American Gods (28 page)

Later he was never able to recollect the sequence and
details of that dream: attempts to remember it produced nothing more than a
tangle of dark images. There was a girl. He had met her somewhere, and now they
were walking across a bridge. It spanned a small lake, in the middle of a town.
The wind was ruffling the surface of the lake, making waves tipped with
whitecaps, which seemed to Shadow to be tiny hands reaching for him.

—Down there, said the woman. She was wearing a leopard-print
skirt, which flapped and tossed in the wind, and the flesh between the top of
her stockings and her skirt was creamy and soft and in his dream, on the
bridge, before God and the world, Shadow went down to his knees in front of
her, burying his head in her crotch, drinking in the intoxicating jungle female
scent of her. He became aware, in his dream, of his erection in real life, a
rigid, pounding, monstrous thing as painful in its hardness as the erections he’d
had as a boy, when he was crashing into puberty.

He pulled away and looked upward, and still he could not see
her face. But his mouth was seeking hers and her lips were soft against his,
and his hands were cupping her breasts, and then they were running across the
satin smoothness of her skin, pushing into and parting the furs that hid her
waist, sliding into the wonderful cleft of her, which warmed and wetted and
parted for him, opening to his hand like a flower.

The woman purred against him ecstatically, her hand moving
down to the hardness of him and squeezing it. He pushed the bedsheets away and
rolled on top of her, his hand parting her thighs, her hand guiding him between
her legs, where one thrust, one magical push ...

Now he was back in his old prison cell with her, and he was
kissing her deeply. She wrapped her arms tightly around him, clamped her legs
about his legs to hold him tight, so he could not pull out, not even if he
wanted to.

Never had he kissed lips so soft. He had not known that
there were lips so soft in the whole worldrffer tongue, though, was sandpaper-rough
as it slipped against his.

—Who are you! he asked.

She made no answer, just pushed him onto his back and, in
one lithe movement, straddled him and began to ride him. No, not to ride him:
to insinuate herself against him in a series of silken-smooth waves, each more
powerful than the one before, strokes and beats and rhythms that crashed
against his mind and his body just as the wind-waves on the lake splashed
against the shore. Her nails were needle-sharp and they pierced his sides, raking
them, but he felt no pain, only pleasure, everything was transmuted by some
alchemy into moments of utter pleasure.

He struggled to find himself, struggled to talk, his head
now filled with sand dunes and desert winds.

—Who are you? he asked again, gasping for the words.

She stared at him with eyes the color of dark amber, then lowered
her mouth to his and kissed him with a passion, kissed him so completely and so
deeply that there, on the bridge over the lake, in his prison cell, in the bed
in the Cairo funeral home, he almost came. He rode the sensation like a kite
riding a hurricane, willing it not to crest, not to explode, wanting it never
to end. He pulled it under control. He had to warn her.

—My wife, Laura. She will kill you.

—Not me, she said.

A fragment of nonsense bubbled up from somewhere in his
mind: In medieval days it was said that a woman on top during coitus would
conceive a bishop. That was what they called it: trying for a bishop ....

He wanted to know her name, but he dared not ask her a third
time, and she pushed her chest against his, and he could feel the hard nubs of
her nipples against his chest, and she was squeezing him, somehow squeezing him
down there deep inside her and this time he could not ride it or surf it, this
time it picked him up and spun and tumbled him away, and he was arching up,
pushing into her as deeply as he could imagine, as if they were, in some way,
part of the same creature, tasting, drinking, holding, wanting ...

—Let it happen, she said, her voice a throaty feline growl.
Give it to me. Let it happen.

And he came, spasming and dissolving, the back of his mind itself
liquefying, then sublimating slowly from one state to the next.

Somewhere in there, at the end of it, he took a breath, a
clear draught of air he felt all the way down to the depths of his lungs, and
he knew that he had been holding his breath for a long time now. Three years,
at least. Perhaps even longer.

—Now rest, she said, and she kissed his eyelids with her
soft lips. Let it go. Let it all go.

The sleep he slept after that was deep and dreamless and comforting,
and Shadow dived deep and embraced it.

The light was strange. It was, he checked his watch, 6:45
A.M., and still dark outside, although the room was filled with a pale blue
dimness. He climbed out of bed. He was certain that he had been wearing pajamas
when he went to bed, but now he was naked, and the air was cold on his skin. He
walked to the window and closed it.

There had been a snowstorm in the night: six inches had
fallen, perhaps more. The corner of the town that Shadow could see from his
window, dirty and run-down, had been transformed into somewhere clean and
different: these houses were not abandoned and forgotten, they were frosted
into elegance. The streets had vanished completely, lost beneath a white field
of snow.

There was an idea that hovered at the edge of his
perception. Something about transience. It flickered and was gone.

He could see as well as if it were full daylight.

In the mirror, Shadow noticed something sttange. He stepped
closer, and stared, puzzled. All his: bruises had vanished. He touched his
side, pressing firmly with his fingertips, feeling for one of the deep pains
that’told him he had encountered Mr. Stone and Mr. Wood, hunting for the
greening blossoms of bruise that Mad Sweeney had gifted him with, and finding
nothing. His face was clear and unmarked. His sides, however, and his back (he
twisted to examine it) were scratched with what looked like claw marks.

He hadn’t dreamed it, then. Not entirely.

Shadow opened the drawers, and put on what he found: an ancient
pair of blue-denim Levi’s, a shirt, a thick blue sweater, and a black
undertaker’s coat he found hanging in the wardrobe at the back of the room.

He wore his own old shoes.

The house was still asleep. He crept through it, willing the
floorboards not to creak, and then he was outside, and he walked through the
snow, his feet leaving deep prints on the sidewalk. It was lighter out than it
had seemed from inside the house, and the snow reflected the light from the
sky.

After fifteen minutes of walking, Shadow came to a bridge
with a big sign on the side of it warning him he was now leaving historical
Cairo. A man stood under the bridge, tall and gangling, sucking on a cigarette
and shivering continually. Shadow thought he recognized the man.

And then, under the bridge in the winter darkness, he was
close enough to see the purple smudge of bruise around, the man’s eye, and he
said, “Good morning, Mad Sweeney.”

The world was so quiet. Not even cars disturbed the snowbound
silence.

“Hey, man,” said Mad Sweeney. He did not look up. The cigarette
had been rolled by hand.

“You keep hanging out under bridges, Mad Sweeney,” said
Shadow, “people gonna think you’re a troll.”

This time Mad Sweeney looked up. Shadow could see the whites
of his eyes all around his irises. The man looked scared. “I was lookin’ for
you,” he said. “You gotta help me, man. I fucked up big time.” He sucked on his
hand-rolled cigarette, pulled it away from his mouth. The cigarette paper stuck
to his lower lip, and the cigarette fell apart, spilling its contents onto his
ginger beard and down the front of his filthy T-shirt. Mad Sweeney brushed it
off, convulsively, with blackened hands, as if it were a dangerous insect.

“My resources are pretty much tapped out, Mad Sweeney,” said
Shadow. “But why don’t you tell me what it is you need. You want me to get you
a coffee?”

Mad Sweeney shook his head. He took out a tobacco pouch and
papers from the pocket of his’ denim jacket and began to roll himself another
cigarette. His beard bristled and his mouth moved as he did this, although no
words were said aloud. He licked the adhesive side of the cigarette paper and
rolled it between his fingers. The result looked only distantly like a cigarette.
Then he said,” ‘M not a troll. Shit. Those bastards’re fucken mean.”

“I know you’re not a troll, Sweeney,” said Shadow, gently. “How
can I help you?”

Mad Sweeney flicked his brass Zippo, and the first inch of
his cigarette flamed and then subsided to ash. “You remember I showed you how
to get a coin? You remember?”

“Yes,” said Shadow. He saw the gold coin in his mind’s eye,
watched it tumble into Laura’s casket, saw it glitter around her neck. “I
remember.”

“You took the wrong coin, man.”

A car approached the gloom under the bridge, blinding them
with its lights. It slowed as it passed them, then stopped, and a window slid
down. “Everything okay here, gentlemen?”

“Everything’s just peachy, thank you, officer,” said Shadow.
“We’re just out for a morning walk.”

“Okay now,” said the cop. He did not look as if he believed
that everything was okay. He waited. Shadow put a hand on Mad Sweeney’s
shoulder, and walked him forward, out of town, away from the police car. He
heardfhe window hum closed, but the car remained where it waST ~

Shadow walked. Mad Sweeney walked, and sometimes he
staggered.

The police car cruised past them slowly, jhen turned and
went back into the city, accelerating down the snowy road.

“Now, why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you,” said Shadow.

“I did it like he said. I did it all like he said, but I
gave you the wrong coin. It wasn’t meant to be that coin. That’s for royalty.
You see? I shouldn’t even have been able to take it. That’s the coin you’d give
to the king of America himself. Not some pissant bastard like you or me. And
now I’m in big trouble. Just give me the coin back, man. You’ll never see me
again, if you do, I sweartofuckenBran, okay? I swear by the years I spent in
the fucken trees.”

“You did it like who said, Sweeney?”

“Grimnir. The dude you call Wednesday, You know who he is?
Who he really is?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

There was a panicked look in the Irishman’s crazy blue eyes.
“It was nothing bad. Nothing you can—nothing b#d. He just told me to be there
at that bar and to pick a fight with you. He said he wanted to see what you
were made of.”

“He tell you to do anything else?”

Sweeney shivered and twitched; Shadow thought it was the
cold for a moment, then knew where he’d seen that shuddering shiver before. In
prison: it was a junkie shiver. Sweeney was in withdrawal from something, and
Shadow would have been willing to. bet it was heroin. A junkie leprechaun? Mad
Sweeney pinched off the burning head of his cigarette, dropped it on the
ground, put the unfinished yellowing rest of it into his pocket. He rubbed his
dirt-black fingers together, breathed on them to try and rub warmth into them.
His voice was a whine now, “Listen, just give me the fucken coin, man. I’ll
give you another, just as good. Hell, I’ll give you a shitload of the fuckers.”

He took off his greasy baseball cap, then, with his right
hand, he stroked the air, producing a large golden coin. He dropped it into his
cap. And then he took another from a wisp of breath steam, and another,
catching and grabbing them from the still morning air until the baseball cap
was brimming with them and Sweeney was forced to hold it with both hands.

He extended the baseball cap filled with gold to Shadow. “Here,”
he said. “Take them, man. Just give me back the coin I gave to you.” Shadow
looked down at the cap, wondered how much its contents would be worth.

“Where am I going to spend those coins, Mad Sweeney?” Shadow
asked. “Are there a lot of places you can turn your gold into cash?”

He thought the Irishman was going to hit him for a moment,
but the moment passed and Mad Sweeney just stood there, holding out his
gold-filled cap with both hands like Oliver Twist. And dien tears swelled in
his blue eyes and began to spill down his cheeks. He took the cap and put it—now
empty of everything except a greasy sweatband—back over his thinning scalp. “You
gotta, man,” he was saying. “Didn’t I show you how to do it? I showed you how
to take coins from the hoard. I showed you where the hoard was. Just give me
that first coin back. It didn’t belong to me.”

“I don’t have it anymore.”

Mad Sweeney’s tears stopped, and spots of color appeared in
his cheeks. “You, you fucken—” he said, and then the words failed him and his
mouth opened and closed, wordlessly.

“I’m telling you the truth,” said Shadow. “I’m sorry. If I
had it I’d give it back to you. But I gave it away.”

Sweeney’s grimy hands clamped on Shadow’s shoulders, and the
pale blue eyes stared into his. The tears had made streaks in the dirt on Mad
Sweeney’s face. “Shit,” he said. Shadow could smell tobacco and stale bepr and
whiskey-sweat. “You’re telling the truth, you fucker. Gave it away and freely
and of your own will. Damn your dark” eyes, you gave it a-fucken-way.”

“I’m sorry.” Shadow remembered the whispering thump the coin
had made as it landed on Laura’s cajjket.

“Sorry or not, I’m damned and I’m doomed.” He wiped his nose
and his eyes on his sleeves, muddying his face into strange patterns.

Shadow squeezed Mad Sweeney’s upper arm in an awkward male
gesture.

“ ‘Twere better I had never been conceived,” said Mad
Sweeney, at length. Then he looked up. “The fellow you gave it to. Would he
give it back?”