Read Online Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll - Free Book Online Page B

kind of tree and lights she would set up in their living room year after year. Edmonds was indifferent to the holidays but his sentimental Italian wife loved everything about them. A contrail and a Christmas tree in the sky at the same time? Suddenly he felt like she was very close and talking loudly to him, saying hello there, Pulcino—remember these things?
    The little girl appeared an hour after he’d seen the Christmas tree on the balcony. Edmonds was having breakfast at the diner five doors down from Kaspar Benn’s store. He ate breakfast there every day and always ordered the same thing: fried eggs, bacon, a plain donut, and hash brown potatoes. Two cups of coffee and the check, please.
    While chewing a piece of bacon, he saw the girl enter the place holding a small plastic Christmas tree in her left hand. She walked to his booth and without asking permission sat down across from him. She put the tree on the red Formica table.
    Neither of them spoke. Edmonds’s eyes drifted between the shabby little tree, the room, and the girl while waiting for her to say something. She was nothing special to look at. She was pie-faced, and her expressionless eyes appeared to be green. Her lips were thin and pale. Was she smiling? He couldn’t really tell. Her ears stuck out from her head a bit. She looked seven or eight years old. She wore a brown parka half opened and a red sweater beneath it that matched the color of the table.
    “This is for you.” She slid the little tree toward him. The branches and tiny ornaments shivered as it moved.
    “Thanks. Who are you?”
    “You can call me Vedran if you want.”
    Edmonds put down the piece of bacon he was about to eat and wiped his lips with a paper napkin he pulled from a silver dispenser on the table. “Did Ken send you?”
    “Nope.”
    “I don’t believe you. I think he did.” Lifting his gaze he scanned the diner again, sure he’d see Ken Alford somewhere nearby just waiting to catch his eye. But Ken wasn’t there. “Where is he?”
    “Who?”
    “Ken Alford.”
    “I don’t know. Can I have a piece of your bacon?”
    Edmonds slid his plate across the table to her. Right away she began gobbling up what was left.
    “How do you know about Vedran?”
    Having just swallowed, the girl said, “Lola told me.”
    “ Lola told you?”
    “Yes.” She bit off another piece of bacon while looking him straight in the eye.
    “When did she tell you this?”
    “Today. Before I came here.”
    “ Today ?” Edmonds slid both hands up and down his thighs and took a long deep breath. “That’s not funny. Whoever told you to say that , it’s not funny at all.”
    “I don’t think it’s funny either. But you asked the question and I answered it.”
    “You talked to Lola today? My wife, Lola?”
    “Yes.”
    “Lola’s dead.”
    “Yes, she is.”
    This child with her plastic Christmas tree, eating his breakfast, saying she’d spoken to his dead wife.
    “Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?” He spoke harshly, really irritated now, despite the fact he was talking to a child.
    “Do you want to know about the amber elephant? The story you keep trying to remember?”
    How could she know?
    “You went to Krakow to meet up with old Marine friends who were stationed with you at the embassy in Warsaw. After you visited the Wawel Castle, you were walking back to your hotel on Kanonicza Street and saw the store that sold nice amber things. You went in and couldn’t decide between a necklace and the elephant. But you didn’t want to spend much money so you bought her the elephant.
    “My name’s not really Vedran—it’s Josephine. I only said Vedran to make you pay attention to me.”
    Josephine was the name Edmonds and his wife had chosen if they ever had a girl: Josephine for a girl, Nevan for a boy. Lola found the name “Nevan.” Edmonds had never heard it before. It meant “little holy one” in Gaelic. It was the sort of thing Lola loved—strange,