The Neil Gaiman Reader

by Neil Gaiman

  Anansi, he runs out and he starts a-crying and a-wailing and a-carrying on, and saying my grandmother, she’s a dead woman, look what you did! Murderer! Evildoer! Now the shopkeeper, he says to Anansi, don’t you tell anyone I done this, and he gives Anansi five whole bottles of whisky, and a bag of gold, and a sack of plantains and pineapples and mangos, to make him hush his carrying-on, and to go away.

  (He thinks he killed Anansi’s grandmother, you see.)

  So Anansi, he wheels his handcart home, and he buries his grandmother underneath the banyan tree.

  Now the next day, Tiger, he’s passing by Anansi’s house, and he smells cooking smells. So he invites himself over, and there’s Anansi having a feast, and Anansi, having no other option, asks Tiger to sit and eat with them.

  Tiger says, Brother Anansi, where did you get all that fine food from, and don’t you lie to me? And where did you get these bottles of whisky from, and that big bag filled with gold pieces? If you lie to me, I’ll tear out your throat.

  So Anansi, he says, I cannot lie to you, Brother Tiger. I got them all for I take my dead grandmother to the village on a handcart. And the storekeeper gave me all these good things for bringing him my dead grandmother.

  Now, Tiger, he didn’t have a living grandmother, but his wife had a mother, so he goes home and he calls his wife’s mother out to see him, saying, grandmother, you come out now, for you and I must have a talk. And she comes out and peers around, and says what is it? Well, Tiger, he kills her, even though his wife loves her, and he places her body on a handcart.

  Then he wheels his handcart to the village, with his dead mother-in-law on it. Who want a dead body? he calls. Who want a dead grandmother? But all the people they just jeered at him, and they laughed at him, and they mocked him, and when they saw that he was serious and he wasn’t going anywhere, they pelted him with rotten fruit until he ran away.

  It wasn’t the first time Tiger was made a fool of by Anansi, and it wouldn’t be the last time. Tiger’s wife never let him forget how he killed her mother. Some days it’s better for Tiger if he’s never been born.

  That’s an Anansi story.

  ’Course, all stories are Anansi stories. Even this one.

  Olden days, all the animals wanted to have stories named after them, back in the days when the songs that sung the world were still being sung, back when they were still singing the sky and the rainbow and the ocean. It was in those days when animals were people as well as animals that Anansi the spider tricked all of them, especially Tiger, because he wanted all the stories named after him.

  Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each.

  What’s that? You want to know if Anansi looked like a spider? Sure he did, except when he looked like a man.

  No, he never changed his shape. It’s just a matter of how you tell the story. That’s all.

  The Morning After

  FAT CHARLIE WAS THIRSTY.

  Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt.

  Fat Charlie was thirsty and his head hurt and his mouth tasted evil and his eyes were too tight in his head and all his teeth twinged and his stomach burned and his back was aching in a way that started around his knees and went up to his forehead and his brains had been removed and replaced with cotton balls and needles and pins which was why it hurt to try and think, and his eyes were not just too tight in his head but they must have rolled out in the night and been reattached with roofing nails; and now he noticed that anything louder than the gentle Brownian motion of air molecules drifting softly past each other was above his pain threshold. Also, he wished he were dead.

  Fat Charlie opened his eyes, which was a mistake, in that it let daylight in, which hurt. It also told him where he was (in his own bed, in his bedroom), and because he was staring at the clock on his bedside table, it told him that the time was 11:30.

  That, he thought, one word at a time, was about as bad as things could get: he had the kind of hangover that an Old Testament God might have smitten the Midianites with, and the next time he saw Grahame Coats he would undoubtedly learn that he had been fired.

  He wondered if he could sound convincingly sick over the phone, then realized that the challenge would be convincingly sounding anything else.

  He could not remember getting home last night.

  He would phone the office, the moment he was able to remember the telephone number. He would apologize—crippling twenty-four-hour flu, flat on his back, nothing that could be done. . . .

  “You know,” said someone in the bed next to him, “I think there’s a bottle of water on your side. Could you pass it over here?”

  Fat Charlie wanted to explain that there was no water on his side of the bed, and that there was, in fact, no water closer than the bathroom sink, if he disinfected the toothbrush mug first, but he realized he was staring at one of several bottles of water, sitting on the bedside table. He reached his hand out, and closed fingers that felt like they belonged to someone else around one of them, then, with the sort of effort people usually reserve for hauling themselves up the final few feet of a sheer rock face, he rolled over in bed.

  It was the vodka and orange.

  Also, she was naked. At least, the bits of her he could see were.

  She took the water, and pulled the sheet up to cover her chest. “Ta. He said to tell you,” she said, “when you woke, not to worry about calling work and telling them you were ill. He said to tell you he’s already taken care of it.”

  Fat Charlie’s mind was not put at rest. His fears and worries were not allayed. Then again, in the condition he was in, he only had room in his head for a single thing to worry about at once, and right now he was worrying about whether or not he would make it to the bathroom in time.

  “You’ll need more liquids,” said the girl. “You’ll need to replenish your electrolytes.”

  Fat Charlie made it to the bathroom in time. Afterward, seeing he was there already, he stood under the shower until the room stopped undulating, and then he brushed his teeth without throwing up.

  When he returned to the bedroom, the vodka and orange was no longer there, which was a relief to Fat Charlie, who had started to hope that she might have been an alcohol-induced delusion, like pink elephants or the nightmarish idea that he had taken to the stage to sing on the previous evening.

  He could not find his dressing gown, so he pulled on a tracksuit, in order to feel dressed enough to visit the kitchen, at the far end of the hall.

  His phone chimed, and he rummaged through his jacket, which was on the floor beside the bed, until he found it, and flipped it open. He grunted into it, as anonymously as he could, just in case it was someone from the Grahame Coats Agency trying to discern his whereabouts.

  “It’s me,” said Spider’s voice. “Everything’s okay.”

  “You told them I was dead?”

  “Better than that. I told them I was you.”

  “But.” Fat Charlie tried to think clearly. “But you’re not me.”

  “Hey. I know that. I told them I was.”

  “You don’t even look like me.”

  “Brother of mine, you are harshing a potential mellow here. It’s all taken care of. Oops. Gotta go. The big boss needs to talk to me.”

  “Grahame Coats? Look, Spider—”

  But Spider had put down the phone, and the screen blanked.

  Fat Charlie’s dressing gown came through the door. There was a girl inside it. It looked significantly better on her than it ever had on him. She was carrying a tray, on which was a water glass with a fizzing Alka-Seltzer in it, along with something in a mug.

  “Drink both of these,” she told him. “The mug first. Just knock it back.”

  “What’s in the mug?”

  “Egg yolk, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, salt
, dash of vodka, things like that,” she said. “Kill or cure. Now,” she told him, in tones that brooked no argument. “Drink.”

  Fat Charlie drank. “Oh my god,” he said.

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “But you’re still alive.”

  He wasn’t sure about that. He drank the Alka-Seltzer anyway.

  Something occurred to him.

  “Um,” said Fat Charlie. “Um. Look. Last night. Did we. Um.” She looked blank.

  “Did we what?”

  “Did we. You know. Do it?”

  “You mean you don’t remember?” Her face fell. “You said it was the best you’d ever had. That it was as if you’d never made love to a woman before. You were part god, part animal, and part unstoppable sex machine . . .”

  Fat Charlie didn’t know where to look. She giggled.

  “I’m just winding you up,” she said. “I’d helped your brother get you home, we cleaned you up, and, after that, you know.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “Well,” she said, “you were completely out cold, and it’s a big bed. I’m not sure where your brother slept. He must have the constitution of an ox. He was up at the crack of dawn, all bright and smiling.”

  “He went into work,” said Fat Charlie. “He told them he was me.”

  “Wouldn’t they be able to tell the difference? I mean, you’re not exactly twins.”

  “Apparently not.” He shook his head. Then he looked at her. She stuck out a small, extremely pink tongue at him.

  “What’s your name?”

  “You mean you’ve forgotten? I remember your name. You’re Fat Charlie.”

  “Charles,” he said. “Just Charles is fine.”

  “I’m Daisy,” she said, and stuck out her hand. “Pleased to meet you.”

  They shook hands solemnly.

  “I feel a bit better,” said Fat Charlie.

  “Like I said,” she said. “Kill or cure.”

  SPIDER WAS HAVING a great day at the office. He almost never worked in offices. He almost never worked. Everything was new, everything was marvelous and strange, from the tiny lift that lurched him up to the fifth floor, to the warrenlike offices of the Grahame Coats Agency. He stared, fascinated, at the glass case in the lobby filled with dusty awards. He wandered through the offices, and when anyone asked him who he was, he would say “I’m Fat Charlie Nancy,” and he’d say it in his god-voice, which would make whatever he said practically true.

  He found the tea-room, and made himself several cups of tea. Then he carried them back to Fat Charlie’s desk, and arranged them around it in an artistic fashion. He started to play with the computer network. It asked him for a password. “I’m Fat Charlie Nancy,” he told the computer, but there were still places it didn’t want him to go, so he said, “I’m Grahame Coats,” and it opened to him like a flower.

  He looked at things on the computer until he got bored.

  He dealt with the contents of Fat Charlie’s in basket. He dealt with Fat Charlie’s pending basket.

  It occurred to him that Fat Charlie would be waking up around now, so he called him at home, in order to reassure him; he just felt that he was making a little headway when Grahame Coats put his head around the door, ran his fingers across his stoatlike lips, and beckoned.

  “Gotta go,” Spider said to his brother. “The big boss needs to talk to me.” He put down the phone.

  “Making private phone calls on company time, Nancy,” stated Grahame Coats.

  “Abso-friggin’-lutely,” agreed Spider.

  “And was that myself you were referring to as ‘the big boss’?” asked Grahame Coats. They walked to the end of the hallway and into his office.

  “You’re the biggest,” said Spider. “And the bossest.”

  Grahame Coats looked puzzled; he suspected he was being made fun of, but he was not certain, and this disturbed him.

  “Well, sit ye down, sit ye down,” he said.

  Spider sat him down.

  It was Grahame Coats’s custom to keep the turnover of staff at the Grahame Coats Agency fairly constant. Some people came and went. Others came and remained until just before their jobs would begin to carry some kind of employment protection. Fat Charlie had been there longer than anyone: one year and eleven months. One month to go before redundancy payments or industrial tribunals could become a part of his life.

  There was a speech that Grahame Coats gave, before he fired someone. He was very proud of his speech.

  “Into each life,” he began, “a little rain must fall. There’s no cloud without a silver lining.”

  “It’s an ill wind,” offered Spider, “that blows no one good.”

  “Ah. Yes. Yes indeed. Well. As we pass through this vale of tears, we must pause to reflect that—”

  “The first cut,” said Spider, “is the deepest.”

  “What? Oh.” Grahame Coats scrabbled to remember what came next. “Happiness,” he pronounced, “is like a butterfly.”

  “Or a bluebird,” agreed Spider.

  “Quite. If I may finish?”

  “Of course. Be my guest,” said Spider, cheerfully.

  “And the happiness of every soul at the Grahame Coats Agency is as important to me as my own.”

  “I cannot tell you,” said Spider, “how happy that makes me.”

  “Yes,” said Grahame Coats.

  “Well, I better get back to work,” said Spider. “It’s been a blast, though. Next time you want to share some more, just call me. You know where I am.”

  “Happiness,” said Grahame Coats. His voice was taking on a faintly strangulated quality. “And what I wonder, Nancy, Charles, is this—are you happy here? And do you not agree that you might be rather happier elsewhere?”

  “That’s not what I wonder,” said Spider. “You want to know what I wonder?”

  Grahame Coats said nothing. It had never gone like this before. Normally, at this point, their faces fell, and they went into shock. Sometimes they cried. Grahame Coats had never minded when they cried.

  “What I wonder,” said Spider, “is what the accounts in the Cayman Islands are for. You know, because it almost sort of looks like money that should go to our client accounts sometimes just goes into the Cayman Island accounts instead. And it seems a funny sort of way to organize the finances, for the money coming in to rest in those accounts. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I was hoping you could explain it to me.”

  Grahame Coats had gone off-white—one of those colors that turn up in paint catalogs with names like “parchment” or “magnolia.” He said, “How did you get access to those accounts?”

  “Computers,” said Spider. “Do they drive you as nuts as they drive me? What can you do?”

  Grahame Coats thought for several long moments. He had always liked to imagine that his financial affairs were so deeply tangled that, even if the Fraud Squad were ever able to conclude that financial crimes had been committed, they would find it extremely difficult to explain to a jury exactly what kind of crimes they were.

  “There’s nothing illegal about having offshore accounts,” he said, as carelessly as possible.

  “Illegal?” said Spider. “I should hope not. I mean, if I saw anything illegal, I should have to report it to the appropriate authorities.”

  Grahame Coats picked up a pen from his desk, then he put it down again. “Ah,” he said. “Well, delightful though it is to chat, converse, spend time, and otherwise hobnob with you, Charles, I suspect that both of us have work we should be getting on with. Time and tide, after all, wait for no man. Procrastination is the thief of time.”

  “Life is a rock,” suggested Spider, “but the radio rolled me.”

  “Whatever.”

  Sunbird

  2005

  THEY WERE A rich and a rowdy bunch at the Epicurean Club in those days. They certainly knew how to party. There were five of them:

  There was Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, big enough for three men, who ate e
nough for four men and who drank enough for five. His great-grandfather had founded the Epicurean Club with the proceeds of a tontine, which he had taken great pains, in the traditional manner, to ensure that he had collected in full.

  There was Professor Mandalay, small and twitchy and gray as a ghost (and perhaps he was a ghost; stranger things have happened), who drank nothing but water, and who ate doll-portions from plates the size of saucers. Still, you do not need the gusto for the gastronomy, and Mandalay always got to the heart of every dish placed in front of him.

  There was Virginia Boote, the food and restaurant critic, who had once been a great beauty but was now a grand and magnificent ruin, and who delighted in her ruination.

  There was Jackie Newhouse, the descendant (on the left-handed route) of the great lover, gourmand, violinist, and duelist Giacomo Casanova. Jackie Newhouse had, like his notorious ancestor, both broken his share of hearts and eaten his share of great dishes.

  And there was Zebediah T. Crawcrustle, who was the only one of the Epicureans who was flat-out broke: he shambled in unshaven from the street when they had their meetings, with half a bottle of rotgut in a brown paper bag, hatless and coatless and, too often, partly shirtless, but he ate with more of an appetite than any of them.

  Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy was talking—

  “We have eaten everything that can be eaten,” said Augustus TwoFeathers McCoy, and there was regret and glancing sorrow in his voice. “We have eaten vulture, mole, and fruitbat.”

  Mandalay consulted his notebook. “Vulture tasted like rotten pheasant. Mole tasted like carrion slug. Fruitbat tasted remarkably like sweet guinea pig.”

  “We have eaten kakapo, aye-aye, and giant panda—”