The Lion is In by Delia Ephron

Author:Delia Ephron [Ephron, Delia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101580561
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

30

One night at closing time Clayton approaches Rita and hands her a book. “I heard you like this,” he says.

“Sudoku? Oh, thank you, I do.”

“I don’t know what level you are at, so it’s got all three levels.”

The next night when Rita comes out of the ladies’ room, Clayton is there, stopping her in her tracks. He’s wearing cologne, a scent so sweet she nearly sneezes.

She moves sideways. So does he.

He backs her against the wall. “I want you,” he says.

“Excuse me?” says Rita.

She ducks under his arm and slips away. He follows.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

“Please try.”

“I can’t. You’re”—he almost loses his nerve but decides to tell the truth—“erotic.”

Rita is surprised. No one has ever said that to her before. But still… “No, thank you.” She hurries away.

At the library Rita continues to educate herself on lion behavior. She reads that lions like to hang over the branches of a tree. At first she imagines Marcel standing on his hind legs with his front paws drooping over a low branch, as if he’s a person chatting over a backyard fence. But then she sees pictures of lions in Africa, stretched out on the thick limbs of thorn trees, lounging like the cats they are.

She wants Marcel to have a tree.

There are none around The Lion. The closest, a cluster of scraggly firs a mile away, have twiggy branches that would break under Marcel’s weight. Besides, she would never risk walking Marcel any farther than she does.

One morning when she and Tim are making a grocery run, they pass a lot where two men with a buzz saw are about to demolish an oak tree. “Pull over,” she says to Tim. “Stop here, please.”

Rita knows that the tree has been struck by lightning. She has seen its effects before. The tree is a skeleton, all foliage gone. The bark is sheared off one side of the trunk, although the hardwood beneath is still intact. The men have already cut off the burned upper branches, which lie scattered where they fell, but what remains is substantial: a strong trunk and several low, mighty limbs. “More a sculpture than a tree,” she says as she and Tim look it over. A sculpture—the men are impressed by the idea, but they are already impressed with Rita, because they have seen her show.

She offers to buy it. “It’s for Marcel,” she tells them.

“No charge,” says one.

“Where do you want it?” says the other.

They dig it up, load it onto their pickup, cart it to The Lion, and replant it next to the parking lot.

Clayton, arriving that night, isn’t thrilled to find a fairly petrified oak tree on the property, but he keeps quiet about it because he wants Rita.

The next morning, when Rita and Marcel leave The Lion for their dawn walk, they turn right instead of left. Rita leads him to the oak tree, hoping he will climb it. The low limbs aren’t that high and she can still keep Marcel leashed. How nice it would be for him to loll on a branch.

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