Anansi Boys

Flamingos are not famed for their cutting intelligence, nor for their problem-solving abilities: confronted with a twist of wire and a bottle with something edible in it, a crow might try to make a tool out of the wire in order to get at the contents of the bottle. A flamingo, on the other hand, will try and eat the wire, if it looks like a shrimp, or possibly even if it doesn’t, just in case it was a new kind of shrimp. So if there was something slightly smoky and insubstantial about the man who stood on the window ledge insulting them, the flamingos failed to perceive it. They glared at him with the crazed ruby eyes of killer rabbits, and they rushed toward him.

The man dove from the window, down into the spray of the waterfall, and a thousand flamingos launched themselves into the air after him, many of them, given the run-up a flamingo needs to get properly airborne, tumbling like stones.

Soon the bedroom contained only injured or dead flamingos: the ones who had broken the windows, the ones who had crashed into the walls, the ones who had been crushed beneath other flamingos. Those of the birds who were still alive watched the bedroom door open, apparently by itself, and close again, but, being flamingos, they thought very little of it.

Spider stood in the corridor of Fat Charlie’s flat and tried to catch his breath. He concentrated on letting the bedroom stop existing, which was something that he hated to do, mostly because he was incredibly proud of his sound system, and also because it was where he kept his stuff.

You can always get more stuff, though.

If you’re Spider, all you really have to do is ask.

ROSIE’S MOTHER WAS NOT A WOMAN GIVEN TO GLOATING loudly, so when Rosie broke down in tears on the Chippendale sofa, her mother refrained from whooping, from singing, or from doing a small victory dance and then shimmying around the room. A careful observer, however, might have noticed a glint of triumph in her eyes.

She gave Rosie a large glass of vitaminized water with an ice cube in it and listened to her daughter’s tearful litany of heartbreak and deception. By the end of it, the glint of triumph had been replaced with a look of confusion, and her head was starting to spin.

“So Fat Charlie wasn’t really Fat Charlie?” said Rosie’s mother.

“No. Well, yes. Fat Charlie is Fat Charlie, but for the last week I’ve been seeing his brother.”

“They are twins?”

“No. I don’t even think they look alike. I don’t know. I’m so confused.”

“So which one of them did you break up with?”

Rosie blew her nose. “I broke up with Spider. That’s Fat Charlie’s brother.”

“But you weren’t engaged to him.”

“No, but I thought I was. I thought he was Fat Charlie.”

“So you broke up with Fat Charlie as well?”

“Sort of. I just haven’t told him yet.”

“Did he, did he know about this, this brother thing? Was it some kind of evil kinky conspiracy they did to my poor girl?”

“I don’t think so. But it doesn’t matter. I can’t marry him.”

“No,” agreed her mother. “You certainly cannot. Not one bit.” Inside, in her head, she did a victory jig and set off a large but tasteful celebratory display of fireworks. “We can find you a good boy. Don’t you worry. That Fat Charlie. He was always up to no good. I knew it the first moment I saw him. He ate my wax fruit. I knew he was trouble. Where is he now?”

“I’m not sure. Spider said he might have been taken away by the police,” said Rosie.

“Hah!” said her mother, who increased the fireworks in her head to New Year’s Eve at Disneyland proportions and mentally sacrificed a dozen flawless black bulls for good measure. Aloud, all she said was, “Probably in prison, you ask me. Best place for him. I always said that was where that young man would end up.”

Rosie began to cry, if anything even harder than before. She pulled out another wadge of paper tissues and blew her nose with an extreme honk. She swallowed bravely. Then she cried some more. Her mother patted the back of Rosie’s hand as reassuringly as she knew how. “Of course you can’t marry him,” she said. “You can’t marry a convict. But if he’s in prison you can easily break off the engagement.” A spectre of a smile haunted the corners of her lips as she said, “I could call on him for you. Or go there on a visitor’s day and tell him he’s a lousy crook and you never want to see him again. We could get a restraining order, as well,” she added helpfully.

“Th-that’s not why I can’t marry Fat Charlie,” said Rosie.

“No?” asked her mother, raising one perfectly penciled eyebrow.

“No,” said Rosie. “I can’t marry Fat Charlie because I’m not in love with him.”

“Of course you aren’t. I always knew that. It was a girlish infatuation, but now you see the true—”

“I’m in love,” continued Rosie, as if her mother had not spoken, “with Spider. His brother.” The expression that made its way across her mother’s face then was a cloud of wasps arriving at a picnic. “It’s okay,” said Rosie. “I’m not going to marry him, either. I’ve told him I never want to see him again.”

Rosie’s mother pursed her lips. “Well,” she said, “I can’t pretend I understand any of this, but I can’t say it’s bad news, either.” The gears in her head shifted, and the cogs interlocked in new and interesting ways: ratchets ratchetted and springs resprung. “You know,” she said, “what would be the best thing for you right now? Have you thought about taking a little holiday? I’m happy to pay for it, all the money I’m saving on the wedding after all…”