American Gods (11 page)

The old woman steadied the bowl of peas upon her lap. “If you're who I think you are,” she said, “then I've no quarrel with you.” In the house, she could hear Phyllida grumbling to the housekeeper.

“Nor I with you,” said the red-haired fellow, a little sadly, “although it was you that brought me here, you and a few like you, into this land with no time for magic and no place for piskies and such folk.”

“You've done me many a good turn,” she said.

“Good and ill,” said the squinting stranger. “We're like the wind. We blows both ways.”

Essie nodded.

“Will you take my hand, Essie Tregowan?” And he reached out a hand to her. Freckled it was, and although Essie's eyesight was going she could see each orange hair on the back of his hand, glowing golden in the afternoon sunlight. She bit her lip. Then, hesitantly, she placed her blue-knotted hand in his.

She was still warm when they found her, although the life had fled her body and only half the peas were shelled.

Only Zorya Utrennyaya was awake to say goodbye to them, that Saturday morning. She took Wednesday's forty-five dollars and insisted on writing him out a receipt for it in wide, looping handwriting, on the back of an expired soft-drink coupon. She looked quite doll-like in the morning light, with her old face carefully made up and her golden hair piled high upon her head.

Wednesday kissed her hand. “Thank you for your hospitality, dear lady,” he said. “You and your lovely sisters remain as radiant as the sky itself.”

“You are a bad old man,” she told him, and shook a finger at him. Then she hugged him. “Keep safe,” she told him. “I would not like to hear that you were gone for good.”

“It would distress me equally, my dear.”

She shook hands with Shadow. “Zorya Polunochnaya thinks very highly of you,” she said. “I also.”

“Thank you,” said Shadow. “Thanks for the dinner.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You liked? You must come again.”

Wednesday and Shadow walked down the stairs. Shadow put his hands in his jacket pocket. The silver dollar was cold in his hand. It was bigger and heavier than any coins he'd used so far. He classic-palmed it, let his hand hang by his side naturally, then straightened his hand as the coin slipped down to a front-palm position. It felt natural there, held between his forefinger and his little finger by the slightest of pressure.

“Smoothly done,” said Wednesday.

“I'm just learning,” said Shadow. “I can do a lot of the technical stuff. The hardest part is making people look at the wrong hand.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes,” said Shadow. “It's called misdirection.” He slipped his middle fingers under the coin, pushing it into a back palm, and fumbled his grip on it, ever so slightly. The coin dropped from his hand to the stairwell with a clatter and bounced down half a flight of stairs. Wednesday reached down and picked it up.

“You cannot afford to be careless with people's gifts,” said Wednesday. “Something like this, you need to hang onto it. Don't go throwing it about.” He examined the coin, looking first at the eagle side, then at the face of Liberty on the obverse. “Ah, Lady Liberty. Beautiful, is she not?” He tossed the coin to Shadow, who picked it from the air, did a slide vanish—seeming to drop it into his left hand while actually keeping it in his right—and then appeared to pocket it with his left hand. The coin sat in the palm of his right hand, in plain view. It felt comforting there.

“Lady Liberty,” said Wednesday. “Like so many of the gods that Americans hold dear, a foreigner. In this case, a Frenchwoman, although, in deference to American sensibilities, the French covered up her magnificent bosom on that statue they presented to New York. Liberty,” he continued, wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom flight of steps, toeing it to the side of the stairs with distaste—“Someone could slip on that. Break his neck” he muttered, interrupting himself. “Like a banana peel, only with bad taste and irony thrown in.” He pushed open the door, and the sunlight hit them. “Liberty,” boomed Wednesday, as they walked to the car, “is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.”

“Yeah?” said Shadow.

“Quoting,” said Wednesday. “Quoting someone French. That's who they have a statue to, in their New York harbor: a bitch who liked to be fucked on the refuse from the tumbril. Hold your torch as high as you want to, m'dear, there's still rats in your dress and cold jism dripping down your leg.” He unlocked the car, and pointed Shadow to the passenger seat.

“I think she's beautiful,” said Shadow, holding the coin up close. Liberty's silver face reminded him a little of Zorya Polunochnaya.

“That,” said Wednesday, driving off, “is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. Worm food. At night, you're rubbing yourself against worm food. No offense meant.”

Shadow had never seen Wednesday quite so expansive. His new boss, he decided, went through phases of extroversion followed by periods of intense quiet. “So you aren't American?” asked Shadow.

“Nobody's American,” said Wednesday. “Not originally. That's my point.” He checked his watch. “We still have several hours to kill before the banks close. Good job last night with Czernobog, by the way. I would have closed him on coming eventually, but you enlisted him more wholeheartedly than I could ever have.”

“Only because he gets to kill me afterward.”

“Not necessarily. As you yourself so wisely pointed out, he's old, and the killing stroke might merely leave you, well, paralyzed for life, say. A hopeless invalid. So you have much to look forward to, should Mister Czernobog survive the coming difficulties.”

“And there is some question about this?” said Shadow, echoing Wednesday's manner, then hating himself for it.

“Fuck yes,” said Wednesday. He pulled up in the parking lot of a bank. “This,” he said, “is the bank I shall be robbing. They don't close for another few hours. Let's go in and say hello.”

He gestured to Shadow. Reluctantly, Shadow got out of the car. If the old man was going to do something stupid, Shadow could see no reason why his face should be on the camera. But curiosity pulled him and he walked into the bank. He looked down at the floor, rubbed his nose with his hand, doing his best to keep his face hidden.

“Deposit forms, ma'am?” said Wednesday to the lone teller.

“Over there.”

“Very good. And if I were to need to make a night deposit . . . ?”

“Same forms.” She smiled at him. “You know where the night deposit slot is, hon? Left out the main door, it's on the wall.”

“My thanks.”

Wednesday picked up several deposit forms. He grinned a goodbye at the teller, and he and Shadow walked out.

Wednesday stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, scratching his beard meditatively. Then he walked over to the ATM machine and to the night safe, set in the side of the wall, and inspected them. He led Shadow across the road to the supermarket, where he bought a chocolate fudge Popsicle for himself and a cup of hot chocolate for Shadow. There was a pay phone set in the wall of the entryway, below a notice board with rooms to rent and puppies and kittens in need of good homes. Wednesday wrote down the telephone number of the pay phone. They crossed the road once more. “What we need,” said Wednesday, suddenly, “is snow. A good, driving, irritating snow. Think ‘snow' for me, will you?”

“Huh?”

“Concentrate on making those clouds—the ones over there, in the west—making them bigger and darker. Think gray skies and driving winds coming down from the arctic. Think snow.”

“I don't think it will do any good.”

“Nonsense. If nothing else, it will keep your mind occupied,” said Wednesday, unlocking the car. “Kinko's next. Hurry up.”

Snow,
thought Shadow, in the passenger seat, sipping his hot chocolate.
Huge, dizzying clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairy-tale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful . . .

Wednesday was talking to him.

“I'm sorry?” said Shadow.

“I said we're here,” said Wednesday. “You were somewhere else.”

“I was thinking about snow,” said Shadow.

In Kinko's, Wednesday set about photocopying the deposit slips from the bank. He had the clerk instant-print him two sets of ten business cards. Shadow's head had begun to ache, and there was an uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades; he wondered if he had slept wrong, if the headache was an awkward legacy of the night before's sofa.

Wednesday sat at the computer terminal, composing a letter, and, with the clerk's help, making several large-sized signs.

Snow,
thought Shadow.
High in the atmosphere, perfect, tiny crystals that form about a minute piece of dust, each a lacelike work of fractal art. And the snow crystals clump together into flakes as they fall, covering Chicago in their white plenty, inch upon inch . . .

“Here,” said Wednesday. He handed Shadow a cup of Kinko's coffee, a half-dissolved lump of nondairy creamer powder floating on the top. “I think that's enough, don't you?”

“Enough what?”

“Enough snow. Don't want to immobilize the city, do we?”

The sky was a uniform battleship gray. Snow was coming. Yes.

“I didn't really do that?” said Shadow. “I mean, I didn't. Did I?”

“Drink the coffee,” said Wednesday. “It's foul stuff, but it will ease the headache.” Then he said, “Good work.”

Wednesday paid the Kinko's clerk, and he carried his signs and letters and cards outside. He opened the trunk of his car, put the papers in a large black metal case of the kind carried by payroll guards, and closed the trunk. He passed Shadow a business card.

“Who,” said Shadow, “is A. Haddock, Director of Security, A1 Security Services?”

“You are.”

“A. Haddock?”

“Yes.”

“What does the A. stand for?”

“Alfredo? Alphonse? Augustine? Ambrose? Your call entirely.”

“Oh. I see.”

“I'm James O'Gorman,” said Wednesday. “Jimmy to my friends. See? I've got a card too.”

They got back in the car. Wednesday said, “If you can think ‘A. Haddock' as well as you thought ‘snow,' we should have plenty of lovely money with which to wine and dine my friends of tonight.”

“I'm not going back to prison.”

“You won't be.”

“I thought we had agreed that I wouldn't be doing anything illegal.”

“You aren't. Possibly aiding and abetting, a little conspiracy to commit, followed of course by receiving stolen money, but, trust me, you'll come out of this smelling like a rose.”

“Is that before or after your elderly Slavic Charles Atlas crushes my skull with one blow?”

“His eyesight's going,” said Wednesday. “He'll probably miss you entirely. Now, we still have a little time to kill—the bank closes at midday on Saturdays, after all. Would you like lunch?”

“Yes,” said Shadow. “I'm starving.”

“I know just the place,” said Wednesday. He hummed as he drove, some cheerful song that Shadow could not identify. Snowflakes began to fall, just as Shadow had imagined them, and he felt strangely proud. He knew, rationally, that he had nothing to do with the snow, just as he knew the silver dollar he carried in his pocket was not and never had been the moon. But still . . .

They stopped outside a large shedlike building. A sign said that the all-U-can-eat lunch buffet was $4.99. “I love this place,” said Wednesday.

“Good food?” asked Shadow.

“Not particularly,” said Wednesday. “But the ambience is unmissable.”

The ambience that Wednesday loved, it turned out, once lunch had been eaten—Shadow had the fried chicken, and enjoyed it—was the business that took up the rear of the shed: it was, the hanging flag across the center of the room announced, a Bankrupt and Liquidated Stock Clearance Depot.

Wednesday went out to the car and reappeared with a small suitcase, which he took into the men's room. Shadow figured he'd learn soon enough what Wednesday was up to, whether he wanted to or not, and so he prowled the liquidation aisles, staring at the things for sale: Boxes of coffee “for use in airline filters only,” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys and Xena: Warrior Princess harem dolls, teddy bears that played patriotic tunes on the xylophone when plugged in, cans of processed meat, galoshes and sundry overshoes, marshmallows, Bill Clinton presidential wristwatches, artificial miniature Christmas trees, salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of animals, body parts, fruit, and nuns, and, Shadow's favorite, a “just add real carrot” snowman kit with plastic coal eyes, a corncob pipe, and a plastic hat.

Shadow thought about how one made the moon seem to come out of the sky and become a silver dollar, and what made a woman get out of her grave and walk across town to talk to you.

“Isn't it a wonderful place?” asked Wednesday when he came out of the men's room. His hands were still wet, and he was drying them off on a handkerchief. “They're out of paper towels in there,” he said. He had changed his clothes. He was now wearing a dark blue jacket, with matching trousers, a blue knit tie, a thick blue sweater, a white shirt, and black shoes. He looked like a security guard, and Shadow said so.

“What can I possibly say to that, young man,” said Wednesday, picking up a box of floating plastic aquarium fish (
“They'll never fade—and you'll never have to feed them!!”
), “other than to congratulate you on your perspicacity. How about Arthur Haddock? Arthur's a good name.”

“Too mundane.”

“Well, you'll think of something. There. Let us return to town. We should be in perfect time for our bank robbery, and then I shall have a little spending money.”

“Most people,” said Shadow, “would simply take it from the ATM.”

“Which is, oddly enough, more or less exactly what I was planning to do.”

Wednesday parked the car in the supermarket lot across the street from the bank. From the trunk of the car Wednesday brought out the metal case, a clipboard, and a pair of handcuffs. He handcuffed the case to his left wrist. The snow continued to fall. Then he put a peaked blue cap on, and Velcroed a patch to the breast pocket of his jacket.
A
1
SECURITY
was written on the cap and the patch. He put the deposit slips on his clipboard. Then he slouched. He looked like a retired beat cop, and appeared somehow to have gained himself a paunch.