American Gods

by Neil Gaiman

  “I saw this week’s already.” She sat on a chair near the door, ruffled through the pile of newspapers put aside for recycling until she found something, and read it while Sam bagged up the last of the money in the till and put it in the safe.

  They had been sleeping together for a week now. Sam wondered if this was it, the relationship she’d been waiting for all her life. She told herself that it was just brain chemicals and pheromones that made her happy when she saw Natalie, and perhaps that was what it was; still, all she knew for sure was that she smiled when she saw Natalie, and that when they were together she felt comfortable and comforted.

  “This paper,” said Natalie, “has another one of those articles in it. ‘Is America Changing?’ “

  “Well, is it?”

  “They don’t say. They say that maybe it is, but they don’t know how and they don’t know why, and maybe it isn’t happening at all.”

  Sam smiled broadly. “Well,” she said, “that covers every option, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess.” Natalie’s brow creased and she went back to her newspaper.

  Sam washed the dishcloth and folded it. “I think it’s just that, despite the government and whatever, everything just feels suddenly good right now. Maybe it’s just spring coming a little early. It was a long winter, and I’m glad it’s over.”

  “Me too.” A pause. “It says in the article that lots of people have been reporting weird dreams. I haven’t really had any weird dreams. Nothing weirder than normal.”

  Sam looked around to see if there was anything she had missed. Nope. It was a good job well done. She took off her apron, hung it back in the kitchen. Then she came back and started to turn off the lights. “I’ve had some weird dreams recently,” she said. “They got weird enough that I actually started keeping a dream journal. I write them down when I wake up. But when I read them, they don’t mean anything at all.”

  She put on her street coat and her one-size-fits-all gloves.

  “I did some dream work,” said Natalie. Natalie had done a little of everything, from arcane self-defense disciplines and sweat lodges to feng shui and jazz dancing. “Tell me. I’ll tell you what they mean.”

  “Okay.” Sam unlocked the door and turned the last of the lights off. She let Natalie out, and she walked out onto the street and locked the door to the Coffee House firmly behind her. “Sometimes I have been dreaming of people who fell from the sky. Sometimes I’m underground, talking to a woman with a buffalo head. And sometimes I dream about this guy I kissed in a bar last month.”

  Natalie made a noise. “Something you should have told me about?”

  “Maybe. But not like that. It was a Fuck-Off Kiss.”

  “You were telling him to fuck off?”

  “No, I was telling everyone else they could fuck off. You had to be there, I guess.”

  Natalie’s shoes clicked down the sidewalk. Sam padded on next to her. “He owns my car,” said Sam.

  “That purple thing you got at your sister’s?”

  “Yup.”

  “What happened to him? Why doesn’t he want his car?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s in prison. Maybe he’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “I guess.” Sam hesitated. “A few weeks back, I was certain he was dead. ESP. Or whatever. Like, I knew. But then, I started to think maybe he wasn’t. I don’t know. I guess my ESP isn’t that hot.”

  “How long are you going to keep his car?”

  “Until someone comes for it. I think it’s what he would have wanted.”

  Natalie looked at Sam, then she looked again. Then she said, “Where did you get those from?”

  “What?”

  “The flowers. The ones you’re holding, Sam. Where did they come from? Did you have them when we left the Coffee House? I would have seen them.”

  Sam looked down. Then she grinned. “You are so sweet. I should have said something when you gave them to me, shouldn’t I?” she said. “They are lovely. Thank you so much. But wouldn’t red have been more appropriate?”

  They were roses, their stems wrapped in paper. Six of them, and white.

  “I didn’t give them to you,” said Natalie, her lips firming.

  And neither of them said another word until they reached the movie theater.

  When she got home that night Sam put the roses in an improvised vase. Later, she cast them in bronze, and she kept to herself the tale of how she got them, although she told Caroline, who came after Natalie, the story of the ghost-roses one night when they were both very drunk, and Caroline agreed with Sam that it was a really, really strange and spooky story, and, deep down, did not actually believe a word of it, so that was all right.

  Shadow had parked near a pay phone. He called information, and they gave him the number.

  No, he was told. She isn’t here. She’s probably still at the Coffee House.

  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 followed the signs 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 toward 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 farther 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.

  “I’m here,” said Shadow, “because back in December a young man played a game of checkers with an old god, and he lost.”

  The old woman’s gray hair was up on the top of her head in a tight bun. She pursed her lips. “Come back tomorrow,” said Zorya Vechernyaya.

  “I can’t,” he said, simply.

  “Is your funeral. Now, you go and sit down. Zorya Utrennyaya will bring you coffee. Czernobog will be back soon.”

  Shadow walked along the corridor to the sitting room. It was just as he remembered, although now the window was open. The gray cat slept on the arm of the sofa. It opened an eye as Shadow came in and then, unimpressed, it went back to sleep.

  This was where he had played checkers with Czernobog; this was where he had wagered his life to get the old man to join them on Wednesday’s last doomed grift. The fresh air came in through the open window, blowing the stale air away.

  Zorya Utrennyaya came in with a red wooden tray. A small enameled cup of steaming black coffee sat on the tray, beside a saucer filled with small chocolate-chip cookies. She put it down on the table in front of him.

  “I saw Zorya Polunochnaya again,” he said. “She came to me under the world, and she gave me the moon to light my way. And she took something from me. But I don’t remember what.”

  “She likes you,” said Zorya Utrennyaya. “She dreams so much. And she guards us all. She is so brave.”

  “Where’s Czernobog?”

  “He says the spring cleaning makes him uncomfortable. He goes out to buy newspaper, sit in the park. Buy cigarettes. Perhaps he will not come back today. You do not have to wait. Why don’t you go? Come back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll wait,” said Shadow. There was no magic forcing him to wait, he knew that. This was him. It was one last thing that needed to happen, and if it was the last thing that happened, well, he was going there of his own volition. After this there would be no more obligations, no more mysteries, no more ghosts.

  He sipped the hot coffee, as black and as sweet as he remembered.

  He heard a deep male voice in the corridor, and he sat up straighter. He was pleased to see that his hand was not trembling. The door opened.

  “Shadow?”

  “Hi,” said Shadow. He stayed sitting down.

  Czernobog walked into the room. He was carrying a folded copy of the Chicago Sun-Times, which he put down on the coffee table. He stared at Shadow, then he put his hand out, tentatively. The two men shook hands.

  “I came,” said Shadow. “Our deal. You came through with your part of it. This is my part.”

  Czernobog nodded. His brow creased. The sunlight glinted on his gray hair and mustache, making them appear almost golden. “Is . . .” he frowned. “Is not . . .” He broke off. “Maybe you should go. Is not a good time.”

  “Take as long as you need,” said Shadow. “I’m ready.”

  Czernobog sighed. “You are a very stupid boy. You know that?”

  “I guess.”

  “You are a stupid boy. And on the mountaintop, you did a very good thing.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  “Perhaps.”

  Czernobog walked to the old wooden sideboard and, bending down, pulled an attaché case from underneath it. He flipped the catches on the case. Each one sprang back with a satisfying thump. He opened the case. He took a hammer out and hefted it experimentally. The hammer looked like a scaled-down sledgehammer; its wooden haft was stained.

  Then he stood up. He said, “I owe you much. More than you know. Because of you, things are changing. This is springtime. The true spring.”

  “I know what I did,” said Shadow. “I didn’t have a lot of choice.”

  Czernobog nodded. There was a look in his eyes that Shadow did not remember seeing before. “Did I ever tell you about my brother?”

  “Bielebog?” Shadow walked to the center of the ash-stained carpet. He went down on his knees. “You said you hadn’t seen him in a long time.”

  “Yes,” said the old man, raising the hammer. “It has been a long winter, boy. A very long winter. But the winter is ending, now.” And he shook his head, slowly, as if he were remembering something. And he said, “Close your eyes.”

  Shadow closed his eyes and raised his head, and he waited.

  The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss.

  “Pock! There,” said Czernobog. “Is done.” There was a smile on his face that Shadow had never seen before, an easy, comfortable smile, like sunshine on a summer’s day. The old man walked over to the case, and he put the hammer away, and closed the bag, and pushed it back under the sideboard.

  “Czernobog?” asked Shadow. Then, “Are you Czernobog?”

  “Yes. For today,” said the old man. “By tomorrow, it will all be Bielebog. But today, is still Czernobog.”

  “Then why? Why didn’t you kill me when you could?”

  The old man took out an unfiltered cigarette from a packet in his pocket. He took a large box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the cigarette with a match. He seemed deep in thought. “Because,” said the old man, after some time, “there is blood. But there is also gratitude. And it has been a long, long winter.”

  Shadow got to his feet. There were dusty patches on the knees of his jeans, where he had knelt, and he brushed the dust away.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” said the old man. “Next time you want to play checkers, you know where to find me. This time, I play white.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I will,” said Shadow. “But not for a while.” He looked into the old man’s twinkling eyes, and he wondered if they had always been that cornflower shade of blue. They shook hands, and neither of them said goodbye.

  Shadow kissed Zorya Utrennyaya on the cheek on his way out, and he kissed Zorya Vechernyaya on the back of her hand, and he took the stairs out of that place two at a time.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Reykjavik, in Iceland, is a strange city, even for those who have seen many strange cities. It is a volcanic city—the heat for the city comes fro
m deep underground.

  There are tourists, but not as many of them as you might expect, not even in early July. The sun was shining, as it had shone for weeks now: it ceased shining for an hour or two in the small hours of the morning. There would be a dusky dawn of sorts between two and three in the morning, and then the day would begin once more.

  The big tourist had walked most of Reykjavik that morning, listening to people talk in a language that had changed little in a thousand years. The natives here could read the ancient sagas as easily as they could read a newspaper. There was a sense of continuity on this island that scared him, and that he found desperately reassuring. He was very tired: the unending daylight had made sleep almost impossible, and he had sat in his hotel room through the whole long nightless night alternately reading a guidebook and Bleak House, a novel he had bought in an airport in the last few weeks, but which airport he could no longer remember. Sometimes he had stared out of the window.

  Finally the clock as well as the sun proclaimed it morning.

  He bought a bar of chocolate at one of the many candy stores and walked the sidewalk, occasionally finding himself reminded of the volcanic nature of Iceland: he would turn a corner and notice, for a moment, a sulfurous quality to the air. It put him in mind not of Hades but of rotten eggs.

  Many of the women he passed were very beautiful: slender and pale. The kind of women that Wednesday had liked. Shadow wondered what could have attracted Wednesday to Shadow’s mother, who had been beautiful, but had been neither of those things.

  Shadow smiled at the pretty women, because they made him feel pleasantly male, and he smiled at the other women too, because he was having a good time.

  He was not sure when he became aware that he was being observed. Somewhere on his walk through Reykjavik he became certain that someone was watching him. He would turn, from time to time, trying to get a glimpse of who it was, and he would stare into store windows and out at the reflected street behind him, but he saw no one out of the ordinary, no one who seemed to be observing him.

  He went into a small restaurant, where he ate smoked puffin and cloudberries and arctic char and boiled potatoes, and he drank Coca-Cola, which tasted sweeter, more sugary than he remembered it tasting back in the States.