Neil Gaiman - American Gods

“So was I,” he said.

The man shook his head. “If it could but have been any other way,” he said, and sighed.

“She died in a car crash,” said Shadow. “There are worse ways to die.”

The man shook his head, slowly. For a moment it seemed to Shadow as if the man was insubstantial; as if the plane had suddenly become more real, while his neighbor had become less so.

“Shadow,” he said. “It’s not a joke. It’s not a trick. I can pay you better than any other job you find will pay you. You’re an ex-con. There won’t be a long line of people elbowing each other out of the way to hire you.”

“Mister whoever-the-fuck you are,” said Shadow, just loud enough to be heard over the din of the engines, “there isn’t enough money in the world.”

The grin got bigger. Shadow found himself remembering a PBS show about chimpanzees. The show claimed that when apes and chimps smile it’s only to bare their teeth in a grimace of hate or aggression or terror. When a chimp grins, it’s a threat.

“Work for me. There may be a little risk, of course, but if you survive you can have whatever your heart desires. You could be the next king of America. Now,” said the man, “who else is going to pay you that well? Hmm?”

“Who are you?” asked Shadow.

“Ah, yes. The age of information—young lady, could you pour me another glass of Jack Daniel’s? Easy on the ice—not, of course, that there has ever been any other kind of age. Information and knowledge: two currencies that have never gone out of style.”

“I said, who are you?”

“Let’s see. Well, seeing that today certainly is my day—why don’t you call me Wednesday? Mister Wednesday. Although given the weather, it might as well be Thursday, eh?”

“What’s your real name?”

“Work for me long enough and well enough,” said the man in the pale suit, “and I may even tell you that. There. Job offer. Think about it. No one expects you to say yes immediately, not knowing whether you’re leaping into a piranha tank or a pit of bears. Take your time.” He closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat.

“I don’t think so,” said Shadow. “I don’t like you. I don’t want to work with you.”

“Like I say,” said the man, without opening his eyes, “don’t rush into it. Take your time.”

The plane landed with a bump, and a few passengers got off. Shadow looked out of the window: it was a little airport in the middle of nowhere, and there were still two little airports to go before Eagle Point. Shadow transferred his glance to the man in the pale suit—Mr. Wednesday? He seemed to be asleep.

Impulsively, Shadow stood up, grabbed his bag, and stepped off the plane, down the steps onto the slick, wet tarmac, walking at an even pace toward the lights of the terminal. A light rain spattered his face.

Before he went inside the airport building, he stopped, and turned, and watched. No one else got off the plane. The ground crew rolled the steps away, the door was closed, and it took off. Shadow walked inside and he rented what turned out, when he got to the parking lot, to be a small red Toyota.

Shadow unfolded the map they’d given him. He spread it out on the passenger’s seat. Eagle Point was about 250 miles away.

The storms had passed, if they had come this far. It was cold and clear. Clouds scudded in front of the moon, and for a moment Shadow could not be certain whether it was the clouds or the moon that were moving.

He drove north for an hour and a half.

It was getting late. He was hungry, and when he realized how hungry he really was, he pulled off at the next exit and drove into the town of Nottamun (pop. 1301). He filled the gas tank at the Amoco and asked the bored woman at the cash register where he could get something to eat.

“Jack’s Crocodile Bar,” she told him. “It’s west on County Road N.”

“Crocodile Bar?”

“Yeah. Jack says they add character.” She drew him a map on the back of a mauve flyer, which advertised a chicken roast for the benefit of a young girl who needed a new kidney. “He’s got a couple of crocodiles, a snake, one a them big lizard things.”

“An iguana?”

“That’s him.”

Through the town, over a bridge, on for a couple of miles, and he stopped at a low, rectangular building with an illuminated Pabst sign.

The parking lot was half empty.

Inside the air was thick with smoke and “Walking After Midnight” was playing on the jukebox. Shadow looked around for the crocodiles, but could not see them. He wondered if the woman in the gas station had been pulling his leg.

“What’ll it be?” asked the bartender.

“House beer, and a hamburger with all the trimmings. Fries.”

“Bowl of chili to start? Best chili in the state.”

“Sounds good,” said Shadow. “Where’s the rest room?”

The man pointed to a door in the corner of the bar. There was a stuffed alligator head mounted on the door. Shadow went through the door.

It was a clean, well-lit rest room. Shadow looked around the room first; force of habit. (“Remember, Shadow, you can’t fight back when you’re pissing,” Low Key said, low key as always, in the back of his head.) He took the urinal stall on the left. Then he unzipped his fly and pissed for an age, feeling relief. He read the yellowing press clipping framed at eye level, with a photo of Jack and two alligators.

There was a polite grunt from the urinal immediately to his right, although he had heard nobody come in.

The man in the pale suit was bigger standing than he had seemed sitting on the plane beside Shadow. He was almost Shadow’s height, and Shadow was a big man. He was staring ahead of him. He finished pissing, shook off the last few drops, and zipped himself up.

Then he grinned, like a fox eating shit from a barbed wire fence. “So,” said Mr. Wednesday, “you’ve had time to think, Shadow. Do you want a job?”

In a dark red room—the color of the walls is close to that of raw liver—is a tall woman dressed cartoonishly in too-tight silk shorts, her breasts pulled up and pushed forward by the yellow blouse tied beneath them. Her black hair is piled high and knotted on top of her head. Standing beside her is a short man wearing an olive T-shirt and expensive blue jeans. He is holding, in his right hand, a wallet and a Nokia mobile phone with a red-white-and-blue faceplate.

The red room contains a bed, upon which are white satin-style sheets and an oxblood bedspread. At the foot of the bed is a small wooden table, upon which is a small stone statue of a woman with enormous hips, and a candleholder. The woman hands the man a small red candle. “Here,” she says. “Light it.”

“Me?”

“Yes,” she says. “If you want to have me.”

“I shoulda just got you to suck me off in the car.”

“Perhaps,” she says. “Don’t you want me?” Her hand runs up her body from thigh to breast, a gesture of presentation, as if she were demonstrating a new product.

Red silk scarves over the lamp in the corner of the room make the light red.

The man looks at her hungrily, then he takes the candle from her and pushes it into the candleholder. “You got a light?”

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 olive 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.