janie.”
Jane placed the sleeping Catherine in her playpen and went to the edge of the veranda, lighting a cigarette. She stood with her back to him. He placed Catherine, who was also sleeping, next to Andrew and came to stand behind Jane. He caressed her tense back.
“Shane, that bargain is totally Machiavellian…it borders on madness.”
He lit his own cigarette and exhaled the smoke into the thick night air. He turned her toward him and enveloped her in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder.
“Desperation begets further desperation. I so long for you always – every day, every freaking hour and minute. This was the only way I could keep the marriage together and not harm Kenya and see you too. I know it puts a cub in harm’s way but I believe Betty wouldn’t dare do that again since she knows I will divorce her and let the chips fall where they may.”
“I hope it turns out well, Shane. I can’t imagine her just wanting to be pregnant so she can get a further hold on you. You are already married to her and she knows you won’t leave her. It boggles the mind.”
He tipped her face to his. “Janie, you could never imagine, in your longest day, the machinations of a convoluted female like Betty. The distressing thing is that I married her, knowing what she had done to my brother, Sam, with me in total compliance. So guess what that makes me, Janie?”
“The one I love and that I will walk in to the fire with, Shane….that’s what that makes you.”
Betty was confined to her bed in the mansion. Frank Tigeres had not wanted her at the clinic so great was his disgust. He was silent as he did the procedure that would produce the pregnancy, barring complications. Before sending her home in the ambulance, he had warned her.
“Betty, I don’t care if you are the President’s wife, if you practice bad dietary habits with this cub, I will no longer be your physician. That last cub’s death I believe to be a result of your heavy smoking, drinking and caffeine habits.”
“It will be different this time, Frank, I promise.”
“This is a little life you’re dealing with. Not a ploy to keep some male harnessed to your side for life.”
Dr. Frank Tigeres had overseen the French procedures producing Betty’s offspring with Ashley Lyon, Sam Simba and his brother, Shane. He knew her proclivities and sense of madness.
“And how is Madame Fecundity?” asked Bertram Baboon as he selected an especially fat radish and buttered it.
We were in OKAPI’S on a lunch date. We had not managed many lately with his busy schedule alongside my own. He had just inquired of Betty and I had told him of her confinement due to a new pregnancy.
“I could not tell you that, in all candor. Betty has simply eluded my understanding recently,” I admitted.
“How was your trip to New York with the Simbas? You are doing a great deal of traveling with Shane these days, I notice.”
“He made me his chief of staff. The traveling is a result of that. New York was fun though.”
“And how does Lachlan abide all the extra duty?” he asked, cramming a large cheese laden stick of celery between his teeth and crunching loudly.
“Lachlan and I knew we were both very busy animals when we got together.”
“I am thinking about finally marrying Gloria Chimpo.”
I almost choked on the fig pate in my shock at that announcement.
“For God’s sake, Bertram, you are gay. You will never be happy married to a female – or any other gender, quite frankly.”
“I’m terribly lonely; and Glo and I are compatible intellectually and work together in the same field. There will be no sex involved as you know. Betty is already in possession of her uterus, working it to a fine tune,” he laughed.
“Just think twice before you do this and keep your own homes, at least” I cautioned.
Nevertheless, he didn’t take heed and on a sunny day in his own garden, next door to his bride’s, he and Gloria Chimpo said their vows. I stood with him as best male. Just before we were to descend into the garden and view his bride, he stopped me on the top stair.
“Maury, you will be most gratified to know that I encouraged Gloria to adopt a softer hair style rather than that red mop that tended to singe one’s eyeballs.”
“So, we’re already beginning to change each other, eh?” I giggled.
“So far, I’ve bent to no requests of hers,” he laughed.
“Very chivalrous of you, Bertram,” I said as we made the last step and entered the garden.
Gloria and Bertram on their wedding day in his garden.
A very wan Betty stood next to her sister, waiting to be plucked and returned to the mansion as soon as the ceremony ended. I must say that Gloria, without the intense mop of flaming red hair, looked rather attractive. She gave me a kiss to my cheek as Father Butch Baboon stepped forward to administer the vows. The good Father is the head of the church that was founded by the ape population and dubbed The Catholic Church of the Holy Ape Family. Neither Bertram nor I are members but as he put it, “I don’t want some damn cat meowing my wedding vows to me.”
Roy Lee Simba was sitting in the sun room of the lovely home in the English countryside that he had rented for the filming of his latest epic, ARTHUR. He opened a telegram and began to read.
“Damn, Jan, get in here,” he roared to his wife Janice Jaguar. “Bertram has married Gloria Chimpo.”
Janice joined him on the sofa and took a look at the words announcing Bertram’s marriage to Gloria.
“That’s wonderful, Roy Lee. They are both talents in the film world. They have much in common. I think they will be happy together.”
“Bertram is gay, Jan.”
“That doesn’t make him any less lonely, Roy Lee. We find our happiness where we can, even if it is less than perfect.”
“Are you referring to us as less than perfect?” he guffawed, pulling her close.
“No, darling, we are perfection – second time around flawlessness, they say, is the best kind,” she giggled.
Bertram wrapped the filming of Chicago and took Gloria to England where Roy Lee and Janice had invited them to honeymoon at his elegant rented English estate. The night before their departure, Lachlan and I had invited them to dinner at our place. They seemed amazingly contented at what they had done, expressing elation with absolutely no sign of regret. Lachlan and I marveled at the easy camaraderie they seemed to share and were quite pleased for them. Betty rose from her confinement to take them, in her official limousine, to the airport to see them off to England. No sooner had their plane lifted in the air than CHANGING SPOTS was at work designing the addition of a spacious boudoir and bath for the bride at Bertram’s elaborate home on Leoparde Drive.
I was working in my office at the State House when Betty walked in and took a chair near my desk. Shane was on a three day trip to Mt. Elgon close to the border we share with Uganda. He was in the midst of creating a conservation project that he hoped the inhabitants of that area would cooperate in making successful.
“You’re looking well,” I stated uneasily for Betty and I had lost our sense of closeness the past few months.
“I made a bargain with my husband to let me have this cub, Maurice. Do you know what it was?”
“I have no idea, Betty.”
“He let me have this baby so I would let him continue to fuck Jane. Who do you think got the better deal?”
“Absolutely no one,” I snapped.
Arlon Lyon was helping his father, Ashley, clear some brush from the back yard of their home in Mombasa.
“Mom, is crackers, Dad. Another cub with Shane who really doesn’t like her at all– I can see that when he’s with her.”
“It’s her life, Arlon….nothing either of us can do about it,” replied Ashley, taking his machete and striking another palmetto scrub.
"I guess you're right. What a pity!"
Ashley Lyon and his son, Arlon, clearing brush at the Mombasa house