Zig Zag Read Online Free PDF Page B

destiny. Why ruin everything by rushing into some relationship
with a woman who could never make him happy? At thirty-four, he still
felt young and hadn't given up hope. Life was a waiting game: an
aralia didn't bloom in two minutes, and nor did love. One of these
days, he'd meet someone, or someone he knew would give him a call...
    "And
then, bam! I'll blossom like C," he said aloud, and laughed.
Just then the phone rang.
    As
he walked over to a bookcase in his small dining room to answer it,
he speculated on who it could be. Given the hour, it was probably his
brother, who had been pestering him for a few months to go over the
accounts at the private surgical clinic he ran. "You're the math
genius; how hard would it be to give me a hand?" Luis Lopera—or
Luis'll Opera, as he jokingly pronounced it (operar was
Spanish for "operate," so "Louis'll Operate" had
been a long-standing pun among the family surgeons)—didn't
trust computers and wanted Victor to go through the files himself to
make sure all was in order. Victor had grown tired of telling him
that mathematicians specialized, just like surgeons. A brain surgeon
couldn't, just like that, perform heart transplants. Likewise, he
worked on elementary particles, not on tallying up a grocery bill. If
anything, his brother needed his stubborn brain operated on.
    He
fished the receiver out from a sea of framed photos (nieces and
nephews, sister, parents, Teilhard de Chardin, the monk and scientist
Georges Lemaitre, Einstein). Stifling a yawn, he said, "Hello?"
    "Victor?
It's Elisa."
    His
sense of tedium shattered like a pane of glass. It was like suddenly
waking from a dream.
    "Hi."
Victor's mind was racing. "How're you feeling?"
    "Better,
thanks... At first I thought it was allergies, but now I'm pretty
sure it's just a cold..."
    "Good!
Glad to hear it. Did you see the report?"
    "What
report?"
    "On
the news ... about Marini's death."
    "Oh,
yeah. Poor guy." That was the extent of the sorrow she
expressed.
    "You
were in Zurich with him, weren't you?" Victor began. But Elisa
spoke over him, rushing to get to the heart of the matter.
    "Yeah.
Listen, Victor. I was calling..." She stopped, then she giggled.
"You're going to think this is idiotic, I'm sure ... But it's
really important to me. OK?"
    "OK."
    He
frowned and tensed up. Elisa's voice was carefree and bubbly. And
that was exactly what worried him, because he thought he knew her
pretty well, and carefree and bubbly were two things she was not.
    "Well,
it's my neighbor, you see... She's got a teenage son, a really nice
kid... Anyway, she just found out that he really loves those word
puzzles ... you know, those rebuses you do from the paper? Turns out
he's got all kinds of books and magazines. So, I told her I'm friends
with the number one rebus puzzler. And it turns out that he's been
trying to solve one, and he can't do it. He's really worked up about
it, and his mother's worried that he'll give up on this wholesome
hobby and take up something more questionable instead. And when she
told me about the specific puzzle in question, I realized that I knew
that one because you'd told me about it, but I can't remember the
answer. So I thought, 'I need help. And
Victor's the only one who can help
me. Do
you understand?"
    "Of
course. Which one is it?" Victor had picked up on Elisa's
strange intonation and felt shivers descend, like unexpected visitors
from another planet. Was he imagining it, or was she trying to tell
him something else, something he could only pick up on by reading
between the lines?
    "It's
the one with the steak and the atom, remember?" She burst out
laughing. "You do remember that one, don't you?"
    "Sure,
that one was..."
    "Listen,"
she cut him off. "I don't need
you to
tell me the answer. Just do what it says, tonight. It's
urgent. Do it as soon as you possibly can. I'm relying on you."
Suddenly she cackled again. "The kid's mother is relying on you,
too. Thanks, Victor. Bye."
    There
was a click, and then the