Happy Monday, Leopold, Patricia said, as she blew into the party blower and tickled the end of his nose with its three blue feathers.
 
Fa-too, said Leopold and blinked at the candles she had set upon the dinner table.
 
Leopold was a strong stocky man with a large head of yellow hair flowing from a bald spot.  He had curly sideburns and a short beard, yellow and curly, from which stuck a sharp chin.  At the moment he sat relaxed in his chair, hairy head looked back while he waited for her to serve their meal.  She was relieved to see that he appeared calm.
 
Quiche of the evening, beautiful quiche, crooned Patricia as she removed the creamy, crusty thing from the oven.  She set it on a trivet in front of her place, a salad to the right and hot rolls to the left.  Help yourself to wine, Leopold, she said.
 
Leopold reached for the wine bottle and scrutinized the quiche.  What’s this? he asked suspiciously.
 
Zucchini quiche, she said, keeping her head bent so that he would not see what she knew was a flush on her cheeks.
 
Squash, Patricia?  But where’s the meat, dear?
 
It’s Monday, Leopold.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we don’t eat meat.
 
Is that so.  I’ve made no agreement to be a vegetarian on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  I am a carnivorous man.  I do not intend to twitch and nibble like a rabbit.
Leopold shook a long fingerbone at her.  Serve me meat, Patricia.
 
There isn’t any.
 
No meat?  None at all?  Not a single chop?  Not a hamburger patty or a leftover chicken leg?
 
No.  I’m sorry.
 
Fry me an egg then.
 
We’re out of eggs until tomorrow.
 
Out of eggs, Patricia?  Your inefficiency is staggering.  If I ran my business the way you run this house, we’d be out of eggs indeed.  Out of eggs and zucchini quiche too, my good woman. Leopold rapped his knuckles on the table.  If there are no eggs, fry me some bacon.  Some of that there is.  For over twenty years I’ve brought it home.
 
I work too, you know.
 
Peanuts.  Your husband, who brings home the bacon, wants some of it, Patricia.  Fry.
 
But you ate all the bacon on Sunday morning, Leopold.
 
Leopold opened his mouth wide.  She had a good view of incisors, cuspids, bicuspids, and molars, marvelously strong and white.  The better to eat you with, my dear, she thought, her flesh shuddering.
 
There’s more cheese, she said.
 
Get it, said Leopold.
 
Patricia unwrapped a wedge of double-cream brie and passed it to Leopold, who thrust it intact into his mouth and chopped furiously.  Then he shoved back his chair and stomped from the room, leaving Patricia, the quiche, salad, rolls, and wine to their own devices.
 
She polished off her half of the meal.  It was delicious, and, said Patricia to herself, no animal died to feed me tonight.  She ate a Clementine, sipped tea, read the paper and was tranquil in stomach and mind since Leopold had quit the premises, gunning his car down the driveway to the nearest hamburger joint, no doubt.
 
On Tuesday night, she served a steak.  Leopold smacked his pink lips together and ate with relish.
 
On Wednesday morning, Leopold said, No nonsense tonight, Patricia.  I want meat for my dinner..
 
Now Patricia, although she didn’t look it, being small boned, soft eyed, with a skin that turned pink or pale with emotion, was a woman of character.  She had determined that she would not serve meat on Monday, Wednesday or Friday, no matter how Leopold should roar, so she didn’t.  She did try to find a vegetarian meal that he would like,  however.  He liked spaghetti.  She made a carrot spaghetti sauce, herbed and spiced and fortified with soybeans.
 
Leopold took a large hank upon his fork and stuffed it in his mouth.
 
Umm, he said, licking the sauce off his lips and helping himself to a chunk of Italian bread.
 
It wasn’t until halfway through his second helping that it occurred to Leopold to wonder about meat.  He sifted spaghetti strands through his fork and scrutinized the sauce.  Is there meat in this sauce, Patricia? he asked.
 
No, she said, but it’s good, isn’t it?
 
Spaghetti with no meat stinks, said Leopold.  Don’t ever serve it to me again.
 
That was the only protest he made, so she felt emboldened to try the meatless meal on Friday night.
 
As soon as she arrived home, she meditated.  She sat in a corner of the darkened living room, legs crossed, and went down in herself to the place where she kept her serenity.
Frightened as she was of Leopold’s rages, she knew it was right to try to win him to a more vegetarian diet.  Already she felt better from eating less meat, physically better and morally better.  She was no longer the sneak who pretended to love animals but abetted in their murdering, and tore them up with her teeth.  If she loved Leopold too (didn’t she?) she must change him in spite of himself.  Him or her.
 
She had decided on cheddar cheese and onion pie for Friday’s dinner.  Leopold liked cheese and he liked onions.  She took care with the table, set it with a linen cloth, hot asparagus, wine, homemade bread and called Leopold.  She gave each of them a generous slice of pie, seven asparagus spears, passed Leopold his plate, and dug in her fork.
 
Queer noises came from across the table.  Patricia ignored them.  The pie hurtled by her head and smashed on the wall behind her.  Patricia helped herself to a slice of bread.  Leopold poured his glass of wine over her head.  Patricia went on eating.  When she heard his car race down the driveway, she allowed herself to wipe her face.
 
After that night, she gave up on Leopold and vegetables.  On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, as well as all the other days in the week, he got steaks, chops, or hamburgers.  It was all right, since she used scraps from his dinner to feed her Venus fly trap, and, while he ate meat, she could eat mushrooms Newburg or beans with chutney or orange curry on brown rice.
 
Every time that he ate meat and she did not, Patricia felt herself more removed from Leopold.  She looked at him covertly when he gnawed his bones.  His hair and beard were longer, were they not?  His sideburns curlier?  Was he slavering at the corners of his mouth?
 
Claiming a series of small colds, she withdrew her person from their bedroom.  When the colds had been prolonged beyond belief, she contracted vaginitis and was ordered by her gynecologist to deny herself the pleasures of Leopold’s bed.  The gynecologist was a slow and cautious man.
 
Patricia was cautious too.  She washed her underwear separately.  She stopped putting her nightgown in the dryer with Leopold’s pajamas.  Perhaps they might press together, his pajama legs become entangled with her gown.
 
Then she abandoned the dryer.  Hanging clothes on the line was time consuming, but she could hang his on one end, hers on the other.  In between, she hung dishtowels or tablecloths.
 
There was the time she hung carelessly and saw the March winds blowing her bra against his under shorts.  By the time she had separated sheep from wolves, she had missed her train to the city.
 
As the weather became warmer, Leopold began to take his bones outside after dinner.  He liked to sit on the front porch and chew a little in the twilight.
 
His yellow hair was now riotous.  She caught herself thinking of it as Leopold’s mane.  He refused her suggestion that he have it cut, saying that his hair made him feel strong.
He paced the porch and tossed it over his shoulder.
 
His beard was thriving too.  It grew down over his shirt front and into the top of his pants.  The sideburns merged.  Leopold seemed all head and shoulders.  He walked lithely swinging his strong hair from side to side.
 
As summer came, Leopold spent less time at the dinner table and more time outside.  It seemed to Patricia that he could hardly wait to get out with his bones.  To be companionable, she took her plate to the porch and ate close to where Leopold lay in the grass.
 
They no longer had must to say to each other.  She tried, but Leopold rarely said more than good meat or nice bone.
 
The tufts in his ears were growing vigorously.
 
Patricia began to read the paper aloud to him in the evening.  It made her feel that they were communicating.  If Leopold didn’t talk much, he did seem to listen when she read the news.  He liked best to hear about animals.  If she read about dogs or cats, he slobbered a little.  If she read about horses, he drooled. She perused the papers to find stories that would interest Leopold.
 
She felt lucky to find the news.  The old lion had died, the only African lion owned by the zoo.  The lioness was grieving.  The zoo officials were grieving too.  They had been fond of their lion and had recently purchased an order of goats and rabbits. more than the lioness could eat by herself.
 
A lion would eat lots and lots of rabbits, Patricia said sadly, noticing that Leopold licked his lips with a rough red tongue.
 
It was the last news she read to him.  The next morning he had disappeared.  His bed had not been slept in.  He had taken none of his clothes.
 
He has left me, she told the hornbeam as she hugged it.
 
It was a fine day.  She kicked off her shoes, gamboled a little in the grass, dancing down the garden path to where the beans hung in lush handfuls on their bushes, watching for the fat gray rabbit to tell him that Leopold had not said good-bye.
 
How are you today? she asked the eggplants, while she looked for the rabbit around the broccoli, searched for him in the tomatoes, discovering in the cucumbers a brief white tail and a long limp ear.  His little bones were all gone.
 
She went into the house one more time.  There’s a stray African Leopold in my garden, she told the zoo over the telephone.  Will you collect him, please.
 
Thank you for your donation, Madame, said the zoo.
 
He’ll be happier, she said, when she was back amongst the vegetables, planting her feet in the rich warm earth. Much, much happier.
 
It’s a lovely growing day, she told the other occupants of the gardens, inviting a little bird into her hair, raising her arms and swaying with the wind.

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