Bathing the Lion Read online

  Both of them wore goose down parkas and winter boots. Vanessa also had on a Russian sable fur hat with long earflaps, which made her look particularly ridiculous on such a hot sunny day.

  “I don’t know,” Dean said.

  “You don’t know what?”

  “How we got here. So don’t ask.”

  “Thank you, husband; thanks for being so sympathetic today.”

  Dean’s voice rose. “I don’t know what else to say, Vanessa. You were going to ask if I knew what this is, right? But I don’t. I just said it because I know you were going to ask.”

  “You’re wrong.” She pulled off the large hat, shook her hair, and began to wiggle-waggle out of her coat. “I was going to ask what’s with this chair.” Her voice was snooty and dismissive.

  They looked at the big black chair as if it were a third person waiting alongside them for someone to explain what was going on.

  A horn honked nearby. Hurrying off the road, Dean pulled the chair behind him like a parent pulling his child to safety. Luckily it was on wheels, although the back two were squirrelly. It wobbled like a wonky supermarket cart all the way. Seconds later a shiny blue Chevrolet pickup truck rushed past, the driver not even glancing at them as he powered off down the road.

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?” Dean asked warily. He was sure Vanessa was going to whip another nasty zinger at him.

  “The chair said that, not me. I was just telling you what it said—thanks for pulling it off the road.”

  Dean semi-smiled. Maybe this was his wife’s way of apologizing for being bitchy. Say the chair thanks you for saving it from being hit by a truck. It was a weird but cute enough way to reboot their conversation in a different direction. He decided to say nothing and just move on.

  Taking off his coat, he dropped it on the seat of the chair. “I don’t understand any of this, Vanessa. Maybe if we find some people from around here they can tell us something. I think we should just keep walking on this road and either flag down the next car, or hope we meet up with someone along the way. What do you think?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “Remember what?”

  “The talking chair—Blackwelder.”

  Dean’s eyes panned from his wife to the chair and back to Vanessa again. “No.”

  “Blackwelder—from The House Inside the Horse, the kids’ book? It’s the talking chair. Come on, Dean, of course you remember.”

  He shrugged.

  “You know—”

  “No, I really don’t.” But then he did. Like lightning skittering across his brain, in an instant Dean remembered everything about The House Inside the Horse. He even saw the cover of the book—a realistic painting of five adults sitting next to each other with their legs dangling over the edge of a gigantic black leather chair that dwarfed all of them. The chair in the book looked exactly like the one he was touching now.

  “Jane gave us a copy; she has a whole bunch of them in her office. She even keeps one on the bar because she likes it so much. You see customers reading the book all the time when they’re sitting by themselves. It’s like the bar’s mascot.”

  “Yes, now I remember.”

  “And the talking chair in the story is named Blackwelder.”

  “Yes, Vanessa, I remember.”

  “Well good, because it just said thank-you.”

  “Nice,” he said sarcastically, and looked down the road to see if more cars were coming.

  “No, Dean, it really did say thank you.”

  Against his better instincts, he slowly turned and stared at his wife. “This chair spoke to you?”

  “Yes. It thanked you for pulling it off the road.”

  Dean looked at his big brown boots. The weather was sweltering August hot. Cicadas scritch-screeched all around them. Once upon a very short time ago, he and his wife were driving in the middle of a New England winter. Now it was summer and Vanessa said furniture spoke to her. “Is this hell? Did we die when I wasn’t looking and this is hell?”

  She didn’t appear fazed by the question. “I don’t think so. Anyway, someone’s coming—look.”

  Far down the road, people were walking toward them. It looked like three but Dean couldn’t be sure. “Wait here.” He started away.

  Vanessa watched him. Then she sat down in Blackwelder and almost pitched over backward. The chair was perched precariously on the sloping shoulder of the road. She was a large woman. Whenever she sat down fast there was a lot of weight in the drop.

  “Watch it!” the chair scolded.

  She staggered back to her feet. Trying to regain some dignity, Vanessa straightened her shoulders and wouldn’t deign to look at the talking chair.

  In the meantime, her husband walked down the road toward the people coming his way. He wasn’t sure whether he was glad or alarmed when he recognized two of them. He was certainly surprised.

  “Jane? Kaspar?”

  They didn’t seem surprised to see Dean Corbin out there in the middle of wherever-they-were.

  The third guy was a stranger. Short white hair like a military man, he appeared to be in his sixties but very fit and sturdy looking. If you arm-wrestled with him you’d probably lose. It took Dean a few moments to register these three were also dressed in winter clothing.

  “What is this? Do you know what’s going on? Or where we are?”

  “Were you in an empty place before this, Dean? Did you just come from there?”

  “Yes, exactly! Vanessa and I were driving through town. The next moment we were out of the car and standing in a place that was empty and completely barren; nothing was there. It was like—”

  “We know.”

  Dean said, “And just as suddenly we were here.”

  Jane and the men exchanged looks but didn’t say anything.

  “Do you know where we are?”

  The white-haired man spoke. “Yes—we believe it’s someone’s dream, but we don’t know whose yet. Maybe one of us is having it but we don’t know. It could just as easily be somebody else’s. Probably not you or me though because we don’t know each other. I don’t usually dream about people I’ve never met. I’m Bill Edmonds.”

  Dean pointed at him. “Ah! We were driving to your house when all this happened. We were looking for Kaspar.”

  Despite the weirdness of the situation, Kaspar Benn stiffened on hearing this. He was afraid Vanessa had told Dean about their affair and his friend had come for revenge.

  “You, um, wanted me, Dean? How come?”

  “Did you see our store today? Did you see what’s happened to it?”

  Kaspar relaxed slightly. “Yes, well no—I mean, I was there this morning. Everything was fine. I called you from there, remember—about the shirts? What about the store? What’s wrong with it?”

  “It’s not there anymore, Kaspar. Benn Corbin has somehow turned back into Newsland, and the owner is Whit Ayres. A thirty-years-younger Whit Ayres, if you can believe it. He was in the store behind the counter when we went in. The whole inside of the place is Newsland as it must have been in 1979. Our store is gone.”

  Bill Edmonds said right away, “No it’s not.”

  All of them looked at him.

  “In real life I bet it’s still there, all of our lives are exactly like they were. But here in this place it’s gone. Whoever’s dreaming all this”—he gestured toward the surroundings—“is muddling and moving our lives and the facts of our lives together so it’s all just a big jumble. Some of it’s true, some isn’t. Mixing them all together like a tossed salad.

  “I’ve seen things here that are completely true about experiences I’ve had. But other stuff has been crazily distorted and bent—like looking at my life reflected in a funhouse mirror. I’ll bet you five dollars I’m right: this is a dream and someone we all know is dreaming it—with us right in the middle.”

  Hearing that small sum made both Jane and Dean smile despite the circumstances. I’ll bet you five whole dollars this
madness we’re trapped in now is only someone’s dream.

  Bill continued, “I’m not worried about that though; I’m worried about who’s actually having the dream and what we’re supposed to do here while it’s happening.”

  “How are you so sure about these things?” Dean asked suspiciously.

  “Because I’ve had the dream before,” Jane said.

  “So did I,” said Bill.

  “Me too. Well, parts of it—a lot of parts of it, more and more recently. They’re different than Jane’s and Bill’s, but when you put all our parts together, all our dreams combined—,” Kaspar added, but was cut off from saying more when Vanessa boomed: “Hello, everyone! Looks like the gang’s all here, plus Bill Edmonds too. Hi Bill.” Dean had forgotten about Vanessa. Hearing her voice now, he turned and saw his wife walking their way. Five feet behind her, the black chair was rolling toward them on its own.

  Dean did not see Jane Claudius’s face as she watched the clumsily moving chair. He did not see her smile grow and grow until it couldn’t stretch any farther. Jane put a hand over her mouth to contain her joy. In this chaotic, anything-goes dreamworld they’d all been dropped into, it was hard to trust what she was seeing. But the closer the chair came, the more she believed. Finally she gave in and accepted the miraculous: it was Blackwelder. Blackwelder was moving toward them and soon there was not a single doubt in her mind it was here—the talking chair from one of her favorite books in the world, The House Inside the Horse.

  Jane had met the book for the first time on one of the worst days of her adult life. Hours before, she had been dumped for good by the woman she once thought she’d happily grow old with, Black Nell.

  Her real name was Nell Ferrow but in the weeks before their relationship died, Jane had taken to referring to her girlfriend as either White Nell or Black Nell. The names had nothing to do with the color of her skin, but rather the color of her ever-changing moods and whims from day to day and frequently from hour to hour. Nell thought both nicknames were funny and right except when she didn’t and flew into one of her extensive variety of rages, snits, silences, or full-blown tantrums. At the end of their time together there weren’t many White Nell days.

  As is so often the case when one is on the receiving end of a bad relationship, Jane felt bewildered and untethered from her life too much of the time, despite trying as hard as she could to keep herself balanced and whole. Like an angry monkey, Black Nell shook everything in their life together like the bars of a cage holding her in.

  The crowning insult was, she left without saying a word. Jane came home from work one Thursday to discover her lover and all of her possessions had disappeared, right down to her green toothbrush and full quart of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream Jane had brought home the night before because she knew it was her partner’s favorite. When Jane saw that was gone she knew Nell must already have a place to live since she needed to put the ice cream in a freezer before it melted.

  Creeped out by the thought of staying in the apartment they had shared after her wrenching discovery, Jane walked right back outside and went to an expensive restaurant for dinner. She had a superb meal, which she didn’t taste, and three glasses of Barolo wine, which she did.

  Afterward, still not ready to go back to the scene of Nell’s crime, Jane wandered into a bookstore. Stopping at a display table, she picked up the first book she saw because the cover illustration caught her eye—five people sitting side by side on an enormous black chair.

  Then she opened the book and gasped. Because she was drunk, when she first saw the word “Blackwelder” she thought she saw “Black Nell” and was agog at the impossible coincidence. Then she looked again and laughed at her mistake. The perfidious Nell Ferrow was everywhere—even in a children’s story.

  Jane had never heard of it but she took the book over to a corner of the room where a cozy-looking chestnut-colored easy chair was waiting for her. Whether it was due to the sadness of the night, the wine she had drunk, the excellence of the story or something else, Jane read The House Inside the Horse three times straight through. Then she bought the book, brought it home to her empty apartment, and sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room, read it again.

  We’re often wrong at predicting who or what will transform us. Encountering certain people, books, music, places, or ideas … at just the right time can immediately make our lives happier, richer, more beautiful, resonant, or meaningful. When it happens, we feel a kind of instant love for them, both deep and abiding. Now and then it can be something as trifling as a children’s book, a returned telephone call, or a night at a seaside bar in Mykonos.

  Jane felt love and gratitude for The House Inside the Horse because it kept her company throughout a very bad, dark time. For some unexplainable reason, whenever she felt on the verge of bottoming out again because of Nell’s leaving, she would reread the story. It invariably calmed or kept her busy. It tided her over till the sadness, the anger, or the panic attacks passed and she was pretty much all right again. People—family, lovers, friends—are supposed to do that: keep us sane or balanced at difficult times. But sometimes things really are better at pulling us back from the edge.

  Years later when she saw the beloved Blackwelder rumbling down the road toward her in this mysterious place, Jane didn’t think it was impossible. She saw it and was overjoyed. The only thing going through her head was, there it is!

  Running over to the black chair, she swept Dean and Vanessa’s coats off the seat and sat down on it, something she had wanted to do ever since the first time she read the book.

  As anyone who ever read The House Inside the Horse knew, Blackwelder only spoke to women.

  “Excuse me, but do I know you?” the chair asked in a stern male voice after she sat down. It was the voice of a railroad conductor asking, “Tickets, please.”

  “My name is Jane Claudius and I know you’re Blackwelder.”

  “I am. But you know this is a dream, of course.”

  Jane tightly gripped the arms of the chair. “Yes, but I’m so happy you’re in it. You’re actually here.”

  “Tell me who these other people are, please.”

  Those other people watched Jane have a conversation with herself, or so it appeared.

  “Who’s she talking to?” Kaspar asked as quietly as he could.

  Dean didn’t care who Jane was talking to. He wanted to know what the hell was going on around them. “Tell me about this dream stuff you were talking about before.”

  “I will, as soon as this thing passes; if it doesn’t plan on stomping us first. Anyone here have elephants in their dreams?” Edmonds’s voice was calm and collected, considering what he was looking at.

  Lumbering toward them now from the same direction that Vanessa and Blackwelder had come was an enormous red elephant. It was not sort of red like an old faded sweatshirt or a slapped cheek. This elephant was the by-God brassy red of a candy apple or a clown’s nose. It was red with a capital “R” and easily weighed twelve thousand pounds. It moved quickly in a very determined manner—so determined that at first glance it was easy to think, the elephant is very pissed off. I’d better run.

  Jane leapt out of the chair and began pulling it as hard as she could out of the path of the pachyderm. Edmonds and Kaspar Benn started jogging down the road together, both of them looking back over their shoulders often at the approaching red beast.

  But Dean and Vanessa Corbin stayed right where they were. The expressions on their faces showed no fear or shock.

  “It’s Muba,” Dean said.

  “You think so?” his wife asked, both hands in fists at her mouth.

  “Absolutely, there’s no question. Muba, stop.”

  Thirty feet away, the giant red animal slowed and came to a stop in the middle of the road. Swinging its head from side to side, it blew off a trumpeting call. It straightened everyone up wherever they were. The elephant was wearing a gigantic wristwatch on its front left foot.

&
nbsp; “The watch! Dean, she’s wearing the watch!”

  “I saw.”

  “So it is Muba. Good God, Dean, Muba’s here!”

  Forget the first kiss, the first sex, the first tears of misunderstanding, the first fight. Forget the first amazing gift that says they thought long and hard about what you love. This gift is physical proof they tried their best to get you something concrete, in-the-hand wonderful to show the intensity of their feeling for you.

  Forget it. Forget it all.

  The first great real intimacy between two people begins when secrets are told. The time you stole money from the candy drive when you were a Girl Scout. The time you slept with your ex-sister-in-law after their marriage dissolved. The one shitty self-serving lie you told your boss that changed everything and ended up burning all the bridges you had at the time. To this day you cringe whenever you think about having told that lie. And finally the secret about your parents you thought you would never, ever tell anyone.

  But one day you do—you tell your new partner. No matter what happens to the two of you afterward, they know the truth now and you can never take it back. They have the goods on you and you on them; your life together shifts permanently on its axis. It is impossible to predict whether that is good or bad.

  A month after they met, the first great secret Dean Corbin told his new girlfriend Vanessa was about the elephant named Muba.

  As a boy Dean had had childhood leukemia. At the time his chances of survival were not good. He spent a lot of time in hospitals getting things like gallium scans and flow cytometry, but the disease persisted no matter what they tried to do to analyze and defeat it. After one particularly grueling chemotherapy session, Dean lapsed into a half sleep, half coma in which he dreamed he met a magnificent red elephant. For some mysterious reason never explained, the animal wore a huge wristwatch and told the boy its name was Muba. Dean asked it if he was going to die. The elephant said no, but there would be many difficult days ahead before he was cured. The most important thing to know was from now on, Muba would keep Dean company throughout his coming ordeal. The little boy was too young to know what an ordeal was, but hearing this red colossus was going to move into his life and be around from now on lifted his spirits tremendously.