Pets Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand, turned the pages so carefully that I imagined she had bought the magazine for someone else at home and wanted it to look untouched.
    I asked Armann what the title of the book was.
    â€œIt’s a really remarkable volume,” he said, but was too engrossed in turning the pages to answer my question. I hadn’t noticed what was on the cover but from the little diagrams—some kind of calculations with words instead of numbers—I guessed that it was of a scientific nature, no doubt some complicated, advanced grammatical text.
    Although I didn’t expect to have peace for long, I used the opportunity to replace my headphones and switched on Miles again. The fair-haired girl in the T-shirt was resting her bare elbow on the armrest, her head leaning to one side as she gazed along the aisle. She had her index finger on her cheek and let her fourth finger play with her lips as if she was deep in thought over what she saw. I couldn’t see if she was drinking anything but imagined she had white wine like the woman beside Armann. I thought it was very likely that she was traveling alone; I hadn’t seen her talk to anyone except the flight attendant and the person on the other side of the aisle.
    I looked at her for quite a while and began to wonder how long I could carry on gazing without her being aware of me. No doubt, she knew already. I think I always notice when someone is watching me; it doesn’t matter whether the person is sitting beside me or is further away.
    All at once I felt Armann nudge me gently with his elbow. At the same moment the fair-haired girl turned round, as if she had heard something further back in the plane. Our eyes met for a moment. She had clearly begun to smell the food, which I also smelled now as the trolley came nearer, but, though our gazes had met, it was impossible to say if she had noticed me.
    I took off the headphones to attend to Armann.
    â€œSee here,” he said. He held up the book and pointed with a thick, short finger at the upper right hand page.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œLook.”
    â€œWhat is it?” I asked, my mind still on the fair-haired girl.
    Armann tapped the tape player on my table and then pointed at the text in the book. He read out:
    â€œSince the Sony Walkman was introduced, no one has been sure whether two of them should be Walkmen or Walkmans .” He looked at me and asked if I had ever considered it.
    I shook my head.
    Then he carried on: “(The nonsexist alternative), that’s in brackets here,” he added, “(The nonsexist alternative Walkpersons would leave us on the hook, because we would be faced with a choice between Walkpersons and Walkpeople ).” He stopped reading out loud but stared at the page as if he was still reading silently. He nodded, looked at me and then at the educated woman, no doubt hoping that she was listening too.
    â€œThat’s a question,” he said.
    â€œYes, it is a question,” I agreed and took the tape out of my Walkman, not to turn it round but just to keep my hands occupied.
    Armann took a good sip of red wine before he continued, and as I picked up my glass to keep him company the woman at the window did exactly the same, although she didn’t seem to be aware that we were drinking simultaneously.
    â€œThat’s the crux of the matter,” Armann said. “They produce one instrument, for example this one here,” he tapped my player again, “but as soon as they use technology to produce a second player and then number three and so on, they no longer know what to call their invention in the plural. They are faced with a grammatical problem that no instrument has been invented to solve. Of course it is the same dilemma that parents have to cope with when they give birth to twins or triplets. Really they should all have the same name, that is if they are identical and the same sex; they come one after another from the same producer, they are as