American Gods

Shadow came back out, gave the woman his clothes, which she put into the plastic bag with the rest of his possessions. She had him sign for them. Shadow signed for them as Mike Ainsel, although he found that he was already thinking of Mike Ainsel as someone he had liked well enough in the past but would no longer be seeing in the future. He had thumbed through the wallet before he handed it over. “You take care of this,” he had said to the woman. “My whole life is in here.” The woman took the wallet from him, and assured him that it would be safe with them. She asked Chad if that wasn’t true, and Chad, looking up from the last of his paperwork, said Liz was telling the truth, they’d never lost a prisoner’s possessions yet.

Shadow had slipped the four hundred-dollar bills that he had palmed from the wallet into his socks, when he had changed, along with the silver Liberty dollar he had palmed as he had emptied his pockets.

“Say,” Shadow asked, when he came out. “Would it be okay if I finished reading the book?”

“Sorry, Mike. Rules are rules,” said Chad.

Liz put Shadow’s possessions in a bag in the back room. Chad said he’d leave Shadow in Officer Bute’s capable hands. Liz looked tired and unimpressed. Chad left. The telephone rang, and Liz—Officer Bute—answered it. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. No problem. Okay. No problem. Okay.” She put down the phone and made a face.

“Problem?” asked Shadow.

“Yes. Not really. Kinda. They’re sending someone up from Milwaukee to collect you. Okay, do you have any history of medical problems, diabetes, anything like that?”

“No,” said Shadow. “Nothing like that. Why is that a problem?”

“Because I got to keep you in here with me for three hours,” she said. “And the cell over there”—she pointed to the cell by the door, with the sleeping man in it—“that’s occupied. He’s on suicide watch. I shouldn’t put you in with him. But it’s not worth the trouble to sign you in to the county and then sign you out again.” She shook her head. “And you don’t want to go in there”—she pointed to the empty cell in which he’d changed his clothes—“because the can is shot. It stinks in there, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. It was gross.”

“It’s common humanity, that’s what it is. The sooner we get into the new facilities, it can’t be too soon for me. One of the women we had in yesterday must’ve flushed a tampon away. I tell ’em not to. We got bins for that. They clog the pipes. Every damn tampon down that john costs the county a hundred bucks in plumbers’ fees. So, I can keep you out here, if I cuff you. Or you can go in the cell.” She looked at him. “Your call,” she said.

“I’m not crazy about them,” he said. “But I’ll take the cuffs.”

She took a pair from her utility belt, then patted the semi-automatic in its holster, as if to remind him that it was there. “Hands behind your back,” she said.

The cuffs were a tight fit: he had big wrists. Then she put hobbles on his ankles, and sat him down on a bench on the far side of the counter, against the wall. “Now,” she said. “You don’t bother me, and I won’t bother you.” She tilted the television so that he could see it.

“Thanks,” he said.

“When we get our new offices,” she said, “there won’t be none of this nonsense.”

The Tonight Show finished. Jay and his guests grinned the world good night. An episode of Cheers began. Shadow had never really watched Cheers. He had only ever seen one episode of it—the one where Coach’s daughter comes to the bar—although he had seen that several times. Shadow had noticed that you only ever catch one episode of shows you don’t watch, over and over, years apart; he thought it must be some kind of cosmic law.

Officer Liz Bute sat back in her chair. She was not obviously dozing, but she was by no means awake, so she did not notice when the gang at Cheers stopped talking and getting off one-liners and just started staring out of the screen at Shadow.

Diane, the blonde barmaid who fancied herself an intellectual, was the first to talk. “Shadow,” she said. “We were so worried about you. You’d fallen off the world. It’s so good to see you again—albeit in bondage and orange couture.”

“What I figure, is, the thing to do,” pontificated bar-bore Cliff, “is to escape in hunting season, when everybody’s wearing orange anyway.”

Shadow said nothing.

“Ah, cat got your tongue, I see,” said Diane. “Well, you’ve led us a merry chase!”

Shadow looked away. Officer Liz had begun, gently, to snore. Carla, the little waitress, snapped, “Hey, jerk-wad! We interrupt this broadcast to show you something that’s going to make you piss in your friggin’ pants. You ready?”