“Well, hell, the tenants were five months behind in the rent,” Blaine said. “Dope-smoking hippies. I rented them the place because they were Walter’s friends. ‘Oh, Mr. Blaine, we’ll take care of the place just like it was our own.’ Shit! Everything was either missing or ruined. They even cut a hole in the front door so their Rottweiler could go in and out. They had opium poppies in the front yard—the little pods were oozing juice from razor slits. I figured that if they’re growing opium in the yard, they had to have grow lights in the basement. I told the hippie housewife I was going to go down in the basement to check on the furnace, and she panicked—no, no, you can’t do that. When a little kid started crying upstairs, I had my chance. Down into the basement, I turn around and there’s a fully grown African lion—”

“Jesus Christ!”

Blaine came up from the couch with his palms out as if he were summoning up a vision in a crystal ball. His eyes darted from left to right as he reenacted the scene. “A fully grown lioness crouching down in the seven o’clock position, and from the front comes a male. I knew then that my picture was coming true. The male let out a growl that shook the rafters, almost knocked me down—Christ! Ten seconds later the hippie earth-mother bitch is down the stairs with an umbrella, popping it in the female’s face. Those were a long ten seconds.” Blaine sat back on the couch and sipped his coffee. “The coin shop was a romp.”

“God! Mary Poppins,” Freddy said, squealing with delight.

“She says, ‘Back, Sheena!’ ” Blaine extended his left leg, pulled his pant leg loose and laughed.

Freddy rattled off a laugh of his own and dabbed at his face with another of Zona’s linen tea napkins. “Jesus! You never told me this.”

Blaine scowled as he took a swig of coffee. “Freddy, you’ve got that too-much-Elavil, no-energy fairy voice again.”

“My voice isn’t that bad,” Freddy said. “I’m starving, sleep-deprived, malarial, and if I don’t take a leak pretty soon, I’m going to piss my pants! Give me a break, dude.”

At this Blaine slapped his thigh and laughed. “It is that bad,” he mimicked. Then he was on his feet again, acting out the scene in the basement. He would imitate a lion, then himself, then the hippie housewife, and then a lion again. “Back, Sheena!”

Freddy mopped his face. “Zona, he’s making me laugh. I’m gonna pee on the rug!” He jumped up, and cupping his genitals, began to dance like a pair of scissors. “Quick: what happened to the lions? A zoo?”