The New Neighbor Read Online Free PDF

picking out books for me—perhaps she gets bored—and the first stack she presented me, two or three years ago, was full of such nonsense. I don’t need my murders made adorable. Death in a book is still only death in a book, but give me an author who doesn’t flinch. If a mystery doesn’t walk you up to the abyss before it rescues you, it’s a shallow form of comfort.
    At any rate Sue knows better now. When I arrived today she had ready a good solid stack of horrible deeds. “Miss Margaret!” she greeted me, beaming like she always does. “How are you today!” I did not make a mistake with the exclamation point; that is how she talks.
    “As well as could be expected,” I said, which is one of my standard answers. What should I say? I’m ninety. Fine would be a ridiculous lie.
    “I’ve got some good ones for you,” she said. She got up from her stool to get them, which gave me time to get to the desk and heave my returns onto it. In the past she’s come out from behind the desk and tried to take them from me, but when politeness didn’t work I snarled at her and now she doesn’t do it anymore.
    She plopped her books next to mine. This is one of the best moments of my week, seeing those two stacks side by side: something accomplished, something to anticipate. Perhaps it is the best moment. She lifted the top book, by Tana French, and displayed it as proudly as if she’d had a hand in its creation. “This just came in,” she said. “Hasn’t even made it to the shelf yet. I know you like her.”
    “I do,” I said. “Thank you.”
    She went about the business of returning and checking out, and as she did my mind drifted. She talks while she works, but she’s really talking to herself—saying my name as she types it in, and so forth—and so I don’t really listen. She used to tell me all the local gossip, but I never responded with more than a flat, “I see,” and eventually she stopped. She knows everything about everyone, Sue, and has little ability to discern what’s interesting. I wondered if she’d heard about my new neighbor. My eye fell on the computers they keep for public use—near the front, to my dismay, as when I go to a library what I want to see are books—and it struck me that I could look up Jennifer Young on the Internet. It’s a common name, though, I imagine. How would I know which Jennifer Young she was? What could I find that would really interest me? My detective novels would be terribly boring if all questions could be answered by an Internet search. It must be hard, these days, to imagine a mystery.
    I don’t have the Internet here in my home. If I did I’d probably look her up. Jennifer Young. We are curious creatures and can’t be expected not to satisfy that curiosity when the answers are so readily available. A child doesn’t really want to spoil the surprise of her Christmas presents, but if she knows where they’re hidden in the closet she’ll have no choice but to look. The world has forgotten that there is more pleasure in wondering than knowing. A quick answer—the year someone was born, the reason for hail—is such a dull satisfaction. Why do you even want to know? That’s the true mystery.
    At any rate I was thinking about Jennifer Young, and so when Sue spoke it seemed like telepathy. “Have you found anyone?” she asked.
    I was startled. “What?”
    “Weren’t you looking for someone?” She pushed the new stack in my direction. “To check on you now and then? To keep you company?”
    “No,” I said, with no small amount of indignation.
    “Are you sure? I could swear you said you were. Last week. You told me that.”
    “Sue, are you getting old?”
    She laughed. “Miss Margaret,” she said. “Every day.”
    “Perhaps you’ve been talking to my doctor.”
    “Oh, Dr. Bell doesn’t gossip. You know that.”
    “Do I?”
    “Miss Margaret, you are wicked. She didn’t say a thing. Well, if you didn’t tell me that then I must’ve