“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 payphone set in the wall of the entryway, as you went in, 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 payphone. 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 on it wrong, if it 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 lace-like work of unique, six-sided 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 non-dairy 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 to the car. 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.”
“And if we’re in jail by this evening?”
“Then my friends will just have to make do without us.”
“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 reassuringly. “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 shed-like 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, and other teddy bears that played seasonal songs 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 you 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.