American Gods

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 pigtailed 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 took Highway 90 south 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 towards 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 further 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 and 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.