American Gods (5 page)

She passes him a book of matches. He tears off a match,
lights the wick: it flickers and then burns with a steady flame, which gives
the illusion of motion to the faceless statue beside it, all hips and breasts. “Put
the money beneath the statue.” “Fifty bucks.”

“Yes,” she says. “Now, come love me.” He unbuttons his blue
jeans and removes his lolive T-shirt. She massages his white shoulders with her
brown fingers; then she turns him over and begins to make love to him with her
hands, and her fingers, and her tongue.

It seems to him that the lights in the red room have been
dimmed, and the sole illumination comes from the candle, which burns with a
bright flame. “What’s your name?” he asks her. “Bilquis,” she tells him,
raising her head. “With a Q.” “A what?” “Never mind.”

He is gasping now. “Let me fuck you,” he says. “I have to
fuck you.”

“Okay, hon,” she says. “We’ll do it. But will you do
something for me, while you’re doing it?”

“Hey,” he says, suddenly tetchy, “I’m paying you, you know.”

She straddles him, in one smooth movement, whispering, “I
know, honey, I know, you’re paying me, and I mean, look at you, I should be
paying you, I’m so lucky ...”

He purses his lips, trying to show that her hooker talk is
having no effect on him, he can’t be taken; that she’s a street whore, for
Chrissakes, while he’s practically a producer, and he knows all about
last-minute ripoffs, but she doesn’t ask for money. Instead she says, “Honey,
while you’re giving it to me, while you’re pushing that big hard thing inside
of me, will you worship me?” “Will I what?”

She is rocking back and forth on him: the engorged head of
his penis is being rubbed against the wet lips of her vulva.

“Will you call me goddess? Will you pray to me? Will you
worship me with your body?”

He smiles. Is that all she wants? We’ve all got our kinks, at
the end of the day. “Sure,” he says. She reaches her hand between her legs and
slips him inside her.

“Is that good, is it, goddess?” he asks, gasping.

“Worship me, honey,” says Bilquis, the hooker.

“Yes,” he says. “I worship your breasts and your hair and
your cunt. I worship your thighs and your eyes and your cherry-red lips ...”

“Yes ...” she croons, riding him.

“I worship your nipples, from which the milk of life flows.
Your kiss is honey and your touch scorches like fire, and I worship it.” His
words are becoming more rhythmic now, keeping pace with the thrust and roll of
their bodies. “Bring me your lust in the morning, and bring me relief and your
blessing in the evening. Let me walk in dark places unharmed and let me come to
you once more and sleep beside you and make love with you again. I worship you
with everything that is within me, and everything inside my . mind, with
everywhere I’ve been and my dreams and my ...” he breaks off, panting for
breath. “What are you doing? That feels amazing. So amazing ...” and he looks
down at his hips, at the place where the two of them conjoin, but her
forefinger touches his chin and pushes his head back, so he is looking only at
her face and at the ceiling once again.

“Keep talking, honey,” she says. “Don’t stop. Doesn’t it
feel good?”

“It feels better than anything has ever felt,” he tells her,
meaning it as he says it. “Your eyes are stars, burning in the, shit, the
firmament, and your lips are gentle waves that lick the sand, and I worship
them,” and now he’s thrusting deeper and deeper inside her: he feels electric,
as if his whole lower body has become sexually charged: priapic, engorged,
blissful.

“Bring me your gift,” he mutters, no longer knowing what he
is saying, “your one true gift, and make me always this ... always so ... I
pray ... I...”

And then the pleasure crests into orgasm, blasting his mind
into void, his head and self and entire being a perfect blank as he thrusts
deeper into her and deeper still ....

Eyes closed, spasming, he luxuriates in the moment; and then
he feels a lurch, and it seems to him that he is hanging, head down, although
the pleasure continues.

He opens his eyes.

He thinks, grasping for thought and reason again, of birth,
and wonders, without fear, in a moment of perfect postcoital clarity, whether
what he sees is some kind of illusion.

This is what he sees:

He is inside her to the chest, and as he stares at this in
disbelief and wonder she rests both hands upon his shoulders and puts gentle
pressure on his body.

He slipslides further inside her.

“How are you doing this to me?” he asks, or he thinks he
asks, but perhaps it is only in his head.

“You’re doing it, honey,” she whispers. He feels the lips of
her vulva tight around his upper chest and back, constricting and enveloping
him. He wonders what this would look like to somebody watching them. He wonders
why he is not scared. And then he knows.

“I worship you with my body,” he whispers, as she pushes him
inside her. Her labia pull slickly across bis face, and his eyes slip into
darkness.

She stretches on the bed, like a huge cat, and then she
yawns. “Yes,” she says. “You do.”

The Nokia phone plays a high, electrical transposition of
the “Ode to Joy.” She picks it up, and thumbs a key, and puts the telephone to
her ear.

Her belly is flat, her labia small and closed. A sheen of
sweat glistens on her forehead and on her upper Up.

She turns the telephone off before she flops out on the bed
m the dark red room, then she stretches once more and she closes her eyes, and
she sleeps.

They took her to the cemet’ry In a big ol’ Cadillac They
took her to the cemet’ry But they did not bring her back.

—old song

“I have taken the liberty,” said Mr. Wednesday, washing his
hands in the men’s room of Jack’s Crocodile Bar, “of ordering food for myself,
to be delivered to your table. We have much to discuss, after all.”

“I don’t think so,” said Shadow. He dried his own hands on a
paper towel and crumpled it, and dropped it into the bin.

“You need a job,” said Wednesday. “People don’t hire
ex-cons. You folk make them uncomfortable.”

“I have a job waiting. A good job.”

“Would that be the job at the Muscle Farm?”

“Maybe,” said Shadow.

“Nope. You don’t. Robbie Burton’s dead. Without him the
Muscle Farm’s dead too.”

“You’re a liar.”

“Of course. And a good one. The best you will ever meet.
But, I’m afraid, I’m not lying to you about this.” He reached into his pocket,
produced a folded newspaper, and handed it to Shadow. “Page seven,” he said. “Come
on back to the bar. You can read it at the table.”

Shadow pushed open the door, back into the bar. The air was
blue with smoke, and the Dixie Cups were on the jukebox singing “Dco Iko.”
Shadow smiled, slightly, in recognition of the old children’s song.

The barman pointed to a table in the corner. There was a
bowl of chili and a burger at one side of the table, a rare steak and a bowl of
fries laid in the place across from it.

Look at my king all dressed in red,

Iko Iko all day,

I bet you five dollars he ‘II kill you dead,

Jockamo-feena-nay

Shadow took his seat at the table. He put the newspaper
down. “This is my first meal as a free man. I’ll wait until after I’ve eaten to
read your page seven.”

Shadow ate his hamburger. It was better than prison hamburgers.
The chili was good but, he decided, after a couple of mouthfuls, not the best
in the state.

Laura made a great chili. She used lean meat, dark kidney
beans, carrots cut small, a bottle or so of dark beer, and freshly sliced hot
peppers. She would let the chiK cook for a while, then add red wine, lemon
juice and a piiich of fresh dill, and, finally, measure out and add her chili
powders. On more than one occasion Shadow had tried to get her to show him how
she made it: he would watch everything she did, from slicing the onions and dropping
them into the olive oil at the bottom of the pot. He had even written down the
recipe, ingredient by ingredient, and he had once made Laura’s chili for
himself on a weekend when she had been out of town. It had tasted okay—it was
certainly edible, but it had not been Laura’s chili.

The news item on page seven was the first account of his
wife’s death that Shadow had read. Laura Moon, whose age was given in the
article as twenty-seven, and Robbie Burton, thirty-nine, were in Robbie’s car
on the interstate when they swerved into the path of a thirty-two-wheeler. The truck
brushed Robbie’s car and sent it spinning off the side of the road.

Rescue crews pulled Robbie and Laura from the wreckage. They
were both dead by the time they arrived at the hospital.

Shadow folded the newspaper up once more and slid it back
across the table, toward Wednesday, who was gorging himself on a steak so
bloody and so blue it might never have been introduced to a kitchen flame. “Here.
Take it back,” said Shadow. Robbie had been driving. He must have been drunk,
although the newspaper account said nothing about this. Shadow found himself
imagining Laura’s face when she realized that Robbie was too drunk to drive.
The scenario unfolded in Shadow’s mind, and there was nothing he could do to
stop it: Laura shouting at Robbie—shouting at him to pull off the road, then
the thud of car against truck, and the steering wheel wrenching over ...

... the car on the side of the road, broken glass glittering
like ice and diamonds in the headlights, blood pooling in rubies on the road
beside them. Two bodies being carried from the wreck, or laid neatly by the
side of the road.

“Well?” asked Mr. Wednesday. He had finished his steak, devoured
it like a starving man. Now he was munching the french fries, spearing them
with his fork.

“You’re right,” said Shadow. “I don’t have a job.” Shadow
took a quarter from his pocket, tails up. He flicked it up in the air, knocking
it against his finger as it left his hand, giving it a wobble as if it were
turning, caught it, slapped it down on the back of his hand. “Call,” he said. “Whyr
asked Wednesday.

“I don’t want to work for anyone with worse luck than me.
Call.” “Heads,” said Mr. Wednesday.

“Sorry,” said Shadow, without even bothering to glance at
the quarter. “It was tails. I rigged the toss.”

“Rigged games are the easiest ones to beat,” said Wednesday,
wagging a square finger at Shadow. ‘Take another look at it.”

Shadow glanced down at it. The head was faceup.

“I must have fumbled the toss,” he said, puzzled.

“You do yourself a disservice,” said Wednesday, and he
grinned. “I’m just a lucky, lucky guy.” Then he looked up. “Well I never. Mad
Sweeney. Will you have a drink with us?”

“Southern Comfort and Coke, straight up,” said a voice from
behind Shadow.

“I’ll go and talk to the barman,” said Wednesday. He stood
up, and began to make his way toward the bar.

“Aren’t you going to ask what I’m drinking?” called Shadow.

“I already know what you’re drinking,” said Wednesday, and
then he was standing by the bar. Patsy Cline started to sing “Walking After
Midnight” on the jukebox again.

The Southern Comfort and Coke sat down beside Shadow. He had
a short ginger beard. He wore a denim jacket covered with bright sew-on
patches, and under the jacket a stained white T-shirt. On the T-shirt was
printed:

IF YOU CAN’T EAT IT, DRINK IT, SMOKE IT, OR SNORT IT... THEN
F*CK IT!

He wore a baseball cap, on which was printed:

THE ONLY WOMAN I HAVE EVER LOVED WAS ANOTHER MAN’S WIFE...
MY MOTHER!

He opened a soft pack of Lucky Strikes with a dirty thumbnail,
took a cigarette, offered one to Shadow. Shadow was about to take one,
automatically—he did not smoke, but a cigarette makes good barter material—when
he realized that he was no longer inside. He shook his head.

“You working for our man then?” asked the bearded man. He
was not sober, although he was not yet drunk.

“It looks that way,” said Shadow. “What do you do?”

The bearded man lit his cigarette. “I’m a leprechaun,” he
said, with a grin.

Shadow did not smile. “Really?” he said. “Shouldn’t you be
drinking Guinness?”

“Stereotypes. You have to learn to think outside the box,”
said the bearded man. “There’s a lot more to Ireland than Guinness.”

“You don’t have an Irish accent.”

“I’ve been over here too fucken long.”

“So you are originally from Ireland?”

“I told you. I’m a leprechaun. We don’t come from fucken
Moscow.”

“I guess not.”

Wednesday returned to the table, three drinks held easily in
his pawlike hands. “Southern Comfort and Coke for you, Mad Sweeney m’man, and a
Jack Daniel’s for me. And this is for you, Shadow.”

“What is it?”

“Taste it.”

The drink was a tawny golden color. Shadow took a sip,
tasting an odd blend of sour and sweet on his tongue. He could taste the
alcohol underneath, and a strange blend of flavors. It reminded him a little of
prison hooch, brewed in a garbage bag from rotten fruit and bread and sugar and
water, but it was sweeter, and far stranger.

“Okay,” said Shadow. “I tasted it. What was it?”

“Mead,” said Wednesday. “Honey wine. The drink of heroes.
The drink of the gods.”

Shadow took another tentative sip. Yes, he could taste the
honey, he decided. That was one of the tastes. ‘Tastes kinda like pickle juice,”
he said. “Sweet pickle-juice wine.”

‘Tastes like a drunken diabetic’s piss,” agreed Wednesday. “I
hate the stuff.”

“Then why did you bring it for me?” asked Shadow, reasonably.

Wednesday stared at Shadow with his mismatched eyes. One of
them, Shadow decided, was a glass eye, but he could not decide which one. “I
brought you mead to drink because it’s traditional. And right now we need all
the tradition we can get. It seals our bargain.”