Madam Life’s a piece in bloomDeath goes dogging everywhere:She’s the tenant of the room,He’s the ruffian on the stair.—W. E. HENLEY, “MADAM LIFE’S
A PIECE IN BLOOM”
Only Zorya Utrennyaya was awake to say goodbye to them, that Saturday morning. She took Wednesday’s forty-five dollars and insisted on writing him out a receipt for it in wide, looping handwriting, on the back of an expired soft-drink coupon. She looked quite doll-like in the morning light, with her old face carefully made-up and her golden hair piled high upon her head.
Wednesday kissed her hand. “Thank you for your hospitality, dear lady,” he said. “You and your lovely sisters remain as radiant as the sky itself.”
“You are a bad old man,” she told him, and shook a finger at him. Then she hugged him. “Keep safe,” she told him. “I would not like to hear that you were gone for good.”
“It would distress me equally, my dear.”
She shook hands with Shadow. “Zorya Polunochnaya thinks very highly of you,” she said. “I also.”
“Thank you,” said Shadow. “Thanks for the dinner.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You liked? You must come again.”
Wednesday and Shadow walked down the stairs. Shadow put his hands in his jacket pockets.
The silver dollar was cold in his hand. It was bigger and heavier than any coins he’d used so far.
He classic-palmed it, let his hand hang by his side naturally, then straightened his hand as the coin slipped down to a front-palm position. It felt natural there, held between his forefinger and his little finger by the slightest of pressure.
“Smoothly done,” said Wednesday.
“I’m just learning,” said Shadow. “I can do a lot of the technical stuff. The hardest part is making people look at the wrong hand.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes,” said Shadow. “It’s called misdirection.” He slipped his middle fingers under the coin, pushing it into a back palm, and fumbled his grip on it, ever-so-slightly. The coin dropped from his hand to the stairwell with a clatter and bounced down half a flight of stairs. Wednesday reached down and picked it up.
“You cannot afford to be careless with people’s gifts,” said Wednesday. “Something like this, you need to hang on to it. Don’t go throwing it about.” He examined the coin, looking first at the eagle side, then at the face of Liberty on the obverse. “Ah, Lady Liberty. Beautiful, is she not?” He tossed the coin to Shadow, who picked it from the air, did a slide vanish—seeming to drop it into his left hand while actually keeping it in his right—and then appeared to pocket it with his left hand. The coin sat in the palm of his right hand, in plain view. It felt comforting there.
“Lady Liberty,” said Wednesday. “Like so many of the gods that Americans hold dear, a foreigner. In this case, a Frenchwoman, although, in deference to American sensibilities, the French covered up her magnificent bosom on that statue they presented to New York. Liberty,”
he continued, wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom flight of steps, toeing it to the side of the stairs with distaste. “Someone could slip on that. Break their necks,”
he muttered, interrupting himself. “Like a banana peel, only with bad taste and irony thrown in.” He pushed open the door, and the sunlight hit them. The world outside was colder than it had looked from indoors: Shadow wondered if there was more snow to come. “Liberty,”
boomed Wednesday, as they walked to his car, “is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.”
“Yeah?” said Shadow.
“Quoting,” said Wednesday. “Quoting someone French. That’s who they have a statue to, in their New York harbor: a bitch, who liked to be fucked on the refuse from the tumbril. Hold your torch as high as you want to, m’dear, there’s still rats in your dress and cold jism dripping down your leg.” He unlocked the car, and pointed Shadow to the passenger seat.
“I think she’s beautiful,” said Shadow, holding the coin up close. Liberty’s silver face reminded him a little of Zorya Polunochnaya.
“That,” said Wednesday, driving off, “is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. Worm food. At night, you’re rubbing yourself against worm food. No offense meant.”
Shadow had never seen Wednesday quite so expansive. His new boss, he decided, went
through phases of extroversion followed by periods of intense quiet. “So you aren’t American?”
asked Shadow.
“Nobody’s American,” said Wednesday. “Not originally. That’s my point.” He checked his watch.
“We still have several hours to kill before the banks close. Good job last night with Czernobog, by the way. I would have closed him on coming eventually, but you enlisted him more
wholeheartedly than ever I could have.”
“Only because he gets to kill me afterward.”
“Not necessarily. As you yourself so wisely pointed out, he’s old, and the killing stroke might merely leave you, well, paralyzed for life, say. A hopeless invalid. So you have much to look forward to, should Mister Czernobog survive the coming difficulties.”
“And there is some question about this?” said Shadow, echoing Wednesday’s manner, then hating himself for it.
“Fuck yes,” said Wednesday. He pulled up in the parking lot of a bank. “This,” he said, “is the bank I shall be robbing. They don’t close for another few hours. Let’s go in and say hello.”
He gestured to Shadow. Reluctantly, Shadow got out of the car and followed Wednesday in. If the old man was going to do something stupid, Shadow could see no reason why his face should be on the camera; but curiosity pulled him in and he walked into the bank. He looked down at the floor, rubbed his nose with his hand, doing his best to keep his face hidden.
“Deposit forms, ma’am?” said Wednesday to the lone teller.
“Over there.”
“Very good. And if I were to need to make a night deposit…?”
“Same forms.” She smiled at him. “You know where the night deposit slot is, hon? Left out the main door, it’s on the wall.”
“My thanks.”
Wednesday picked up several deposit forms. He grinned a goodbye at the teller, and he and Shadow walked out.
Wednesday stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, scratching his beard meditatively. Then he walked over to the ATM machine, and to the night safe, set in the side of the wall, and inspected them. He led Shadow across the road to the supermarket, where he bought a chocolate fudge Popsicle for himself, and a cup of hot chocolate for Shadow. There was a payphone set in the wall of the entryway, as you went in, below a notice board with rooms to rent, and puppies and kittens in need of good homes. Wednesday wrote down the telephone number of the payphone. They crossed the road once more. “What we need,” said Wednesday, suddenly, “is snow. A good, driving, irritating snow. Think ‘snow’ for me, will you?”
“Huh?”
“Concentrate on making those clouds—the ones over there, in the west—making them bigger and darker. Think gray skies and driving winds coming down from the arctic. Think snow.”
“I don’t think it will do any good.”
“Nonsense. If nothing else, it will keep your mind occupied,” said Wednesday, unlocking the car. “Kinko’s next. Hurry up.”
Snow, thought Shadow, in the passenger seat, sipping his hot chocolate. Huge, dizzying, clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairy-tale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful…
Wednesday was talking to him.
“I’m sorry?” said Shadow.
“I said we’re here,” said Wednesday. “You were somewhere else.”
“I was thinking about snow,” said Shadow.
In Kinko’s, Wednesday set about photocopying the deposit slips from the bank. He had the clerk instant-print him two sets of ten business cards. Shadow’s head had begun to ache, and there was an uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades; he wondered if he had slept on it wrong, if it was an awkward legacy of the night before’s sofa.
Wednesday sat at the computer terminal, composing a letter, and, with the clerk’s help, making several large-sized signs.
Snow, thought Shadow. High in the atmosphere, perfect, tiny crystals that form about a
minute piece of dust, each a lace-like work of unique, six-sided fractal art. And the snow crystals
clump together into flakes as they fall, covering Chicago in their white plenty, inch upon inch…
“Here,” said Wednesday. He handed Shadow a cup of Kinko’s coffee, a half-dissolved lump of non-dairy creamer powder floating on the top. “I think that’s enough, don’t you?”
“Enough what?”
“Enough snow. Don’t want to immobilize the city, do we?”
The sky was a uniform battleship gray. Snow was coming. Yes.
“I didn’t really do that?” said Shadow. “I mean, I didn’t. Did I?”
“Drink the coffee,” said Wednesday. “It’s foul stuff, but it will ease the headache.” Then he said,
“Good work.”
Wednesday paid the Kinko’s clerk, and he carried his signs and letters and cards outside to the car. He opened the trunk of his car, put the papers in a large black metal case of the kind carried by payroll guards, and closed the trunk. He passed Shadow a business card.
“Who,” said Shadow, “is A. Haddock, Director of Security, A1 Security Services?”
“You are.”
“A. Haddock?”
“Yes.”
“What does the A stand for?”
“Alfredo? Alphonse? Augustine? Ambrose? Your call entirely.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I’m James O’Gorman,” said Wednesday. “Jimmy to my friends. See? I’ve got a card too.”
They got back in the car. Wednesday said, “If you can think ‘A. Haddock’ as well as you thought
‘snow,’ we should have plenty of lovely money with which to wine and dine my friends of tonight.”
“And if we’re in jail by this evening?”
“Then my friends will just have to make do without us.”
“I’m not going back to prison.”
“You won’t be.”
“I thought we had agreed that I wouldn’t be doing anything illegal.”
“You aren’t. Possibly aiding and abetting, a little conspiracy to commit, followed of course by receiving stolen money, but trust me, you’ll come out of this smelling like a rose.”
“Is that before or after your elderly Slavic Charles Atlas crushes my skull with one blow?”
“His eyesight’s going,” said Wednesday reassuringly. “He’ll probably miss you entirely. Now, we still have a little time to kill—the bank closes at midday on Saturdays, after all. Would you like
lunch?”
“Yes,” said Shadow. “I’m starving.”
“I know just the place,” said Wednesday. He hummed as he drove, some cheerful song that Shadow could not identify. Snowflakes began to fall, just as Shadow had imagined them, and he felt strangely proud. He knew, rationally, that he had nothing to do with the snow, just as he knew the silver dollar he carried in his pocket was not, and never had been, the moon. But still…
They stopped outside a large shed-like building. A sign said that the All-U-Can-Eat lunch buffet was $4.99. “I love this place,” said Wednesday.
“Good food?” asked Shadow.
“Not particularly,” said Wednesday. “But the ambience is unmissable.”
The ambience that Wednesday loved, it turned out, once lunch had been eaten—Shadow had the fried chicken, and enjoyed it—was the business that took up the rear of the shed: it was, the hanging flag across the center of the room announced, a Bankrupt and Liquidated Stock Clearance Depot.
Wednesday went out to the car, and reappeared with a small suitcase, which he took into the men’s room. Shadow figured he’d learn soon enough what Wednesday was up to, whether he wanted to or not, and so he prowled the liquidation aisles, staring at the things for sale: boxes of coffee “for use in airline filters only,” Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys and Xena: Warrior Princess harem dolls, teddy bears that played patriotic tunes on the xylophone when plugged in, and other teddy bears that played seasonal songs on the xylophone when plugged in, cans of processed meat, galoshes and sundry overshoes, marshmallows, Bill Clinton presidential wristwatches, artificial miniature Christmas trees, salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of animals, body parts, fruit and nuns, and, Shadow’s favorite, a “just add real carrot” snowman kit, with plastic coal eyes, a corncob pipe, and a plastic hat.
Shadow thought about how you made the moon seem to come out of the sky and become a silver dollar, and what made a woman get out of her grave and walk across town to talk to you.
“Isn’t it a wonderful place?” asked Wednesday when he came out of the men’s room. His hands were still wet, and he was drying them off on a handkerchief. “They’re out of paper towels in there,” he said. He had changed his clothes. He was now wearing a dark blue jacket, with matching trousers, a blue knit tie, a thick blue sweater, a white shirt, and black shoes. He looked like a security guard, and Shadow said so.
“What can I possibly say to that, young man,” said Wednesday, picking up a box of floating plastic aquarium fish (“They’ll never fade—and you’ll never have to feed them!!”), “other than to congratulate you on your perspicacity. How about Arthur Haddock? Arthur’s a good name.”
“Too mundane.”
“Well, you’ll think of something. There. Let us return to town. We should be in perfect time for our bank robbery, and then I shall have a little spending money.”
“Most people,” said Shadow, “would simply take it from the ATM.”
“Which is, oddly enough, more or less exactly what I was planning to do.”
Wednesday parked the car in the supermarket lot across the street from the bank. From the trunk of the car Wednesday brought out the metal case and a clipboard, and a pair of
handcuffs. He handcuffed the case to his left wrist. He attached the other end of the cuff to the metal case’s handle. The snow continued to fall. Then he put a peaked blue cap on, and
Velcroed a patch to the breast pocket of his jacket.A1SECURITY was written on the cap and the patch. He put the deposit slips on his clipboard. Then he slouched. He looked like a retired beat cop, and appeared somehow to have gained himself a paunch.
“Now,” he said, “you do a little shopping in the food store, then hang out by the phone. If anyone asks, you’re waiting for a call from your girlfriend, whose car has broken down.”
“So why’s she calling me there?”
“How the hell should you know?”
Wednesday put on a pair of faded pink earmuffs. He closed the trunk. Snowflakes settled on his dark blue cap, and on his earmuffs.
“How do I look?” he asked.
“Ludicrous,” said Shadow.
“Ludicrous?”
“Or goofy, maybe,” said Shadow.
“Mm. Goofy and ludicrous. That’s good.” Wednesday smiled. The earmuffs made him appear, at the same time, reassuring, amusing, and, ultimately, loveable. He strode across the street and walked along the block to the bank building, while Shadow walked into the supermarket hall and watched.
Wednesday taped a large redOUT OF ORDER notice to the ATM. He put a red ribbon across the night deposit slot, and he taped a photocopied sign up above it. Shadow read it with amusement.
FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, it said,WE ARE WORKING TO MAKE ONGOING IMPROVEMENT’S.WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE TEMPORARY INCONVENIENCE.
Then Wednesday turned around and faced the street. He looked cold and put-upon.
A young woman came over to use the ATM. Wednesday shook his head, explained that it was out of order. She cursed, apologized for cursing, and ran off.
A car drew up, and a man got out holding a small gray sack and a key. Shadow watched as Wednesday apologized to the man, then made him sign the clipboard, checked his deposit slip, painstakingly wrote him out a receipt and puzzled over which copy to keep, and, finally, opened his big black metal case and put the man’s sack inside.
The man shivered in the snow, stamping his feet, waiting for the old security guard to be done with this administrative nonsense, so he could leave his takings and get out of the cold and be on his way, then he took his receipt and got back into his warm car and drove off.
Wednesday walked across the street carrying the metal case, and bought himself a coffee at the supermarket.
“Afternoon, young man,” he said, with an avuncular chuckle, as he passed Shadow. “Cold enough for you?”
He walked back across the street, and took gray sacks and envelopes from people coming to deposit their earnings or their takings on this Saturday afternoon, a fine old security man in his funny pink earmuffs.
Shadow bought some things to read—Turkey Hunting, People, and because the cover picture of Bigfoot was so endearing, the Weekly World News—and stared out of the window.
“Anything I can do to help?” asked a middle-aged black man with a white moustache. He seemed to be the manager.
“Thanks, man, but no. I’m waiting for a phone call. My girlfriend’s car broke down.”
“Probably the battery,” said the man. “People forget those things only last three, maybe four years. It’s not like they cost a fortune.”
“Tell me about it,” said Shadow.
“Hang in there, big guy,” said the manager, and he went back into the supermarket.
The snow had turned the street scene into the interior of a snowglobe, perfect in all its details.
Shadow watched, impressed. Unable to hear the conversations across the street, he felt it was like watching a fine silent movie performance, all pantomime and expression: the old security guard was gruff, earnest—a little bumbling perhaps, but enormously well-meaning. Everyone who gave him their money walked away a little happier from having met him.
And then the cops drew up outside the bank, and Shadow’s heart sank. Wednesday tipped his cap to them and ambled over to the police car. He said his hellos and shook hands through the open window, and nodded, then hunted through his pockets until he found a business card and a letter, and passed them through the window of the car. Then he sipped his coffee.
And then the cops drew up outside the bank, and Shadow’s heart sank. Wednesday tipped his cap to them and ambled over to the police car. He said his hellos and shook hands through the open window, and nodded, then hunted through his pockets until he found a business card and a letter, and passed them through the window of the car. Then he sipped his coffee.