Easter Egg of Christianity II
San Francisco in January was unseasonably warm, warm enough that the sweat prickled on the back of Shadow’s neck. Wednesday was wearing a deep blue suit, and a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles that made him look like an entertainment lawyer.
They were walking along Haight Street. The street people and the hustlers and the moochers watched them go by, and no one shook a paper cup of change at them, no one asked them for anything at all.
Wednesday’s jaw was set. Shadow had seen immediately that the man was still angry, and had asked no questions when the black Lincoln Town Car had pulled up outside the apartment that morning. They had not talked on the way to the airport. He had been relieved that Wednesday was in first class and he was back in coach.
Now it was late in the afternoon. Shadow, who had not been in San Francisco since he was a boy, who had only seen it since then as a background to movies, was astonished at how familiar it was, how colorful and unique the wooden houses, how steep the hills, how very much it didn’t feel like anywhere else.
“It’s almost hard to believe that this is in the same country as Lakeside,” he said.
Wednesday glared at him. Then he said, “It’s not. San Francisco isn’t in the same country as Lakeside anymore than New Orleans is in the same country as New York or Miami is in the same country as Minneapolis.”
“Is that so?” said Shadow, mildly.
“Indeed it is. They may share certain cultural signifiers—money, a federal government, entertainment—it’s the same land, obviously—but the only things that give it the illusion of being one country are the greenback, The Tonight Show, and McDonald’s.” They were approaching a park at the end of the road. “Be nice to the lady we are visiting. But not too nice.”
“I’ll be cool,” said Shadow.
They stepped onto the grass.
A young girl, no older than fourteen, her hair dyed green and orange and pink, stared at them as they went by. She sat beside a dog, a mongrel, with a piece of string for a collar and a leash. She looked hungrier than the dog did. The dog yapped at them, then wagged its tail.
Shadow gave the girl a dollar bill. She stared at it as if she was not sure what it was. “Buy dog food with it,” Shadow suggested. She nodded, and smiled.
“Let me put it bluntly,” said Wednesday. “You must be very cautious around the lady we are visiting. She might take a fancy to you, and that would be bad.”
“Is she your girlfriend or something?”
“Not for all the little plastic toys in China,” said Wednesday, agreeably. His anger seemed to have dissipated, or perhaps to have been invested for the future. Shadow suspected that anger was the engine that made Wednesday run.
There was a woman sitting on the grass, under a tree, with a paper tablecloth spread in front of her, and a variety of Tupperware dishes on the cloth.
She was—not fat, no, far from fat: what she was, a word that Shadow had never had cause to use until now, was curvaceous. Her hair was so fair that it was white, the kind of platinum-blonde tresses that should have belonged to a long-dead movie starlet, her lips were painted crimson, and she looked to be somewhere between twenty-five and fifty.
As they reached her she was selecting from a plate of deviled eggs. She looked up as Wednesday approached her, put down the egg she had chosen, and wiped her hand. “Hello, you old fraud,” she said, but she smiled as she said it, and Wednesday bowed low, took her hand, and raised it to his lips.
He said, “You look divine.”
“How the hell else should I look?” she demanded, sweetly. “Anyway, you’re a liar. New Orleans was such a mistake—I put on, what, thirty pounds there? I swear. I knew I had to leave when I started to waddle. The tops of my thighs rub together when I walk now, can you believe that?” This last was addressed to Shadow. He had no idea what to say in reply, and felt a hot flush suffuse his face. The woman laughed delightedly. “He’s blushing! Wednesday, my sweet, you brought me a blusher. How perfectly wonderful of you. What’s he called?”
“This is Shadow,” said Wednesday. He seemed to be enjoying Shadow’s discomfort. “Shadow, say hello to Easter.”
Shadow said something that might have been Hello, and the woman smiled at him again. He felt like he was caught in headlights—the blinding kind that poachers use to freeze deer before they shoot them. He could smell her perfume from where he was standing, an intoxicating mixture of jasmine and honeysuckle, of sweet milk and female skin.
“So, how’s tricks?” asked Wednesday.
The woman—Easter—laughed a deep and throaty laugh, full-bodied and joyous. How could you not like someone who laughed like that? “Everything’s fine,” she said. “How about you, you old wolf?”
“I was hoping to enlist your assistance.”
“Wasting your time.”
“At least hear me out before dismissing me.”
“No point. Don’t even bother.”
She looked at Shadow. “Please, sit down here and help yourself to some of this food. Here, take a plate and pile it high. It’s all good. Eggs, roast chicken, chicken curry, chicken salad, and over here is lapin—rabbit, actually, but cold rabbit is a delight, and in that bowl over there is the jugged hare—well, why don’t I just fill a plate for you?” And she did, taking a plastic plate, piling it high with food, and passing it to him. Then she looked at Wednesday. “Are you eating?” she asked.
“I am at your disposal, my dear,” said Wednesday.
“You,” she told him, “are so full of shit it’s a wonder your eyes don’t turn brown.” She passed him an empty plate. “Help yourself,” she said.
The afternoon sun at her back burned her hair into a platinum aura. “Shadow,” she said, chewing a chicken leg with gusto. “That’s a sweet name. Why do they call you Shadow?”
Shadow licked his lips to moisten them. “When I was a kid,” he said. “We lived, my mother and I, we were, I mean, she was, well, like a secretary, at a bunch of U.S. embassies, we went from city to city all over northern Europe. Then she got sick and had to take early retirement and we came back to the States. I never knew what to say to the other kids, so I’d just find adults and follow them around, not saying anything. I just needed the company, I guess. I don’t know. I was a small kid.”
“You grew,” she said.
“Yes,” said Shadow. “I grew.”
She turned back to Wednesday, who was spooning down a bowl of what looked like cold gumbo. “Is this the boy who’s got everybody so upset?”
“You heard?”
“I keep my ears pricked up,” she said. Then to Shadow, “You keep out of their way. There are too many secret societies out there, and they have no loyalties and no love. Commercial, independent, government, they’re all in the same boat. They range from the barely competent to the deeply dangerous. Hey, old wolf, I heard a joke you’d like the other day. How do you know the CIA wasn’t involved in the Kennedy assassination?”
“I’ve heard it,” said Wednesday.
“Pity.” She turned her attention back to Shadow. “But the spook show, the ones you met, they’re something else. They exist because everyone knows they must exist.” She drained a paper cup of something that looked like white wine, and then she got to her feet. “Shadow’s a good name,” she said. “I want a mochaccino. Come on.”
She began to walk away. “What about the food?” asked Wednesday. “You can’t just leave it here.”
She smiled at him, and pointed to the girl sitting by the dog, and then extended her arms to take in the Haight and the World. “Let it feed them,” she said, and she walked, with Wednesday and Shadow trailing behind her.
“Remember,” she said to Wednesday, as they walked, “I’m rich. I’m doing just peachy. Why should I help you?”
“You’re one of us,” he said. “You’re as forgotten and as unloved and unremembered as any of us. It’s pretty clear whose side you should be on.”
They reached a sidewalk coffeehouse, went inside, sat down. There was only one waitress, who wore her eyebrow ring as a mark of caste, and a woman making coffee behind the counter. The waitress advanced upon them, smiling automatically, sat them down, took their orders.
Easter put her slim hand on the back of Wednesday’s square gray hand. “I’m telling you,” she said, “I’m doing fine. On my festival days they still feast on eggs and rabbits, on candy and on flesh, to represent rebirth and copulation. They wear flowers in their bonnets and they give each other flowers. They do it in my name. More and more of them every year. In my name, old wolf.”
“And you wax fat and affluent on their worship and their love?” he said, dryly.
“Don’t be an asshole.” Suddenly she sounded very tired. She sipped her mochaccino.
“Serious question, m’dear. Certainly I would agree that millions upon millions of them give each other tokens in your name, and that they still practice all the rites of your festival, even down to hunting for hidden eggs. But how many of them know who you are? Eh? Excuse me, miss?” This to their waitress.
She said, “You need another espresso?”
“No, my dear. I was just wondering if you could solve a little argument we were having over here. My friend and I were disagreeing over what the word ‘Easter’ means. Would you happen to know?”
The girl stared at him as if green toads had begun to push their way between his lips. Then she said, “I don’t know about any of that Christian stuff. I’m a pagan.”
The woman behind the counter said, “I think it’s like Latin or something for ‘Christ has risen,’ maybe.”
“Really?” said Wednesday.
“Yeah, sure,” said the woman. “Easter. Just like the sun rises in the east, you know.”
“The risen son. Of course—a most logical supposition.” The woman smiled and returned to her coffee grinder. Wednesday looked up at their waitress. “I think I shall have another espresso, if you do not mind. And tell me, as a pagan, who do you worship?”
“Worship?”
“That’s right. I imagine you must have a pretty wide-open field. So to whom do you set up your household altar? To whom do you bow down? To whom do you pray at dawn and at dusk?”
Her lips described several shapes without saying anything before she said, “The female principle. It’s an empowerment thing. You know?”
“Indeed. And this female principle of yours. Does she have a name?”
“She’s the goddess within us all,” said the girl with the eyebrow ring, color rising to her cheek. “She doesn’t need a name.”
“Ah,” said Wednesday, with a wide monkey grin, “so do you have mighty bacchanals in her honor? Do you drink blood wine under the full moon while scarlet candles burn in silver candleholders? Do you step naked into the seafoam, chanting ecstatically to your nameless goddess while the waves lick at your legs, lapping your thighs like the tongues of a thousand leopards?”
“You’re making fun of me,” she said. “We don’t do any of that stuff you were saying.” She took a deep breath. Shadow suspected she was counting to ten. “Any more coffees here? Another mochaccino for you, ma’am?” Her smile was a lot like the one she had greeted them with when they had entered.
They shook their heads, and the waitress turned to greet another customer.
“There,” said Wednesday, “is one who ‘does not have the faith and will not have the fun,’ Chesterton. Pagan indeed. So. Shall we go out onto the street, Easter my dear, and repeat the exercise? Find out how many passers by know that their Easter festival takes its name from Eostre of the Dawn? Let’s see—I have it. We shall ask a hundred people. For every one that knows the truth, you may cut off one of my fingers, and when I run out of them, toes; for every twenty who don’t know, you spend a night making love to me. And the odds are certainly in your favor here—this is San Francisco, after all. There are heathens and pagans and Wiccans aplenty on these precipitous streets.”
Her green eyes looked at Wednesday. They were, Shadow decided, the exact same color as a leaf in spring with the sun shining through it. She said nothing.
“We could try it,” continued Wednesday. “But I would end up with ten fingers, ten toes, and five nights in your bed. So don’t tell me they worship you and keep your festival day. They mouth your name, but it has no meaning to them. Nothing at all.”
Tears stood out in her eyes. “I know that,” she said, quietly. “I’m not a fool.”
“No,” said Wednesday. “You’re not.”
He’s pushed her too far, thought Shadow.
Wednesday looked down, ashamed. “I’m sorry,” he said. Shadow could hear the real sincerity in his voice. “We need you. We need your energy. We need your power. Will you fight beside us when the storm comes?”
She hesitated. She had a chain of blue forget-me-nots tattooed around her left wrist.
“Yes,” she said, after a while. “I guess I will.”
I guess it’s true what they say, thought Shadow. If you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. Then he felt guilty for thinking it.
Wednesday kissed his finger, touched it to Easter’s cheek. He called their waitress over and paid for their coffees, counting out the money carefully, folding it over with the check and presenting it to her.
As she walked away, Shadow said, “Ma’am? Excuse me? I think you dropped this.” He picked up a ten-dollar bill from the floor.
“No,” she said, looking at the wrapped bills in her hand.
“I saw it fall, ma’am,” said Shadow, politely. “You should count them.”
She counted the money in her hand, looked puzzled, and said, “Jesus. You’re right. I’m sorry.” She took the ten-dollar bill from Shadow, and walked away.
Easter walked out onto the sidewalk with them. The light was just starting to fade. She nodded to Wednesday, then she touched Shadow’s hand and said, “What did you dream about, last night?”
“Thunderbirds,” he said. “A mountain of skulls.”
She nodded. “And do you know whose skulls they were?”
“There was a voice,” he said. “In my dream. It told me.”
She nodded and waited.
He said, “It said they were mine. Old skulls of mine. Thousands and thousands of them.”
She looked at Wednesday, and said, “I think this one’s a keeper.” She smiled her bright smile. Then she patted Shadow’s arm and walked away down the sidewalk. He watched her go, trying—and failing—not to think of her thighs rubbing together as she walked.
In the taxi on the way to the airport, Wednesday turned to Shadow. “What the hell was that business with the ten dollars about?”
“You shortchanged her. It comes out of her wages if she’s short.”
“What the hell do you care?” Wednesday seemed genuinely irate.
Shadow thought for a moment. Then he said, “Well, I wouldn’t want anyone to do it to me. She hadn’t done anything wrong.”
“No?” Wednesday stared off into the middle distance, and said, “When she was seven years old she shut a kitten in a closet. She listened to it mew for several days. When it ceased to mew, she took it out of the closet, put it into a shoebox, and buried it in the backyard. She wanted to bury something. She consistently steals from everywhere she works. Small amounts, usually. Last year she visited her grandmother in the nursing home to which the old woman is confined. She took an antique gold watch from her grandmother’s bedside table, and then went prowling through several of the other rooms, stealing small quantities of money and personal effects from the twilight folk in their golden years. When she got home she did not know what to do with her spoils, scared someone would come after her, so she threw everything away except the cash.”
“I get the idea,” said Shadow.
“She also has asymptomatic gonorrhea,” said Wednesday. “She suspects she might be infected but does nothing about it. When her last boyfriend accused her of having given him a disease she was hurt, offended, and refused to see him again.”
“This isn’t necessary,” said Shadow. “I said I get the idea. You could do this to anyone, couldn’t you? Tell me bad things about them.”
“Of course,” agreed Wednesday. “They all do the same things. They may think their sins are original, but for the most part they are petty and repetitive.”
“And that makes it okay for you to steal ten bucks from her?”
Wednesday paid the taxi and the two men walked into the airport, wandered up to their gate. Boarding had not yet begun. Wednesday said, “What the hell else can I do? They don’t sacrifice rams or bulls to me. They don’t send me the souls of killers and slaves, gallows-hung and raven-picked. They made me. They forgot me. Now I take a little back from them. Isn’t that fair?”
“My mom used to say, ‘Life isn’t fair,’ ” said Shadow.
“Of course she did,” said Wednesday. “It’s one of those things that moms say, right up there with ‘If all your friends jumped off a cliff would you do it too?’ ”
“You stiffed that girl for ten bucks, I slipped her ten bucks,” said Shadow, doggedly. “It was the right thing to do.”
Someone announced that their plane was boarding. Wednesday stood up. “May your choices always be so clear,” he said.
