The Lion is In

by Delia Ephron

  “It wasn’t called that,” says Lana.

  Tim takes a pole standing upright near the bed. It’s one of those things with a clamp on the end that they use in a supermarket to grab boxes off a high shelf. Tim uses this one in his job at the P ’n S and brings it home every night. He points it at the bureau, clamps a drawer pull with it, opens the drawer, and closes it. “I never need to get up,” he says.

  Rita comes out of the bathroom, freshened up, in time to see Tim, as a further demonstration, use the pole to grab the box of candy off the bureau. “Caramel cream?” He offers them to Tracee.

  “Thank you.” She hunts through for one she wants. “Look how cute they are.” She holds it up for everyone to admire the chunky candy wrapped in striped waxed paper with twists at the ends.

  He extends the pole with the box to Lana and Rita. Rita declines but Lana takes a handful. Then he swings the pole to the bureau, releases the box, and stands the pole back up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some errands to run. I’ll be back to take you to The Lion.” He’s out the door before they can say good-bye.

  Tim takes the stairs two at a time and sprints out of the parking lot. He doesn’t slow down until he’s a quarter of a mile down the road, where he takes a turn and jogs down a narrow path through some pines to the Tar River, to a spot he knows where some people catch bass or catfish as well as run into a water moccasin or two, but that’s never happened to him. Isn’t it his luck that he’s watching Family Feud with the prettiest woman he’s ever met, that she’s moved in, an answered prayer, and that he knows from how she says thank-you for a caramel cream that his mother would like her. Here she is, her fiancé dead and gone, probably in shock, and still she’s acting positive, telling stories about space bars. Oh, man, he really screwed up. He’s got to tell her. He’s got to confess. He tries to reason it out. How can he explain?

  He stands there throwing stones across the river, which is nearly as narrow as a swan’s neck at that particular location, while he tries to make sense of how it happened.

  He stopped at The Lion the night before—well, early morning to be more accurate—before going home, because it’s his job to clean up the place. Although sometimes he stops by when The Lion is closed, for no reason except to sit and watch the wild beast, who ignores him. Two lonely guys, one a senior citizen (the lion), the other a youngster (Tim), twenty-four, and two years out of Raleigh Community College, where he studied all the ins and outs of the furniture business, which turned out to be of no use whatsoever because, while he was there, the companies—and there were many—moved the manufacturing to Mexico. “Bad timing. Cutbacks. No one’s looking to hire,” he tells anyone who asks, but mostly they don’t because everyone knows that cutbacks have pretty much squeezed the juice out of the whole county.

  Tim set himself to cobbling together another living and another life.

  He worked super late at the P ’n S because Ronald, who comes on after him, has a sick dog. Tim couldn’t fuss about that, even though King gets sick a lot and Tami, who works the cash register, thinks Ronald is full of shit. So what if Tim clocks a few extra hours. So what that Tim is assistant manager and isn’t even supposed to cover for Ronald. Tim couldn’t leave Tami on her own, you never knew what could happen. While there’s never been a robbery, customers can be quite pesky. The “no cash for returns” policy can get them pretty riled up. It was three a.m., a bit past actually, when he pulled into The Lion to do stuff he’d intentionally left undone the day before because he will do anything to avoid the sad, runty place he lives.

  He never saw the women because he never went into the men’s room. He never noticed the open window either, probably because he was preoccupied. He was homesick.

  He was missing his mom’s house, sixty miles away, near Wendell. Everything about it, especially the smells. His mom is always baking something, biscuits or one of her crumbles, blackberry or apple. She does his laundry, and his bed is comfortable. The sheets smell good. She dries them the old-fashioned way, outdoors on the line.

  He brought his pole with him. Why had he done that? He wants to kick himself. He was unlocking the padlock, getting rust stains on his hands as usual, when he went back to his car for it. True, he needed it. The paper towel rolls are stacked on a high shelf in the back of a packed closet. Still, it wasn’t that important. He could have climbed up on a chair. Once inside The Lion, he flipped a single switch. A few sconces cast the room in a gloomy amber, which is why he was there awhile before he noticed anything. Tim conserves electricity. He uses only the lights that are absolutely necessary because it makes Clayton happy. Round-the-clock air-conditioning for Mr. M during the summer months, Clayton says, busts his balls. “I didn’t think it through,” Clayton told him.

  The lion was asleep, lying on his side. Tim had checked—his eyes were open. Sometimes they’re open, sometimes they’re shut, which fascinates Tim. Why two ways of sleeping?

  He’d finished sponging off the few dirty tables when way across, on the opposite side of the room, he’d noticed the mess on the bar and gone over to investigate.

  Three half-drunk glasses of what looked like Pepsi, a scattering of nuts and pretzel crumbs, and a half-eaten jar of maraschino cherries. The little fridge under the bar was open. Wide open. He recalls wondering about that. He tested the door to see if it was broken. It wasn’t. Someone had been careless, that was all. He dug a cherry out of the jar and popped it in his mouth. He popped in another, sat on a stool, and chewed.

  They tasted delicious. He ate the rest.

  Then he saw it.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans before picking up the delicate thing, and turned and pulled it in several directions before he realized what it was: a wedding veil. Why didn’t he put it in the lost and found, the cardboard box in the kitchen, which contained several pairs of sunglasses, a scarf, a headband, and a man’s boot? It was none of his business to mess with something this precious, this obviously precious to someone, that was for sure, and now he knew who. Instead it piqued his curiosity. Who got married? Not Clayton, he’d ruled that out. You have to have some dates before you get married, and ever since his wife took off, his mother told him, Clayton’s been flying solo. Solo, day in and day out.

  Boy, had he been on the wrong track.

  Using the pole, Tim clamped the veil by the sparkly crown. He waved it back and forth. Pretty thing, he remembers thinking as the netting fluttered, a sail in the wind. He leaned his elbow on the bar, listing sideways, looking up at the veil as, with his free hand brandishing the pole, he swooped it. God, he was tired. That memory is as clear as a bell, because it is the moment he was waiting for, the one he waits for every night—when he’s so dizzy with exhaustion that returning to that empty, stale room at the Tulip Tree doesn’t feel soul crushing.

  I’ll just try one more thing, he remembers thinking. One more and then I’ll leave.

  13

  The hook is bent. The door is swollen, shrunken or mishung. Something. In any case she can’t lock the bathroom. How did Lana and Rita do it? Maybe they didn’t bother. Finally Tracee jams the hook into the metal loop, pinching her finger.

  She balances her purse on the sink, opens it wide, and the necklace blinks right up at her. She rarely tries it on. Simply holding it mesmerizes her, triggering fantasies of a life she didn’t have.

  She lays it out on the top of the toilet tank, enjoying the sparkle while she washes her face, and lifts her shirt to splash on some cooling water straight from the tap. She’s had the necklace less than a week and has found that if she doesn’t see it every few hours, she worries it has vanished—fallen, or been stolen even, out of her purse.

  Lana raps on the door.

  Tracee scoops up the necklace.

  “We’ve got to leave,” says Lana.

  Tracee tucks the necklace back in her purse at the bottom under everything.

  “What?” says Lana when Tracee opens the door.

  “What what?” says Tracee.
r />   Lana whispers, “Did you just cop something?”

  Tracee throws out her arms. Like what? There’s nothing to take.

  “You’ve got that look.”

  14

  By ten that evening the women realize the situation they’re in: The Lion is not popular. There are six or so tables occupied, isolated pops of activity, including a bunch of guys, workers at a local quarry, celebrating a divorce. They are on their third pitcher of beer and ordering a fourth. A couple of Clayton’s friends are chewing his ear off about how NASCAR is in the toilet. A quiet couple show Tracee snapshots of their grandchildren. They have nursed the same rye and ginger for two hours, even though Tracee has politely inquired every twenty minutes whether they’d like another. She keeps refilling their bowl of peanuts.

  Clayton bartends in his sweats, which the women find a depressing sight.

  Rita takes her job seriously. She decides all the glasses are dirty from standing around and should be washed. “I’ve never had a paying job before,” she confides to Tracee and Lana. Every so often she checks on the lion, either glancing over while she buses tables or leaving the sink to stand in the doorway. From the kitchen she has a good view. Probably he thinks I’m curious, like everyone else, like a visitor to a zoo. I’m not that, she wants him to know. He faces away, his back to everyone. For hours he lounges on his side, his head up, still as a museum piece. His ears, round like mittens, poke through his bushy and tangled mane. Very occasionally they flick, a quick back-and-forth, the only sign of life.

  “When do we get paid?” Lana asks Clayton.

  “At the end of two weeks.”

  Lana groans.

  “You can keep your tips.”

  She figures that will barely be anything. “You know, it flitted through my head when he fired that Marybeth, how could one waitress take care of this entire place? Now we know,” she tells Tracee and Rita.

  She stands at the end of the bar and broods, watching a woman play a game with her boyfriend that involves flipping pennies and chugging beer. The woman, younger than Lana, is a short blonde with way too much black eye makeup and a mouth that seems to take up most of her face, because she laughs loudly every time beer dribbles down her chin. She’s wearing what amounts to half a dress, her breasts are falling out of it, and the sheer fabric, wet with beer, sticks to her skin. At one point she puts a bare dirty foot on the table and anyone who wants to can see up her skirt.

  When the woman bumps into a chair and then another on her way to the ladies’ room, Lana follows. She stands at the sink, her back against it, facing the stall, waiting for the woman to come out. “Hi,” says Lana, all friendly-like. Lana doesn’t look friendly, however. She looks judgmental, like someone’s mother. The woman, were she not drunk, would know instantly that she has trouble on her hands, but Lana’s voice is so cheery it confuses her. She squints as if she can’t quite see through the mist.

  “I’m Lana.”

  “Candy,” says the woman. She washes her hands.

  “I’m telling you this for your own good, Candy, please trust me. You have a drinking problem.”

  Candy looks in the mirror and blinks a few times.

  “You have no shutoff valve. Do you know what that means?”

  Candy, her hands still dripping, unsnaps her pink plastic clutch and takes out a cell phone. She holds up a finger, indicating that Lana should wait while she dials. “Help,” she says into her phone.

  “I’m helping you,” says Lana. “That’s why I’m here. I was you.”

  “Who are you now?” says Candy.

  The door bangs open. They both jump even though Candy is expecting him. “What’s happening?” her boyfriend shouts, as if he has arrived to put out a fire.

  “Nothing, take it easy,” says Lana.

  “She’s crazy,” says Candy.

  “Your girlfriend has a drinking problem.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You can’t even walk,” says Lana, ignoring him and focusing on Candy.

  “MYOB,” screams Candy.

  It takes Lana a second to differentiate between MYOB and something she is more familiar with, BYOB.

  “Hey, we said fuck off, so fuck off.”

  Lana screams, “Your girlfriend’s an alcoholic.”

  “Oh, shit,” says Clayton, showing up at the door with some customers in his wake.

  “You can’t even walk,” Lana screams.

  “Can too,” Candy shouts back.

  Clayton steps between them. “Okay, that’s it, we’re done here.” He turns his back to Lana and smiles at Candy. “You okay? I bet you are,” he adds before she can protest. “Come on, Danny, take your beautiful girlfriend back to the table.” To the gathering behind him he says, “Bit of a rumpus. Over and out.”

  Danny puts his arm around Candy, staking his territory with a firm grip on her shoulder. She wraps her arm around his waist. “Bitch,” she says as they leave.

  Lana looks in the mirror and fusses with her hair. “How can you serve someone who’s wasted like that?” she asks Clayton. “I hope you don’t expect me to.”

  “If you want to quit, quit.”

  “I don’t want to quit. I was trying to have a conversation.”

  “Not trying hard enough.”

  She follows him back to the bar.

  Clayton pours himself a shot of whiskey and downs it. He holds up the bottle, offering one to Lana.

  “I’m sober,” says Lana, outraged.

  “I can live with that.”

  “I don’t see where it’s any of your business.”

  “Born to spar. Fuck me. I miss Marybeth. Your girlfriend’s upset.” He points.

  Tracee is collapsed at a table near the cage, wiping her eyes. She’s wilted, her knees knock together and her arms hang limply. Lana hurries over, sits down, and leans in close. “What’s wrong, Tee?”

  “What were you doing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tracee jerks her head in the direction of Danny and Candy. He’s at the bar now, paying the tab while Candy nibbles his shoulder.

  “I was trying to help. She needs help. She went off on me, can you believe?”

  “Suppose they tell someone.”

  “Tell someone what?”

  “I don’t know, that there are new waitresses and—”

  “And what?”

  Tracee pulls on one of her curls and twists it. “Will you—”

  “What?”

  “Not go off?”

  “Where?”

  “I mean off, like angry.”

  “What are you talking about? She went off.”

  “Please promise.”

  “I promise. I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

  Tim hurries in the door with his grabber pole and a plastic sack from Food World. Immediately he scouts for Tracee, dying to confess—he has to get it off his chest. He’s prepared an apology, a mea culpa about the veil, rehearsed it in his head many times, but decides against barging right over when he sees the women huddled together and Tracee blowing her nose. A moment of grief, he figures. Instead he waves a hello to Clayton and gets to work.

  Marcel, perhaps smelling dinner, rises slowly and turns for the first time that evening as Tim sets the bag on a front table near the women. He nods, calls a “good evening”—wanting to please Tracee makes him pull manners from old movies and TV shows. Marcel moves closer as Tim takes out the five pounds of chuck (on special at $3.89 a pound), rips off the plastic and styrofoam wrapping, and clamps the steak with the pole.

  “That’s how your veil got on Marcel’s head,” says Rita.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” says Tim. “I hope you forgive me.”

  Tracee screws up her face, trying to understand. That Tim, not Clayton, is responsible requires a one-eighty, and she’s slow on the uptake.

  “Of course she forgives you,” says Lana. “You’re putting us up.”

  “I’ll pay you back. Don�
�t doubt it.”

  “It’s okay,” says Tracee, but her eyebrows still knot.

  “You’re sleeping in the shower,” says Lana.

  “Hell, I’d sleep in the sink.”

  “Marcel is hungry,” says Rita.

  “Right,” says Tim.

  “But why did you do it?” says Tracee. “I don’t understand.”

  Tim thinks about his motives, even though he’s already given them several hours of thought. “A bit of fun, I guess.” He extends the pole, passing the steak through the bars. He presses a button on the pole, releasing the clamp. The meat drops. Marcel pounces.

  “Is that as close to Marcel as you ever get?” says Rita.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Is that as close as anyone gets?”

  “I guess so. Unless they’re crazy.”

  Rita watches Marcel devour his steak. The intensity, the single-minded focus reminds her of the times she secretly wolfed whole layer cakes. Sometimes she hid in the closet, vacuuming it clean afterward, poking that suction pipe into every possible nook and cranny, worried that Harry would find crumbs on his clothes.

  “He must be starved for comfort.”

  She doesn’t realize when she says this that she’s alone. Tim has done his job and left. Marcel finishes, licks his paws, and rubs one over his nose. Perhaps he has an itch. He rises and, as he does, Rita moves close to the cage. The lion’s big head is at the bars. She notices gray in his mane and can feel his breath on her face when she says to him softly, “Starved for comfort—I know what that’s like.”

  “Hey, move it,” yells Clayton. “Don’t stand there with dirty glasses. It’s not classy. And don’t you have anything else to wear?”

  Rita rips the bow off her blouse, startling Clayton. She picks up her tray of glasses and walks to the kitchen. At the door she looks back.

  The lion is watching her. She holds his gaze.

  15

  Their combined tips for the night total fourteen dollars. It’s a cruelty that fourteen is not equally divisible by three. Rita insists on taking four dollars and letting Lana and Tracee have five each.