Chapter 5 (p.2)
“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.
