Free American Gods by Neil Gaiman Page B

love you.”
    He stopped himself from saying I love you, too. He wasn’t going to say that. Not anymore. “So what happened the other night?”
    â€œThe night I was killed?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œWell, Robbie and I went out to talk about your welcome-back surprise party. It would have been so good. And I told him that we were done. Finished. That now that you were back that was the way it had to be.”
    â€œMm. Thank you, babe.”
    â€œYou’re welcome, darling.” The ghost of a smile crossed her face. “We got maudlin. It was sweet. We got stupid. I got very drunk. He didn’t. He had to drive. We were driving home and I announced that I was going to give him a goodbye blow job, one last time with feeling, and I unzipped his pants, and I did.”
    â€œBig mistake.”
    â€œTell me about it. I knocked the gearshift with my shoulder, and then Robbie was trying to push me out of the way to put the car back in gear, and we were swerving, and there was a loud crunch and I remember the world started to roll and to spin, and I thought, ‘I’m going to die.’ It was very dispassionate. I remember that. I wasn’t scared. And then I don’t remember anything more.”
    There was a smell like burning plastic. It was the cigarette, Shadow realized: it had burned down to the filter. Laura did not seem to have noticed.
    â€œWhat are you doing here, Laura?”
    â€œCan’t a wife come and see her husband?”
    â€œYou’re dead. I went to your funeral this afternoon.”
    â€œYes.” She stopped talking, stared into nothing. Shadow stood up and walked over to her. He took the smoldering cigarette butt from her fingers and threw it out of the window.
    â€œWell?”
    Her eyes sought his. “I don’t know much more than I did when I was alive. Most of the stuff I know now that I didn’t know then I can’t put into words.”
    â€œNormally people who die stay in their graves,” said Shadow.
    â€œDo they? Do they really, puppy? I used to think they did too. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps.” She climbed off the bed and walked over to the window. Her face, in the light of the motel sign, was as beautiful as it had ever been. The face of the woman he had gone to prison for.
    His heart hurt in his chest as if someone had taken it in a fist and squeezed. “Laura . . . ?”
    She did not look at him. “You’ve gotten yourself mixed up in some bad things, Shadow. You’re going to screw it up, if someone isn’t there to watch out for you. I’m watching out for you. And thank you for my present.”
    â€œWhat present?”
    She reached into the pocket of her blouse, and pulled out the gold coin he had thrown into the grave earlier that day. There was still black dirt on it. “I may have it put on a chain. It was very sweet of you.”
    â€œYou’re welcome.”
    She turned then and looked at him with eyes that seemed both to see and not to see him. “I think there are several aspects of our marriage we’re going to have to work on.”
    â€œBabes,” he told her. “You’re dead.”
    â€œThat’s one of those aspects, obviously.” She paused. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going now. It will be better if I go.” And, naturally and easily, she turned and put her hands on Shadow’s shoulders, and went up on tiptoes to kiss him goodbye, as she had always kissed him goodbye.
    Awkwardly he bent to kiss her on the cheek, but she moved her mouth as he did so and pushed her lips against his. Her breath smelled, faintly, of mothballs.
    Laura’s tongue flickered into Shadow’s mouth. It was cold, and dry, and it tasted of cigarettes and of bile. If Shadow had had any doubts as to whether his wife was dead or not, they ended then.
    He pulled back.
    â€œI love you,” she said, simply. “I’ll be looking out