The Elephant Vanishes Read Online Free Page A

females striking up conversations with me, is it?
    “Say, you got a cigarette?” the girl asks.
    I pull a pack of Hope regulars from my pocket and offer it to her. She withdraws her hand from her shorts, extracts a cigarette, and examines it a second before putting it to her mouth. Her mouth is small, with the slightest hint of a curl to her upper lip. I strike a match and give her a light. She leans forward, revealing an ear: a freshly formed, soap-smooth, pretty ear, its delicate outline glistening with a tracery of fine hairs.
    She parts her lips in the center with an accomplished air and lets out a satisfied puff of smoke, then looks up at me as if she’s suddenly remembered something. I see my face split into two reflections in her sunglasses. The lenses are so hideously dark, and even mirror-coated, that there’s no way to make out her eyes.
    “You from the neighborhood?” the girl asks.
    “Yeah,” I reply, and am about to point toward the house, only I can’t tell if it’s really the right direction or not. What with all these odd turns getting here. So—what’s the difference, anyway?—I simply point any which way.
    “What you been up to over there so long?”
    “I’m looking for a cat. It’s been missing three or four days now,” I explain, wiping a sweaty palm on my slacks. “Someone said they saw the cat around here.”
    “What kind of cat?”
    “A big tom. Brown stripes, a slight kink at the end of its tail.”
    “Name?”
    “Name …?”
    “The cat’s. It has a name, no?” she says, peering into my eyes from behind her sunglasses—at least, I guess she is.
    “Noboru,” I reply. “Noboru Watanabe.”
    “Fancy name for a cat.”
    “It’s my brother-in-law’s name. My wife’s little joke. Says it somehow reminds her of him.”
    “Like how?”
    “The way it moves. Its walk, the sleepy look in its eyes. Little things.”
    Only then does the girl smile. And as she lets down her façade, I can see she’s much more of a child than I thought on first impression. The quirky curl of her upper lip shoots out at a strange angle.
    Caress
, I can swear I hear someone say. The voice of that telephone woman. Not the girl’s voice. I wipe the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand.
    “A brown-striped cat with a kink in the end of its tail, huh?” the girl reconfirms. “Wearing a collar?”
    “A black flea collar.”
    The girl gives it a cool ten-, fifteen-second think, hand still resting on the gate. Whereupon she flicks the stub of her cigarette to the ground by my feet.
    “Stamp that out for me? I got bare feet.”
    I conscientiously grind it out under the sole of my tennis shoe.
    “That cat, I think I just may have seen it,” she phrases guardedly. “I didn’t get as far as noticing the tip of its tail, but yes, there was a brown tom. Big, probably wearing a collar.”
    “When did you see it?”
    “Yeah, when was that? I’m sure I must’ve seen it lots of times. I’m out here in the yard nearly every day sunbathing, so one day just blends into the rest. But anyway, it’d have to be within the last three or four days. The yard’s a cat shortcut, all kinds of cats scooting through all the time. They come out of the Suzukis’ hedge there, cut across our yard, and head into the Miyawakis’ yard.”
    So saying, she points over at the vacant house. Same as ever, there’s the stone bird with outspread wings, goldenrod basking in the spring rays, pigeon cooing away on the TV aerial.
    “Thanks for the tip,” I tell her.
    “Hey, I’ve got it, why not come into the yard here and wait? All the cats pass this way anyhow. And besides, if you keep snooping around over there, somebody’s going to mistake you for a burglar and call the cops. Wouldn’t be the first time.”
    “But I can’t just hang around waiting for a cat in somebody else’s yard.”
    “Sure you can, like, it’s no big deal. Nobody’s home and it’s dead boring without someone to talk to. Why don’t we