THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Believing hear, what you deserve to hear:
Your birthday as my own to me is dear...
But yours gives most; for mine did only lend
Me to the world; yours gave to me a friend.
Martial
Jane was in her kitchen, having taken calls of best wishes from Caitlin Cougar and Luke Leoparde from Tanzania where he was on an air safari. She had come from a long day at the Masai Mara Daily where she had written an extensive article on Shane Simba’s compelling treaty success with the difficult Somalis. She was about to turn off the light and go to bed when a tapping came at her door. She opened to find Shane standing there holding a pasteboard box. He gave a kiss to her cheek and came in, placing the box on her small table.
“Janie, I couldn’t let your birthday pass without some notice from me.”
“Shane, how did you get away? It’s such a risk for you. We might be found out.”
“You broke the rules on the border of Somalia so you have to forgive me for this night. I purloined the gardener’s truck. He doesn’t use it in the evenings. I can’t shop or order anything for you of real importance or sentiment. The media examines everything I buy of a personal nature. So, I ripped off a few things from the mansion.”
He laughed as he pulled two bottles of Dom Perignon champagne from the box, and then lifted an elaborate cake from a smaller box within.
“Oh, Shane, those are the most beautiful gifts in the world to me. Diamonds couldn’t mean as much as this champagne and cake and your being here,” she said, hugging him tightly to her.
They took her gifts to the living room where a fire was laid in the spotless hearth. She struck a match and the flames leapt in bright colors. They sat on the floor in front of the warm glow. Shane popped the champagne cork and filled their glasses.
“This is a wonderful room, so filled with your essence, Janie.”
“I’ve lived in this house since I worked for the Daily. It is a happy house tonight because you’re here. Can you see it? The walls are smiling down, even the fire is joyous. It knows that we’re so right when we can be together.”
“Janie, stop – you’ll make me cry.”
“Crying is a good thing sometimes. You can certainly do it here if you feel like it,” she said, licking a small dollop of icing from his mouth.
“I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you. If I could have only met you when I first returned to the Mara…...”
“Maybe that wasn’t the right time for us to meet, Shane. We both had to be ready, Luv.”
They sat eating cake and licking it from each other’s lips, creating funky toasts with each glass of champagne. They made love on the small Persian carpet before the fire which was now only embers. Then it was time for Shane to leave. He held her so tightly she could feel the strong beating of his heart.
“This was the best birthday I have ever had, Shane. I can never thank you enough.”
She held his paws, kissing each in turn.
“You can thank me, Janie.”
“How?”
“By never leaving me.”
“You have no worries there. I could no more leave you than I could stop breathing.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone before this,” he said, tipping her face to his.
“I know I haven’t, Shane.”
He kissed her long and hard and was out the door, waving as he climbed in the gardener’s truck and drove off.
Shane joins his lover for her birthday
The next morning was Saturday. The first couple were about to leave for their bush house. Betty was reading the Daily at the breakfast table. She went to the second page and saw an article headed: THE SIMBA DIALOGUES. It was written by Jane. She read through it. She then lit a cigarette and looked at her husband who was reading the New York Times.
“I believe this Jane reporter is going to get another Pulitzer off of you, Shane. Have you read this article in the Mara Daily?”
“Yes, I have.”
“She writes it like she was there when you spoke with the leader in Somalia.”
“She’s a creative and very thorough reporter, Betty, that’s why she won the first one.”
“How is your biography going?”
“I haven’t gotten a chance to meet with her much lately. I’ve been too busy.”
“What a pity!”
Shane ignored the snap in Betty’s voice that resembled a rubber band popping from the stretch of tension. He left the table and headed for a shower before leaving for the bush house.
Solly with his parents in their bush home.....Shane holds him (above)
with Betty and the nanny (below)
The evening arrived with a glorious sunset. Staci was still riding Bess, the male cubs were watching videos and Shane was on the porch reading a prospectus for his next trip. Betty brought Solly and sat next to him. Shane, after two Scotches, was feeling mellow.
“He is so adorable, Fifi,” commented Shane, taking his youngest son in his lap.
One could not have missed the look on Betty’s face at the sound of Shane’s pet name for her. She shone with an expression of wonder. He caught the look.
That’s not too much to do for her, he thought. Not much at all and it makes her so happy and everyone benefits from this. I must make a note of it to myself – do it well and often.
The look on Sam Simba’s face at the announcement that Tawny Tigeres was pregnant with his litter was more one of initial confusion which segued into wonder. They were sitting on his back porch facing the Mara River. The sunset that evening was sending spikes of red into the sky. They were on their second drink when she told him the news. At first he was silent wearing an air of total shock. Then he appeared to be deep in thought. This was just before the look of wonder and delight appeared on his face, his golden eyes taking light.
“Tawny is that okay with you?” he asked.
“Of course it is, Sam.”
“Then it is more than okay with me,” he said, giving her a giant hug and kiss.
“What will they be?”
“Ours, Sam - Ligers,” she answered.
The minute Simone Serval turned on her bedside lamp after having made love to Alexander Simba, they were an item. The only Simba male unable to control his females, Alexander had been dashed about by Lucy Cougar and Cameron Caracal. Now here was this major film star who embodied all the sweetness and malleability he had dreamed of in a female. The icing on the cake, after midnight cognac in her beautiful living room, was the mutual confession that neither wanted more children. His vasectomy suited Simone to a tee. They were like two peas in a pod - one pea being a great deal larger than the other - on the things they wanted in life. Alexander didn’t even mind the fact that three nights later at a party for Baboon-Simba Studios, his arrival in a stretch limousine with Simone caused a swarm of paparazzi and flashing cameras.
“I am going to have to bite the bullet and ask you about your marriages and lovers,” said, Jane, lighting a cigarette.
They were under the fever tree in the back of his pride territory. He was sitting, his head against the trunk; she was stretched on her stomach with a recorder ready to turn on.
“Go for it, Janie,” he laughed. “I can only refuse to answer.”
“Then I will have failed as your biographer and you will have to find another,” she giggled.
“Then I have no choice but to tell you the truth. Just at times close your ears and let the recorder do its job,” he chuckled, taking her cigarette to light his own.
“What was your first relationship of any importance, Shane?”
He took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled slowly. His eyes narrowed for a few minutes. The recorder was on.
“I had some dates with Simone Serval and boned a few others and then Catherine returned not long after I did. She caught me in her web and I fell hard. She was into kinky sex and I rather enjoyed what she taught me. She had grave emotional problems. When she was pregnant, she was on drugs and lost Staci’s litter mate. Maurice Monkee gave her the job directing the arts center and she miraculously got her act together. By that time I was an habitual adulterer. You probably think I’m using her zaniness as an excuse for fucking around.”
“I know more than you think I know about your Catherine. I was working for Bob Bushbuck at the Daily when he hired her and fired her because she was a trouble maker. I covered her trial when she was implicated in the mauling of Johanna Delacroix – your human lover. Want to tell me about that one?”
“Shit, you do know all my particularly nasty linen, don’t you? Johanna was the first human I ever fucked and as such, she was a real turn on until I caught my breath and realized she was a compete shit of a woman.”
Jane laughed heartily at this declaration. “When I covered that trial, I thought you were one hot looking male but a real bastard.”
“You had it right too, Janie, - at least the bastard part.”
He spoke more about his relationship with the dead Catherine. The sun had begun its inevitable descent behind the hills. He got to his feet and pulled Jane up with him. They walked to their cars.
“The next time we will have to cover Betty. Are you ready for that?” she chuckled, giving him a goose to the ribs.
He grabbed her paws and held them. “Let’s get this one up front. I screwed Betty when she was my brother’s wife and pregnant with his cub.”
Jane looked at him squarely, her golden eyes catching the light from the waning day.
“You are indeed the Jack the ripper of sex and fornication,” she giggled, kissing his lips.
‘Not anymore, Janie, you’ve changed all that – tamed the rowdy beast.”
“I do love you, Shane Simba.”
“I love you more than I can ever express, Janie, the lioness.”
Sloane Simba walked in the break room at the State House. It was 10:00 am and he wanted coffee badly. Standing with her back to him at the coffee machine was Caroline. She was back from her hospitalization and suicide attempt. She turned to him. Her eyes were dull with sadness. Her body was terribly thin.
“Caroline, are you okay now?”
“No, I’m not, Sloane. Doesn’t it show?”
“You’re emaciated and very tragic looking. Want to tell me about what made you do it?”
“I think you know that answer.”
“If only I hadn’t said I didn’t want kids with spots, we would probably be married today. We would be fighting like a couple of cats and dogs but we would be together.”
“It’s all so sad,” she said, placing her face in her paws.
“It will be alright, Caroline. I’m sure you know by now that I really love you.”
She clung to him for a while and then went to her small office to ready a noon press conference for Shane.
Jane was at her computer when she felt overcome by dizziness. She tried to stand but couldn’t. It was six in the morning, she having come to work early to finish the layout for tomorrow’s news stories. When she finally rose from her chair, she was overcome by nausea. She went to the bathroom, threw up and mopped her face with a cool towel. She returned to her desk in time to receive a call from Bob Bushbuck telling her how outstanding her stories and coverage of the president had been and telling her of a raise in salary for the following month.
Jane sat in Dr. Sylly Cougar Lyon’s office at the clinic. Sylly was checking results. When she returned she sat behind her desk and looked at the lioness.
“I don’t know whether this news will thrill you or devastate you but you’re pregnant,” reported Sylly.
Jane sat quietly absorbing the knowledge that she was pregnant by Shane Simba. She smiled.
“I will be just fine with this,” she told Sylly. “I am single and wanted children before I got too old to become a mother. I never intended to marry anyhow.”
“What about the father, will he participate, Jane?”
“He’s a lion I see in Tanzania. It doesn’t matter if he participates,” she lied.
After receiving a prescription for prenatal vitamins from Sylly, Jane left the clinic. She decided to go home since it was late afternoon by then. She let herself in the house, grabbed a beer and took it to her porch where she watched the sunset, her paw lying gently across her belly which held the children she would share with Shane's.