Inflating a Dog (The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy) by Eric Kraft (novels to read for beginners .txt) 📗

We put the containers of chowder and the clamburgers into one large bag, and added small white paper containers of tartar sauce and cocktail sauce and cole slaw. The bag of french fries went into a second brown paper bag, and that too began to darken with grease.

Porky put the bags on the counter and handed my mother the check. She got her wallet from her handbag and handed Porky some bills. He took them and he went to the cash register and stood there for a moment, with his head down, but I could see that he was looking our way. He hit the key to open the register, took some bills from the money tray, added them to the bills my mother had given him, and brought them to her.

“Here you go,” he said.

“Thanks, Porky,” said my mother, absently stuffing the bills into her wallet.

“You want to count that,” said Porky.

With a look, she said, “Porky, I’m sure it’s right,” and began to close her bag.

“Mom,” I said, “you want to count it.”

Reluctantly, with a look for me that told me I was speaking out of turn, she opened her wallet. “Oh!” she said, when she looked at the bills, and then, “Oh, Porky!” She leaned across the counter and flung her arms around his neck, and he turned a brilliant red.

“I figured, why don’t I become your first investor?” he said. “After all, Peter was my first investor, and it seems like such a good idea — sound, you know, a solid investment — and — for old times’ sake.”

Patti shot a look in my direction, raised an eyebrow, and pursed her lips.

I shook my head once and mouthed, “Never. Impossible.”

My mother said, “Oh, Porky, darling, thank you, thank you,” and she kissed him.

Patti raised the other eyebrow.

Chapter 22

My Father Bets on My Mother’s Horse

MY MOTHER, PATTI, AND I crept up the back porch stairs, reluctant to confront the lion in his den. We paused, and my mother put on a brave smile and crossed her fingers.

“You don’t mind going in the back door?” I whispered to Patti.

“Nah,” she said. “We’re all in this together now.”

My mother opened the door and immediately called out brightly, “Hello-ho-ho! We’re ho-ho-home!”

We made our way to the living room, where we found my father slumped in his favorite chair, staring blankly in the direction of the television set, where an episode of “Video Rangers” was underway. This was a locally produced half-hour adventure serial set on a spaceship somewhere in another galaxy sometime in the future. It was a kids’ show, but my father never missed an episode. The production values were poor; the budget was tiny; the actors were comically inept. (The television picture was, of course black and white, since color television would not be commercially available at a price that a family with my family’s budget could afford for years, but color would not have improved “Video Rangers.”) Apparently, my father had been sitting in his chair since he got home from work, waiting for his dinner, consoling himself with beer. Several empty cans were on the table beside him, and he was drinking another one. Also on the table were a bag that had held pork rinds, the heel of a wedge of cheese he had found in the refrigerator, and a jar of pickled cherry peppers. He burped and poked around in the jar, chasing the last of the pickled peppers.

“I’ll bet you thought we’d never get here,” said my mother.

My father scowled. “Where the hell have you two been all this — ” he began, and then he turned from the television set and caught sight of Patti, who had entered the room after my mother, followed in turn by me.

My father’s eyes popped — really, just like the eyes of a cartoon lecher — at least I recall that they did. He blinked, he licked his lips, and, in my memory, his eyes were bloodshot, bulging, and moist with desire.

Patti put her hands behind her back, brought her knees together, and bent forward at the waist, playing at being sweet and shy. “Hi,” she said. “I’m Patti. Peter’s friend.” She fluttered her lashes and added, “Ella’s friend.”

“Isn’t she cute?” asked my mother.

She reached into the bag of wrapped clamburgers, pulled one out, and tossed it to my father, as if she were flinging a steak into a cage. Startled from his fixation on Patti, he caught it.

“Hey — ” he began, but then, smelling the burger, he smiled and finished with, “ — mmm, clamburgers.”

A few minutes later we were all eating and, halfheartedly, watching “Video Rangers.” The dialogue was murmurous and mostly unintelligible, though it rose and fell as the actors overplayed or underplayed their parts, and now and then a word or phrase emerged whole and comprehensible: “anti-gravity drive,” “creatures from another world,” “sabotage,” “the ship.”

My mother, suddenly eager, said, “That reminds me — Porky White is investing in a new business.”

“What?” said my father. “What reminded you?”

“Huh? Oh. ‘The ship.’ One of them said something about ‘the ship.’”

My father drew his brows together and scrutinized my mother’s expression. Then, suspiciously and, it seemed to me, enviously, asked, “What sort of new business?”

“Elegant Excursions.”

“Elegant Excursions?” He was mystified.

“It’s going to be a ship — well, a boat — that takes people on excursions. Cruises to Hargrove and back. On the bay. In the moonlight.”

“Eating clamburgers?”

“Oh, no, no. Hors d’oeuvres. Canapés. Little sandwiches on colored bread.”

My father seemed to recognize a theme. “What?”

“He’s going to work up a kind of clam spread. Cream cheese and chopped clams.”

“Don’t tell me: the clam spread will come in colors, too.”

“What a good idea, Bert!”

“Oh, yeah. I wonder where I got it.”

We all ate in silence for a moment. My mother was uneasy. I could see that she was searching for a way to take the conversation where she wanted it to go.

“You know,” she said, “you’ve got to hand it to Porky.”

“Do I? Why?”

“Well, he’s really making