“Really?”
“I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true and I can believe things where nobody knows if they’re true or not. I can believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and Marilyn Monroe and the Beatles and Elvis and Mister Ed. Listen—I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the worM is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems communicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative. I believe that California is going to sink into the sea when the big one comes, while Florida is going to dissolve into madness and alligators and toxic waste. I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe that the greatest poets of the last century were Edith Sitwell and Don Marquis, that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumblebee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” She stopped, out of breath.
Shadow almost took his hands off the wheel to applaud. Instead he said, “Okay. So if I tell you what I’ve learned you won’t think that I’m a nut.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Try me.”
“Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today?”
“... Maybe.”
“And that there are new gods out there, gods of computers and telephones and whatever, and that ti%y all seem to think there isn’t room for them both in the world. And that some kind of war is kind of likely.”
“And these gods killed those two men?”
“No, my wife killed those two men.”
“I thought you said your wife was dead.”
“She is.”
“She killed them before she died, then?”
“After. Don’t ask.”
She reached up a hand and flicked her hair from her forehead.
They pulled up on Main Street, outside the Buck Stops Here. The sign over the window showed a surprised-look-ing stag standing on its hind legs holding a glass of beer. Shadow grabbed the bag with the book in it and got out.
“Why would they have a war?” asked Sam. “It seems kind of redundant. What is there to win?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Shadow.
“It’s easier to believe in aliens than in gods,” said Sam. “Maybe Mister Town and Mister Whatever were Men in Black, only the alien kind.”
They were standing on the sidewalk outside the Buck Stops Here and Sam stopped. She looked up at Shadow, and her breath hung on the night air like a faint cloud. She said, “Just tell me you’re one of the good guys.”
“I can’t,” said Shadow. “I wish I could. But I’m doing my best.”
She looked up at him, and bit her lower lip. Then she nodded. “Good enough,” she said. “I won’t turn you in. You can buy me a beer.”