Keeping Them Happy Ch. 2

You will find a link to the next chapter at the end of this one. To return to Chapter 1, where Mason first meets Officer Borst, click here, which also will take you to a list of links to any other chapter.

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CHAPTER TWO

George came back a little after seven o’clock. Mason had finished his pork chop dinner and cleared away the dishes. He had just started to look at the video tape of a movie that a friend had lifted off of one of the cable movie channels. Mason did not subscribe to cable for his one TV set that was fully operational. He was only interested in videotaped movies and got those from his friend for a few insignificant legal favors, a will, a contract, occasional advice. He regarded regular TV shows as uninteresting, patronizing, even mind numbing.

“Hey, Mason, you home?” George called from the doorway.

Mason got up from where he had been reclining on the floor in front of the TV, watching the video tape of the movie. When he went to greet George he found him looking despondent; and he was carrying a suitcase.

“She won’t let me come back,” he said. He seemed confused, possibly ready to cry.

Mason took the suitcase and carried it into the spare bedroom. “Listen, I’ve got a tape of a good movie,” he explained to George. “I was just starting to watch it. You want to do that? Drink a little beer? Or should we just go out for awhile? Somewhere interesting.” Mason believed in the power of distraction.

Since George didn’t answer promptly, Mason opened a couple beers and stuck one in George’s hand. He steered his guest into the room where the TV had both picture and sound. Mason hit some buttons on his tape deck and the movie resumed. He tried to tell George a little bit about it, but George didn’t seem attentive, so Mason gave up and resumed watching by himself.

About ten minutes later George drained the last of his bottle of beer and said “Fuck!”

Just then the phone rang. “There’s more beer in the refrigerator,” Mason said as he went to answer the phone. The caller was female, but he was having a hard time figuring out who she was. The name Patricia was familiar but he couldn’t quite place it. He heard the sound of glasses clinking in the background.

Patricia, becoming impatient, took a deep breath and spoke slowly and distinctly. “I was there last night. Remember? In the boat.”

He remembered. And the drinking sounds must be from the bar where he had picked up Patricia when she got off work.

“I’m missing an earring. It’s from a set I really like. Do you suppose you could look around for it?”

“I already found it,” Mason said. “Just a second.” He set the phone down without waiting for a reply. He went into his bedroom and dipped into his pants pockets until he found the item that he had picked up in the driveway next to the boat. He took it back to the phone with him. “OK. I’ve got this little gold thing with a spaceship or something swinging on the end of it. Is that yours?”

She laughed, which raised his spirits. “It isn’t a spaceship,” she said. “It’s supposed to be a tree.”

“Oh yeah. Sure. I see that now,” Mason said, examining it more thoroughly but still doubting that the hanging object could be a tree.

“Do you suppose you could drop it by the bar?” Patricia asked.

To Mason it sounded as though she didn’t plan to go out with him again. That was OK. It was not what he would have preferred, but he could adjust.

“Sure,” he answered. “How about tonight?”

She agreed.

He hung up and went to get George. He hadn’t bothered to mention to Patrica that he would be bringing a friend. Mason thought it would be good for George’s fragile demeanor to get out and drink a little, maybe even pick up some other lonely person of the opposite sex. He didn’t really want to take George with him, but he didn’t know what else to do with him and did not want to leave him alone in the house.

George was still acting morose when they pulled into the parking lot of the Liquidation Bar. He finished another beer and left the empty bottle on the floor of Mason’s car.

As usual, it was crowded inside. Mason liked the closeness of the long narrow room. The bar was on one side and a line of small tables pressed against the wall on the other side, but customers milled about everywhere. As he and George pushed toward the bar, curious faces turned slowly toward them, smiled faintly or not at all and then rotated back to some other point of interest. A Mozart piano concerto was playing in the background.

They each obtained a beer and then stood among the knots of customers. Eyes of patrons constantly scanned each other, sometimes locking on someone momentarily before disengaging without any expressed recognition.

“There’s a lot of nice looking girls in here,” George said, surrendering to the therapy of distraction.

A waitress approached and Mason was finally able to remember what Patricia looked like.

“Hi. Do you have my earring?” She glanced suspiciously at George.

Mason gave her the earring and she immediately pocketed it. “Patricia, this is a friend of mine – George.” George smiled, a bit too eagerly. Patricia flashed back a brief mechanical smile.

“My wife kicked me out,” George said.

“That’s too bad, I’m sure,” Patricia replied unsympathetically. “Mason, can I have a word with you over here for a second.” George shrugged at them as Patricia pulled Mason through the crowd and over against a wall.

“This friend of yours, you didn’t tell him about me being in your boat last night, did you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then how come he looked at me kind of funny, sort of like he knew?”

“George looks at everyone funny. He’s a little crazy. Besides, his wife kicked him out.”

“Yeah. I heard.”

Mason tried to be consoling, figuring there might be another boat date for him sometime in the future if he again felt some interest. “George is just a little depressed tonight. We should try to be understanding. Then maybe someone will be nice to us when we’re in the same condition.”

She rolled her eyes in disbelief and shook her head, but she did smile. “OK. Enjoy yourself. And call me sometime. But not tonight, OK?” She slipped between two couples and disappeared in the crowd. Mason wondered briefly what he had done with the piece of paper she had given him with her phone number.

“So that’s the one you were balling in the boat, huh?” George asked.

“Yeah. But pretend you don’t know about the boat. She’s a nice girl.”

George, who had consumed a couple drinks before arriving at Mason’s house and had not yet had any dinner, drank a couple more and began to appear unsteady.

“I know a place we can go,” he told Mason after giving up on a girl he had tried to talk to at the bar and who had turned her back to him.

“Where?”

“Girl lives in an apartment near here. Old friend.”

Mason was agreeable, partly because he didn’t want George to spoil any chances he might have for another adventure with Patricia. It was still early, and if George’s friend didn’t want to see them, they’d just go home.

George brought his drink with him, still in its bar glass, as they headed out the door toward the car. He said he was unsure of the exact location of the apartment, acknowledging that he had been there only once before. As Mason drove through the streets in which all of the apartment buildings looked alike, he began to wonder if the whole evening was going to turn into a mistake.

“There! Stop there!” George was so excited he had the car door open and was stepping out into the street before the car came to a complete stop. He deposited his bar glass on the car floor, where his empty beer bottle still rolled around.

While George went to the door of an apartment building, Mason drove up the street to a parking place and then walked back. George was standing in the building entrance, leaning on one one of the bell buttons.

“The door’s locked,” he said.

“Why don’t you use the phone,” Mason suggested, referring to the device next to the buttons.

“It doesn’t work. I already tried it. Maybe the bell doesn’t work either.” He looked around in exasperation. “What are we going to do?”

George glided down the steps to the sidewalk and looked at the windows above. Mason, who couldn’t last any longer, unzipped his pants and urinated on the side of the building.

“Janice!” George yelled through cupped hands at the windows. Nothing happened. “Hey, Janice!” he yelled again. Mason looked up, saw no signs of activity, and could not avoid concluding that if Janice were up there, she probably would not respond to being yelled at.

“It’s me, George Shindler. Come on, open the door, Janice.”

“Why don’t you get in here and be quiet,” she said. They had both been looking up, so they hadn’t noticed her at the building entrance. Mason quickly zipped up his pants.

George introduced Mason as they climbed the stairs to the third floor.

“Pleased to meet you, Mason. Are you guys celebrating something?”

“Yes,” George said. “And we wanted you to celebrate with us.”

She preceded them up the stairs. Mason could not resist admiring her curves and wondering what she was wearing beneath her thin robe. He also had begun to wonder what kind of female lived in a building with a broken entry system and responded favorably to shouting.

Janice was about 25 to 30 years old. She had bleached blonde hair, and dark lines of ill health or sleeplessness under her eyes. Her apartment was small and had the smell of old buildings, but it was neat and was furnished comfortably. There was another girl already waiting inside when they got there.

“This is my friend Cindy. She lives upstairs. She’s a physical therapist.”

“Hey, great,” George said, a little too eagerly.

Janice got four beers and they all settled in chairs around the living room, George ending up on the sofa alone as though he had been placed in isolation.

“I did some work on Janice’s teeth,” George explained, referring proudly to his dental practice. “That’s how we met. She’s got good strong enamel but we had to do a little gum line filling. Is it all right? Any problems?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Janice said, quickly moving the conversation on. “What do you do?” she asked Mason.

George didn’t give Mason a chance to answer. “He’s a lawyer.” George seemed proud to be able to make that claim for a friend. “And I’m a dentist. And Janice is a secretary. And Cindy is a… a….”

“Physical therapist,” Cindy reminded him.

“Right. Right. Fiscal therapist.” Mason wondered if that mistake was an accident, a product of George’s inebriation, or was intended to be a joke. George went on, “Now we all know what we do. And that’s important. Don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t tell us anything about what’s on the inside.”

“But you probably will,” Janice interjected.

“My wife kicked me out and I haven’t quite decided yet how I feel about that.” He ticked off his subsequent moods on his finger tips. “At first I didn’t believe she was serious, then I was worried, then I was sad, then I was pissed off.” He leaned back on the sofa and partly suppressed a belch.

“What are you now?” Cindy the physical therapist asked.

George jerked his gaze around to her and processed the question through his soggy brain.

“Now? Right now? I don’t know.” He paused to think about it some more. “I don’t know. I can’t seem to get a handle on anything right now. Maybe that’s what I am. Maybe I’m indifferent. That doesn’t seem very suitable, does it?”

“You’ve had too much to drink, George,” Janice said.

Cindy nodded, but Mason wasn’t sure whether she was agreeing with Janice or was thinking about something else.

“I wonder how I’d feel,” Cindy finally said.

“Are you married, Mason?” Janice asked.

“No.”

“Have you been?”

“I was married a couple times.” He wondered if she was trying to remind him about his age. It didn’t seem fair.

Cindy spoke up, still mired in self-examination. “I think I’d feel confused. That’s the way I’ve felt when I’ve broken off with guys. And sort of cheated, too.”

“Cheated,” Mason repeated. “Why would you feel cheated?”

“You know, like I’d put something into a relationship and expected to get something back out of it and then didn’t.”

“But don’t you think you get something out of every relationship? Maybe not something happy or satisfying, but at least an experience.”

George mumbled, mostly to himself, “we learn from experience.”

“Yeah. I suppose you get something,” Cindy said. “For me, maybe that’s not all that I expected when I was giving. Maybe I wouldn’t have given as much if I’d known how it was going to end.” She made it sound like a contribution to the American Cancer Society.

George, who had seemed impatient and restless during this conversation, suddenly stood up. “I think we should all take our clothes off,” he announced. He began to disrobe. “We should remove all the barriers. We should get down to the essential elements of our beings. We should present ourselves without artifact.” He was already unbuttoning his shirt.

“You mean artifice,” Mason corrected as George’s shirt came off.

“Clothes are like camouflage. We use them to conceal ourselves from one another.” He saved his boxer shorts for last. He staggered and almost fell down, saving himself by grabbing the arm of the sofa as he pulled the boxers off.

“Jesus,” Cindy said. “He really meant it.”

George slumped back into his chair and stared at his limp member. “I don’t think I can get it up. I think I’ve gone impotent.”

“I think you’d better take George home,” Janice said.

Mason was not inclined to follow that suggestion, partly because it would be too much effort just getting George dressed again and back to the car, and partly because leaving would be to admit some blame for a social blunder. Janice took another sip from her drink and generally acted disinterested in George’s body, which Mason assumed she had seen already on some previous occasion. Cindy couldn’t keep her eyes off him.

“Well, isn’t anybody else going to get naked?” George asked the other three.

“Maybe we should talk about it a little more,” Mason suggested.

“I’m not taking anything off,” Janice declared.

Cindy seemed to like the idea. “I don’t know, Janice. Give it some more thought. Maybe it would be interesting. Maybe we would see each other differently.” She actually giggled. “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never done it before. But when I’m doing PT, that’s physical therapy, some of my patients are only covered with a towel.” It appeared important to her to explain. “It depends on what part of their body I need to work on, of course. Anyway, nudists are naked all the time. It doesn’t seem to bother them any.”

“Oh Christ,” Janice said.

“Would you get mad at me if I did it, Janice?”

“Of course not,” she said, her face already starting to show signs of displeasure. “If you want to expose yourself to a couple of drunken men you just met, that’s your business.”

“You would get mad, wouldn’t you. I’d better not do it.”

“I’m not drunk,” Mason interjected, in a tentative voice that made it sound as though he were speaking to himself. Cindy smiled at him. Mason decided that Cindy, despite her slightly over-sized nose, was becoming very appealing.

“I’m going to get another beer,” Janice said. “Does anybody else want one?” All three said they did. Mason followed Janice into the kitchen to help. He didn’t like feeling confined to a chair.

“George is really something,” Janice commented as she took the beers from the refrigerator. At first Mason thought she was irritated, then he saw that she was smiling. “I feel like I ought to throw a sheet over him. At least I wouldn’t want you to get the idea that I’m used to seeing George careening around my apartment in the nude.”

“George and I have known each other since high school,” Mason said. “He gets a little carried away sometimes, but he’s a good guy.”

“High school? No kidding? How long ago was that?”

Mason was conscious of the gray at his temples. “Oh, about twenty years.” It was actually closer to thirty.

“What a commitment. I wouldn’t have guessed. Your age, I mean. You’re very distinguished looking.”

It was a description he had heard before from younger women. It always made him wince a little. He changed the subject. “How long have you lived here?” They each took a swallow of beer before she answered.

“It’s been about two years. I didn’t think I’d stay this long, but it’s the pits to move.”

“It’s a nice place,” Mason said awkwardly.

“I miss having a place to lie down outside under the sun. The last place I lived had a small patch of lawn. But I was out in the suburbs. The rent was too high and it cost too much to commute. Besides, the people in the suburbs are weird, way too conventional. So, here I am.”

“Sometimes these older buildings have a roof you can use. You ever been up there?”

“If it’s the door at the top of the stairs, it’s locked.” She went to the doorway and called to Cindy in the other room. “You ever been up on the roof?”

Cindy called back, “I didn’t know you could.”

Janice and Mason carried the beers in and passed them around, ignoring George’s unchanged state of undress.

“I’m going up to the roof,” George announced eagerly and stood up with his beer. He swayed slightly and seemed to have forgotten he was naked. He tried to put his hand in a non-existent pocket and threw himself off balance.

“George, you can’t go anywhere like that,” Janice said. Her tone suggested that he shouldn’t even try, but to George it only represented a challenge. He pulled on his boxer shorts and was out the door into the hallway before any of them had gotten out of their chairs. By the time they had crossed the threshold themselves he was already halfway up the stairs to the next floor. They followed, tripping up the stairs, whispering loudly, laughing, calling out to the remarkably swift and sure-footed George.

At the top of the third flight of stairs above Janice’s apartment, there was no light and further passage was blocked by a metal fire door. When they caught up with George he was fussing with the knob. “Let’s break it down,” he said as he started to pound on the door with his fist.

“It’s steel,” Cindy said, impressed.

They heard a door open in the hallway below. Janice put a finger to her lips and they huddled against each other at the top of the stairwell, blocking George from anyone else’s view. While they waited, Mason took another swallow of his beer. At the foot of the stairs they saw male legs go by and then heard someone descend toward the street.

While Cindy and Janice tried to figure out who it was they had seen and heard in the hallway, Mason examined the latch on the door. It looked like any other latch he had ever seen, but he had never understood anything mechanical. “Maybe we could pick the lock,” he suggested without having any idea how that could be done. George sat down on the top step and leaned into the corner to steady himself while he took a couple more gulps on his beer.

“What about the pins in the hinges?” Janice suggested, shoving George out of the way.

“They’re probably stuck,” George said. Mason didn’t know what they were talking about.

She lifted the bottom hinge pin out with two fingers and held it up triumphantly.

Cindy was mystified. “Oh, look what Janice did.”

George was unaccepting. “It’s the top one that’s going to be impossible. You’ll see.”

Janice tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. She bent down and shoved the loose hinge pin under the bottom of the door. “Pry up on this a little, would you,” she instructed Mason. He bent down and began to try to leverage the door up with the pin. He felt his strength challenged by the presence of an audience.

“It’s about halfway,” Janice announced after a few moments. It occurred to Mason that if both pins were released there would be nothing besides their own strength preventing the heavy steel door from falling inward and smashing them all flat. Still, Mason continued to pull up on the pin under the door.

In one final surge of strength, Janice wrenched the upper pin loose. The door immediately started to topple toward them off its hinges. George cheered. Cindy said “oh oh.” Janice put both hands up hard against the face of the door. Mason stood and pressed one hand against the derelict door, preserving his beer in his other hand. The door steadied momentarily, then tipped crazily in a way that permitted it to pass through the frame and crash loudly on the roof outside. A rush of cooler, outside air let them know they had succeeded in opening the passage to the roof.

George scrambled up and walked confidently out over the fallen door, pausing at the end of it to stretch his arms out toward the night sky. “This is it,” he proclaimed, removing his boxers again. “This is really great.” The two women stepped out delicately across the door and Mason followed. Now that they had arrived they weren’t sure what to do, except George, who was urinating off the edge of the roof.

“Do you think anyone heard?” Cindy asked.

“I need another beer,” Janice said. “And then I’ll probably need to start thinking about finding another apartment.”

Cindy was designated to return to the apartment for two six packs and an opener and to check for anyone in the upper hallway who looked concerned.

Mason took comfort from the relative quiet and darkness that shrouded the roof. While Janice and George walked off separately to explore viewpoints, Mason sat back against a chimney and waited for the next beer to arrive. He felt a wave of tranquility and decided without any consideration to follow George’s example and shuck his own clothes, which he did without further hesitation. He dropped them in a pile next to the chimney and walked over to the low wall that surrounded the edge of the roof. It must have gotten later, he reasoned, because there was very little traffic below. He was looking in the windows across the street when Janice and George came back from opposite directions.

“Oh shit, Mason,” Janice said. “You guys are really determined, aren’t you.” But she paused only a moment before she pulled her sweatshirt over her head, unsnapped her bra and dropped it, and then pulled her pants off, all so quickly that George, who was looking across the street, didn’t even seem to notice. Mason thought it was interesting that she didn’t wear any underpants.

“There’s a fat guy watching TV over there,” George called out.

“Hey, where are you guys?” It was Cindy, silhouetted in the dim light from the stairwell, carrying a half case of beer and a couple blankets and obviously having a hard time seeing after emerging from the bright interior lighting of the building.

“I brought a couple blan… oh…” Her eyes went back and forth from one to another of the three nude figures. “Janice, you said you weren’t going to.” She sighed at their laughter, put down her load and methodically began to remove her own clothing, which she folded carefully.

“Let’s have some more beer,” George said and quickly opened four more.

They spread the blankets in a corner away from the open stairwell and sat or reclined facing each other. Their nakedness seemed to compel talk about their bodies from George. “You girls have really got the good breasts. Both of you, and both of them.”

“I’ve always thought mine were a little small,” Cindy said.

“This is really crazy,” Janice said. “I don’t know how to sit. I feel like I should have my legs crossed, but that doesn’t make sense, does it? I mean, what’s left to hide?” She changed positions several times trying to be both modest and comfortable.

Cindy spoke up, sounding more analytical. “I think men’s bodies are really beautiful.”

Mason, who was peeling the label off his beer bottle, thought that was one of the sillier remarks of the evening. He was beginning to wonder what he was doing on the roof of an apartment building with two girls who didn’t seem to mind taking off their clothes in the presence of relative strangers.

George stood up to model his beautiful body for Cindy, hand on his hip, turning around with mock stylishness. “Oh, that makes me dizzy,” he said after a couple of revolutions. He sat down again, not looking well. He drank some more beer. Mason thought George had suddenly gotten the inward look of someone fighting for control. After a few moments he smiled again, a temporary victory.

“Well, what do we do now?” Cindy asked. Mason noticed that they were all drinking faster than they had been. He was having trouble keeping his eyes focused and realized that at some moment which he had not recognized he had become intoxicated.

George suggested they play tag. “I haven’t done that since I was a little kid.”

“Who’s gonna be it?” Cindy asked eagerly.

Janice stood up and hauled Cindy up beside her. “Come on,” she directed. “It was his idea. He’s gotta be it.” The two girls tripped off to another part of the roof, giggling and looking back to see if George was following. George rolled over on his side and took a long, thoughtful draw on his beer. “Which one do you want?” he asked Mason.

“Is that where we are now?” He looked off into the shadows. “Of the two I suppose I’d take Cindy. That’s if I were going to choose either one. I sort of figured you for Janice, especially since you already know her. Some other time it actually wouldn’t make any difference to me, which one. The crazy part is that right now I don’t really feel like doing either of them. Do you think they expect it?”

“You’re saying you’d really rather have Janice? I mean, if you do it’s OK with me.”

“No, I mean that I don’t think I’ve got any interest. In either one. Not because there’s anything wrong with either of them. They both look fine. Oh shit, that sounds like I’m judging livestock. I didn’t mean that. It’s something else. Something’s just not right for me.”

“What is it, do you think? That never used to be a problem. You have too much to drink?”

“No, it’s not that. Could be I’m just too comfortable sprawled out here under the night sky and don’t feel like making the effort.”

“Hummm,” George contemplated. “Actually I don’t either. It is sort of an effort sometimes, isn’t it? I mean, hormones will only take you so far.”

“That’s why I was asking if you thought they expected it. I get that feeling sometimes lately. The woman hesitating, waiting to see if I’m gonna make the right moves. You know, like they’re sort of relying on my performance.”

“You’re not having problems in that department, are you? I know some remedies if you are.”

“No,” Mason said, glancing at his flaccid penis. “It seems to come up when it needs to.”

“That’s good.”

Janice yelled at them from across the roof. “I thought you guys were going to play tag.”

“Hey, we are, Janice,” George called back. “No question about it.” But he took another gulp of his beer and made no effort to get up. I don’t get enough exercise,” he explained to Mason. “I tried jogging for a while, but it was too boring. And, anyway, Diane threw my shoes out.”

“Why’d she do that?”

“She said they smelled. So whose don’t? She was just on a toot because I never put them where she thought I should.”

“Where’d you put them?”

Before George could answer, Cindy yelled at them, “You guys gonna do anything or not?”

George answered. “Yeah we’re just working it out now. We’ll be right there.” He returned to Mason’s question. “I left them next to the recliner in the living room because when I came back from running I was always so beat that I’d crash in the recliner.”

“I don’t think that’s good for you, is it?”

“What?”

“Lying down right after running.”

“Beats the shit out of me. I figured it was the running that was gonna kill me. It’s probably all for the best that Diane threw those shoes away. It gave me an excuse to quit running.” He paused and reflected. “I wonder what she’s doing right now.”

“You could call her.”

“She’d hang up on me,” George said unhappily.

The girls walked back and stood with their hands on their hips, feet slightly apart, all pretenses of modesty disregarded.

“Well?” Janice said.

George patted a spot on the blanket next to him. “Sit down. We got a better idea.”

They didn’t move. “What is it?” Cindy asked.

George patted the blanket again. “We want to talk to you. Come on, sit down. I don’t like speaking upwards into your snatch.”

Janice rolled her eyes, Cindy giggled but they both sat down. Mason wondered what it was that George planned to talk to them about. Whatever it was, George was in no hurry to begin.

“All right, what is it?” Janice prodded.

“Have another beer first,” he said. He opened a couple more and put them into waiting hands.

“I want do do something,” Cindy complained. “I thought we were going to play tag. I feel like moving around.”

“Uh huh,” George agreed. “I can understand that you feel that way.” Mason thought that George was using his dentist voice, the way he would talk to a patient. George paused to take another drink. “Well listen,” he said scratching his stomach, “do you two want to have sex? What do you think.”

“Jesus, you’re a crude bastard, George,” Janice said.

“See, Mason and me were talking – about all the game playing that goes on between people when they’re trying to figure out if they both want to have sex, while each one’s pretending they’ll talk about anything except that. Seems like people who know each other could be more direct. I mean, Let’s get it out in the open. Why do we have to pretend? This way is more democratic, isn’t it? Gives women a voice. What do you think?”

“George, nobody could be more direct than you,” Janice said. “And Mason, you haven’t said much. Did you and George figure this out together?”

“Well, frankly I don’t remember the conversation.”

Janice and Cindy shrieked with delight, but Mason couldn’t tell if they were laughing at his comment or had finally concluded that the two men were fools. George lifted his beer bottle above him and tried to pour beer into his mouth from arm’s length. Most of it missed and ran down the side of his face. Cindy jumped up and started jogging around the perimeter of the roof. Mason sighed and laid back flat, staring up at what few stars were visible through the pinkish-gray background light of the city.

After a few minutes he couldn’t keep his eyes open. He heard the light pad of Cindy’s feet passing by once and then he was asleep.