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

water, and then — with a smile and a shake of her head at the way good luck sometimes comes right along with bad — produced a change of clothes from a paper bag that she was holding; my grandmother pouted in sympathy, patted and petted Patti to comfort and calm her, smiled at the change of clothes, indicated the dressing table, then turned and left the room, closing the door behind her.

Without once looking my way, Patti began unbuttoning her blouse.

WHEN THE DEAR GIRL arrived at the front door a few minutes later, I was in quite a state. All the ardor of a young man in love had set my heart to pounding and sent my blood pulsing through my veins, while the wisdom, propriety, and caution of a middle-aged — oh, let us not say that, not “middle-aged” — let us say rather that the wisdom of a man no longer quite so young nor nearly so foolish as he once had been counseled me to control myself, to still my throbbing heart, cool my ardor, calm my passions: to behave myself.

I opened the door with a trembling hand.

“Hi, Dud,” said the innocent darling.

What would she have said, I wondered, if she had known that a thousand heartbeats earlier I had watched with hungry eyes while her schoolgirl’s garb fell from her body, the white blouse slipping from her shoulders, the plaid skirt dropping down her creamy thighs, until all, all was revealed, all her charms, more than I could allow myself to recall while she was standing there, so sweet, so pure.

“Come in,” I said, trying not to sound like a spider welcoming a fly.

Chapter 25

Take Me Away; Take Me with You

SLIPPING HER PUCKERED LIPS over the tip of her paper straw, Patti sucked up and swallowed a mouthful of vanilla milk shake and then in a voice thick and soft, milky and sweet, asked, “Well, Peter, did you learn anything new last night?”

I had been expecting this question since the day when Patti had suggested another experiment. I had known that we would meet at the malt shop the day after that experiment, when we were playing ourselves again, to consider what we had discovered while playing my mother and Mr. Beaker. I had, since the conclusion of the experiment, often practiced what I wanted to say to her, and I felt fairly certain that, if I delivered my answer in the way that I had rehearsed it, I could strike just the right note — a chord, actually, of notes that might before I had so cannily combined them have seemed discordant, a chord in which humor harmonized with high purpose, friendship with lust, the offhanded assessment of a dispassionate investigator with the all-but-inexpressible awe of an adolescent, like one of those complex — and, for me, unsingable — chords that ended so many of the doo-wop songs.

“I found,” I said, drawing my words out to emphasize the depth of thought underlying them, “that — you — have — beautiful — breasts.”

She exhaled a bit of a laugh down the straw and it bubbled richly through her milk shake.

“I always supposed that you did have beautiful breasts,” I went on, “but I was very — ah — pleased — to have my supposition confirmed — by direct observation — and — ah — digital palpation.”

She pulled her straw from her glass and blew an inch of milk shake into my face.

“Nice shot,” I said.

“Was this whole paternity experiment just a way to get your hands on me?” she asked.

“No!” I said quickly, perhaps too quickly.

She rolled her eyes.

“It wasn’t,” I asserted. “Honest.”

She ran her tongue over her lips.

“Patti,” I said, in a tone of deepest sincerity, “I really do have strong doubts about my paternity, and strong suspicions about the part that Dudley Beaker might have played in my conception. I meant what I said about conducting an experiment, and I’m grateful to you for being willing to assist me with it.” I paused; then, with a shrug, I added, “I never said I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

She threatened me with the loaded straw again, and I raised my hands to suggest surrender, or at least a truce.

“I seem to recall that you told me we would be investigating certain events that may or may not have occurred in the past, between your mother and Dudley Beaker, not that we would be considering your opinion of my breasts or any other part of my gorgeous little body.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Forgive me for straying from the purpose of our undertaking.”

We snickered at each other.

“I learned something, too,” she said.

“Yes?” I said, hoping for a compliment.

“Assuming that you’re doing a good job of portraying Dudley — ”

She paused and cocked her head.

“I think I am,” I said.

“Then I think that Ella probably did have a crush on him.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He’s kind of cute — and I’m talking about him, you know, not you — ”

I hung my head.

“You’re kind of cute, too,” she said, “but I’m talking about Dudley in the pictures you showed me. He’s good-looking, and he’s suave — for a small-town guy, anyway — but I think that — if I’m really being honest with myself about this — the thing that I find most attractive about him when I’m with him might be the fact that he’s grown-up, especially the particular way that he’s grown-up.”

I hadn’t expected this.

“He’s still young,” she explained, “and he’s got those jazz records and that crazy sports jacket in the back of the closet, but basically he’s a grown-up guy, a man, and it’s flattering to think that a man is interested in me — as if I were a woman, not just a girl.” She poked her straw at the last of her milk shake. “That’s it,” she said. “He makes me feel like a woman: he makes me feel grown-up, and sophisticated.”

This was interesting. He had always made me feel like a little boy, and a