American Gods (40 page)

He said, “You look divine.”

“How the hell else should I look?” she demanded, sweetly. “Anyway,
you’re a liar. New Orleans was such a mistake—I put on, what, thirty pounds
there? I swear. I knew I had to leave when I started to waddle. The tops of my
thighs rub together when I walk now, can you believe that?” This last was
addressed to Shadow. He had no idea what to say in reply, and felt a hot flush
suffuse his face. The woman laughed delightedly. “He’s bbishingl Wednesday, my
sweet, you brought me a blusher. Hdfy perfectly wonderful of you. What’s he
called?”

‘This is Shadow,” said Wednesday. He seemed to be enjoying
Shadow’s discomfort. “Shadow, say hello to Easter.”

Shadow said something that might have been Hello, and the
woman smiled at him again. He felt like he was caught in headlights—the blinding
kind that poachers use to freeze deer before they shoot them. He could smell
her perfume from where he was standing, an intoxicating mixture of jasmine and
honeysuckle, of sweet milk and female skin.

“So, how’s tricks?” asked Wednesday.

The woman—Easter—laughed a deep and throaty laugh,
full-bodied and joyous. How could you not like someone who laughed like that? “Everything’s
fine,” she said. “How about you, you old wolf?”

“I was hoping to enlist your assistance.”

“Wasting your time.”

“At least hear me out before dismissing me.”

“No point. Don’t even bother.”

She looked at Shadow. “Please, sit down here and help
yourself to some of this food. Here, take a plate and pile it high. It’s all
good. Eggs, roast chicken, chicken curry, chicken salad, and over here is
lapin—rabbit, actually, but cold rabbit is a delight, and in that bowl over
there is the jugged hare—well, why don’t I just fill a plate for you?” And she
did, taking a plastic plate, piling it high with food, and passing it to him.
Then she looked at Wednesday. “Are you eating?” she asked.

“I am at your disposal, my dear,” said Wednesday.

“You,” she told him, “are so full of shit it’s a wonder your
eyes don’t turn brown.” She passed him an empty plate. “Help yourself,” she
said.

The afternoon sun at her back burned her hair into a
platinum aura. “Shadow,” she said, chewing a chicken leg with gusto. “That’s a
sweet name. Why do they call you Shadow?”

Shadow licked his lips to moisten them. “When I was a kid,”
he said. “We lived, my mother and I, we were, I mean, she was, well, like a
secretary, at a bunch of U.S. embassies, we went from city to city all over
northern Europe. Then she got sick and had to take early retirement and we came
back to the States. I never knew what to say to the other kids, so I’d just
find adults and follow them around, not saying anything. I just needed the
company, I guess. I don’t know. I was a small kid.”

“You grew,” she said.

“Yes,” said Shadow. “I grew.”

She turned back to Wednesday, who was spooning down a bowl
of what looked like cold gumbo. “Is this the boy who’s got everybody so upset?”

“You heard?”

“I keep my ears pricked up,” she said. Then to Shadow,

“You keep out of their way. There are too many secret
societies out there, and they have no loyalties and no love. Commercial, independent,
government, they’re all in the same boat. They range from the barely competent
to the deeply dangerous. Hey, old wolf, I heard a joke you’d like the other
day. How do you know the CIA wasn’t involved in the Kennedy assassination?”

“I’ve heard it,” said Wednesday.

“Pity.” She turned her attention back to Shadow. “But the
spook show, the ones you met, they’re something else. They exist because
everyone knows they must exist.” She drained a paper cup of something that
looked like white wine, and then she got to her feet. “Shadow’s a good name,”
she said. “I want a mochaccino. Come on.”

She began to walk away. “What about the food?” asked
Wednesday. “You can’t just leave it here.”

She smiled at him, and pointed to the girl sitting by the
dog, and then extended her arms to take in the Haight and the World. “Let it
feed them,” she said, and she walked, with Wednesday and Shadow trailing behind
best

“Remember,” she said to Wednesday, as they walked, “I’m
rich. I’m doing just peachy. Why should I help you?”

“You’re one of us,” he said. “You’re as forgotten and as
unloved and unremembered as any of us. It’s pretty clear whose side you should
be on.”

They reached a sidewalk coffeehouse, went inside, sat down.
There was only one waitress, who wore her eyebrow ring as a mark of caste, and
a woman making coffee behind the counter. The waitress advanced upon them,
smiling automatically, sat them down, took their orders.

Easter put her slim hand on the back of Wednesday’s square
gray hand. “I’m telling you,” she said, “I’m doing fine. On my festival days
they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent
rebirth and copulation. They wear flowers in their bonnets and they give each
other flowers. They do it in my name. More and more of them every year. In my
name, old wolf.”

“And you wax fat and affluent on their worship and their
love?” he said, dryly.

“Don’t be an asshole.” Suddenly she sounded very tired. She
sipped her mochaccino.

“Serious question, m’dear. Certainly I would agree that millions
upon millions of them give each other tokens in your name, and that they still
practice all the rites of your festival, even down to hunting for hidden eggs.
But how many of them know who you are? Eh? Excuse me, miss?” This to their waitress.

She said, “You need another espresso?”

“No, my dear. I was just wondering if you could solve a
little argument we were having over here. My friend and I were disagreeing over
what the word ‘Easter’ means. Would you happen to know?”

The girl stared at him as if green toads had begun to push
their way between his lips. Then she said, “I don’t know about any of that
Christian stuff. I’m a pagan.”

The woman behind the counter said, “I think it’s like Latin
or something for ‘Christ has risen,’ maybe.”

“Really?” said Wednesday.

“Yeah, sure,” said the woman. “Easter. Just like the sun
rises in the east, you know.”

“The risen son. Of course—a most logical supposition.” The
woman smiled and returned to her coffee grinder. Wednesday looked up at their
waitress. “I think I shall have another espresso, if you do not mind. And tell
me, as a pagan, who do you worship?”

“Worship?”

“That’s right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open
field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To
whom do you pray at dawn and at dusk?”

Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before
she said, ‘The female principle. It’s an empowerment thing. You know?”

“Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a
name?”

“She’s the goddess within us all,” said the girl with the eyebrow
ring, color rising to her cheek. “She doesn’t need a name.”

“Ah,” said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, “so do you
have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full
moon while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into
the seafoam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves
lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?”

“You’re making fun of me,” she said. “We don’t do any of
that stuff you were saying.” She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was
counting to ten. “Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, ma’am?”
Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had
entered.

They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another
customer.

“There,” said Wednesday, “is one who ‘does not have the
faith and will not have the fun,’ Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out
onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many
passjrsby know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the
Dawn? Let’s see—I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that
knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them,
toes; for every twenty who don’t know, you spend a night making love to me. And
the odds are certainly in your favor here—this is San Francisco, after all.
There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets.”

Her green eyes looked at Wednesday. They were, Shadow decided,
the exact same color as a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. She
said nothing.

“We could try it,” continued Wednesday. “But I would end up
with ten fingers, ten toes, and five nights in your bed. So don’t tell me they
worship you and keep your festival day. They mouth your name, but it has no
meaning to them. Nothing at all.”

Tears stood out in her eyes. “I know that,” she said,
quietly. “I’m not a fool.”

“No,” said Wednesday. “You’re not.”

He’s pushed her too far, thought Shadow.

Wednesday looked down, ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he said. Shadow
could hear the real sincerity in his voice. “We need you. We need your energy.
We need your power. Will you fight beside us when the storm comes?”

She hesitated. She had a chain of blue forget-me-nots
tattooed around her left wrist.

“Yes,” she said, after a while. “I guess I will.”

/ guess it’s true what they say, thought Shadow. If you can
fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. Then he felt guilty for thinking it.

Wednesday kissed his finger, touched it to Easter’s cheek.
He called their waitress over and paid for their coffees, counting out the
money carefully, folding it over with the check and presenting it to her.

As she walked away, Shadow said, “Ma’am? Excuse me? I think
you dropped this.” He picked up a ten-dollar bill from the floor.

“No,” she said, looking at the wrapped bills in her hand.

“I saw it fall, ma’am,” said Shadow, politely. “You should
count them.”

She counted the money in her hand, looked puzzled, and said,
“Jesus. You’re right. I’m sorry.” She took the ten-dollar bill from Shadow, and
walked away.

Easter walked out onto the sidewalk with them. The light was
just starting to fade. She nodded to Wednesday, then she touched Shadow’s hand
and said, “What did you dream about, last night?”

“Thunderbirds,” he said. “A mountain of skulls.”

She nodded. “And do you know whose skulls they were?”

“There was a voice,” he said. “In my dream. It told me.”

She nodded and waited.

He said, “It said they were mine. Old skulls of mine. Thousands
and thousands of them.”

She looked at Wednesday, and said, “I think this one’s a
keeper.” She smiled her bright smile. Then she patted Shadow’s arm and walked
away down the sidewalk. He watched her go, trying—and failing—not to think of
her thighs rubbing together as she walked.

In the taxi on the way to the airport, Wednesday turned to
Shadow. “What the hell was that business with the ten dollars about?”

“You shortchanged her. It comes out of her wages if she’s
short.”

“What the hell do you care?” Wednesday seemed genuinely
irate.

Shadow thought for a moment. Then he said, “Well, I wouldn’t
want anyone to do it to me. She hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“No?” Wednesday stared off into the middle distance, and said,
“When she was seven years old she shut a kitten in a closet. She listened to it
mew for several days. When it ceased to mew, she took it out of the cloth, put
it into a shoebox, and buried it in the backyard. She wanted to bury something.
She consistently steals from everywhere she works. Small amounts, usually. Last
year she visited her grandmother in the nursing home to which the old woman is
confined. She took an antique gold watch from her grandmother’s bedside table,
and then went prowling through several of the other rooms, stealing small
quantities of money and personal effects from the twilight folk in their golden
years. When she got home she did not know what to do with her spoils, scared
someone would come after her, so she threw everything away except the cash.”

“I get the idea,” said Shadow.

“She also has asymptomatic gonorrhea,” said Wednesday. “She
suspects she might be infected but does nothing about it. When her last
boyfriend accused her of having given him a disease she was hurt, offended, and
refused to see him again.”

“This isn’t necessary,” said Shadow. “I said I get the idea.
You could do this to anyone, couldn’t you? Tell me bad things about them.”

“Of course,” agreed Wednesday. “They all do the same things.
They may think their sins are original, but for the most part they are petty
and repetitive.”

“And that makes it okay for you to steal ten bucks from her?”

Wednesday paid the taxi and the two men walked into the airport,
wandered up to their gate. Boarding had not yet begun. Wednesday said, “What
the hell else can I do? They don’t sacrifice rams or bulls to me. They don’t
send me the souls of killers and slaves, gallows-hung and raven-picked. They
made me. They forgot me. Now I take a little back from them. Isn’t that fair?”

“My mom used to say, ‘Life isn’t fair,’ “ said Shadow.

“Of course she did,” said Wednesday. “It’s one of those
things that moms say, right up there with ‘If all your friends jumped off a
cliff would you do it too?’ “

“You stiffed that girl for ten bucks, I slipped her ten
bucks,” said Shadow, doggedly. “It was the right thing to do.”

Someone announced that their plane was boarding. Wednesday
stood up. “May your choices always be so clear,” he said.

The cold snap was easing when Wednesday dropped Shadow off
in the small hours of the morning. It was still obscenely cold in Lakeside, but
it was no longer impossibly cold. The lighted sign on the side of the M&I
Bank flashed alternately 3:30 A.M. and—5°F as they drove through the town.