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

said with a knowing smile, “it doesn’t last forever.” She got up, keeping her glass, and said, “Come on — let’s walk through the house and I’ll show you what I want you to do.”

“I’ll try not to break anything,” I said.

“Good,” she said, and she tousled my hair.

My duties as she outlined them wouldn’t be many. I would have to check the house daily, water some plants, dust and vacuum regularly, run the water and flush the toilet so that rust wouldn’t accumulate in the pipes, fix or have fixed anything that broke, keep the windows open a bit so that the place wouldn’t get musty, but close them if rain was predicted, then open them again when the skies cleared, and keep the lawn mowed and the weeds down. She would remunerate me handsomely; since yesterday’s pay scales seem quaint today, and today’s are likely to seem quaint tomorrow, I’ll put my remuneration in terms of purchasing power: the amount that she was willing to pay me each week would be equivalent to the price of dinner for two with drinks, tax, and tip at a modest restaurant in Manhattan. Not bad for a kid of thirteen. With that much money coming in each week, I could take Patti out on dates, if I could persuade her to go on dates with me.

“The key to the back door is under the mat,” she said. She paused and looked me over. Then she decided to add something.

“You can snoop around. I know that you’re going to snoop around, so I’ll tell you that you can snoop around, but don’t break anything, and please put everything back just as you found it.”

“Okay.”

“And don’t do anything that will ruin my reputation, okay?”

“Like what?” I asked.

“You know — no parties, no seducing teenage girls, no plying them with drink, no playing the bachelor playboy just because you have the run of the house.”

“Oh.”

“Or if you do, no getting caught at it.”

She winked at me, and I winked back.

“Okay,” I said. Parties; there was an idea. Seducing teenage girls; there was an even better idea. Bachelor playboy. Not getting caught. These were all good ideas.

“And if people should ask — not that I think they will, but if they should — tell them that I had to get away for a while because I couldn’t endure all the sympathy.”

“Okay.” The most attractive idea of all was the thought that with the run of the house and license to snoop I could look for evidence of Dudley’s role in my conception.

Chapter 4

A Lot to Learn

AS SOON AS ELIZA HAD LEFT for Europe, I visited the house on my own. I told my parents that, as a diligent lad who took his duties seriously and meant to go about them in an organized way, I intended to get right down to work and would be spending most of Saturday looking the place over, making an inventory of what was required, listing the jobs that would have to be performed, and making a schedule on a calendar that I had been given when I visited the showroom of Babbington Studebaker. I thought I gave a fine performance.

“Stay out of trouble,” said my father, but that didn’t necessarily mean that he had seen through my act; he said it all the time. There wasn’t any reason to think that he knew that what I really intended to do was snoop around.

At the back door to Dudley’s house, I lifted the mat and found the key. I picked it up. I held it in my hand. It was heavy.

(Of course it was heavy, freighted as it was with allegorical import. In the fairy tale version of this story, a beautiful and worldly woman gives to an adolescent boy the secret of the location of a hidden key that will unlock a door that leads into a house — make that a castle — within which are hidden treasures physical, metaphorical, and sexual, like rubies, gold, knowledge, power, and women of all ages. He uncovers the key and takes it into his possession. He fits the key into the lock. He pauses for a moment to give a thought to the step he is about to take. We return to my story at that point.)

I held in my hand the key that would — could, might — unlock the mystery of my paternity. I paused, since I had begun thinking of myself as a character in an allegorical tale, and reflected on the step I was about to take.

“This door,” I murmured aloud, acting the lead in my own drama, “opens onto a new phase of my life.”

I opened the door. I stepped inside.

I was in the kitchen. It seemed not very different from any other kitchen, and not at all like the start of a new phase of my life.

I walked the length of the hall that ran down the center of the house and looked through the glass set into the panels beside the front door. I imagined Dudley waiting for my mother to come up the walk and ring the bell, and I decided that if I were he I would not be waiting there at the door, nervously watching out the window. If I were awaiting a visit from the girl next door, I would be elsewhere, in the kitchen, perhaps, fixing a snack, or in the living room, sitting in front of the fire, reading a book, sipping a drink, scarcely aware that the time had come when the girl was expected, certainly not annoyed that the girl was late.

The living room was just off the entry hall, to my right as I stood facing the front door. In front of the fireplace, two chairs faced each other. I had often sat in one of those, with Dudley in the other, and listened while he lectured. His lectures were usually instigated by my mother, who would send me to Dudley if I