The Elephant Vanishes Read Online Free Page B

just get some sun, the two of us, until the cat shows up? I’ve got sharp eyes, I’d be a real help.”
    I look at my watch. Two thirty-six. All I’ve got left to do today is take in the laundry and fix dinner.
    “Well, okay, I’ll stay until three o’clock,” I say, still not really grasping the situation.
    I open the gate and step in, following the girl across the grass, and only then do I notice that she’s dragging her left leg slightly. Her tiny shoulders sway with the periodic rhythm of a crank grinding mechanically to the left. She stops a few steps ahead of me and signals for me to walk alongside her.
    “Had an accident last month,” the girl says simply. “Was riding on the back of someone’s bike and got thrown off. No luck.”
    Two canvas deck chairs are set out in the middle of the grass. A big blue towel is draped over the back of one chair, and the other is occupied by a red Marlboro box, an ashtray, and a lighter tossed together with a large radio-cassette player and some magazines. The volume is on low, but some unidentifiable hard-rock group is playing.
    She removes the clutter to the grass and asks me to sit down, switching off the music. No sooner am I seated than I get a clear view of the passage and the vacant house beyond. I can even see the white stone bird figurine and the goldenrod and the chain link fence. I bet she’s been watching me from here the whole time.
    The yard is large and unpretentious. The grass sweeps down a gentle slope, graced here and there with plants. To the left of the deck chairs is a sizable concrete pond, which obviously hasn’t seen much use of late. Drained of water, it presents a greenish, discolored bottom to the sun, like some overturned aquatic creature. The elegant beveled façade of an old Western-style house, neither particularly large nor all that luxurious, poses behind a stand of trees to the rear. Only the yard is of any scale or shows any real upkeep.
    “Once, I used to part-time for a lawn-mowing service,” I say.
    “Oh yeah?” says the girl without much interest.
    “Must be hard work maintaining a yard this big,” I comment, looking around me.
    “Don’t you have a yard?”
    “Just a little yard. Two, three hydrangeas, that’s about the size of it,” I say. “You alone here all the time?”
    “Yeah, you said it. Daytime, I’m always alone. Mornings and evenings, a maid comes around, though otherwise I’m alone. Say, how about a cold drink? There’s even beer.”
    “No, I’m fine.”
    “Really? Like, it’s no big deal.”
    “I’m not thirsty,” I say. “Don’t you go to school?”
    “Don’t you go to work?”
    “No work to go to,” I admit.
    “Unemployed?”
    “Kind of. I quit.”
    “What sort of work were you doing?”
    “Lawyer’s gofer,” I equivocate, taking a slow, deep breath to cut the talk. “Collecting papers from city-hall and government offices, filing materials, checking case precedents, taking care of court procedures, busy work like that.”
    “But you quit?”
    “Correct.”
    “Your wife work?”
    “She does,” I say.
    I take out a cigarette and put it to my mouth, strike a match, and light up. The wind-up bird screeches from a nearby tree. A good twelve or thirteen turns of the watch spring, then it flits off to another tree.
    “Cats are always going past there,” the girl remarks apropos of nothing, pointing over at the edge of the grass in front. “See that incinerator behind the Suzukis’ hedge? Well, they come out from right next to it, run all the way across, duck under the gate, and make for the yard over there. Always the same route. Say, you know Mr. Suzuki? College professor, on TV half the time?”
    “Mr. Suzuki?”
    She goes on in some detail, but it turns out that I don’t know our Mr. Suzuki.
    “I hardly ever watch TV,” I say.
    “Horrible family,” the girl sneers. “Stuck-up, the whole lot of them. TV people are all a bunch of phonies.”
    “Oh?”
    The girl picks up