“I thought she was my best friend,” said Audrey. “We’d talk every day. When Robbie and I had a fight, she’d be the first one to know—we’d go down to Chi-Chi’s for margaritas and to talk about what scumpots men can be. And all the time she was fucking him behind my back.”
“Please go away, Audrey.”
“I just want you to know I had good reason for what I did.”
He said nothing.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey! I’m talking to you!”
Shadow turned. “Do you want me to tell you that you were right when you spit in Laura’s face? Do you want me to say it didn’t hurt? Or that what you told me made me hate her more than I miss her? It’s not going to happen, Audrey.”
She drove beside him for another minute, not saying anything. Then she said, “So, how was prison, Shadow?”
“It was fine,” said Shadow. “You would have felt right at home.”
She put her foot down on the gas then, making the engine roar, and drove on and away.
With the headlights gone, the world was dark. Twilight faded into night. Shadow kept expecting the act of walking to warm him, to spread warmth through his icy hands and feet. It didn’t happen.
Back in prison, Low Key Lyesmith had once referred to the little prison cemetery out behind the infirmary as the Bone Orchard, and the image had taken root in Shadow’s mind. That night he had dreamed of an orchard under the moonlight, of skeletal white trees, their branches ending in bony hands, their roots going deep down into the graves. There was fruit that grew upon the trees in the bone orchard, in his dream, and there was something very disturbing about the fruit in the dream, but on waking he could no longer remember what strange fruit grew on the trees, nor why he found it so repellent.
Cars passed him. Shadow wished that there was a sidewalk. He tripped on something that he could not see in the dark and sprawled into the ditch on the side of the road, his right hand sinking into several inches of cold mud. He climbed to his feet and wiped his hands on the leg of his pants. He stood there, awkwardly. He had only enough time to observe that there was someone beside him before something wet was forced over his nose and mouth, and he tasted harsh, chemical fumes.
This time the ditch seemed warm and comforting.
Shadow’s temples felt as if they had been reattached to the rest of his skull with roofing nails. His hands were bound behind his back with what felt like some kind of stra
ps. He was in a car, sitting on leather upholstery. For a moment he wondered if there was something wrong with his depth perception and then he understood that, no, the other seat really was that far away.
There were people sitting beside him, but he could not turn to look at them.
The fat young man at the other end of the stretch limo took a can of diet Coke from the cocktail bar and popped it open. He wore a long black coat, made of some silky material, and he appeared barely out of his teens: a spattering of acne glistened on one cheek. He smiled when he saw that Shadow was awake.
“Hello, Shadow,” he said. “Don’t fuck with me.”
“Okay,” said Shadow. “I won’t. Can you drop me off at the Motel America, up by the interstate?”
“Hit him,” said the young man to the person on Shadow’s left. A punch was delivered to Shadow’s solar plexus, knocking the breath from him, doubling him over. He straightened up, slowly.
“I said don’t fuck with me. That was fucking with me. Keep your answers short and to the point or I’ll fucking kill you. Or maybe I won’t kill you. Maybe I’ll have the children break every bone in your fucking body. There are two hundred and six of them. So don’t fuck with me.”
“Got it,” said Shadow.
The ceiling lights in the limo changed color from violet to blue then to green and to yellow.
“You’re working for Wednesday,” said the young man.
“Yes,” said Shadow.
“What the fuck is he after? I mean, what’s he doing here? He must have a plan. What’s the game plan?”
“I started working for Mister Wednesday this morning,” said Shadow. “I’m an errand boy.”
“You’re saying you don’t know?”
“I’m saying I don’t know.”
The boy opened his jacket and took out a silver cigarette case from an inside pocket. He opened it, and offered a cigarette to Shadow. “Smoke?”