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

“ — I was young once myself, you know.”

This she rewarded with a bit of a smile, her small hand on my knee, and a squeeze.

“So I know that the thought arises in a young person’s mind that he — or she — can do something that will make the world take notice, and become famous — rich and famous.”

Now at this point a very odd feeling began to come over me, a revelation, perhaps, or inspiration, perhaps, but whatever it was it really did come over me, creeping over my skin, warm and tingling and exciting, as if it had entered the room on a breeze rather than arising from within me, and I shuddered — not from fear or cold, but from sheer excitement, because at that moment I relived with vivid immediacy the moment years earlier when I had admitted to Dudley that I thought that if I did manage to build an airplane out of a motorcycle and scrap metal and flew it across the country, I would certainly become famous as the first boy to fly solo across the country in a plane that he had built from a motorcycle and scrap metal after learning how to do his own welding.

“Forget it,” he had said, in many more words than that, specifying for me all the difficulties that I would have to overcome if I were to succeed and specifying as well all the character flaws that would in my case turn the difficult into the impossible.

In a kind of trance, speaking as Dudley, speaking to Patti, to my mother, and to myself, I said, “It will in all probability not be easy. Do you remember the old story about the droll madman who attracted crowds by inflating a dog?”

“Sure I do.”

“Think, for a moment, about the part of the story that you have not heard.”

She drew her brows together and pursed her lips. “What part is that?” she asked.

“It is the part that is never told, the part that the listeners would not sit still for, the part about all the effort that the madman put into making himself the famous dog-blower of Seville. Just think what that took! Think about all the hours that our clever madman spent learning to inflate a dog, hiding in a shed somewhere with a poor stray upon whom he practiced. Think of the failed attempts, the disappointments, the disappointments piled on disappointments, the dogs that ran away, the ones that bit him, the ones that burst like overstretched balloons and sprayed themselves across the walls of the miserable isolated dwelling where he sequestered himself while he was mastering his art.”

“Ooh,” she said, grimacing in sympathy with the overblown dogs.

“Think of the anguished bouts of self-examination, when the madman held his head in his hands and asked himself whether he shouldn’t have chosen some other path to fame, when he despaired of ever developing the skill to inflate a dog, doubted that anyone would be interested in witnessing the inflation of a dog even if he succeeded in accomplishing the feat, and the times when he questioned his underlying motive, his thirst for fame, asked himself whether fame was a thing worth pursuing and wondered whether he wouldn’t be happier abandoning the pursuit and settling into a comfortable obscurity.”

“Gee,” she said. “It sounds — almost impossible.” I had brought her to the brink of tears again, but I knew what I was doing.

“Oh, no,” I said at once. “Not impossible. The madman of Seville did it, remember. And you can do it, too. You can succeed at this. You will succeed at this. You’ll be famous for it. I know you will. I believe in you.”

I barely managed to get the last words out, because she was in my lap, kissing me, running her tongue into my mouth, slipping her hand into my pants.

LATER, UPSTAIRS, in Dudley’s bed, I lay on my back smiling at the ceiling in a state of goofy bliss. I was keeping my silence, because the only word left in my lexicon seemed to be wow. Patti was propped on an elbow, leaning over me, running her fingertips along my penis as if it were a pet.

“Where did you learn to talk like that?” she asked.

I drew a long, deep breath, reclaimed myself, and said, “From listening to Dudley, sitting in the chair where you were sitting. I guess it’s a case of ‘like father, like son,’ except that he never offered me any encouragement. Just the opposite, in fact. He never said that he believed in me.”

“Mmmm,” she said, and then, after taking a moment to consider whether she would say anything else, she added, “About that ‘like father, like son’ business? I don’t think so.”

“What?”

“I’ve been doing lots and lots of research, much more than you know, and I’m beginning to have some other ideas.”

“Really? Even after tonight?”

“Even after tonight. Tonight was — well — fantastic.”

I smiled — beamed, to tell the truth — and said, “Aw, shucks, ma’am, twern’t nothin’,” as movie cowboy heroes did after they’d singlehandedly liberated a prairie town from a band of desperadoes.

She squeezed my penis; it was the equivalent of poking me in the ribs with her elbow. “I mean ‘fantastic’ as in ‘probably never happened,’” she said.

Chapter 42

Splash! Flash! Ella’s Opening Night

MY MOTHER STOOD IN THE BOW, holding a clipboard that she had painted white and decorated with tiny edible silver balls that were meant for decorating cakes. “Ohh,” she wailed, checking her guest list. “Do you think anyone will show up?”

“Sure,” said my father, still struggling with his tie. “It’s a free meal with all the booze they can drink. They’ll show up.”

“The mayor? Do you think the mayor will come?”

“That fathead? Any chance to make a splash, he’ll come. And I guarantee you he’ll try to grab the spotlight. Mark my words.”

“Oh, Bert, stop fussing with that tie. Let me fix it for you.”

She swatted his hands aside.

“I