Anansi Boys

They stumbled through the neon-and-striplight world. Spider had his arms around several of the women. He would kiss them as he walked, indiscriminately, like a man taking a bite from first one summer fruit, then another. None of them seemed to mind.

It’s not normal, thought Fat Charlie. That’swhat it’s not. He was not even trying to keep up, merely attempting not to be left behind.

He could still taste the bitter wine on his tongue.

He became aware that a girl was walking along beside him. She was small, and pretty in a pixieish sort of way. She tugged at his sleeve. “What are we doing?” she asked. “Where are we going?”

“We’re mourning my father,” he said, “I think.”

“Is it a reality TV show?”

“I hope not.”

Spider stopped and turned. The gleam in his eyes was disturbing. “We are here,” he announced. “We have arrived. It is what he would have wanted.” There was a handwritten message on a sheet of bright orange paper on the door outside the pub. It said on it, Tonight. Upstair’s. KAROAKE.

“Song,” said Spider. Then he said, “It’s showtime!”

“No,” said Fat Charlie. He stopped where he was.

“It’s what he loved,” said Spider.

“I don’t sing. Not in public. And I’m drunk. And, I really don’t think this is a really good idea.”

“It’s a great idea.” Spider had a perfectly convincing smile. Properly deployed, a smile like that could launch a holy war. Fat Charlie, however, was not convinced.

“Look,” he said, trying to keep the panic from his voice. “There are things that people don’t do. Right? Some people don’t fly. Some people don’t have sex in public. Some people don’t turn into smoke and blow away. I don’t do any of those things, and I don’t sing either.”

“Not even for Dad?”

“Especially not for Dad. He’s not going to embarrass me from beyond the grave. Well, not any more than he has already.”

“ ‘Scuse me,” said one of the young women. “ ‘Scuse me but are we going in? ‘Cause I’m getting cold out here, and Sybilla needs to wee.”

“We’re going in,” said Spider, and he smiled at her.

Fat Charlie wanted to protest, to stand his ground, but he found himself swept inside, hating himself.

He caught up with Spider on the stairs. “I’ll go in,” he said. “But I won’t sing.”

“You’re already in.”

“I know. But I’m not singing.”

“Not much point in saying you won’t go in if you’re already in.”

“I can’t sing.”

“You telling me I inherited all the musical talent as well?”

“I’m telling you that if I have to open my mouth in order to sing in public, I’ll throw up.”

Spider squeezed his arm, reassuringly. “You watch how I do it,” he said.

The birthday girl and two of her friends stumbled up onto the little dais, and giggled their way through “Dancing Queen.” Fat Charlie drank a gin and tonic somebody had put into his hand, and he winced at every note they missed, at every key change that didn’t happen. There was a round of applause from the rest of the birthday group.

Another of the women took the stage. It was the pixieish one who had asked Fat Charlie where they were going. The opening chords sounded to “Stand by Me,” and she began, using the phrase in its most approximate and all-encompassing way, to sing along: she missed every note, came in too soon or too late on every line, and misread most of them. Fat Charlie felt for her.

She climbed down from the stage and came toward the bar. Fat Charlie was going to say something sympathetic, but she was glowing with joy. “That was so great,” she said. “I mean, that was just amazing.” Fat Charlie bought her a drink, a large vodka and orange. “That was such a laugh,” she told him. “Are you going to do it? Go on. You have to do it. I bet you won’t be any crapper than I was.”

Fat Charlie shrugged, in a way that, he hoped, indicated that he contained within him depths of crap as yet unplumbed.

Spider walked over to the little stage as if a spotlight was following him.

“I bet this will be good,” said the vodka and orange. “Did someone say you were his brother?”

“No,” muttered Fat Charlie, ungraciously. “I said that he was my brother.”

Spider began to sing. It was “Under the Boardwalk.”

It wouldn’t have happened if Fat Charlie had not liked the song so much. When Fat Charlie was thirteen he had believed that “Under the Boardwalk” was the greatest song in the world (by the time he was a jaded and world-weary fourteen-year-old, it had become Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry”). And now Spider was singing his song, and singing it well. He sang it in tune, he sang it as if he meant it. People stopped drinking, stopped talking, and they looked at him, and they listened.

When Spider finished singing, people cheered. Had they been wearing hats, they might well have flung them into the air.

“I can see why you wouldn’t want to follow that,” said the vodka and orange to Fat Charlie. “I mean, you can’t follow that, can you?”

“Well—” said Fat Charlie.