840: “They’re gone,” . . .
At Home with the Glynns, Chapter 26 begins
26
“THEY’RE GONE,” said Margot in an elaborate stage whisper.
“Good,” said Martha.
She pulled away from me, as eager to return to the game, it seemed, as she had been to kiss me, as if there was a seamless continuity of feeling within her, with kissing me exactly equal to playing the part of a hunted underground revolutionary satirist. Perhaps my using eager isn’t quite right for either of the acts, if I were to consider them from her point of view. Perhaps it’s only wishful thinking on my part. Perhaps it was all acting.
My feelings—well, to put this as precisely as I can, I seemed to have been removed from the world, numbed to every sensory impression of it, by the magic of those kisses, by some intoxicating venom on the lips of those little girls. I was in a fog. So was everyone else, to be truthful—during the film, fog had drifted in from Bolotomy Bay, softening the night, giving everything the graininess of a black-and-white movie—but the blissful haze that enveloped me was more than an aggregation of water droplets condensed on minuscule nuclei of dust. I drifted in a haze of Glynns.
“Snap out of it,” said Martha, tugging me. I was aware, as if watching all of this from outside it, that I was the one she was tugging, the one standing there wearing a goofy grin. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
They put their arms through mine and walked me along the sidewalk.
“You taste like an éclair,” Martha whispered, with the hint of a giggle.
I glanced at my reflection in the plate glass window of the Department of Motor Vehicles. I had chocolate around my mouth.
“It’s hard to eat an éclair in the dark,” I said.
A few doors down, we came to the Poop Deck, a bar on the same side of Main Street as the theater. We slowed our steps so that we could better absorb this completely unfamiliar experience, being in the vicinity of an adult place alone, as if we were three little adults ourselves. We walked more and more slowly, until we were directly in front of the door (weathered, once red), and by that time we had slowed our steps so completely that we had stopped. We were standing in front of the door, trying to see through the windows. The girls put their hands in mine, and we stood there a moment, a hesitant little trio, waiting for something to happen to us, wary of getting caught peeking. A car pulled up to the curb.
“Oh, no,” breathed Martha.
“What’ll we do now?” I asked.
“Act normal,” said Martha.
“Sing!” said Margot. “Don’t try to be furtive! Sing!”
I don’t know what came over me. I sang.
Oh something something, doodle-ee-doo,
Doing something in the dark with you,
A something something, oodle-oo,
Éclairs—and you—and me—and you—
[to be continued]
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide. The Substack serialization of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed. The Substack podcast reading of Little Follies begins here; Herb ’n’ Lorna begins here; Reservations Recommended begins here; Where Do You Stop? begins here; What a Piece of Work I Am begins here; At Home with the Glynns begins here.
You can listen to “My Mother Takes a Tumble” and “Do Clams Bite?” complete and uninterrupted as audiobooks through YouTube.
You can ensure that you never miss a future issue by getting a free subscription. (You can help support the work by choosing a paid subscription instead.)
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of Little Follies, Herb ’n’ Lorna, Reservations Recommended, and Where Do You Stop? and What a Piece of Work I Am.
You’ll find overviews of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy (a pdf document), The Origin Story (here on substack), Between the Lines (a video, here on Substack), and at Encyclopedia.com.