“I love you,” she said, simply. “I’ll be looking out for you.” She walked over to the motel room door. There was a strange taste in his mouth. “Get some sleep, puppy,” she told him. “And stay out of trouble.”
She opened the door to the hall. The fluorescent light in the hallway was not kind: beneath it, Laura looked dead, but then, it did that to everyone.
“You could have asked me to stay the night,” she said, in her cold-stone voice.
“I don’t think I could,” said Shadow.
“You will, hon,” she said. “Before all this is over. You will.” She turned away from him, and walked down the corridor.
Shadow looked out of the doorway. The night clerk kept on reading his John Grisham novel, and barely looked up as she walked past him. There was thick graveyard mud clinging to her shoes. And then she was gone.
Shadow breathed out, a slow sigh. His heart was pounding arrhythmically in his chest. He walked across the hall and knocked on Wednesday’s door. As he knocked he got the weirdest notion, that he was being buffeted by black wings, as if an enormous crow was flying through him, out into the hall and the world beyond.
Wednesday opened the door. He had a white motel towel wrapped around his waist, but was otherwise naked. “What the hell do you want?” he asked.
“Something you should know,” said Shadow. “Maybe it was a dream—but it wasn’t—or maybe I inhaled some of the fat kid’s synthetic toad-skin smoke, or probably I’m just going mad ...”
“Yeah, yeah. Spit it out,” said Wednesday. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”
Shadow glanced into the room. He could see that there was someone in the bed, watching him. A sheet pulled up over small breasts. Pale blonde hair, something rattish about the face. He lowered his voice. “I just saw my wife,” he said. “She was in my room.”
“A ghost, you mean? You saw a ghost?”
“No. Not a ghost. She was solid. It was her. She’s dead all right, but it wasn’t any kind of a ghost. I touched her. She kissed me.”
“I see.” Wednesday darted a look at the woman in the bed. “Be right back, m’dear,” he said.
They crossed the hall to Shadow’s room. Wednesday turned on the lamps. He looked at the cigarette butt in the ashtray. He scratched his chest. His nipples were dark, old-man nipples, and his chest hair was grizzled. There was a white scar down one side of his torso. He sniffed the air. Then he shrugged.
“Okay,” he said. “So your dead wife showed up. You scared?”
“A little.”
“Very wise. The dead always give me the screaming mimis. Anything else?”
“I’m ready to leave Eagle Point. Laura’s mother can sort out the apartment, all that. She hates me anyway. I’m ready to go when you are.”
Wednesday smiled. “Good news, my boy. We’ll leave in the morning. Now, you should get some sleep. I have some scotch in my room, if you need help sleeping. Yes?”
“No. I’ll be fine.”
“Then do not disturb me further. I have a long night ahead of me.”
“Good night,” said Shadow.
“Exactly,” said Wednesday, and he closed the door as he went out.
Shadow sat down on the bed. The smell of cigarettes and preservatives lingered in the air. He wished that he were mourning Laura: it seemed more appropriate than being troubled by her or, he admitted it to himself now that she had gone, just a little scared by her. It was time to mourn. He turned the lights out, and lay on the bed, and thought of Laura as she was before he went to prison. He remembered their marriage when they were young and happy and stupid and unable to keep their hands off each other.
It had been a very long time since Shadow had cried, so long he thought he had forgotten how. He had not even wept when his mother died.
But he began to cry now, in painful, lurching sobs, and for the first time since he was a small boy, Shadow cried himself to sleep.
Coming To America A.D. 813
They navigated the green sea by the stars and by the shore, and when the shore was only a memory and the night sky was overcast and dark they navigated by faith, and they called on the All-Father to bring them safely to land once more.
A bad journey they had of it, their fingers numb and with a shiver in their bones that not even wine could burn off. They would wake in the morning to see that the hoarfrost had touched their beards, and, until the sun wanned them, they looked like old men, white-bearded before their time.