or cotton candy?" The boy's father looked exasperated.

"If you go to the lion cage at three o'clock today you'll hear them roar," Mr. Kemper said.

Shortly after that the young man dragged away his little boy, who was still insisting he wanted to hear the lions roar. Eventually, everyone who talked with Mr. Kemper went away rather suddenly. Mr. Kemper, unabashed, drank from his paper cup and thought about the ravages of time.

A woman and a man came around the corner of the building that faced the polar bears. The woman was red-faced, her voice a thin rasping. "All you want to do is watch those damn chips. You'd watch those chips all day if I didn't drag you away from there. Chips, chips, I'm sick of chips."

"Chimps," said Mr. Kemper as they went by. "Chimps, lady, with an 'm' in it."

The counterman, moving toward him, wiped the counter with a soggy rag and said, "Listen, Mac, what's all this with the lions?"

Mr. Kemper looked at him. "Oh, do you like lions?"

"Well, it's like this," the counterman said. But he had no chance to finish. There was an animal shriek of pain from the other side of the building. The polar bears lifted their heads. Putting his unfinished drink on the counter, Mr. Kemper went toward the sound.

In the high cage that housed the chimpanzees, at the corner of the wing, a chimp swung violently on a trapeze, scolding at another on the cage floor. Kemper saw that the one on the trapeze was a female, the other a bigger, older male. The male, his face grotesque with anger, climbed the bars and got as close as he could to the trapeze. He hung there, grabbing at the female as she swung past just out of reach. There were only a few people near the cage, but most of them were smiling. One of them, a gangling, tall man, ran about pointing a camera first at the female, then the male. A lean woman, possibly his wife, stood close to him. She put her hand on his arm. When Kemper saw her eyes he moved behind the others and went toward her and the man with the camera, taking a position a little to their right.

"Do it again, Al," the lank woman said. "Make them mad again." Al was sweating. He laughed, looked at the people around him, then pushed black hair from his forehead and handed her the camera. "Okay, okay," he said. "You get the shots now and don't goof it." He moved disjointedly, like a puppet, as close to the cage 

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