"Is that good, is it, goddess?" he asks, gasping.
"Worship me, honey," says Bilquis, the hooker.
"Yes," he says. "I worship your br**sts and your hair and your cunt. I worship your thighs and your eyes and your cherry-red lips…"
"Yes…" she croons, riding him.
"I worship your n**ples, from which the milk of life flows. Your kiss is honey and your touch scorches like fire, and I worship it." His words are becoming more rhythmic now, keeping pace with the thrust and roll of their bodies. "Bring me your lust in the morning, and bring me relief and your blessing in the evening. Let me walk in dark places unharmed and let me come to you once more and sleep beside you and make love with you again. I worship you with everything that is within me, and everything inside my mind, with everywhere I've been and my dreams and my…" he breaks off, panting for breath. "What are you doing? That feels amazing. So amazing…" and he looks down at his hips, at the place where the two of them conjoin, but her forefinger touches his chin and pushes his head back, so he is looking only at her face and at the ceiling once again.
"Keep talking, honey," she says. "Don't stop. Doesn't it feel good?"
"It feels better than anything has ever felt," he tells her, meaning it as he says it. "Your eyes are stars, burning in the, shit, the firmament, and your lips are gentle waves that lick the sand, and I worship them," and now he's thrusting deeper and deeper inside her: he feels electric, as if his whole lower body has become sexually charged: priapic, engorged, blissful.
"Bring me your gift," he mutters, no longer knowing what he is saying, "your one true gift, and make me always this…always so…I pray…I…"
And then the pleasure crests into orgasm, blasting his mind into void, his head and self and entire being a perfect blank as he thrusts deeper into her and deeper still…
Eyes closed, spasming, he luxuriates in the moment; and then he feels a lurch, and it seems to him that he is hanging, head down, although the pleasure continues.
He opens his eyes.
He thinks, grasping for thought and reason again, of birth, and wonders, without fear, in a moment of perfect postcoital clarity, whether what he sees is some kind of illusion.
This is what he sees:
He is inside her to the chest, and as he stares at this in disbelief and wonder she rests both hands upon his shoulders and puts gentle pressure on his body.
He slipslides further inside her.
"How are you doing this to me?" he asks, or he thinks he asks, but perhaps it is only in his head.
"You're doing it, honey," she whispers. He feels the lips of her vulva tight around his upper chest and back, constricting and enveloping him. He wonders what this would look like to somebody watching them. He wonders why he is not scared. And then he knows.
"I worship you with my body," he whispers, as she pushes him inside her. Her labia pull slickly across his face, and his eyes slip into darkness.
She stretches on the bed, like a huge cat, and then she yawns. "Yes," she says. "You do."
The Nokia phone plays a high, electrical transposition of the "Ode to Joy." She picks it up, and thumbs a key, and puts the telephone to her ear.
Her belly is flat, her labia small and closed. A sheen of sweat glistens on her forehead and on her upper lip.
"Yeah?" she says. And then she says, "No, honey, he's not here. He's gone away."
She turns the telephone off before she flops out on the bed in the dark red room, then she stretches once more and she closes her eyes, and she sleeps.
Chapter Two
They took her to the cemet'ry
In a big ol' Cadillac
They took her to the cemet'ry
But they did not bring her back.
-old song
"I have taken the liberty," said Mr. Wednesday, washing his hands in the men's room of Jack's Crocodile Bar, "of ordering food for myself, to be delivered to your table. We have much to discuss, after all."
"I don't think so," said Shadow. He dried his own hands on a paper towel and crumpled it, and dropped it into the bin.
"You need a job," said Wednesday. "People don't hire ex-cons. You folk make them uncomfortable."
"I have a job waiting. A good job."
"Would that be the job at the Muscle Farm?"
"Maybe," said Shadow.
"Nope. You don't. Robbie Burton's dead. Without him the Muscle Farm's dead too."
"You're a liar."
"Of course. And a good one. The best you will ever meet. But, I'm afraid, I'm not lying to you about this." He reached into his pocket, produced a folded newspaper, and handed it to Shadow. "Page seven," he said. "Come on back to the bar. You can read it at the table."
Shadow pushed open the door, back into the bar. The air was blue with smoke, and the Dixie Cups were on the jukebox singing "Iko Iko." Shadow smiled, slightly, in recognition of the old children's song.
The barman pointed to a table in the corner. There was a bowl of chili and a burger at one side of the table, a rare steak and a bowl of fries laid in the place across from it.
Look at my king all dressed in red,
Iko Iko all day,
I bet you five dollars he'll kill you dead,
Jockamo-feena-nay
Shadow took his seat at the table. He put the newspaper down. "This is my first meal as a free man. I'll wait until after I've eaten to read your page seven."
Shadow ate his hamburger. It was better than prison hamburgers. The chili was good but, he decided, after a couple of mouthfuls, not the best in the state.
Laura made a great chili. She used lean meat, dark kidney beans, carrots cut small, a bottle or so of dark beer, and freshly sliced hot peppers. She would let the chili cook for a while, then add red wine, lemon juice and a pitch of fresh dill, and, finally, measure out and add her chili powders. On more than one occasion Shadow had tried to get her to show him how she made it: he would watch everything she did, from slicing the onions and dropping them into the olive oil at the bottom of the pot. He had even written down the recipe, ingredient by ingredient, and he had once made Laura's chili for himself on a weekend when she had been out of town. It had tasted okay-it was certainly edible, but it had not been Laura's chili.
The news item on page seven was the first account of his wife's death that Shadow had read. Laura Moon, whose age was given in the article as twenty-seven, and Robbie Burton, thirty-nine, were in Robbie's car on the interstate when they swerved into the path of a thirty-two-wheeler. The truck brushed Robbie's car and sent it spinning off the side of the road.
Rescue crews pulled Robbie and Laura from the wreckage. They were both dead by the time they arrived at the hospital.
Shadow folded the newspaper up once more and slid it back across the table, toward Wednesday, who was gorging himself on a steak so bloody and so blue it might never have been introduced to a kitchen flame.
"Here. Take it back," said Shadow.
Robbie had been driving. He must have been drunk, although the newspaper account said nothing about this. Shadow found himself imagining Laura's face when she realized that Robbie was too drunk to drive. The scenario unfolded in Shadow's mind, and there was nothing he could do to stop it: Laura shouting at Robbie-shouting at him to pull off the road, then the thud of car against truck, and the steering wheel wrenching over…
…the car on the side of the road, broken glass glittering like ice and diamonds in the headlights, blood pooling in rubies on the road beside them. Two bodies being carried from the wreck, or laid neatly by the side of the road.
"Well?" asked Mr. Wednesday. He had finished his steak, devoured it like a starving man. Now he was munching the french fries, spearing them with his fork.
"You're right," said Shadow. "I don't have a job." Shadow took a quarter from his pocket, tails up. He flicked it up in the air, knocking it against his finger as it left his hand, giving it a wobble as if it were turning, caught it, slapped it down on the back of his hand.
"Call," he said.
"Why?" asked Wednesday.
"I don't want to work for anyone with worse luck than me. Call."
"Heads," said Mr. Wednesday.
"Sorry," said Shadow, without even bothering to glance at the quarter. "It was tails. I rigged the toss."
"Rigged games are the easiest ones to beat," said Wednesday, wagging a square finger at Shadow. "Take another look at it."
Shadow glanced down at it. The head was face up.
"I must have fumbled the toss," he said, puzzled.
"You do yourself a disservice," said Wednesday, and he grinned. "I'm just a lucky, lucky guy." Then he looked up. "Well I never. Mad Sweeney. Will you have a drink with us?"
"Southern Comfort and Coke, straight up," said a voice from behind Shadow.
"I'll go and talk to the barman," said Wednesday. He stood up, and began to make his way toward the bar.
"Aren't you going to ask what I'm drinking?" called Shadow.
"I already know what you're drinking," said Wednesday, and then he was standing by the bar. Patsy Cline started to sing "Walking After Midnight" on the jukebox again.
The Southern Comfort and Coke sat down beside Shadow. He had a short ginger beard. He wore a denim jacket covered with bright sew-on patches, and under the jacket a stained white T-shirt. On the T-shirt was printed:
IF YOU CAN'T EAT IT, DRINK IT, SMOKE IT, OR SNORT IT…THEN F*CK IT!
He wore a baseball cap, on which was printed:
THE ONLY WOMAN I HAVE EVER LOVED WAS ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE…MY MOTHER!
He opened a soft pack of Lucky Strikes with a dirty thumbnail, took a cigarette, offered one to Shadow. Shadow was about to take one, automatically-he did not smoke, but a cigarette makes good barter material-when he realized that he was no longer inside. He shook his head.
"You working for our man then?" asked the bearded man. He was not sober, although he was not yet drunk.
"It looks that way," said Shadow. "What do you do?"
The bearded man lit his cigarette. "I'm a leprechaun," he said, with a grin.
Shadow did not smile. "Really?" he said. "Shouldn't you be drinking Guinness?"
"Stereotypes. You have to learn to think outside the box," said the bearded man. "There's a lot more to Ireland than Guinness."
"You don't have an Irish accent."
"I've been over here too fucken long."
"So you are originally from Ireland?"
"I told you. I'm a leprechaun. We don't come from fucken Moscow."
"I guess not."
Wednesday returned to the table, three drinks held easily in his pawlike hands. "Southern Comfort and Coke for you, Mad Sweeney m'man, and a Jack Daniel's for me. And this is for you, Shadow."
"What is it?"
"Taste it."
The drink was a tawny golden color. Shadow took a sip, tasting an odd blend of sour and sweet on his tongue. He could taste the alcohol underneath, and a strange blend of flavors. It reminded him a little of prison hooch, brewed in a garbage bag from rotten fruit and bread and sugar and water, but it was sweeter, and far stranger.