by Neil Gaiman
She did not say anything.
“Well, I don’t really look like him. But. Y’know, none of this really comes easy to me. Ookay. Uh. I can’t stop thinking about you. So I mean, I know you’re engaged to my brother, but I’m sort of asking if you, well, if you’d think about maybe dumping him and possibly going out with me.”
A pot of coffee arrived on a small silver tray, with two cups.
“Greek coffee,” said the proprietor, who had brought it.
“Yes. Thanks. I did ask for a couple of minutes…”
“Is very hot,” said the proprietor. “Very hot coffee. Strong. Greek. Not Turkish.”
“That’s great. Listen, if you don’t mind—five minutes. Please?”
The proprietor shrugged and walked away.
“You probably hate me,” said Spider. “If I was you I’d probably hate me, too. But I mean this. More than I’ve ever meant anything in my life.” She was just looking at him, without expression, and he said, “Please. Just say something. Anything.”
Her lips moved, as if she were trying to find the right words to say.
Spider waited.
Her mouth opened.
His first thought was that she was eating something, because the thing he saw between her teeth was brown, and was certainly not a tongue. Then it moved its head and its eyes, little black-bead eyes, stared at him. Rosie opened her mouth impossibly wide and the birds came out.
Spider said “Rosie?” and then the air was filled with beaks and feathers and claws, one after the other. Birds poured out from her throat, each accompanied by a tiny coughing-choking noise, in a stream directed at him.
He threw up an arm to protect his eyes, and something hurt his wrist. He flailed out, and something flew at his face, heading for his eyes. He jerked his head backward, and the beak punctured his cheek.
A moment of nightmare clarity: there was still a woman sitting opposite him. What he could no longer understand was how he could ever have mistaken her for Rosie. She was older than Rosie, for a start, her blue-black hair streaked here and there with silver. Her skin was not the warm brown of Rosie’s skin but black as flint. She was wearing a ragged ochre raincoat. And she grinned and opened her mouth wide once more, and now inside her mouth he could see the cruel beaks and crazy eyes of seagulls…
Spider did not stop to think. He acted. He grabbed the handle of the coffeepot, swept it up in one hand, while with the other he pulled off the lid; then he jerked the pot toward the woman in the seat opposite him. The contents of the pot, scalding hot black coffee, went all over her.
She hissed in pain.
Birds crashed and flapped through the air of the cellar restaurant, but now there was nobody sitting opposite him, and the birds flew without direction, flapping into walls wildly.
The proprietor said, “Sir? Are you hurt? I am sorry. They must have come in from the street.”
“I’m fine,” said Spider.
“Your face is bleeding,” said the man. He handed Spider a napkin, and Spider pressed it against his cheek. The cut stung.
Spider offered to help the man get the birds out. He opened the door to the street, but now the place was as empty of birds as it had been before his arrival.
Spider pulled out a five-pound note. “Here,” he said. “For the coffee. I’ve got to go.”
The proprietor nodded, gratefully. “Keep the napkin.”
Spider stopped and thought. “When I came in,” he asked, “was there a woman with me?”
The proprietor looked puzzled—possibly even scared, Spider could not be sure. “I do not remember,” he said, as if dazed. “If you had been alone, I would not have seated you back there. But I do not know.”
Spider went back out into the street. The day was still bright, but the sunlight no longer seemed reassuring. He looked around. He saw a pigeon, shuffling and pecking at an abandoned ice cream cone; a sparrow on a window ledge; and, high above, a flash of white in the sunlight, its wings extended, a seagull circled.
CHAPTER NINE
IN WHICH FAT CHARLIE ANSWERS THE DOOR AND SPIDER ENCOUNTERS FLAMINGOS
FAT CHARLIE’S LUCK WAS CHANGING. HE COULD FEEL IT. THE plane on which he was returning home had been oversold, and he had found himself bumped up to first class. The meal was excellent. Halfway across the Atlantic, a flight attendant came over to inform him that he had won a complimentary box of chocolates, and presented it to him. He put it in his overhead locker, and ordered a Drambuie on ice.
He would get home. He would sort everything out with Grahame Coats—after all, if there was one thing that Fat Charlie was certain of, it was the honesty of his own accounting. He would make everything good with Rosie. Everything was going to be just great.
He wondered if Spider would already be gone when he got home, or whether he would get the satisfaction of throwing him out. He hoped it would be the latter. Fat Charlie wanted to see his brother apologize, possibly even grovel. He started to imagine the things that he was going to say.
“Get out!” said Fat Charlie, “And take your sunshine, your Jacuzzi, and your bedroom with you!”
“Sorry?” said the flight attendant.
“Talking,” said Fat Charlie. “To myself. Just um.”
But even the embarrassment he felt at this wasn’t really that bad. He didn’t even hope the plane would crash and end his mortification. Life was definitely looking up.
He opened the little kit of useful amenities he had been given, and put on his eyeshade, and pushed his seat back as far as it would go, which was most of the way. He thought about Rosie, although the Rosie in his mind kept shifting, morphing into someone smaller who wasn’t really wearing much of anything. Fat Charlie guiltily imagined her dressed, and was mortified when he realized that she seemed to be wearing a police uniform. He felt terrible about this, he told himself, but it didn’t seem to make much of an impression. He ought to feel ashamed of himself. He ought to…
Fat Charlie shifted in his seat and emitted one small, satisfied snore.
He was still in an excellent mood when he landed at Heathrow. He took the Heathrow Express into Paddington and was pleased to note that in his brief absence from England the sun had decided to come out. Every little thing, he told himself, is going to be all right.
The only odd note, which added a flavor of wrongness to the morning, occurred halfway through the train journey. He was staring out of the window, wishing he had bought a newspaper at Heathrow. The train was passing an expanse of green—a school playing field, perhaps, when the sky seemed, momentarily, to darken, and, with a hiss of brakes, the train stopped at a signal.
That did not disturb Fat Charlie. It was England in the autumn: the sun was, by definition, something that only happened when it wasn’t cloudy or raining. But there was a figure standing on the edge of the green by a stand of trees.
At first glance, he thought it was a scarecrow.
That was foolish. It could not have been a scarecrow. Scarecrows are found in fields, not on football pitches. Scarecrows certainly aren’t left on the edge of the woodland. Anyway, if it was a scarecrow it was doing a very poor job.
There were crows everywhere, after all, big black ones.
And then it moved.
It was too far away to be anything more than a shape, a slight figure in a tattered brown raincoat. Still, Fat Charlie knew it. He knew that if he had been close enough, he would have seen a face chipped from obsidian, and raven-black hair, and eyes that held madness.
Then the train jerked and began to move, and in moments the woman in the brown raincoat was out of sight.
Fat Charlie felt uncomfortable. He had practically convinced himself by now that what had happened, what he thought had happened, in Mrs. Dunwiddy’s front room had been some form of hallucination, a high-octane dream, true on some level but not a real thing. Not something that had happened; rather, it was symbolic of a greater truth. He could not have gone to a real place, nor struck a real bargain, could he?
<
br /> It was only a metaphor, after all.
He did not ask himself why he was now so certain that everything would soon begin to improve. There was reality, and there was reality, and some things were more real than others.
Faster and faster, the train rattled him further into London.
SPIDER WAS ALMOST HOME FROM THE GREEK RESTAURANT, napkin pushed against his cheek, when someone touched him on the shoulder.
“Charles?” said Rosie.
Spider jumped, or at least, he jerked and made a startled noise.
“Charles? Are you all right? What happened to your cheek?”
He stared at her. “Are you you?” he asked.
“What?”
“Are you Rosie?”
“What kind of a question is that? Of course I’m Rosie. What did you do to your cheek?”
He pressed the napkin against his cheek. “I cut it,” he said.
“Let me see?” She took his hand away from his cheek. The center of the white napkin was stained crimson, as if he had bled into it, but his cheek was whole and untouched. “There’s nothing there.”
“Oh.”
“Charles? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” he said. “I am. Unless I’m not. I think we should go back to my place. I think I’ll be safer there.”
“We were going to have lunch,” said Rosie, in the tone of voice of one who worries that she’ll only understand what’s actually going on when a TV presenter leaps out and reveals the hidden cameras.
“Yes,” said Spider. “I know. I think someone just tried to kill me, though. And she pretended she was you.”
“Nobody’s trying to kill you,” said Rosie, failing to sound like she wasn’t humoring him.
“Even if nobody’s trying to kill me, can we skip lunch and go back to my place? I’ve got food there.”
“Of course.”
Rosie followed him down the road, wondering when Fat Charlie had lost all that weight. He looked good, she thought. He looked really good. They walked into Maxwell Gardens in silence.
He said, “Look at that.”
“What?”
He showed her. The fresh bloodstain had vanished from the napkin. It was now perfectly white.
“Is it a magic trick?”
“If it is, I didn’t do it,” he said. “For once.” He dropped the napkin into a bin. As he did so, a taxi pulled up in front of Fat Charlie’s house, and Fat Charlie got out, rumpled and blinking and carrying a white plastic bag.
Rosie looked at Fat Charlie. She looked at Spider. She looked back at Fat Charlie, who had opened the bag and pulled out an enormous box of chocolates.
“They’re for you,” he said.
Rosie took the chocolates and said, “Thank you.” There were two men and they looked and sounded completely different, and she still could not work out which one of them was her fiancé. “I’m going mad, aren’t I?” she said, her voice taut. It was easier, now she knew what was wrong.
The thinner of the two Fat Charlies, the one with the earring, put his hand on her shoulder. “You need to go home,” he said. “Then you need a nap. When you wake up, you’ll have forgotten all about this.”
Well, she thought, that makes life easier. It’s better with a plan. She walked back to her flat with a spring in her step, carrying her box of chocolates.
“What did you do?” asked Fat Charlie. “She just seemed to turn off.”
Spider shrugged. “I didn’t want to upset her,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”
“It didn’t seem appropriate.”
“Like you’d know what was appropriate?”
Spider touched the front door and it opened.
“I have keys, you know,” said Fat Charlie. “It’s my front door.”
They walked into the hallway, walked up the stairs.
“Where have you been?” asked Spider.
“Nowhere. Out,” said Fat Charlie, as if he were a teenager.
“I was attacked by birds in the restaurant this morning. Do you know anything about that? You do, don’t you.”
“Not really. Maybe. It’s just time for you to leave, that’s all.”
“Don’t start anything,” said Spider.
“Me? Me start anything? I think I’ve been a model of restraint. You came into my life. You got my boss upset, and got the police onto me. You, you’ve been kissing my girlfriend. You screwed up my life.”
“Hey,” said Spider. “You ask me, you’ve done a great job of screwing up your life on your own.”
Fat Charlie clenched his fist, swung back, and hit Spider in the jaw, like they do on the movies. Spider staggered back, more surprised than hurt. He put his hand to his lip, then looked down at the blood on his hand. “You hit me,” he said.
“I can do it again,” said Fat Charlie, who wasn’t sure that he could. His hand hurt.
Spider said “Yeah?” and launched himself at Fat Charlie, pummeling him with his fists, and Fat Charlie went over, his arm around Spider’s waist, pulling Spider down with him.
They rolled up and down the hallway floor, hitting and flailing at each other. Fat Charlie half-expected Spider to launch some kind of magical counterattack or to be supernaturally strong, but the two of them seemed fairly evenly matched. Both of them fought unscientifically, like boys—like brothers—and as they fought, Fat Charlie thought he remembered doing this once before, a long, long time ago. Spider was smarter and faster, but if Fat Charlie could just get on top of him, and get Spider’s hands out of the way…
Fat Charlie grabbed for Spider’s right hand, twisted it behind Spider’s back, then sat on his brother’s chest, putting all his weight on him.
“Give in?” he asked.
“No.” Spider wriggled and twisted, but Fat Charlie was solidly in position, sitting on Spider’s chest.
“I want you to promise,” said Fat Charlie, “to get out of my life, and to leave me and Rosie alone forever.”
At this, Spider bucked, angrily, and Fat Charlie was dislodged. He landed, sprawled, on the kitchen floor. “Look,” said Spider. “I told you.”
There was a banging on the door downstairs, an imperious knocking of the kind that indicated someone needed to come in rather urgently. Fat Charlie glared at Spider, and Spider scowled at Fat Charlie, and slowly they got to their feet.
“Shall I answer it?” said Spider.
“No,” said Fat Charlie. “It’s my bloody house. And I’m going to bloody answer my own front door, thank you very much.”
“Whatever.”
Fat Charlie edged toward the stairs. Then he turned around. “Once I’ve dealt with this,” he said, “I’m dealing with you. Pack your stuff. You are on your way out.” He walked downstairs, tucking himself in, brushing the dust off, and generally trying to make it look as if he hadn’t been brawling on the floor.
He opened the door. There were two large uniformed policemen and one smaller, rather more exotic policewoman in extremely plain clothes.
“Charles Nancy?” said Daisy. She looked at him as if he was a stranger, her eyes expressionless.
“Glumph,” said Fat Charlie.
“Mister Nancy,” she said, “you are under arrest. You have the right—”
Fat Charlie turned back to the interior of the house. “Bastard!” he shouted up the stairs. “Bastard bastard bastarding bastardy bastard!”
Daisy tapped him on the arm. “Do you want to come quietly?” she asked, quietly. “Only if you don’t, we can subdue you first. I wouldn’t recommend it, though. They’re very enthusiastic subduers.”
“I’ll come quietly,” said Fat Charlie.
“That’s good,” said Daisy. She walked Fat Charlie outside and locked him into the back of a black police van.
The police searched the flat. The rooms were empty of life. At the end of the hall was a little spare bedroom, containing several boxes of books and toy cars. They poked around in there, but they didn’t find anything interestin
g.
SPIDER LAY ON THE COUCH IN HIS BEDROOM, AND SULKED. HE had gone to his room when Fat Charlie went off to answer the door. He needed to be on his own. He didn’t do confrontations terribly well. When it got to that point was normally when he went away, and right now Spider knew it was time to go, but he still didn’t want to leave.
He wasn’t sure that sending Rosie home was the right thing to have done.
What he wanted to do—and Spider was driven entirely by wants, never by oughts or shoulds—was to tell Rosie that he wanted her—he, Spider. That he wasn’t Fat Charlie. That he was something quite different. And that, in itself, wasn’t the problem. He could simply have said to her, with enough conviction, “I’m actually Spider, Fat Charlie’s brother, and you’re completely okay with this. It doesn’t bother you,” and the universe would have pushed Rosie just a little, and she would have accepted it, just as she’d gone home earlier. She’d be fine with it. She would not have minded it, not at all.
Except, he knew, somewhere deep inside, she would.
Human beings do not like being pushed about by gods. They may seem to, on the surface, but somewhere on the inside, underneath it all, they sense it, and they resent it. They know. Spider could tell her to be happy about the situation, and she would be happy, but it would be as real as painting a smile on her face—a smile that she would truly believe, in every way that mattered, was her own. In the short term (and until now Spider had only ever thought in the short term) none of this would be important, but in the long term it could only lead to problems. He didn’t want some kind of seething, furious creature, someone who, though she hated him way down deep, was perfectly placid and doll-like and normal on the surface. He wanted Rosie.
And that wouldn’t be Rosie, would it?
Spider stared out of the window at the glorious waterfall and the tropical sky beyond it, and Spider began to wonder when Fat Charlie would come knocking on his door. Something had happened this morning in the restaurant, and he was certain that his brother knew more about it than he was saying.