Bathing the Lion by Carroll Jonathan

Author:Carroll, Jonathan [Carroll, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781466848917
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-10-20T16:00:00+00:00

As testament to his ever-increasing humanity, Kaspar didn’t really notice when things began to change, albeit the first signs were small. Of course right after the three women visited he was vigilant and skittish about strange sounds or occurrences, frowned at out-of-the-ordinary anythings or psychic bumps in his road. But when life remained calm and very much same-old, same-old day after day with no suspicious dark clouds looming on his horizon, he was gradually lulled into thinking mostly about other much more pleasant things, like the affair he had begun with Vanessa Corbin, or her heavenly recipe for Polish zurek soup.

In a way Kaspar Benn was like the people who reside in areas of frequent earthquake activity—San Francisco, Thessaloniki, Islamabad. Ask them how they can bear living in a place under constant threat, how they can confidently walk around every day on a piece of earth that is not their friend and probably planning at this very minute its next attempt to kill them. The citizens of these shakyvilles say they’ve got an emergency pack all ready to go complete with flashlight, bottled water, canned salmon, and three flares. Or they get stoic and cite well-worn bromides like when your time’s up, your time’s up—so live with it: carpe diem. Or they turn feisty and annoyed at you for bringing up the ugly, sword-of-Damocles subject. They rebuke you for being morbid. It’s not possible to really discuss it with them because deep down they know they’re living on borrowed time (or borrowed Earth) but have grown adept at keeping the eventuality out of their thoughts. In other words, after Kaspar learned a Somersault was imminent he looked away from the abyss by immersing himself in the many pleasures inherent in being human. There was sex and food, fine cashmere and shell cordovan shoes, and those gorgeous long walks in the woods with D Train.

Kaspar was a man with a sunny nature who liked bourgeois things, not overly bright but so what? He had realized the smarter a person was, the more unhappy they often were for a variety of reasons, both logical and not. Selfish but effortlessly charming, he was especially good at knowing when to take and when to give. He had no qualms about fucking his partner’s wife, but he also worked tremendously hard to make Benn Corbin successful. Both he and Dean knew, without his many significant contributions, not least of which was his winning personality, the store would have failed.

Kaspar knew the Somersault had begun when he started sharing others’ dreams. These people did not know it was happening, but he did immediately. In essence while asleep, he moved into their heads and witnessed their night dreams along with them. Kaspar fully enjoyed the occurrence and eagerly looked forward to these uninhibited, candid peeks in the windows of others’ subconscious. Yes, it was a kind of voyeurism but he didn’t care and didn’t feel guilty. The experience was good fun, a free ticket to someone else’s hidden home movies.

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