Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Author:Neil Gaiman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781405506328
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group Limited
Published: 2009-01-15T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

IN WHICH FAT CHARLIE ANSWERS THE DOOR AND SPIDER ENCOUNTERS FLAMINGOS

Fat Charlie’s luck was changing. He could feel it. The plane on which he was returning home had been oversold, and he had found himself bumped up to first class. The meal was excellent. Halfway across the Atlantic, a flight attendant came over to inform him that he had won a complimentary box of chocolates, and presented it to him. He put it in his overhead locker, and ordered a Drambuie on ice.

He would get home. He would sort everything out with Grahame Coats - after all, if there was one thing that Fat Charlie was certain of, it was the honesty of his own accounting. He would make everything good with Rosie. Everything was going to be just great.

He wondered if Spider would already be gone when he got home, or whether he would get the satisfaction of throwing him out. He hoped it would be the latter. Fat Charlie wanted to see his brother apologize, possibly even grovel. He started to imagine the things that he was going to say.

"Get out!" said Fat Charlie, "And take your sunshine, your Jacuzzi, and your bedroom with you!"

"Sorry?" said the flight attendant.

"Talking," said Fat Charlie. "To myself. Just um."

But even the embarrassment he felt at this wasn't really that bad. He didn't even hope the plane would crash and end his mortification. Life was definitely looking up.

He opened the little kit of useful amenities he had been given, and put on his eyeshade, and pushed his seat back as far as it would go, which was most of the way. He thought about Rosie, although the Rosie in his mind kept shifting, morphing into someone smaller who wasn't really wearing much of anything. Fat Charlie guiltily imagined her dressed, and was mortified when he realized that she seemed to be wearing a police uniform. He felt terrible about this, he told himself, but it didn't seem to make much of an impression. He ought to feel ashamed of himself. He ought to-.

Fat Charlie shifted in his seat and emitted one small, satisfied snore.

He was still in an excellent mood when he landed at Heathrow. He took the Heathrow Express into Paddington and was pleased to note that in his brief absence from England the sun had decided to come out. Every little thing, he told himself, is going to be all right.

The only odd note, which added a flavor of wrongness to the morning, occurred halfway through the train journey. He was staring out of the window, wishing he had bought a newspaper at Heathrow. The train was passing an expanse of green - a school playing field, perhaps, when the sky seemed, momentarily, to darken, and, with a hiss of brakes, the train stopped at a signal.

That did not disturb Fat Charlie. It was England in the autumn: the sun was, by definition, something that only happened when it wasn't cloudy or raining. But there was a figure standing on the edge of the green by a stand of trees.

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