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

She kissed me, slowly and affectionately, and said, “Tomorrow night? At Dudley’s?”

“Yes,” I whispered into her little ear. “Tomorrow night.”

MY FATHER was sitting up, watching an old movie on television.

“Well?” he asked, turning briefly toward my mother.

“Mr. Lodkochnikov loved it.”

“Good,” said my father. Then, a moment later, “What? Who?”

“I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow, Bert. I’m too tired now.” She went to him, leaned over and threw her arms around his neck, and hugged him. “But it was a great success, a wonderful success.”

“Any sandwiches left?” asked my father.

“In the refrigerator,” she said, “in waxed paper.”

I went upstairs to my bed, undressed, masturbated, and fell asleep. It had been a wonderful day, a wonderful night, the best night that Ella’s Elegant Excursions would know, my mother’s greatest success.

Chapter 41

Testing the Hypothesis, Part 3, in Which I Discover Certain Magic Words of Great Value to a Seducer of Young Girls

Do we show the public . . . the mechanism behind our effects? . . . Do we display all the rags, the paint, the pulleys, the chains, the alterations, the scribbled-over proof sheets — in short, all the horrors that make up the sanctuary of art?

    Charles Baudelaire,

    quoted by Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project

PATTI (AS ELLA) AND I (AS DUDLEY) sat facing each other in the chairs before the fire, but I hadn’t lit the fire. It was summer, after all.

“Dudley,” she said, “can I tell you a secret?”

“Of course you may tell me a secret,” I replied, supposing that I knew the sort of secret she intended to divulge.

“Okay — ”

“I hope, Ella, that you will consider all your secrets safe with me.”

“Oh, sure — ”

“And it is also my hope — my fervent hope, I might say — that you will be as frank and forthcoming in disclosing your secrets to me as you would be if you whispered them to your pillow in the privacy of your own bedroom.” Here I winked a wink that went unnoticed, or at least unacknowledged.

“Yeah. I will. So — ”

“In short — ”

“Dud!”

“Yes, my dear?”

“Shut up and let me tell you!”

“Of course.”

“When I grow up — ”

“Ah, my little darling, I almost wish that you would never grow up.”

“When I grow up, I want to be famous.”

“Ah, fame.” I brought the tips of my fingers together and nodded. “There are many species of fame, Ella, but most of them are not worthy objects of your desire. I would much rather you said that you wanted respect, or admiration, than fame.”

“But I do want to be famous. I want people to know who I am. I want them to nudge one another when I walk by and say ‘That’s Ella. She’s a big success.’”

“Success, too?”

“Yes. Fame and success, that’s what I want. And I know how I’m going to get them, too.”

“Do you, now?” I asked with the slightly amused, slightly weary, slightly wary tone of condescension that Dudley had used with me when I told him that I thought I could probably build an airplane out of a wrecked motorcycle and some scrap metal if I took a correspondence course in welding.

“I’m going to buy a boat,” she began, and, slowly, hesitantly, as if some of the details were coming to her on the spot, she laid before me the whole plan for Ella’s Elegant Excursions, from the purchase and conversion of the clam boat to the pastel sandwiches and champagne. When she had finished, she sat for a moment, flushed with excitement, a little out of breath, and then sank, as if the lifting gas of hope had been displaced by denser stuff, the murky waters of doubt, and without looking at me she came to the point, asking meekly, “Do you think it will work?”

To tell the truth, sitting there in my chair with years of life lessons behind me and my cupped hand warming the last shallow swallow of cognac in my snifter, I didn’t. I don’t know when the shadow of doubt had first fallen over the charming fantasy she laid before me, but I do know that by the time she had finished I saw the enterprise for what it was, or what Dudley would have considered it to be, a quixotic undertaking, and I saw the principals in the effort — Patti, my mother, and me — for the poor deluded fools they were.

Patti raised her head and turned her eyes toward mine. She wanted an answer.

“I don’t think it will work,” I said, and I swear to you now that I could see the tears well up in her eyes with each word I spoke. Seeing those tears standing in those dark eyes, hearing her breath catch, seeing her chest heave, something came over me, a change so profound and complete that I would not be exaggerating if I said that in the interval between two heartbeats I became another man. Who could have been or remained so hard a man as to stick to the truth of his thoughts when a little lie could dry those tears, ease that breath, return a flutter of hope to that sweet bosom? Not I, not I. I leaned toward her, extended my arm across the space between us, put my hand beneath her darling chin and raised it so that she was looking into my eyes again. “Unless you make it work,” I concluded with enthusiasm.

She brightened. Seeing the effect of a mere five words that did no more than offer the possibility of a future success, I searched for something that would inflate her further. I understood, somehow, that I had to proceed with caution. I couldn’t use a jet pump. I had to use something gentler, a method of inflation that Patti-playing-Ella wouldn’t detect or would be willing not to detect. I chose parable.

“I know how very many things young people wish for,” I began, slowly. “After all — ”

I paused, picked up my pipe, peered into its bowl, and allowed a wistful