Jiggs and the Social Lion

A bricklayer’s brawny shoulders slump under the starch of a rented tux as Jiggs, king of the tavern, is dragged by his lace-corseted wife Maggie into the gilded menagerie of high-society soirées where champagne flutes clink like guillotine blades. Marble corridors echo with condescending titters; monocles fog as Jiggs mispronounces canapé, spills consommé down a dowager’s décolletage, and punctuates a waltz with a belch that rattles crystal. Ejected like a speck of soot, he staggers into the neon night, eyes blazing with wounded pride. At dawn he reappears at the mansion’s wrought-iron gates clutching a chain that yokes a living, tawny lion—mane aflame in the morning sun—transforming the manicured lawn into a savage theater. Drawing-room matrons shriek atop chaise longues; top-hatted financiers vault oak buffets; parquet floors become a stampede of patent leather and terror. Jiggs, now ringmaster, unleashes the beast not for blood but for exquisite humiliation, letting the animal’s hot breath part pearls from throats until the same aristocrats who scorned him now crawl, groveling, beneath his boots. When the police arrive, the lion lounges docile at Jiggs’s side, symbolic crown restored to the true sovereign of chaos.