American Gods (73 page)

“Hello,” said Natalie. She went up on tiptoes and kissed
Sam, depositing the kiss snugly between Sam’s cheek and the corner of her
mouth. You can say a lot of things with a kiss like that. “You done?”

“Nearly.”

“You want to see a movie?”

“Sure. Love to. I’ve got a good five minutes left here,
though. Why don’t you sit and read the Onion?’

“I saw this week’s already.” She sat on a chair near the
door, ruffled through the pile of newspapers put aside for recycling until she
found something, and read it while Sam bagged up the last of the money in the
till and put it in the safe.

They had been sleeping together for a week now. Sam wondered
if this was it, the relationship she’d been waiting for all her life. She told
herself that it was just brain chemicals and pheromones that made her happy
when she saw Natalie, and perhaps that was what it was; still, all she knew for
sure was that she smiled when she saw Natalie, and that when they were together
she felt comfortable and comforted.

“This paper,” said Natalie, “has another one of those
articles in it. ‘Is America Changing?’ “

“Well, is it?”

“They don’t say. They say that maybe it is, but they don’t
know how and they don’t know why, and maybe it isn’t happening at all.”

Sam smiled broadly. “Well,” she said, “that covers every option,
doesn’t it?”

“I guess.” Natalie’s brow creased and she went back to her
newspaper.

Sam washed the dishcloth and folded it. “I think it’s just
that, despite the government and whatever, everything just feels suddenly good
right now. Maybe it’s just spring coming a little early. It was a long winter,
and I’m glad it’s over.”

“Me too.” A pause. “It says in the article that lots of
people have been reporting weird dreams. I haven’t really had any weird dreams.
Nothing weirder than normal.”

Sam looked around to see if there was anything she had
missed. Nope. It was a good job well done. She took off her apron, hung it back
in the kitchen. Then she came back and started to turn off the lights. “I’ve
had some weird dreams recently,” she said. “They got weird enough that I
actually started keeping a dream journal. I write them down when I wake up. But
when I read them, they don’t mean anything at all.”

She put on her street coat and her one-size-fits-all gloves.

“I did some dream work,” said Natalie. Natalie had done a
little of everything, from arcane self-defense disciplines and sweat lodges to
feng shui and jazz dancing. “Tell me. I’ll tell you what they mean.”

“Okay.” Sam unlocked the door and turned the last of the
lights off. She let Natalie out, and she walked out onto the street and locked
the door to the Coffee House firmly behind her. “Sometimes I have been dreaming
of people who fell from the sky. Sometimes I’m underground, talking to a woman
with a buffalo head. And sometimes I dream about this guy I kissed in a bar
last month.”

Natalie made a noise. “Something you should have told me
about?”

“Maybe. But not like that. It was a Fuck-Off Kiss.”

“You were telling him to fuck off?”

“No, I was telling everyone else they could fuck off. You
had to be there, I guess.”

Natalie’s shoes clicked down the sidewalk. Sam padded on
next to her. “He owns my car,” said Sam.

‘That purple thing you got at your sister’s?”

“Yup.”

“What happened to him? Why doesn’t he want his car?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s in prison. Maybe he’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“I guess.” Sam hesitated. “A few weeks back, I was certain
he was dead. ESP. Or whatever. Like, I knew. But then, I started to think maybe
he wasn’t. I don’t know. I guess my ESP isn’t that hot.”

“How long are you going to keep his car?”

“Until someone comes for it. I think it’s what he would have
wanted.”

Natalie looked at Sam, then she looked again. Then she said,
“Where did you get those from?”

“What?”

“The flowers. The ones you’re holding, Sam. Where did they
come from? Did you have them when we left the Coffee House? I would have seen
them.”

Sam looked down. Then she grinned. “You are so sweet. I
should have said something when you gave them to me, shouldn’t I?” she said. “They
are lovely. Thank you so much. But wouldn’t red have been more appropriate?”

They were roses, their stems wrapped in paper. Six of them,
and white.

“I didn’t give them to you,” said Natalie, her lips firming.

And neither of them said another word until they reached the
movie theater.

When she got home that night Sam put the roses in an improvised
vase. Later, she cast them in bronze, and she kept to herself the tale of how
she got them, although she told Caroline, who came after Natalie, the story of
the ghost-roses one night when they were both very drunk, and Caroline agreed
with Sam that it was a really, really strange and spooky story, and, deep down,
did not actually believe a word of it, so that was all right.

Shadow had parked near a pay phone. He called information,
and they gave him the number.

No, he was told. She isn’t here. She’s probably still at the
Coffee House.

He stopped on the way to the Coffee House to buy flowers..
He found the Coffee House, then he crossed the road and stood in the doorway of
a used bookstore, and waited, and watched.

The place closed at eight, and at ten past eight Shadow saw
Sam Black Crow walk out of the Coffee House in the company of a smaller woman
whose pigtailed hair was a peculiar shade of red. They were holding hands
tightly, as if simply holding hands could keep the world at bay, and they were
talking—or rather, Sam was doing most of the talking while her friend listened.
Shadow wondered what Sam was saying. She smiled as she talked.

The two women crossed the road, and they walked past the
place where Shadow was standing. The pigtailed girl passed within a foot of
him; he could have reached out and touched her, and they didn’t see him at all.

He watched them walking away from him down the street, and
felt a pang, like a minor chord being played inside him.

It had been a good kiss, Shadow reflected, but Sam had never
looked at him the way she was looking at the pig-tailed girl, and she never
would.

“What the hell. We’ll always have Peru,” he said, under his
breath, as Sam walked away from him. “And El Paso. We’ll always have that.”

Then he ran after her, and put the flowers into Sam’s hands.
He hurried away, so she could not give them back.

Then he walked up the hill, back to his car, and he followed
the signs to Chicago. He drove at or slightly under the speed limit.

It was the last thing he had to do.

He was in no hurry.

He spent the night in a Motel 6. He got up the next morning
and realized his clothes still smelled like the bottom of the lake. He put them
on anyway. He figured he wouldn’t need them much longer.

Shadow paid his bill. He drove to the brownstone apartment
building. He found it without any difficulty. It was smaller than he
remembered.

He walked up the stairs steadily—not fast, that would have
meant he was eager to go to his death, and not slow, that would have meant he
was afraid. Someone had cleaned the stairwell: the black garbage bags had gone.
The place smelled of the chlorine smell of bleach, no longer of rotting
vegetables.

The red-painted door at the top of the stairs was wide open:
the smell of old meals hung in the air. Shadow hesitated, then he pressed the
doorbell.

“I come!” called a woman’s voice, and, dwarf-small and dazzlingly
blonde, Zorya Utrennyaya came out of the kitchen and bustled toward him, wiping
her hands on her apron. She looked different, Shadow realized. She looked
happy. Her cheeks were rouged red, and there was a sparkle in her old eyes.
When she saw him her mouth became an O and she called out, “Shadow? You came
back to us?” and she hurried toward him with her arms outstretched. He bent
down and embraced her, and she kissed his cheek. “So good to see you!” she
said. “Now you must go away.”

Shadow stepped into the apartment. All the doors in the apartment
(except, unsurprisingly, Zorya Polunochnaya’s) were wide open, and all the
windows he could see were open as well. A gentle breeze blew fitfully through
the corridor.

“You’re spring cleaning,” he said to Zorya Utrennyaya.

“We have a guest coming,” she told him. “Now, you must go
away. First, you want coffee?”

“I came to see Czernobog,” said Shadow. “It’s time.”

Zorya Utrennyaya shook her head violently. “No, no,” she
said. “You don’t want to see him. Not a good idea.”

“I know,” said Shadow. “But you know, the only thing I’ve
really learned about dealing with gods is that if you make a deal, you keep it.
They get to break all the rules they want. We don’t. Even if I tried to walk
out of here, my feet would just bring me back.”

She pushed up her bottom lip, then said, “Is true. But go
today. Come back tomorrow. He will be gone then.”

“Who is it?” called a woman’s voice from farther down the
corridor. “Zorya Utrennyaya, to who are you talking? This mattress, I cannot
turn on my own, you know.”

Shadow walked down the corridor and said, “Good morning,
Zorya Vechernyaya. Can I help?” which made the woman in the room squeak with
surprise and drop her corner of the mattress.

The bedroom was thick with dust: it covered every surface,
the wood and the glass, and motes of it floated arid danced through the beams
of sunshine coming through the open window, disturbed by occasional breezes and
the lazy flapping of the yellowed lace curtains.

He remembered this room. This was the room they had given to
Wednesday, that night. Bielebog’s room.

Zorya Vechernyaya eyed him uncertainly. “The mattress,” she
said. “It needs to be turned.”

“Not a problem,” said Shadow. He reached out and took the
mattress, lifted it with ease, and turned it over. It was an old wooden bed,
and the feather mattress weighed almost as much as a man. Dust flew and swirled
as the mattress went down.

“Why are you here?” asked Zorya Vechernyaya. It was not a
friendly question, the way she asked it.

“I’m here,” said Shadow, “because back in December a young
man played a game of checkers with an old god, and he lost.”

The old woman’s gray hair was up on the top of her head in a
tight bun. She pursed her lips. “Come back tomorrow,” said Zorya Vechernyaya.

“I can’t,” he said, simply.

“Is your funeral. Now, you go and sit down. Zorya Utrennyaya
will bring you coffee. Czernobog will be back soon.”

Shadow walked along the corridor to the sitting room. It was
just as he remembered, although now the window was open. The gray cat slept on
the arm of the sofa. It opened an eye as Shadow came in and then, unimpressed,
it went back to sleep. This was where he had played checkers with Czernobog;
this was where he had wagered his life to get the old man to join them on Wednesday’s
last doomed grift. The fresh air came in through the open window, blowing the
stale air away.

Zorya Utrennyaya came in with a red wooden tray. A small
enameled cup of steaming black coffee sat on the tray, beside a saucer filled
with small chocolate-chip cookies. She put it down on the table in front of
him.

“I saw Zorya Polunochnaya again,” he said. “She came to me
under the world, and she gave me the moon to light my way. And she took
something from me. But I don’t remember what.”

“She likes you,” said Zorya Utrennyaya. “She dreams so much.
And she guards us all. She is so brave.”

“Where’s Czernobog?”

“He says the spring cleaning makes him uncomfortable. He
goes out to buy newspaper, sit in the park. Buy cigarettes. Perhaps he will not
come back today. You do not have to wait. Why don’t you go? Come back tomorrow.”

“I’ll wait,” said Shadow. There was no magic forcing him to
wait, he knew that. This was him. It was one last thing that needed to happen,
and if it was the last thing that happened, well, he was going there of his own
volition. After this there would be no more obligations, no more mysteries, no
more ghosts.

He sipped the hot coffee, as black and as sweet as he remembered.

He heard a deep male voice in the corridor, and he sat up
straighten He was pleased to see that his hand was not trembling. The door
opened.

“Shadow?”

“Hi,” said Shadow. He stayed sitting down.

Czernobog walked into the room. He was carrying a folded
copy of the Chicago Sun-Times, which he put down on the coffee table. He stared
at Shadow, then he put his hand out, tentatively. The two men shook hands.

“I came,” said Shadow. “Our deal. You came through with your
part of it. This is my part.”

Czernobog nodded. His brow creased. The sunlight glinted on
his gray hair and mustache, making them appear almost golden. “Is ...” he
frowned. “Is not ...” He broke off. “Maybe you should go. Is not a good time.”
.

“Take as long as you heed,” said Shadow. “I’m ready.”

Czernobog sighed. “You are a very stupid boy. You know that?”

“I guess.”

“You are a stupid boy. And on the mountaintop, you did a
very good thing.”

“I did what I had to do.”

“Perhaps.”

Czernobog walked to the old wooden sideboard and, bending
down, pulled an attaché case from underneath it. He flipped the catches on the
case. Each one sprang back with a satisfying thump. He opened the case. He took
a hammer out and hefted it experimentally. The hammer looked like a scaled-down
sledgehammer; its wooden haft was stained.

Then he stood up. He said, “I owe you much. More than you
know. Because of you, things are changing. This is springtime. The true spring.”

“I know what I did,” said Shadow. “I didn’t have a lot of
choice.”

Czernobog nodded. There was a look in his eyes that Shadow
did not remember seeing before. “Did I ever tell you about my brother?”