Madam Life's apiece in bloom
Death goes dogging everywhere:
She's the tenant of the room,
He's the ruffian on the stair.

-W. E. Henley, "Madam Life's a Piece in Bloom"

Only Zorya Utrennyaya was awake to say goodbye to them, that Saturday morning. She took Wednesday's forty-five dollars and insisted on writing him out a receipt for it in wide, looping handwriting, on the back of an expired soft-drink coupon. She looked quite doll-like in the morning light, with her old face carefully made up and her golden hair piled high upon her head.

Wednesday kissed her hand. "Thank you for your hospitality, dear lady," he said. "You and your lively sisters remain as radiant as the sky itself."

"You are a bad old man," she told him, and shook a finger at him. Then she hugged him. "Keep safe," she told him. "I would not like to hear that you were gone for good."

"It would distress me equally, my dear."

She shook hands with Shadow. "Zorya Polunochnaya thinks very highly of you," she said. "I also."

"Thank you," said Shadow. "Thanks for the dinner."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "You liked? You must come again."

Wednesday and Shadow walked down the stairs. Shadow put his hands in his jacket pocket. The silver dollar was cold in his hand. It was bigger and heavier than any coins he'd used so far. He classic-palmed it, let his hand hang by his side naturally, then straightened his hand as the coin slipped down to a front-palm position. It felt natural there, held between his forefinger and his little finger by the slightest of pressure.

"Smoothly done," said Wednesday.

"I'm just learning," said Shadow. "I can do a lot of the technical stuff. The hardest part is making people look at the wrong hand."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," said Shadow. "It's called misdirection." He slipped his middle fingers under the coin, pushing it into a back palm, and fumbled his grip on it, ever so slightly. The coin dropped from his hand to the stairwell with a clatter and bounced down half a flight of stairs. Wednesday reached down and picked it up.

"You cannot afford to be careless with people's gifts," said Wednesday. "Something like this, you need to hang onto it. Don't go throwing it about." He examined the coin, looking first at the eagle side, then at the face of Liberty on the obverse. "Ah, Lady Liberty. Beautiful, is she not?" He tossed the coin to Shadow, who picked it from the air, did a slide vanish-seeming to drop it into his left hand while actually keeping it in his right-and then appeared to pocket it with his left hand. The coin sat in the palm of his right hand, in plain view. It felt comforting there.

"Lady Liberty," said Wednesday. "Like so many of the gods that Americans hold dear, a foreigner. In this case, a Frenchwoman, although, in deference to American sensibilities, the French covered up her magnificent bosom on that statue they presented to New York. Liberty," he continued, wrinkling his nose at the used condom that lay on the bottom flight of steps, toeing it to the side of the stairs with distaste-"Someone could slip on that. Break his neck," he muttered, interrupting himself. "Like a banana peel, only with bad taste and irony thrown in." He pushed open the door, and the sunlight hit them. "Liberty," boomed Wednesday, as they walked to the car, "is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses."

"Yeah?" said Shadow.

"Quoting," said Wednesday. "Quoting someone French. That's who they have a statue to, in their New York harbor: a bitch who liked to be fucked on the refuse from the tumbrel. Hold your torch as high as you want to, m'dear, there's still rats in your dress and cold jism dripping down your leg." He unlocked the car, and pointed Shadow to the passenger seat.

"I think she's beautiful," said Shadow, holding the coin up close. Liberty's silver face reminded him a little of Zorya Polunochnaya.

"That," said Wednesday, driving off, "is the eternal folly of man. To be chasing after the sweet flesh, without realizing that it is simply a pretty cover for the bones. Worm food. At night, you're rubbing yourself against worm food. No offense meant."

Shadow had never seen Wednesday quite so expansive. His new boss, he decided, went through phases of extroversion followed by periods of intense quiet. "So you aren't American?" asked Shadow.

"Nobody's American," said Wednesday. "Not originally. That's my point." He checked his watch. "We still have several hours to kill before the banks close. Good job last night with Czernobog, by the way. I would have closed him on coming eventually, but you enlisted him more wholeheartedly than I could ever have."

"Only because he gets to kill me afterward."

"Not necessarily. As you yourself so wisely pointed out, he's old, and the killing stroke might merely leave you, well, paralyzed for life, say. A hopeless invalid. So you have much to look forward to, should Mister Czernobog survive the coming difficulties."

"And there is some question about this?" said Shadow, echoing Wednesday's manner, then hating himself for it.

"Fuck yes," said Wednesday. He pulled up in the parking lot of a bank. "This," he said, "is the bank I shall be robbing. They don't close for another few hours. Let's go in and say hello."

He gestured to Shadow. Reluctantly, Shadow got out of the car. If the old man was going to do something stupid, Shadow could see no reason why his face should be on the camera. But curiosity pulled him and he walked into the bank. He looked down at the floor, rubbed his nose with his hand, doing his best to keep his face hidden.

"Deposit forms, ma'am?" said Wednesday to the lone teller.

"Over there."

"Very good. And if I were to need to make a night deposit...?"

"Same forms." She smiled at him. "You know where the night deposit slot is, hon? Left out the main door, it's on the wall."

"My thanks."

Wednesday picked up several deposit forms. He grinned a goodbye at the teller, and he and Shadow walked out.

Wednesday stood there on the sidewalk for a moment, scratching his beard meditatively. Then he walked over to the ATM machine and to the night safe, set in the side of the wall, and inspected them. He led Shadow across the road to the supermarket, where he bought a chocolate fudge Popsicle for himself and a cup of hot chocolate for Shadow. There was a pay phone set in the wall of the entry way, below a notice board with rooms to rent and puppies and kittens in need of good homes. Wednesday wrote down the telephone number of the pay phone. They crossed the road once more. "What we need," said Wednesday, suddenly, "is snow. A good, driving, irritating snow. Think 'snow' for me, will you?"

"Huh?"

"Concentrate on making those clouds-the ones over there, in the west-making them bigger and darker. Think gray skies and driving winds coming down from the arctic. Think snow."

"I don't think it will do any good."

"Nonsense. If nothing else, it will keep your mind occupied," said Wednesday, unlocking the car. "Kinko's next. Hurry up."

Snow, thought Shadow, in the passenger seat, sipping his hot chocolate. Huge, dizzying clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairy-tale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful...

Wednesday was talking to him.

"I'm sorry?" said Shadow.

"I said we're here," said Wednesday. "You were somewhere else."

"I was thinking about snow," said Shadow.

In Kinko's, Wednesday set about photocopying the deposit slips from the bank. He had the clerk instant-print him two sets of ten business cards. Shadow's head had begun to ache, and there was an uncomfortable feeling between his shoulder blades; he wondered if he had slept wrong, if the headache was an awkward legacy of the night before's sofa.

Wednesday sat at the computer terminal, composing a letter, and, with the clerk's help, making several large-sized signs.

Snow, thought Shadow. High in the atmosphere, perfect, tiny crystals that form about a minute piece of dust, each a lacelike work of fractal art. And the snow crystals clump together into flakes as they fall, covering Chicago in their white plenty, inch upon inch...

"Here," said Wednesday. He handed Shadow a cup of Kinko's coffee, a half-dissolved lump of nondairy creamer powder floating on the top, "I think that's enough, don't you?"

"Enough what?"

"Enough snow. Don't want to immobilize the city, do we?"

The sky was a uniform battleship gray. Snow was coming. Yes.

"I didn't really do that?" said Shadow. "I mean, I didn't. Did I?"

"Drink the coffee," said Wednesday. "It's foul stuff, but it will ease the headache." Then he said, "Good work."

Wednesday paid the Kinko's clerk, and he carried his signs and letters and cards outside. He opened the trunk of his car, put the papers in a large black metal case of the kind carried by payroll guards, and closed the trunk. He passed Shadow a business card.

"Who," said Shadow, "is A. Haddock, Director of Security, A1 Security Services?"

"You are."

"A. Haddock?"

"Yes."

"What does the A. stand for?"

"Alfredo? Alphonse? Augustine? Ambrose? Your call entirely."

"Oh. I see."

"I'm James O'Gorman," said Wednesday. "Jimmy to my friends. See? I've got a card too."

They got back in the car. Wednesday said, "If you can think 'A. Haddock' as well as you thought 'snow,' we should have plenty of lovely money with which to wine and dine my friends of tonight."

"I'm not going back to prison."

"You won't be."

"I thought we had agreed that I wouldn't be doing anything illegal."

"You aren't. Possibly aiding and abetting, a little conspiracy to commit, followed of course by receiving stolen money, but, trust me, you'll come out of this smelling like a rose."

"Is that before or after your elderly Slavic Charles Atlas crushes my skull with one blow?"

"His eyesight's going," said Wednesday. "He'll probably miss you entirely. Now, we still have a little time to kill-the bank closes at midday on Saturdays, after all. Would you like lunch?"

"Yes," said Shadow. "I'm starving."

"I know just the place," said Wednesday. He hummed as he drove, some cheerful song that Shadow could not identify. Snowflakes began to fall, just as Shadow had imagined them, and he felt strangely proud. He knew, rationally, that he had nothing to do with the snow, just as he knew the silver dollar he carried in his pocket was not and never had been the moon. But still...

They stopped outside a large shedlike building. A sign said that the all-U-can-eat lunch buffet was $4.99. "I love this place," said Wednesday.

"Good food?" asked Shadow.

"Not particularly," said Wednesday. "But the ambience is unmissable."

The ambience that Wednesday loved, it turned out, once lunch had been eaten-Shadow had the fried chicken, and enjoyed it-was the business that took up the rear of the shed: it was, the hanging flag across the center of the room announced, a Bankrupt and Liquidated Stock Clearance Depot.

Wednesday went out to the car and reappeared with a small suitcase, which he took into the men's room. Shadow figured he'd learn soon enough what Wednesday was up to, whether he wanted to or not, and so he prowled the liquidation aisles, staring at the things for sale: Boxes of coffee "for use in airline filters only," Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys and Xena: Warrior Princess harem dolls, teddy bears that played patriotic tunes on the xylophone when plugged in, cans of processed meat, galoshes and sundry overshoes, marshmallows, Bill Clinton presidential wristwatches, artificial miniature Christmas trees, salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of animals, body parts, fruit, and nuns, and, Shadow's favorite, a "just add real carrot" snowman kit with plastic coal eyes, a corncob pipe, and a plastic hat.

Shadow thought about how one made the moon seem to come out of the sky and become a silver dollar, and what made a woman get out of her grave and walk across town to talk to you.

"Isn't it a wonderful place?" asked Wednesday when he came out of the men's room. His hands were still wet, and he was drying them off on a handkerchief. "They're out of paper towels in there," he said. He had changed his clothes. He was now wearing a dark blue jacket, with matching trousers, a blue knit tie, a thick blue sweater, a white shirt, and black shoes. He looked like a security guard, and Shadow said so.

"What can I possibly say to that, young man," said Wednesday, picking up a box of floating plastic aquarium fish ("They'll never fade-and you'll never have to feed them!!"), "other than to congratulate you on your perspicacity. How about Arthur Haddock? Arthur's a good name."

"Too mundane."

"Well, you'll think of something. There. Let us return to town. We should be in perfect time for our bank robbery, and then I shall have a little spending money."

"Most people," said Shadow, "would simply take it from the ATM."

"Which is, oddly enough, more or less exactly what I was planning to do."

Wednesday parked the car in the supermarket lot across the street from the bank. From the trunk of the car Wednesday brought out the metal case, a clipboard, and a pair of handcuffs. He handcuffed the case to his left wrist. The snow continued to fall. Then he put a peaked blue cap on, and Velcroed a patch to the breast pocket of his jacket. A1 SECURITY was written on the cap and the patch. He put the deposit slips on his clipboard. Then he slouched. He looked like a retired beat cop, and appeared somehow to have gained himself a paunch.

"Now," he said, "you do a little shopping in the food store, then hang out by the phone. If anyone asks, you're waiting for a call from your girlfriend, whose car has broken down."

"So why's she calling me there?"

"How the hell should you know?"

Wednesday put on a pair of faded pink earmuffs. He closed the trunk. Snowflakes settled on his dark blue cap, and on his earmuffs.

"How do I look?" he asked.

"Ludicrous," said Shadow.

"Ludicrous?"

"Or goofy, maybe," said Shadow.

"Mm. Goofy and ludicrous. That's good." Wednesday smiled. The earmuffs made him appear, at the same time, reassuring, amusing, and, ultimately, lovable. He strode across the street and walked along the block to the bank building, while Shadow walked into the supermarket hall and watched.

Wednesday taped a large red out-of-order notice to the ATM. He put a red ribbon across the night deposit slot, and he taped a photocopied sign up above it. Shadow read it with amusement.

FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, it Said, WE ARE WORKING TO MAKE ONGOING IMPROVEMENTS. WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE TEMPORARY INCONVENIENCE.

Then Wednesday turned around and faced the street. He looked cold and put-upon. A young woman came over to use the ATM. Wednesday shook his head, explained that it was out of order. She cursed, apologized for cursing, and ran off.

A car drew up, and a man got out holding a small gray sack and a key. Shadow watched as Wednesday apologized to the man, then made him sign the clipboard, checked his deposit slip, painstakingly wrote him out a receipt and puzzled over which copy to keep, and, finally, opened his big black metal case and put the man's sack inside.

The man shivered in the snow, stamping his feet, waiting for the old security guard to be done with this administrative nonsense, so he could leave his takings and get out of the cold and be on his way, then he took his receipt and got back into his warm car and drove off.

Wednesday walked across the street carrying the metal case, and bought himself a coffee at the supermarket.

"Afternoon, young man," he said, with an avuncular chuckle, as he passed Shadow. "Cold enough for you?"

He walked back across the street and took gray sacks and envelopes from people coming to deposit their earnings or their takings on this Saturday afternoon, a fine old security man in his funny pink earmuffs.

Shadow bought some things to read-Turkey Hunting, People, and, because the cover picture of Bigfoot was so endearing, the Weekly World News-and stared out of the window.

"Anything I can do to help?" asked a middle-aged black man with a white mustache. He seemed to be the manager.

"Thanks, man, but no. I'm waiting for a phone call. My girlfriend's car broke down."

"Probably the battery," said the man. "People forget those things only last three, maybe four years. It's not like they cost a fortune."

"Tell me about it," said Shadow.

"Hang in there, big guy," said the manager, and he went back into the supermarket. The snow had turned the street scene into the interior of a snow globe, perfect in all its details.

Shadow watched, impressed. Unable to hear the conversations across the street, he felt it was like watching a fine silent movie performance, all pantomime and expression: the old security guard was gruff, earnest-a little bumbling perhaps, but enormously well-meaning. Everyone who gave him their money walked away a little happier from having met him.

And then the cops drew up outside the bank, and Shadow's heart sank. Wednesday tipped his cap to them, and ambled over to the police car. He said his hellos and shook hands through the open window, and nodded, then hunted through his pockets until he found a business card and a letter, and passed them through the window of the car. Then he sipped his coffee.

The telephone rang. Shadow picked up the handpiece and did his best to sound bored. "A1 Security Services," he said.

"Can I speak to A. Haddock?" asked the cop across the street.

"This is Andy Haddock speaking," said Shadow.

"Yeah, Mister Haddock, this is the police," said the cop in the car across the street. "You've got a man at the First Illinois Bank on the corner of Market and Second."

"Uh, yeah. That's right. Jimmy O'German. And what seems to be the problem, officer? Jim behaving himself? He's not been drinking?"

"No problem, sir. Your man is just fine, sir. Just wanted to make certain everything was in order."

"You tell Jim that if he's caught drinking again, officer, he's fired. You got that? Out of a job. Out on his ass. We have zero tolerance at A1 Security."

"I really don't think it's my place to tell him that, sir. He's doing a fine job. We're just concerned because something like this really ought to be done by two personnel. It's risky, having one unarmed guard dealing with such large amounts of money."

"Tell me about it. Or more to the point, you tell those cheapskates down at the First Illinois about it. These are my men I'm putting on the line, officer. Good men. Men like you." Shadow found himself warming to this identity. He could feel himself becoming Andy Haddock, chewed cheap cigar in his ashtray, a stack of paperwork to get to this Saturday afternoon, a home in Schaumburg and a mistress in a little apartment on Lake Shore Drive. "Y'know, you sound like a bright young man, officer, uh..."

"Myerson."

"Officer Myerson. You need a little weekend work, or you wind up leaving the force, any reason, you give us a call. We always need good men. You got my card?"

"Yes sir."

"You hang onto it," said Andy Haddock. "You call me."

The police car drove off, and Wednesday shuffled back through the snow to deal with the small line of people who were waiting to give him their money.

"She okay?" asked the manager, putting his head around the door. "Your girlfriend?"

"It was the battery," said Shadow. "Now I just got to wait."

"Women," said the manager. "I hope yours is worth waiting for."

Winter darkness descended, the afternoon slowly graying into night. Lights went on. More people gave Wednesday their money. Suddenly, as if at some signal Shadow could not see, Wednesday walked over to the wall, removed the out-of-order signs, and trudged across the slushy road, heading for the parking lot. Shadow waited a minute, then followed him.

Wednesday was sitting in the back of the car. He had opened the metal case, and was methodically laying everything he had been given out on the backseat in neat piles.

"Drive," he said. "We're heading for the First Illinois Bank over on State Street."

"Repeat performance?" asked Shadow. "Isn't that kind of pushing your luck?"

"Not at all," said Wednesday. "We're going to do a little banking."

While Shadow drove, Wednesday sat in the backseat and removed the bills from the deposit bags in handfuls, leaving the checks and the credit card slips, and taking the cash from some, although not all, of the envelopes. He dropped the cash back into the metal case. Shadow pulled up outside the bank, stopping the car about fifty yards down the road, well out of camera range. Wednesday got out of the car and pushed the envelopes through the night deposit slot. Then he opened the night safe, and dropped in the gray bags. He closed it again.

He climbed into the passenger seat. "You're heading for I-90," said Wednesday. "Follow the signs west for Madison."

Shadow began to drive.

Wednesday looked back at the bank they were leaving. "There, my boy," he said, cheerfully, "that will confuse everything. Now, to get the really big money, you need to do that at about four-thirty on a Sunday morning, when the clubs and the bars drop off their Saturday night's takings. Hit the right bank, the right guy making the drop-off-they tend to pick them big and honest, and sometimes have a couple of bouncers accompany them, but they aren't necessarily smart-and you can walk away with a quarter of a million dollars for an evening's work."

"If it's that easy," said Shadow, "how come everybody doesn't do it?"

"It's not an entirely risk-free occupation," said Wednesday, "especially not at four-thirty in the morning."

"You mean the cops are more suspicious at four-thirty in the morning?"

"Not at all. But the bouncers are. And things can get awkward."

He flicked through a sheaf of fifties, added a smaller stack of twenties, weighed them in his hand, then passed them over to Shadow. "Here," he said. "Your first week's wages."

Shadow pocketed the money without counting it. "So, that's what you do?" he asked. "To make money?"

"Rarely. Only when a great deal of cash is needed fast. On the whole, I make my money from people who never know they've been taken, and who never complain, and who will frequently line up to be taken when I come back that way again."

"That Sweeney guy said you were a hustler."

"He was right. But that is the least of what I am. And the least of what I need you for, Shadow."

***

Snow spun through their headlights and into the windshield as they drove through the darkness. The effect was almost hypnotic.

"This is the only country in the world," said Wednesday, into the stillness, "that worries about what it is."

"What?"

"The rest of them know what they are. No one ever needs to go searching for the heart of Norway. Or looks for the soul of Mozambique. They know what they are."

"And...?"

"Just thinking out loud."

"So you've been to lots of other countries, then?"

Wednesday said nothing. Shadow glanced at him. "No," said Wednesday, with a sigh. "No. I never have."

They stopped for gas, and Wednesday went into the rest room in his security guard jacket and his suitcase, and came out in a crisp, pale suit, brown shoes, and a knee-length brown coat that looked like it might be Italian.

"So when we get to Madison, what then?"

"Take Highway Fourteen west to Spring Green. We'll be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there?"

"No," said Shadow. "But I've seen the signs."

The signs for the House on the Rock were all around that part of the world: oblique, ambiguous signs all across Illinois and Minnesota and Wisconsin, probably as far away as Iowa, Shadow suspected, signs alerting you to the existence of the House on the Rock. Shadow had seen the signs, and wondered about them. Did the House balance perilously upon the Rock? What was so interesting about the Rock? About the House? He had given it a passing thought, but then forgotten it. Shadow was not in the habit of visiting roadside attractions.

They left the interstate at Madison, and drove past the dome of the capitol building, another perfect snow-globe scene in the falling snow, and then they were off the interstate and driving down country roads. After almost an hour of driving through towns with names like Black Earth, they turned down a narrow driveway, past several enormous, snow-dusted flower pots entwined with lizardlike dragons. The tree-lined parking lot was almost empty.

"They'll be closing soon," said Wednesday.

"So what is this place?" asked Shadow, as they walked through the parking lot toward a low, unimpressive wooden building.

"This is a roadside attraction," said Wednesday. "One of the finest. Which means it is a place of power."

"Come again?"

"It's perfectly simple," said Wednesday. "In other countries, over the years, people recognized the places of power. Sometimes it would be a natural formation, sometimes it would just be a place that was, somehow, special. They knew that something important was happening there, that there was some focusing point, some channel, some window to the Immanent. And so they would build temples or cathedrals, or erect stone circles, or...well, you get the idea."

"There are churches all across the States, though," said Shadow.

"In every town. Sometimes on every block. And about as significant, in this context, as dentists' offices. No, in the USA, people still get the call, or some of them, and they feel themselves being called to from the transcendent void, and they respond to it by building a model out of beer bottles of somewhere they've never visited, or by erecting a gigantic bat house in some part of the country that bats have traditionally declined to visit. Roadside attractions: people feel themselves being pulled to places where, in other parts of the world, they would recognize that part of themselves that is truly transcendent, and buy a hot dog and walk around, feeling satisfied on a level they cannot truly describe, and profoundly dissatisfied on a level beneath that."

"You have some pretty whacked-out theories," said Shadow.

"Nothing theoretical about it, young man," said Wednesday. "You should have figured that out by now."

There was only one ticket window open. "We stop selling tickets in half an hour," said the girl. "It takes at least two hours to walk around, you see."

Wednesday paid for their tickets in cash.

"Where's the rock?" asked Shadow.

"Under the house," said Wednesday.

"Where's the house?"

Wednesday put his finger to his lips, and they walked forward. Farther in, a player piano was playing something that was intended to be Ravel's Bolero. The place seemed to be a geometrically reconfigured 1960s bachelor pad, with open stone work, pile carpeting, and magnificently ugly mushroom-shaped stained-glass lampshades. Up a winding staircase was another room filled with knickknacks.

"They say this was built by Frank Lloyd Wright's evil twin," said Wednesday. "Frank Lloyd Wrong." He chuckled at his joke.

"I saw that on a T-shirt," said Shadow.

Up and down more stairs, and now they were in a long, long room, made of glass, that protruded, needlelike, out over the leafless black-and-white countryside hundreds of feet below them. Shadow stood and watched the snow tumble and spin.

"This is the House on the Rock?" he asked, puzzled.

"More or less. This is the Infinity Room, part of the actual house, although a late addition. But no, my young friend, we have not scratched the tiniest surface of what the house has to offer."

"So according to your theory," said Shadow, "Walt Disney World would be the holiest place in America."

Wednesday frowned, and stroked his beard. "Walt Disney bought some orange groves in the middle of Florida and built a tourist town on them. No magic there of any kind. I think there might be something real in the original Disneyland. There may be some power there, although twisted, and hard to access. But some parts of Florida are filled with real magic. You just have to keep your eyes open. Ah, for the mermaids of Weeki Wachee...Follow me, this way."

Everywhere was the sound of music: jangling, awkward music, ever so slightly off the beat and out of time. Wednesday took a five-dollar bill and put it into a change machine, receiving a handful of brass-colored metal coins in return. He tossed one to Shadow, who caught it, and, realizing that a small boy was watching him, held it up between forefinger and thumb and vanished it. The small boy ran over to his mother, who was inspecting one of the ubiquitous Santa Clauses-OVER SIX THOUSAND ON DISPLAY! the signs read-and he tugged urgently at the hem of her coat.

Shadow followed Wednesday outside briefly, and then followed the signs to the Streets of Yesterday.

"Forty years ago Alex Jordan-his face is on the token you have palmed in your right hand, Shadow-began to build a house on a high jut of rock in a field he did not own, and even he could not have told you why. And people came to see him build it-the curious, and the puzzled, and those who were neither and who could not honestly have told you why they came. So he did what any sensible American male of his generation would do: he began to charge them money-nothing much. A nickel each, perhaps. Or a quarter. And he continued building, and the people kept coming.

"So he took those quarters and nickels and made something even bigger and stranger. He built these warehouses on the ground beneath the house, and filled them with things for people to see, and then the people came to see them. Millions of people come here every year."

"Why?"

But Wednesday simply smiled, and they walked into the dimly lit, tree-lined Streets of Yesterday. Prim-lipped Victorian china dolls stared in profusion through dusty store windows, like so many props from respectable horror films. Cobblestones under their feet, the darkness of a roof above their heads, jangling mechanical music in the background. They passed a glass box of broken puppets and an overgrown golden music box in a glass case. They passed the dentist's and the drugstore ("RESTORE POTENCY! USE O'LEARY'S MAGNETICAL BELT!").

At the end of the street was a large glass box with a female mannequin inside it, dressed as a gypsy fortune-teller.

"Now," boomed Wednesday, over the mechanical music, "at the start of any quest or enterprise it behooves us to consult the Norns. So let us designate this Sybil our Urd, eh?" He dropped a brass-colored House on the Rock coin into the slot. With jagged, mechanical motions, the gypsy lifted her arm and lowered it once more. A slip of paper chunked out of the slot.

Wednesday took it, read it, grunted, folded it up, and put it in his pocket.

"Aren't you going to show it to me? I'll show you mine," said Shadow.

"A man's fortune is his own affair," said Wednesday, stiffly. "I would not ask to see yours."

Shadow put his own coin in the slot. He took his slip of paper. He read it.

EVERY ENDING IS A NEW BEGINNING.
YOUR LUCKY NUMBER IS NONE.
YOUR LUCKY COLOR IS DEAD.
Motto:
LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON.

Shadow made a face. He folded the fortune up and put it in his inside pocket.

They went farther in, down a red corridor, past rooms filled with empty chairs upon which rested violins and violas and cellos that played themselves, or seemed to, when fed a coin. Keys depressed, cymbals, crashed, pipes blew compressed air into clarinets and oboes. Shadow observed, with a wry amusement, that the bows of the stringed instruments, played by mechanical arms, never actually touched the strings, which were often loose or missing. He wondered whether all the sounds he heard were made by wind and percussion, or whether there were tapes as well.

They had walked for what felt like several miles when they came to a room called the Mikado, one wall of which was a nineteenth-century pseudo-Oriental nightmare, in which beetle-browed mechanical drummers banged cymbals and drums while staring out from their dragon-encrusted lair. Currently, they were majestically torturing Saint-Sa?ns's Danse Macabre.

Czernobog sat on a bench in the wall facing the Mikado machine, tapping out the time with his fingers. Pipes fluted, bells jangled.

Wednesday sat next to him. Shadow decided to remain standing. Czernobog extended his left hand, shook Wednesday's, shook Shadow's. "Well met," he said. Then he sat back, apparently enjoying the music.

The Danse Macabre came to a tempestuous and discordant end. That all the artificial instruments were ever so slightly out of tune added to the otherworldliness of the place. A new piece began.

"How was your bank robbery?" asked Czernobog. "It went well?" He stood, reluctant to leave the Mikado and its thundering, jangling music.

"Slick as a snake in a barrel of butter," said Wednesday.

"I get a pension from the slaughterhouse," said Czernobog. "I do not ask for more."

"It won't last forever," said Wednesday. "Nothing does."

More corridors, more musical machines. Shadow became aware that they were not following the path through the rooms intended for tourists, but seemed to be following a different route of Wednesday's own devising. They were going down a slope, and Shadow, confused, wondered if they had already been that way.

Czernobog grasped Shadow's arm. "Quickly, come here," he said, pulling him over to a large glass box by a wall. It contained a diorama of a tramp asleep in a churchyard in front of a church door. THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM, said the label, explaining that it was a nineteenth-century penny-in-the-slot machine, originally from an English railway station. The coin slot had been modified to take the brass House on the Rock coins.

"Put in the money," said Czernobog.

"Why?" asked Shadow.

"You must see. I show you."

Shadow inserted his coin. The drunk in the graveyard raised his bottle to his lips. One of the gravestones flipped over, revealing a grasping corpse; a headstone turned around, flowers replaced by a grinning skull. A wraith appeared on the right of the church, while on the left of the church something with a half-glimpsed, pointed, unsettlingly birdlike face, a pale, Boschian nightmare, glided smoothly from a headstone into the shadows and was gone. Then the church door opened, a priest came out, and the ghosts, haunts, and corpses vanished, and only the priest and the drunk were left alone in the graveyard. The priest looked down at the drunk disdainfully, and backed through the open door, which closed behind him, leaving the drunk on his own.

The clockwork story was deeply unsettling. Much more unsettling, thought Shadow, than clockwork has any right to be.

"You know why I show that to you?" asked Czernobog.

"No."

"That is the world as it is. That is the real world. It is there, in that box."

They wandered through a blood-colored room filled with old theatrical organs, huge organ pipes, and what appeared to be enormous copper brewing vats, liberated from a brewery.

"Where are we going?" asked Shadow.

"The carousel," said Czernobog.

"But we've passed signs to the carousel a dozen times already."

"He goes his way. We travel a spiral. The quickest way is sometimes the longest."

Shadow's feet were beginning to hurt, and he found this sentiment to be extremely unlikely.

A mechanical machine played "Octopus's Garden" in a room that went up for many stories, the center of which was filled entirely with a replica of a great black whalelike beast, with a life-sized replica of a boat in its vast fiberglass mouth. They passed on from there to a Travel Hall, where they saw the car covered with tiles and the functioning Rube Goldberg chicken device and the rusting Burma Shave ads on the wall.

Life is Hard
It's Toil and Trouble
Keep your Jawline
Free from Stubble
Burma Shave

read one, and

He undertook to overtake
The road was on a bend
From now on the Undertaker
Is his only friend
Burma Shave

and they were at the bottom of a ramp now, with an ice-cream shop in front of them. It was nominally open, but the girl washing down the surfaces had a closed look on her face, so they walked past it into the pizzeria-cafeteria, empty but for an elderly black man wearing a bright checked suit and canary-yellow gloves. He was a small man, the kind of little old man who looked as if the passing of the years had shrunk him, eating an enormous, many-scooped ice-cream sundae, drinking a supersized mug of coffee. A black cigarillo was burning in the ashtray in front of him.

"Three coffees," said Wednesday to Shadow. He went to the rest room.

Shadow bought the coffees and took them over to Czernobog, who was sitting with the old black man and was smoking a cigarette surreptitiously, as if he were scared of being caught. The other man, happily toying with his sundae, mostly ignored his cigarillo, but as Shadow approached he picked it up, inhaled deeply, and blew two smoke rings-first one large one, then another, smaller one, which passed neatly through the first-and he grinned, as if he were astonishingly pleased with himself.

"Shadow, this is Mister Nancy," said Czernobog.

The old man got to his feet and thrust out his yellow-gloved right hand. "Good to meet you," he said with a dazzling smile. "I know who you must be. You're workin' for the old one-eye bastard, aren't you?" There was a faint twang in his voice, a hint of a patois that might have been West Indian.

"I work for Mister Wednesday," said Shadow. "Yes. Please, sit down."

Czernobog inhaled on his cigarette.

"I think," he pronounced, gloomily, "that our kind, we like the cigarettes so much because they remind us of the offerings that once they burned for us, the smoke rising up as they sought our approval or our favor."

"They never gave me nothin' like that," said Nancy. "Best I could hope for was a pile of fruit to eat, maybe curried goat, something slow and cold and tall to drink, and a big old high-titty woman to keep me company." He grinned white teeth, and winked at Shadow.

"These days," said Czernobog, his expression unchanged, "we have nothing."

"Well, I don't get anywhere near as much fruit as I used to," said Mr. Nancy, his eyes shining. "But there still ain't nothin' out there in the world for my money that can beat a big old high-titty woman. Some folk you talk to, they say it's the booty you got to inspect at first, but I'm here to tell you that it's the titties that still crank my engine on a cold mornin'." Nancy began to laugh, a wheezing, rattling, good-natured laugh, and Shadow found himself liking the old man despite himself.

Wednesday returned from the rest room, and shook hands with Nancy. "Shadow, you want something to eat? A slice of pizza? Or a sandwich?"

"I'm not hungry," said Shadow.

"Let me tell you somethin'," said Mr. Nancy. "It can be a long time between meals. Someone offers you food, you say yes. I'm no longer young as I was, but I can tell you this, you never say no to the opportunity to piss, to eat, or to get half an hour's shut-eye. You follow me?"

"Yes. But I'm really not hungry."

"You're a big one," said Nancy, staring into Shadow's light gray eyes with old eyes the color of mahogany, "a tall drink of water, but I got to tell you, you don't look too bright. I got a son, stupid as a man who bought his stupid at a two-for-one sale, and you remind me of him."

"If you don't mind, I'll take that as a compliment," said Shadow.

"Being called dumb as a man who slept late the mornin' they handed out brains?"

"Being compared to a member of your family."

Mr. Nancy stubbed out his cigarillo, then he flicked an imaginary speck of ash off his yellow gloves. "You may not be the worst choice old One-Eye could have made, come to that." He looked up at Wednesday. "You got any idea how many of us there's goin' to be here tonight?"

"I sent the message out to everyone I could find," said Wednesday. "Obviously not everyone is going to be able to come. And some of them," with a pointed look at Czernobog, "might not want to. But I think we can confidently expect several dozen of us. And the word will travel."

They made their way past a display of suits of armor ("Victorian fake," pronounced Wednesday as they passed the glassed-in display, "modern fake, twelfth-century helm on a seventeenth-century reproduction, fifteenth-century left gauntlet...") and then Wednesday pushed through an exit door, circled them around the outside of the building ("I can't be doin' with all these ins and outs," said Nancy, "I'm not as young as I used to be, and I come from warmer climes") along a covered walkway, in through another exit door, and they were in the carousel room.

Calliope music played: a Strauss waltz, stirring and occasionally discordant. The wall as they entered was hung with antique carousel horses, hundreds of them, some in need of a lick of paint, others in need of a good dusting; above them hung dozens of winged angels constructed rather obviously from female store-window mannequins; some of them bared their sexless breasts; some had lost their wigs and stared baldly and blindly down from the darkness.

And then there was the carousel.

A sign proclaimed it was the largest in the world, said how much it weighed, how many thousand lightbulbs were to be found in the chandeliers that hung from it in Gothic profusion, and forbade anyone from climbing on it or from riding on the animals.

And such animals! Shadow stared, impressed in spite of himself, at the hundreds of full-sized creatures who circled on the platform of the carousel. Real creatures, imaginary creatures, and transformations of the two: each creature was different. He saw mermaid and merman, centaur and unicorn, elephants (one huge, one tiny), bulldog, frog and phoenix, zebra, tiger, manticore and basilisk, swans pulling a carriage, a white ox, a fox, twin walruses, even a sea serpent, all of them brightly colored and more than real: each rode the platform as the waltz came to an end and a new waltz began. The carousel did not even slow down.

"What's it for?" asked Shadow. "I mean, okay, world's biggest, hundreds of animals, thousands of lightbulbs, and it goes around all the time, and no one ever rides it."

"It's not there to be ridden, not by people," said Wednesday. "It's there to be admired. It's there to be."

"Like a prayer wheel goin' around and round," said Mr. Nancy. "Accumulating power."

"So where are we meeting everyone?" asked Shadow. "I thought you said that we were meeting them here. But the place is empty."

Wednesday grinned his scary grin. "Shadow," he said. "You're asking too many questions. You are not paid to ask questions."

"Sorry."

"Now, stand over here and help us up," said Wednesday, and he walked over to the platform on one side, with a description of the carousel on it, and a warning that the carousel was not to be ridden.

Shadow thought of saying something, but instead he helped them, one by one, up onto the ledge. Wednesday seemed profoundly heavy, Czernobog climbed up himself, only using Shadow's shoulder to steady himself, Nancy seemed to weigh nothing at all. Each of the old men climbed out onto the ledge, and then, with a step and a hop, they walked out onto the circling carousel platform.

"Well?" barked Wednesday. "Aren't you coming?"

Shadow, not without a certain amount of hesitation, and a hasty look around for any House on the Rock personnel who might be watching, swung himself up onto the ledge beside the World's Largest Carousel. Shadow was amused, and a little puzzled, to realize that he was far more concerned about breaking the rules by climbing onto the carousel than he had been aiding and abetting this afternoon's bank robbery.

Each of the old men selected a mount. Wednesday climbed onto a golden wolf. Czernobog climbed onto an armored centaur, its face hidden by a metal helmet. Nancy, chuckling, slithered up onto the back of an enormous, leaping lion, captured by the sculptor mid-roar. He patted the side of the lion. The Strauss waltz carried them around, majestically.

Wednesday was smiling, and Nancy was laughing delightedly, an old man's cackle, and even the dour Czernobog seemed to be enjoying himself. Shadow felt as if a weight were suddenly lifted from his back: three old men were enjoying themselves, riding the World's Largest Carousel. So what if they all did get thrown out of the place? Wasn't it worth it, worth anything, to say that you had ridden on the World's Largest Carousel? Wasn't it worth it to have traveled on one of those glorious monsters?

Shadow inspected a bulldog, and a mer-creature, and an elephant with a golden howdah, and then he climbed on the back of a creature with an eagle's head and the body of a tiger, and held on tight.

The rhythm of the "Blue Danube" waltz rippled and rang and sang in his head, the lights of a thousand chandeliers glinted and prismed, and for a heartbeat Shadow was a child again, and all it took to make him happy was to ride the carousel: he stayed perfectly still, riding his eagle-tiger at the center of everything, and the world revolved around him.

Shadow heard himself laugh, over the sound of the music. He was happy. It was as if the last thirty-six hours had never happened, as if the last three years had not happened, as if his life had evaporated into the daydream of a small child, riding the carousel in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, on his first trip back to the States, a marathon journey by ship and by car, his mother standing there, watching him proudly, and himself sucking his melting Popsicle, holding on tightly, hoping that the music would never stop, the carousel would never slow, the ride would never end. He was going around and around and around again...

Then the lights went out, and Shadow saw the gods.