Page 2 of Wrong Number, Right Lion

The guy wasn’t answering his phone, but I left a message with my device tucked under my chin and pelted around the house emptying containers of rainwater. Not having been to his house, he might have been dealing with his own roof, but thinking selfishly, I hoped not. I needed his help, and I’d pay anything to have the leaks fixed.

It occurred to me as I dashed around that I might have to get a new roof. Please, no. That’d be expensive, but I suspected if the damage couldn’t be repaired, it’d just be a section of the roof.

I kept checking my phone, hoping the guy would return my call. Maybe he didn’t work weekends or perhaps he was volunteering and helping people evacuate their flooded homes.

With the rain easing so it was just a drizzle, I ventured onto the porch. Perhaps not the smartest thing to do because one end was badly damaged. I waved to the tree, lying forlornly over part of the porch and roof. It’d been so majestic, and now I sensed it sighing as it took its last breath.

“No, I’m going to keep you alive.” I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and gingerly trod over the wooden floorboards. Isearched for a new shoot, and when I found it, I cut it off and cradled it to my chest.

“You’re okay. I’ll look after you and you’ll grow big and strong.” I’d have to get it in a pot, but the yard was waterlogged, so I’d wait.

I hugged the cutting as you would a baby, hoping it would grow and I could plant it where its parent once stood.

A car turned off the road and parked outside the gate. It was a pickup which suggested it could be the handyman. Wow! That was amazing service. The guy couldn’t have been as busy as I’d assumed. Or maybe as my cousin was such a good customer, he’d put me above other people calling for help.

Avoiding the porch stairs, I went out the back door and squelched through the sticky mud that stuck to my shoes like glue. I was still holding the silver maple cutting but didn’t want to put it down. After I’d shown the handyman the damage, I’d get some potting mixture from the shed and plant it in a pot.

But as I peered at the man getting out of the car, I noted his tawny hair and shaggy matching beard. He didn’t look as if he was equipped to fix my roof, but then how was a handyman supposed to appear?

This one looked delicious!

2

KALEN

Nobody at the college loved sheltering in place when a storm came through. I mean, you were stuck inside, away from the windows, unable to leave until it was over. What was there to like about it? At least if I was with one of my classes, I could continue the lesson or even get ahead. But that was not today.

Of course, with my luck, it was the last day before break when shelter-in-place decided to rear its ugly head. Not only that, I was in a department meeting—a department meeting that I had been dreading and with good reason. The new dean was there with plans to make our jobs exponentially more difficult.

In their infinite wisdom, they created a master plan that included getting rid of the lower-level math class because it was one where “students at our school should already be well-versed in these topics.”

In theory, they were right. If you had the credits to qualify for admittance and test scores to back it up, you should know the information. Except, for a plethora of reasons, they weren’t “well-versed” in them, which was why we had them.

Sure, the courses didn’t count toward most of the majors, but for kids who hadn’t taken math for a couple of years or non-trads who came back to school after decades in the workforce, they were essential components of their math instruction. The curriculum focused on the building blocks they needed for success in every other mathematics course we offered. And now that the all-clear was in place, the dean knew full well. I’d just finished spending over two hours explaining it to them, over and over again, as the lights flickered outside and the winds raged on.

Now we were finally free, and my head was pounding, my stomach growling, and all my lion wanted to do was run. Run and run and run. Fine, he also wanted to hunt himself down a little snack, but mostly he needed out of this skin.

Unlike most lions I grew up with, who loved to lie in the sun and sleep outdoors, just chilling, mine thought he was a freakin’ track star. He would run anywhere and everywhere—but not today. Just the drive home showed me there were enough trees and powerlines down in this city that it would be better not to go tearing through the woods until all the limbs that were going to fall, fell. And really, for all we knew, another round of the storm was gonna whip around.

I drove to my place on the outskirts of town and went straight inside, needing to get out of my work clothes and into a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. Operation “Be a Slug” was about to begin.

This semester had already been far more stressful than most, with the new dean trying to make the college more in line with some of the larger universities he’d really wanted to be working at. He was such a pain in the ass. My colleagues and I spent ridiculous amounts of time trying to prove to him that we didn’t need to make massive changes all at once.

I wasn’t opposed to change as a rule. Heck, I’d been known to push a little too hard for it on multiple occasions over the years. But this was too much—too much of the wrong things. I’m sure, deep down, the dean had some really great ideas. Problem was, he hadn’t shown us any yet. He was hyperfixated on consolidating classes and increasing class sizes, and those things just didn’t work. Not for the kind of school environment we had.

Maybe in the big top-five schools he aspired us to be? Maybe? But I doubted it even worked there. College students were not robots. They needed a personalized experience that ginormous classes would never give them.

In any case, I was frustrated, and this time away was going to do me well.

I had a steak waiting for me to cook up and enjoy. Only, when I went to the fridge, I was met with my door hanging open, and everything inside was warm.

“What did I do?” I banged my head on the fridge door. I’d lived on my own for a long time and not once had I ever left the door open.

I pushed it closed, and it popped back open. Further investigation showed there was a box in the way.

“Okay. New plan.” Or at least there would be when I finally figured one out. For now I needed to get rid of the unsafe food.

I grabbed a garbage sack, throwing away anything that needed to be tossed for safety reasons. My pitcher of water was fine. The ketchup was fine. But all the dairy? Pretty much shot. Leftovers? Suspect. Thinking back, the last time I’d been in the fridge was last night, and 24-plus hours was far too long to trust the contents.

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