Things return to normalcy.....
There's an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966
Things began to get back to normal after the close call our president had endured. Shane was regaining his strength and still totally dedicated to Kenya and his family. He worked long hours but at the insistence of his doctors, spent down time in his wonderful home in the savanna. He went often to the sporting club to rebuild his stamina with tennis games. He even played a few games with Dina Myers but it was if his desire for her had drained from him along with the blood gushing from his ulcerated stomach. He was kind, played a tough game but aside from that, there was no evidence that he and the lawyer from South Africa had engaged in a virtually home wrecking affair. Dina would leave the tennis courts and cry during her cleansing showers. She would then contact the Reverend Saul Serval and set up an appointment for counseling. She had a copy of the Ascending Predator Holy Book in her office at Simba Brothers. Sloane Simba picked it from her desk one day while in her office and gave a cursory glance to the cover.
“Why have you got the big cat’s bible in your office, Dina?”
“I am studying for conversion with Dr. Serval,” she replied with the prim lips that seemed to be so typical of her these days.
“You’ve already been at the mercy of a big cat predator, I would think you would find more comfort in someone like Jesus,” observed Sloane in his usual laconic manner.
However, Sloane Simba was not terribly interested in the suffering of his employee, Dina. He was having too much fun getting to know another one. He, breaking his own rules, would pinch Tawny Tigeres muscled and shapely fanny when passing her in the offices of Simba Brothers. She called him ‘Sweetie’, being careful not to do so within hearing of the others working there. Sloane didn’t even attempt to tamp down the lusty spirit of the tigress that seemed on top of her game in all avenues.
“Why don’t you get a place of your own, Tawny?” he asked one evening as she sat on his couch with him nibbling her neck. .
“I’m in the process, Sweetie; Dad’s having a wonderful house built for me in the compound. It will be next door to my brother, Tommy and his wife, Melanie.”
“Why do you want to live in the bosom of your family, Tawny?”
“That’s coming from a lion with your pride system?” she laughed, heartily.” “I love living among my family. We have more fun than anyone I know. My parents never get in our business. I’m inviting you to our next barbecue if you care to come.”
“That would be nice. Do you like the beach?”
“Oooh, yes, I simply love the water.”
“I have a place in Mombasa. We’ll go there soon.”
One morning, Tawny joined him in court wearing one of her power suits with high stiletto heels. They had a case that day. He looked to her great height which was enhanced by the heels.
“Tawny, can you dispense with the high heels? You tower over me and we have to go before the bench.”
She gave a great throaty guffaw. “Sweetie, I think you have the testosterone levels to handle that issue with aplomb.”
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath, realizing he had been bested coming out of the gate.
Caroline Cheetah lit a cigarette, slung her purse over one shoulder and headed out the door of WMM-TV. She hadn’t seen Sloane Simba in ages and regretted turning down his proposal of marriage. She checked her watch and called his cell. He finally answered.
“Where the hell have you been, Sloane? You haven’t come around in ages,” she snarled.
“Well, for starters, I had a family member almost die. The president almost kicked the bucket or didn’t you know, Caroline.”
“He probably staged those hemorrhages because he was up shit creek with his tatty affair,” she growled. “Anyhow, what did that have to do with you? You don’t exactly go around holding his paw.”
“He’s my half-brother, Caroline, for crying out loud.”
“Oh boo the hell hoo! Come to my place for a drink.”
Sloane knew an order when he heard one and not wishing to lose one of his sexiest bed buddies, he consented. When he got there she had a bottle of Scotch on a tray in her library. She was sitting with her long legs propped on the coffee table. Young Shane, Jr. was tugging at the lace on her tennis shoe. Sloane poured a drink and sat beside her.
“Do I see a cheetah spot on that kid?” he asked.
“No you don’t and don’t be an ass. He looks as much like a lion as ever,” she growled.
About that time, the cub switched his attention to the tassels on Sloane’s expensive loafers.
“Oh, no you don’t, buddy – those are Manolo Blahniks.”
“Sloane, do you still want me to marry you?” she purred.
“What? I asked you?”
“You proposed the last time I saw you.”
“I must have been joking, Caroline. You know that I’m a serious bachelor these days.”
She jumped up, putting her son on the floor, and paws on hips.
“You were not joking at all, you bastard. You were dead serious. You were even taken aback that I turned you down flat.”
He saw his out and tromped on it. “Then you should not have refused an eloquent offer of marriage. They seldom come from me and once refused are never reiterated.”
“Stop bullshitting, you prick. What have you been up to?” she snarled, eye dark eyes afire.
He stood up and put his arms around her. “Can you put junior baby to bed? I can never resist you when you are all afire with your dreadful temperament and wicked mouth.”
“Who is she, Sloane Simba?”
“Who is who?” he laughed, catching her paws behind her back before they went for his eyes.
“Your new tart?”
“I do have an addition to my lovelies. She happens to be a tiger.”
Caroline pulled her arms from around her back and began to laugh hysterically.
“Please let me come and watch. I won’t even try to join in – cross my heart and hope to die,” she giggled. “I just want to see a tigress beat the living shit out of you.”
“That’s not exactly what she does, Caroline. It’s more in the nature of mind-bending sex,” he laughed.
Her dark eyes went flat and cold. “Then I’ll leave you to her since you’ve forgotten your smaller friends.”
“Actually, I like my smaller friends,” he said, picking her up in his arms.
“I have to feed little Shane, he’s hungry.”
“Let him eat cake.”
Shane Simba came from the State House after a long day. He was able to have light Scotches now. Betty had one waiting as he walked off the elevator to the family quarters. He took the drink and her hand, leading her to the comfortable couch in front of the crackling flames of the fire. .
“Fifi, you haven’t had any pleasure in life for some time now and I know I’m the culprit. But all this is going to change next week,” he chuckled, kissing her neck. “I have been asked by President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, leader of the Maldive Islands, to come there. They are some of the most beautiful islands in the world and I have booked us into a superb and very clandestine resort, Reethi Rah. We just have one official day of meeting with him and then it’s on to our own private island and what I hope, for you, will be the best honeymoon ever.”
“Oh, Shane, that will be fantastic. You can unwind.”
“Betty, aside from a request from another president to me, this trip will be for you and all about you. You are the one that needs this. I am so glad to be a part of it, my darling wife."
Lachlan still continued his twice weekly luncheon sessions with Shane Simba. It was decided that my wonderful lion psychiatrist would continue to delve into the mind of our president and cull what ever information available in possibly deterring another outbreak of outrageous and uncontrolled testosterone driven behavior. Lachlan had found that Shane, with troubled relations with both parents, had tended to act out as a cub. With further, more intense prying, he found that the young lion had the control to burn the midnight oil in his law studies in England, achieving one of the highest grade averages ever in the history of that prestigious school. When asked about sex in those hard-pressed days of his schooling, he responded that there had been many encounters with absolutely no emotional attachment until he returned to the Masai Mara.
“And?” asked Lachlan, savoring his last bite of cheesecake.
“And then came Cathy, my troubled, breathtaking, sexy cheetah with those mile long, silk clad legs and a mind as honed as a diamond knife blade,” said Shane, with such elegiac poignancy, Lachlan felt slightly taken aback and quite saddened for him. .
“Was it love at first sight?”
“It was something akin to that. She was something very special to me, Lachlan. Cathy and I had the rockiest road possible, thanks to both of us. She was nuts, as I was. Nevertheless, when she got pregnant with those last two cubs that died with her, I wanted to make her life and our lives as happy as possible from that day forward. I still see her fur and scent it in my dreams. Her brown eyes invade my hours of dark spaces; she still is there with me most nights, in an ephemeral way.”
“Did you marry too soon after her death, Shane?”
“I love Betty, Lachan. I don’t think you believe this. Betty and Catherine were two females that nested in my psyche due to their incredible intelligence. I love sex but it must be intermingled with a fine mind to make me act on the situation with any sort of permenance.”
“And so on to Dina Myers, if I may be so bold,” said Lachlan, giving his lunch tray to the houseboy.
“Dina Myers is beautiful and brainy too.”
“So that leaves us where, Shane?”
“It leaves us at the point where I cannot have her without breaking Betty’s heart and I have no intention of doing that.”
“Remember, Shane, you have already had her, broken your wife’s heart and did a bit of damage to your country.”
“Yes, I know. It won’t happen again.”
Betty and Shane flew to the Maldives, spent a day with the president and went on to the awe-inspiring resort in that tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean. They had a place all to themselves with a private beach. They swam, made love, relaxed on a completely private beach and ordered from the extensive and delicious menu. It was an idyllic four days of Betty having Shane all to herself.
Betty and Shane enjoy their private paradise in the Muldive Islands.....
Sam Simba asked his brother’s permission to resign as the Minister of Justice. The two brothers were not on bad terms but Sam’s home life had become more all encompassing and he wanted to leave the government post and return to Simba Brothers for full time work as a lawyer which he had always preferred. Shane called Sefu, who is Chief Magistrate for Kenya, and asked him if he wanted the post but Sefu had become enamored of his role as the top judge in Kenya and declined. Shane, knowing full well, that Sam would regain the reigns at Simba Brothers and demand excellence put in a call to Sloane Simba. The young lion didn’t know why he had been summoned to the State House since word of Sam’s resignation had not been made public as of yet. He sat before Shane and nervously lit a cigarette, hoping the president wasn’t going to light into him for some reason or other.
“Sloane, I am offering you the post of Minister of Justice for Kenya. Are you interested?”
“Sir?”
“The post of Minister of Justice, Sam resigned. I choose you for the job,” restated Shane.
“But, Sir, you have put so much in confidence in me lately,” gasped Sloane.
“Sloane, leave off the ‘sir’ thing with me, we’re brothers. I place confidence in you because, though it may sound abominably arrogant of me, I find you to be a great deal like me. And I place a great deal of confidence in the things I can accomplish when I keep my fly zipped. Will you accept?”
Sloane burst out in laughter at this show of flagrant conceit with the side of self deprecation on the part of his half-brother. “I would be proud to be your minister of justice.”
They shook paws. Shane had the houseboy bring Scotch for Sloane and Perrier water for him. The next day, the news papers headlined the appointment as did the television stations. Two days later, Sloane Simba cleared his desk at Simba Brothers and moved lock stock and barrel to the offices in the State House vacated by Sam Simba. He gave a Tawny's boob a discreet squeeze as he left.