Anansi Boys

“It’s called ‘Yellow Bird,’” said Spider.

Charlie pushed his hat back on his head, and they walked into Rosie’s hospital room.

Rosie was sitting up in bed, reading a magazine, and looking worried. When she saw the three of them come in, she looked more worried. She looked from Spider to Charlie and back again.

“You’re both a long way from home,” was all she said.

“We all are,” said Charlie. “Now, you’ve met Spider. This is Daisy. She’s in the police.”

“I’m not sure that I am anymore,” said Daisy. “I’m probably in all kinds of hot water.”

“You’re the one who was there last night? The one who got the island police to come up to the house?” Rosie stopped. She said, “Any word on Grahame Coats?”

“He’s in intensive care, just like your mum.”

“Well, if she comes to before he does,” said Rosie, “I expect she’ll kill him.” Then she said, “They won’t talk to me about my mum’s condition. They just say that it’s very serious, and they’ll tell me as soon as there’s anything to tell.” She looked at Charlie with clear eyes. “She’s not as bad as you think she is, really. Not when you get time to know her. We had a lot of time to talk, locked up in the dark. She’s all right.”

She blew her nose. Then she said, “They don’t think she’s going to make it. They haven’t directly said that to me, but they sort of said it in a not-saying-it sort of way. It’s funny. I thought she’d live through anything.”

Charlie said, “Me too. I figured even if there was a nuclear war, it would still leave radioactive cockroaches and your mum.”

Daisy ste

pped on his foot. She said, “Do they know anything more about what hurt her?”

“I told them,” said Rosie. “There was some kind of animal in the house. Maybe it was just Grahame Coats. I mean it sort of was him, but it was sort of someone else. She distracted it from me, and it went for her…” She had explained it all as best she could to the island police that morning. She had decided not to talk about the blonde ghost-woman. Sometimes minds snap under pressure, and she thought it best if people did not know that hers had.

Rosie broke off. She was staring at Spider as if she had only just remembered who he was. She said, “I still hate you, you know.” Spider said nothing, but a miserable expression crept across his face, and he no longer looked like a doctor: now he looked like a man who had borrowed a white coat from behind a door and was worried that someone would notice. A dreamlike tone came into her voice. “Only,” she said, “only when I was in the dark, I thought that you were helping me. That you were keeping the animal away. What happened to your face? It’s all scratched.”

“It was an animal,” said Spider.

“You know,” she said, “Now I see you both at once, you don’t look anything alike at all.”

“I’m the good-looking one,” said Charlie, and Daisy’s foot pressed down on his toes for the second time.

“Bless,” said Daisy, quietly. And then, slightly louder, “Charlie? There’s something we need to talk about outside. Now.”

They went out into the hospital corridor, leaving Spider inside.

“What?” said Charlie.

“What what?” said Daisy.

“What have we got to talk about?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why are we out here? You heard her. She hates him. We shouldn’t have left them alone together. She’s probably killed him by now.”

Daisy looked up at him with the kind of expression that Jesus might have given someone who had just explained that he was probably allergic to bread and fishes, so could He possibly do him a quick chicken salad: there was pity in that expression, along with almost infinite compassion.

She touched a finger to her lips and pulled him back toward the door. He looked back into the hospital room: Rosie did not appear to be killing Spider. Quite the opposite, if anything. “Oh,” said Charlie.

They were kissing. Put like that, and you could be forgiven for presuming that this was a normal kiss, all lips and skin and possibly even a little tongue. You’d miss how he smiled, how his eyes glowed. And then, after the kiss was done, how he stood, like a man who had just discovered the art of standing and had figured out how to do it better than anyone else who would ever come along.

Charlie turned his attention back to the corridor to find Daisy in conversation with several doctors and the police officer they had encountered the previous evening.

“Well, we always had him figured as a bad man,” the police officer was saying to Daisy. “I mean, frankly, you only get this kind of behavior from foreigners. The local people, they simply wouldn’t do that kind of thing.”