Shadow washed his face with the rest room's liquid soap, then he lathered his face and shaved. He cleaned his teeth. He wet his hair and combed it back. He still looked rough.
He wondered what Laura would say when she saw him, and then he remembered that Laura wouldn't say anything ever again and he saw his face, in the mirror, tremble, but only for a moment.
He went out.
"I look like shit," said Shadow.
"Of course you do," agreed Wednesday.
Wednesday took an assortment of snack food up to the cash register and paid for that and their gas, changing his mind twice about whether he was doing it with plastic or with cash, to the irritation of the gum-chewing young lady behind the till. Shadow watched as Wednesday became increasingly flustered and apologetic. He seemed very old, suddenly. The girl gave him his cash back, and put the purchase on the card, and then gave him the card receipt and took his cash, then returned the cash and took a different card. Wednesday was obviously on the verge of tears, an old man made helpless by the implacable plastic march of the modern world.
They walked out of the warm gas station, and their breath steamed in the air.
On the road once more: browning grass meadows slipped past on each side of them. The trees were leafless and dead. Two black birds stared at them from a telegraph wire.
"Hey, Wednesday."
"What?"
"The way I saw it in there, you never paid for the gas."
"Oh?"
"The way I saw it, she wound up paying you for the privilege of having you in her gas station. You think she's figured it out yet?"
"She never will."
"So what are you? A two-bit con artist?"
Wednesday nodded. "Yes," he said. "I suppose I am. Among other things."
He swung out into the left lane to pass a truck. The sky was a bleak and uniform gray.
"It's going to snow," said Shadow.
"Yes."
"Sweeney. Did he actually show me how he did that trick with the gold coins?"
"Oh, yes."
"I can't remember."
"It'll come back. It was a long night."
Several small snowflakes brushed the windshield, melting in seconds.
"Your wife's body is on display at Wendell's Funeral Parlor at present," said Wednesday. "Then after lunch they will take her from there to the graveyard for the interment."
"How do you know?"
"I called ahead while you were in the john. You know where Wendell's Funeral Parlor is?"
Shadow nodded. The snowflakes whirled and dizzied in front of them.
"This is our exit," said Shadow. The car stole off the interstate and past the cluster of motels to the north of Eagle Point.
Three years had passed. Yes. There were more stoplights, unfamiliar storefronts. Shadow asked Wednesday to slow as they drove past the Muscle Farm. CLOSED INDEFINITELY, said the hand-lettered sign on the door, DUE TO BEREAVEMENT.
Left on Main Street. Past a new tattoo parlor and the Armed Forces Recruitment Center, then the Burger King, and, familiar and unchanged, Olsen's Drug Store, finally the yellow-brick facade of Wendell's Funeral Parlor. A neon sign in the front window said HOUSE OF REST. Blank tombstones stood unchristened and uncarved in the window beneath the sign.
Wednesday pulled up in the parking lot. "Do you want me to come in?" he asked.
"Not particularly."
"Good." The grin flashed, without humor. "There's business I can be getting on with while you say your goodbyes. I'll get rooms for us at the Motel America. Meet me there when you're done."
Shadow got out of the car and watched it pull away. Then he walked in. The dimly lit corridor smelled of flowers and of furniture polish, with just the slightest tang of formaldehyde. At the far end was the Chapel of Rest.
Shadow realized that he was palming the gold coin, moving it compulsively from a back palm to a front palm to a Downs palm, over and over. The weight was reassuring in his hand.
His wife's name was on a sheet of paper beside the door at the far end of the corridor. He walked into the Chapel of Rest. Shadow knew most of the people in the room: Laura's workmates, several of her friends.
They all recognized him. He could see it in their faces. There were no smiles, though, no hellos.
At the end of the room was a small dais, and, on it, a cream-colored casket with several displays of flowers arranged about it: scarlets and yellows and whites and deep, bloody purples. He took a step forward. He could see Laura's body from where he was standing. He did not want to walk forward; he did not dare to walk away.
A man in a dark suit-Shadow guessed he worked at the funeral home-said, "Sir? Would you like to sign the condolence and remembrance book?" and pointed him to a leather-bound book, open on a small lectern.
He wrote SHADOW and the date in his precise handwriting, then, slowly, he wrote (PUPPY) beside it, putting off walking toward the end of the room where the people were, and the casket, and the thing in the cream casket that was no longer Laura.
A small woman walked in through the door, and hesitated. Her hair was a coppery red, and her clothes were expensive and very black. Widow's weeds, thought Shadow, who knew her well. Audrey Burton, Robbie's wife.
Audrey was holding a sprig of violets, wrapped at the base with silver foil. It was the kind of thing a child would make in June, thought Shadow. But violets were out of season.
She walked across the room, to Laura's casket. Shadow followed her.