Bathing the Lion Read Online Free PDF Page B

confidence. She played longer sets and began performing one more night a week. Jane was careful and solicitous. She watched Vanessa closely and entered Dean’s telephone number on her phone’s speed dials just in case she needed to reach him quickly.
    At the same time, Jane was working twice as hard to keep up with the large increase in customers. She had always firmly believed if people would only visit her bar a couple of times and get a feel for its ambience, they would want to return regularly. Her new singer was the catalyst. What heartened Jane most was after Vanessa had been there a while and established a fixed schedule, the place was still almost full on the nights she didn’t perform.
    Of course there was a “but” in all this. There’s always a “but” in any triumph. The nasty little bone in the delicious piece of fish, the dangerous slick spot on the just-waxed gleaming floor, the “no” hiding under “yes’s” bed, waiting for the right moment to spring out and bite you. The worm in Jane’s beautiful new apple was paradoxically Vanessa’s success. As time passed and her confidence grew, the talented singer became demanding, difficult, and in due course the most exasperating kind of diva.
    At first it was small understandable things—adjust the lighting on her three different times, buy expensive new microphones, tune the piano, and then have someone else tune it again because Vanessa was still dissatisfied with the sound.
    Then one day she “suggested” Jane fire the nice, very capable pianist who filled in for Vanessa on her days off. This man was also a big fan of Vanessa, which made it even harder for Jane to understand why she wanted him out. When asked, the singer tsked like a petulant child and muttered, “It’s difficult to explain.”
    Jane said no. Vanessa’s face tightened but she said nothing.
    When she came into the bar two nights later, she played for exactly twenty-nine minutes and then stopped. By then she usually played for at least an hour. Passing Jane who was sitting at the bar, the two women exchanged stony glances. The next two times she performed that evening, Vanessa repeated this abbreviated twenty-nine-minute set. The audience didn’t appear to notice because luckily it was a raucous crowd content with its own company.
    Coincidentally it happened to be payday. After the third twenty-nine-minute set, Jane went back to her office and rewrote the singer’s salary check for the week. At the end of the evening she handed it over as always in a blank envelope. As if expecting something, Vanessa opened the envelope immediately and saw her employer had reduced her salary accordingly.
    “I waited my whole life to have this place, Vanessa. You’ve only been here three months but you’re already trying to tell me how to run it. I won’t let you; it’s neither right nor fair. I love having you here and we both know how much you’ve helped my business, but you cannot do this.” Then Jane smiled. It was cordial and warm, with not the slightest bit of challenge or scold in it. A smile that said, let’s drop this right now and move forward, on to more important things we both want.
    The smile more than anything else disarmed Vanessa. She backed off and things were all right for a while afterward. But as she grew more self-assured as a performer, her selfishness manifested itself in other unpleasant ways.
    In contrast, the longer Jane knew him, the more she liked Dean Corbin. He was kind, intelligent, and very good company. But when she spoke to him about Vanessa’s bad behavior, he only made excuses for his wife’s conduct and downplayed every example of bad behavior she brought to his attention. He believed you must treat artists differently and make allowances for their shortcomings, because in the end their work brings so much joy to others. Jane delicately argued talent is no excuse for meanness. But she couldn’t convince him to talk to his wife about this matter.