American Gods Read Online Free Page B

was the color of melted vanilla ice cream. His tie was dark gray silk, and the tie pin was a tree, worked in silver: trunk, branches, and deep roots.
    He held his glass of Jack Daniel’s as they took off, and did not spill a drop.
    â€œAren’t you going to ask me what kind of job?” he asked.
    â€œHow do you know who I am?”
    The man chuckled. “Oh, it’s the easiest thing in the world to know what people call themselves. A little thought, a little luck, a little memory. Ask me what kind of job.”
    â€œNo,” said Shadow. The attendant brought him another glass of beer, and he sipped at it.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI’m going home. I’ve got a job waiting for me there. I don’t want any other job.”
    The man’s craggy smile did not change, outwardly, but now he seemed, actually, amused. “You don’t have a job waiting for you at home,” he said. “You have nothing waiting for you there. Meanwhile, I am offering you a perfectly legal job—good money, limited security, remarkable fringe benefits. Hell, if you live that long, I could throw in a pension plan. You think maybe you’d like one of them?”
    Shadow said, “You must have seen my name on the side of my bag.”
    The man said nothing.
    â€œWhoever you are,” said Shadow, “you couldn’t have known I was going to be on this plane. I didn’t know I was going to be on this plane, and if my plane hadn’t been diverted to St. Louis, I wouldn’t have been. My guess is you’re a practical joker. Maybe you’re hustling something. But I think maybe we’ll have a better time if we end this conversation here.”
    The man shrugged.
    Shadow picked up the in-flight magazine. The little plane jerked and bumped through the sky, making it harder to concentrate. The words floated through his mind like soap bubbles, there as he read them, gone completely a moment later.
    The man sat quietly in the seat beside him, sipping his Jack Daniel’s. His eyes were closed.
    Shadow read the list of in-flight music channels available on transatlantic flights, and then he was looking at the map of the world with red lines on it that showed where the airline flew. Then he had finished reading the magazine, and, reluctantly, he closed the cover and slipped it into the pocket.
    The man opened his eyes. There was something strange about his eyes, Shadow thought. One of them was a darker gray than the other. He looked at Shadow. “By the way,” he said, “I was sorry to hear about your wife, Shadow. A great loss.”
    Shadow nearly hit the man, then. Instead he took a deep breath. (“Like I said, don’t piss off those bitches in airports,” said Johnnie Larch, in the back of his mind, “or they’ll haul your sorry ass back here before you can spit.”) He counted to five.
    â€œSo was I,” he said.
    The man shook his head. “If it could but have been any other way,” he said, and sighed.
    â€œShe died in a car crash,” said Shadow. “There are worse ways to die.”
    The man shook his head, slowly. For a moment it seemed to Shadow as if the man was insubstantial; as if the plane had suddenly become more real, while his neighbor had become less so.
    â€œShadow,” he said. “It’s not a joke. It’s not a trick. I can pay you better than any other job you find will pay you. You’re an ex-con. There won’t be a long line of people elbowing each other out of the way to hire you.”
    â€œMister whoever-the-fuck you are,” said Shadow, just loud enough to be heard over the din of the engines, “there isn’t enough money in the world.”
    The grin got bigger. Shadow found himself remembering a PBS show about chimpanzees. The show claimed that when apes and chimps smile it’s only to bare their teeth in a grimace of hate or aggression or terror. When a chimp grins,