I go and drink bad coffee with the modern assholes in a Kansas City Masonic hall.”
“Okay. You going to pick me up, or shall I meet you somewhere?”
“You stay there and you keep your head down. Don’t get into any trouble. You hear me?”
“But—”
There was a click, and the line went dead and stayed dead. There was no dial tone, but then, there never was.
Nothing but time to kill. The conversation with Wednesday had left Shadow with a sense of disquiet. He got up, intending to go for a walk, but already the light was fading, and he sat back down again.
Shadow picked up the Minutes of the Lakeside City Council 1872–1884 and turned the pages, his eyes scanning the tiny print, not actually reading it, occasionally scanning something that caught his eye.
In July of 1874, Shadow learned, the city council was concerned about the number of itinerant foreign loggers arriving in the town. An opera house was to be built on the corner of Third Street and Broadway. It was to be expected that the nuisances attendant to the damming of Mill Creek would abate once the mill-pond had become a lake. The council authorized the payment of seventy dollars to Mr. Samuel Samuels, and of eighty-five dollars to Mr. Heikki Salminen, in compensation for their land and for the expenses incurred in moving their domiciles out of the area to be flooded.
It had never occurred to Shadow before that the lake was man-made. Why call a town Lakeside, when the lake had begun as a dammed mill-pond? He read on, to discover that a Mr. Hinzelmann, originally of Hüdemuhlen in Brunswick, was in charge of the lake-building project, and that the city council had granted him the sum of $370 toward the project, any shortfall to be made up by public subscription. Shadow tore off a strip of a paper towel and placed it into the book as a bookmark. He could imagine Hinzelmann’s pleasure in seeing the reference to his grandfather. He wondered if the old man knew that his family had been instrumental in building the lake. Shadow flipped forward through the book, scanning for more references to the lake-building project.
They had dedicated the lake in a ceremony in the spring of 1876, as a precursor to the town’s centennial celebrations. A vote of thanks to Mr. Hinzelmann was taken by the council.
Shadow checked his watch. It was five thirty. He went into the bathroom, shaved, combed his hair. He changed his clothes. Somehow the final fifteen minutes passed. He got the wine and the plant, and he walked next door.
The door opened as he knocked. Marguerite Olsen looked almost as nervous as he felt. She took the wine bottle and the potted plant, and said thank you. The television was on, The Wizard of Oz on video. It was still in sepia, and Dorothy was still in Kansas, sitting with her eyes closed in Professor Marvel’s wagon as the old fraud pretended to read her mind, and the twister-wind that would tear her away from her life was approaching. Leon sat in front of the screen, playing with a toy fire truck. When he saw Shadow an expression of delight touched his face; he stood up and ran, tripping over his feet in his excitement, into a back bedroom, from which he emerged a moment later, triumphantly waving a quarter.
“Watch, Mike Ainsel!” he shouted. Then he closed both his hands and he pretended to take the coin into his right hand, which he opened wide. “I made it disappear, Mike Ainsel!”
“You did,” agreed Shadow. “After we’ve eaten, if it’s okay with your mom, I’ll show you how to do it even smoother than that.”
“Do it now if you want,” said Marguerite. “We’re still waiting for Samantha. I sent her out for sour cream. I don’t know what’s taking her so long.”
And, as if that was her cue, footsteps sounded on the wooden deck, and somebody shouldered open the front door. Shadow did not recognize her at first, then she said, “I didn’t know if you wanted the kind with calories or the kind that tastes like wallpaper paste so I went for the kind with calories,” and he knew her then: the girl from the road to Cairo.
“That’s fine,” said Marguerite. “Sam, this is my neighbor, Mike Ainsel. Mike, this is Samantha Black Crow, my sister.”
I don’t know you, thought Shadow desperately. You’ve never met me before. We’re total strangers. He tried to remember how