Anansi Boys

Fat Charlie felt like he’d scored, somehow, in the argument. He got up from the sofa, picked up the empty foil cartons that had, the previous evening, held a chicken chow mein and a crispy pork balls, and he dropped them into the bin. He went into his bedroom, where he took off the clothes he had slept in in order to put on clean clothes, discovered that, due to not doing the laundry, he had no clean clothes, so brushed yesterday’s clothes down vigorously—dislodging several stray strands of chow mein—and put them back on.

He went into the kitchen.

Spider was sitting at the kitchen table, enjoying a steak large enough for two people.

“Where did you get that from?” said Fat Charlie, although he was certain that he already knew.

“I asked you if you wanted lunch,” said Spider, mildly.

“Where did you get the steak?”

“It was in the fridge.”

“That,” declaimed Fat Charlie, wagging his finger like a prosecuting attorney going in for the kill, “that was the steak I bought for dinner tonight. For dinner tonight for me and Rosie. The dinner I was going to be cooking for her! And you’re just sitting there like a, a person eating a steak, and, and eating it, and—”

“It’s not a problem,” said Spider.

“What do you mean, not a problem?”

“Well,” said Spider, “I called Rosie this morning already, and I’m taking her out to dinner tonight. So you wouldn’t have needed the steak anyway.”

Fat Charlie opened his mouth. He closed it again. “I want you out,” he said.

“It’s a good thing for man’s desire to outstrip his something or other—grasp or reach or something—or what else is Heaven for?” said Spider, cheerfully, between mouthfuls of Fat Charlie’s steak.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means I’m not going anywhere. I like it here.” He hacked off another lump of steak, shoveled it down.

“Out,” said Fat Charlie, and then the hall telephone rang. Fat Charlie sighed, walked into the hall, and answered it. “What?”

“Ah. Charles. Good to hear your voice. I know you’re currently enjoying your well-earned, but do you think it might be within the bounds of possibility for you to swing by for, oh, half an hour or so, tomorrow morning? Say, around ten-ish?”

“Yeah. Course,” said Fat Charlie. “Not a problem.”

“Delighted to hear it. I’ll need your signature on some papers. Well, until then.”

“Who was that?” asked Spider. He had cleaned his plate and was blotting his mouth with a paper towel.

“Grahame Coats. He wants me to pop in tomorrow.”

Spider said, “He’s a bastard.”

“So? You’re a bastard.”

“Different kind of bastard. He’s not good news. You should find another job.”

“I love my job!” Fat Charlie meant it when he said it. He had managed entirely to forget how much he disliked his job, and the Grahame Coats Agency, and the ghastly, lurking-behind-every-door presence of Grahame Coats.

Spider stood up. “Nice piece of steak,” he said. “I’ve set my stuff up in your spare room.”

“You’ve what?”

Fat Charlie hurried down to the end of the hall, where there was a room that technically qualified his residence

as a two-bedroom flat. The room contained several cartons of books, a box containing an elderly Scalextric Racing set, a tin box filled with Hot Wheels cars (most of them missing tires), and various other battered remnants of Fat Charlie’s childhood. It might have been a good-sized bedroom for a normal-sized garden gnome or an undersized dwarf, but for anyone else it was a closet with a window.

Or rather, it used to be, but it wasn’t. Not anymore.