The Elephant Vanishes Read Online Free

visible occupants. Not a sound, not a hint of life. No noticeable laundry, either.
    It’s the first time I’ve taken in the sights of the passage at leisure, so everything is new to my eyes. Propped up in a corner of one backyard is a lone, withered, brown Christmas tree. In another yard lies several childhoods’ worth of every plaything imaginable—a virtual scrap heap of tricycle parts, a ringtoss set, plastic samurai swords, rubber balls, a toy turtle, wooden trucks. One yard sports a basketball hoop, another a fine set of garden chairs and a rattan table. By the look of them, the chairs haven’t been sat on in months (maybe years), they’re so coveredwith dirt; the tabletop is rain-plastered with lavender magnolia petals.
    One house presents a clear view into its living room through large glass sliding doors. There I see a kidney-shaped sofa with matching lounge furniture, a sizable television, a cellarette topped with a tank of tropical fish and two trophies of some sort, and a decorator floor lamp. It all looks as unreal as a set for a TV sitcom.
    In another yard, there’s a massive doghouse penned in with wire screening. No dog inside that I can see, though. Just a wide-open hole. I also notice that the screening is stretched shapeless, bulging out as if someone or something had been leaning into it for months.
    The vacant house my wife told me about is only a little farther along, past the one with the doghouse. Right away, I can see it’s vacant. One look tells you that this is not your scant two-or three-months’ absence. The place is a fairly new two-story affair, yet the tight shutters look positively weather-beaten and the rusted railings around the upstairs windows seem about ready to fall off. The smallish yard hosts a stone figurine of a bird with wings outstretched atop a chest-high pedestal surrounded by a thicket of weeds, the taller stalks of goldenrod reaching clear to the bird’s feet. The bird—beats me what kind—finds this encroachment most distressing and flaps its wings to take flight at any second.
    Besides this stone figurine, the yard has little in the way of decoration. Two beat-up old vinyl chaises are parked neatly under the eaves, right next to an azalea blazing with ethereally crimson blossoms. Otherwise, weeds are about all that meets the eye.
    I lean against the chest-high chain link fence and make a brief survey of the yard. Just the sort of yard a cat would love, but hope as I might, nothing catty puts in an appearance. On the rooftop TV aerial, a pigeon perches, its monotone carrying everywhere. The shadow of the stone bird falls across the tangleof weeds, their blades cutting it into fragments of different shapes.
    I take a cigarette out of my pocket, light up, and smoke it, leaning against the fence the whole while. The pigeon doesn’t budge from the aerial as it goes on cooing nonstop.
    Cigarette finished and stamped out on the ground, I still don’t move for the longest time. Just how long, I don’t know. Half asleep, I stare dumbly at the shadow of the bird, hardly even thinking.
    Or maybe I am thinking, somewhere out of range of my conscious mind. Phenomenologically speaking, however, I’m simply staring at the shadow of the bird falling over stalks of grass.
    Gradually I become aware of something—a voice?—filtering into the bird’s shadow. Whose voice? Someone seems to be calling me.
    I turn around to look behind me, and there, in the yard opposite, stands a girl of maybe fifteen or sixteen. Petite, with short, straight hair, she’s wearing dark sunglasses with amber frames and a light-blue Adidas T-shirt with the sleeves snipped off at the shoulders. The slender arms protruding from the openings are exceedingly well tanned for only May. One hand in her shorts, the other on a low bamboo gate, she props herself up precariously.
    “Hot, huh?” the girl greets me.
    “Hot all right,” I echo.
    Here we go again, I think—again. All day long it’s going to be