Free Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll Page B

few times back. He twisted his head hard left, then hard right, again and again until the tension in his neck muscles gave way a little.
    Music came on from somewhere in the back of the house: Gershwin’s Cuban Overture . Josephine loved music. Whenever she was up and about she had the radio or CD player on, often humming along loudly to whatever was playing.
    The first few times the girl did this it jarred Edmonds because since his wife’s death he was accustomed to a silent house. At the time it seemed right, a fitting tribute. Their home should remain quiet because Lola was the one who’d always filled it and their days together with both sound and life. Lola with her music and her singing, her banging around in the kitchen as she prepared their meals, or watching soap operas and game shows on the different TVs around the house. Sometimes she would have all three televisions on at the same time tuned to different channels.
    Not only do you lose a person to death, but you lose their noise too—their noise and smells, gestures and facial expressions. You lose the way they talk and phrase things and laugh, the way they fill in your blanks without ever thinking about it or having to try. You lose things you love about them they don’t even know they possess.
    But eventually, sooner than he would have thought possible, William Edmonds grew to enjoy the sound of music again playing in the rooms of his house.
    He remembered very vividly what was playing the afternoon he found out the truth about Lola. Again Gershwin, only that time it was “An American in Paris.” Edmonds was drinking soup when it happened: thick, pulpy pumpkin soup with a squiggle of green pumpkin oil across the surface. He had cooked up a big batch of the soup and he, Josephine, and Keebler were all sitting at the table eating it for lunch.
    Keebler still had not grown accustomed to his new large body. He moved very awkwardly and to the others’ annoyance, squeaked all the time. Whenever he moved he sounded like lots of footsteps walking on old warped wooden floors. Edmonds oiled him daily but it did little good.
    Keebler also couldn’t get used to eating. Before he grew to human size, he had never eaten anything. He had never even opened his mouth, much less put anything inside of it. Why would he? Until recently he had been a two-inch-high netsuke figure sitting on a shelf. Then from one moment to the next he was transformed into a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound semi-human being with a fat guy’s appetite. Josephine said this would change as he gradually transformed into a complete person. But at the time he was only a very large semi-man who wanted to eat constantly.
    “This is good,” Josephine said with a nod and a smile.
    “Thanks. Lola liked it a lot too.”
    Keebler held his bowl in both hands and drank the soup in big loud gluggy gulps, despite the fact the stuff was just off the stove and piping hot.
    “Doesn’t it burn your throat when you drink it like that?”
    “Why would soup burn my throat? It’s not made of skin.”
    “Good point.”
    “She didn’t like it though, you’re wrong,” Keebler said as he raised the bowl again to his mouth.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Your wife, Lola; she didn’t like this soup. She made a face every time you served it. She just didn’t want you to know.”
    Josephine frowned at Keebler. She was beginning to think he enjoyed being cruel. She had seen example after example of his gratuitous meanness and she’d had enough. “Why do you say those things? What’s the point? Why are you always so nasty?”
    “I’m only telling the truth.”
    “Well, eat your truth. Nobody wants to hear it.”
    “She really didn’t like my soup?” Edmonds was crestfallen. Lola taught him how to make zuppa di zucca based on her family’s recipe. He’d always been very proud of it. “What didn’t she like?”
    “She didn’t like anything you cooked.”
    “ Keebler! ”
    The netsuke man