“Time to get up,” said Margot.
“Our Father loves his breakfast,” said Martha, “and he loves to have his women around him while he eats.”
“Okay,” I said.
They hopped out of bed. I wanted to look at them, which is to say that I longed to feast on the sight of them, but I knew that if I took even one glance, I would soon begin to stare, so I averted my eyes.
“Hey,” said Margot after a moment. “Peter!”
“What?” I said.
“You’re not looking,” she said. “Aren’t you interested?”
“Yes,” I said. “Very interested.”
“Well, then, look.”
She and Martha stood together and posed. They turned this way and that, in a sequence of displays that they must have practiced—practiced, I thought, perhaps, just for me. They were so alike that at times I seemed to see two sides of a single girl, simultaneously.
After a couple of minutes of this, Martha said, “Now get up and get dressed. We’ve got to get downstairs.”
So I got up, and they looked me over with undisguised interest. When I was dressed, I started for the door.
Margot grabbed me by the arm. “Hey!” she said. “Are you nuts?”
“Huh?”
“Were you going to open that door?”
“Well, yes.”
“Our Father would tear your head right off if he saw you come walking out of this room.”
“Oh,” I said.
I looked at the door, thinking how close I had come to opening it. I flapped my hands as if they’d been burned. So things were like that, I thought. I was disappointed. I can’t imagine what I’d been thinking. Maybe the stories told about the Glynns had interfered with what I would otherwise have considered wise or prudent behavior in a situation like this—if I had ever considered what might be wise or prudent behavior in a situation like this. Raised as I was on the common chatter, I must have supposed that Andy and Rosetta wouldn’t mind my spending the night entangled with their girls, but the girls themselves thought otherwise, and they ought to know. I began to experience something like the feeling that Rocky and Lulu and Lola must have had throughout L’Amour, La Guerre, La Poussière: there seemed to be a threatening presence in the house, all around me, potential danger everywhere. I listened for footsteps in the hall outside the door.
“Here’s the idea,” said Martha. “You go back out the window, down the ladder, walk around to the front door, and knock.”
“Our Father is expecting you,” said Margot.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yes, for breakfast,” said Martha.
“But he isn’t expecting you to walk out this door,” said Margot.
“Of course not,” I said. “Sure. Okay.”
“See you downstairs,” said Margot.
She showed me to the window.
I made my way down the ladder, and the girls pulled it up. I dropped from the wall to the roof of the shed, straightened my clothes, and walked around the corner of the house toward the front door. Along the way, I realized that I had no idea why Andy Glynn might be expecting me. For a moment, slipping back into the emotional context of L’Amour, La Guerre, La Poussière, I felt the wariness of a person on the run, the creeping suspicion that I was being set up. I knocked anyway. Andy himself came to the door.
“Peter Leroy!” he said, as if he’d never seen me before. “Come on in! Come on in!”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Did you have a good time last night?” he asked.
[to be continued]
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