Anansi Boys

in which Fat Charlie fails to get home, even by taxi

Daisy woke up to the alarm. She stretched in her bed like a kitten. She could hear the shower, which meant that her flatmate was already up. She put on a pink fuzzy dressing gown and went into the hall.

“You want porridge?” she called through the bathroom door.

“Not much. If you’re making it, I’ll eat it.”

“You certainly know how to make a girl feel wanted,” said Daisy, and she went into the kitchenette and put the porridge on to cook.

She went back into her bedroom, pulled on her work clothes, then looked at herself in the mirror. She made a face. She put her hair up into a tight bun at the back.

Her flatmate, Carol, a thin-faced white woman from Preston, stuck her head around the bedroom door. She was toweling her hair vigorously. “Bathroom’s all yours. What’s the word on the porridge?”

“Probably needs a stir.”

“So where were you the other night anyway? You said you were going off to Sybilla’s birthday drinks, and I know you never came back.”

“None of your beeswax, innit.” Daisy went into the kitchen and stirred the porridge. She added a pinch of salt and stirred it some more. She glopped the porridge into bowls and placed them on the counter.

“Carol? Porridge is getting cold.”

Carol came in, sat down, stared at the porridge. She was only half-dressed. “S’not a proper breakfast, is it? You ask me, a proper breakfast is fried eggs, sausages, black pudden, and grilled tomatoes.”

“You cook it,” said Daisy, “I’ll eat it.”

Carol sprinkled a dessert-spoonful of sugar on her porridge. She looked at it. Then she sprinkled another one on. “No, you bloody won’t. You say that you will. But you’ll start rabbiting on about cholesterol or what fried food is doing to your kidneys.” She tasted the porridge as if it might bite her back. Daisy passed her a cup of tea. “You and your kidneys. Actually, that might be nice for a change. You ever eaten kidneys, Daisy?”

“Once,” said Daisy. “If you ask me, you can get the same effect by grilling half a pound of liver, then weeing all over it.”

Carol sniffed. “That wasn’t called for,” she said.

“Eat your porridge.”

They finished their porridge and their tea. They put the bowls in the dishwasher and, because it was not yet full, did not turn it on. Then they drove in to work. Carol, who was now in uniform, did the driving.

Daisy went up to her desk, in a room filled with empty desks.

The phone rang as she sat down. “Daisy? You’re late.”

She looked at her watch. “No,” she said. “I’m not. Sir. Now is there anything else I can do for you this morning?”

“Too right. You can call a man named Coats. He’s a friend of the chief super. Fellow Crystal Palace supporter. He’s already texted me about it twice this morning. Who taught the chief super to text, that’s what I want to know?”

Daisy took down the details and called the number. She put on her most businesslike and efficient tone of voice and said, “Detective Constable Day. How can I help you?”

“Ah,” said a man’s voice. “Well, as I was telling the chief superintendent last night, a lovely man, old friend. Good man. He suggested I talk to someone in your office. I wish to report. Well, I’m not actually certain that a crime has been committed. Probably a perfectly sensible explanation. There have been certain irregularities, and, well, to be perfectly frank with you, I’ve given my bookkeeper a couple of weeks’ leave while I try to come to grips with the possibility that he may have been involved in certain, mm, financial irregularities.”

“Suppose we get the details,” said Daisy. “What’s your full name, sir? And the bookkeeper’s name?”

“My name is Grahame Coats,” said the man on the other end of the telephone. “Of the Grahame Coats Agency. My bookkeeper is a man named Nancy. Charles Nancy.”

She wrote both names down. They did not ring any bells.

Fat Charlie had planned to have an argument with spider as soon as Spider came home. He had rehearsed the argument in his head, over and over, and had won it, both fairly and decisively, every time.

Spider had not, however, come home last night, and Fat Charlie had eventually fallen asleep in front of the television, half-watching a raucous game show for horny insomniacs, which seemed to be called Show Us Your Bum!

He woke up on the sofa, when Spider pulled open the curtains. “Beautiful day,” said Spider.

“You!” said Fat Charlie. “You were kissing Rosie. Don’t try to deny it.”

“I had to,” said Spider.

“What do you mean, you had to? You didn’t have to.”

“She thought I was you.”

“Well, you knew you weren’t me. You shouldn’t have kissed her.”

“But if I had refused to kiss her, she would have thought it was you not kissing her.”

“But it wasn’t me.”

“She didn’t know that. I was just trying to be helpful.”

“Being helpful,” said Fat Charlie, from the sofa, “is something you do that, generally speaking, involves not kissing my fiancee. You could have said you had a toothache.”

“That,” said Spider, virtuously, “would have been lying.”

“But you were lying already! You were pretending to be me!”

“Well, it would have been compounding the lie, anyway,” explained Spider. “Something I only did because you were in no shape to go to work. No,” he said, “I couldn’t have lied further. I would have felt dreadful.”

“Well, I did feel dreadful. I had to watch you kissing her.”

“Ah,” said Spider. “But she thought she was kissing you.”

“Don’t keep saying that!”

“You should feel flattered.” Spider said, “Do you want lunch?”

“Of course I don’t want lunch. What time is it?”

“Lunchtime,” said Spider. “And you’re late for work again. It’s a good thing I didn’t cover for you again, if this is all the thanks I get.”

“S’okay,” said Fat Charlie. “I’ve been given two weeks off. And a bonus.”

Spider raised an eyebrow.

“Look,” said Fat Charlie, feeling like it was time to move to the second round of the argument, “it’s not like I’m trying to get rid of you or anything, but I was wondering when you were thinking of leaving?”

Spider said, “Well, when I came here, I’d only planned to visit for a day. Maybe two days. Long enough to meet my little brother, and then I’d be on my way. I’m a busy man.”

“So you’re leaving today.”

“That was my plan,” said Spider. “But then I met you. I cannot believe that we have let almost an entire lifetime go by without each other’s company, my brother.”

“I can.”

“The ties of blood,” said Spider, “are stronger than water.”

“Water’s not strong,” objected Fat Charlie.

“Stronger than vodka, then. Or volcanoes. Or, or ammonia. Look, my point is that meeting you—well, it’s a privilege. We’ve never been part of each other’s lives, but that was yesterday. Let’s start a new tomorrow, today. We’ll put yesterday behind us and forge new bonds—the bonds of brotherhood.”

“You’re totally after Rosie,” said Fat Charlie.

“Totally,” agreed Spider. “What do you plan to do about it?”

“Do about it? Well, she’s my fiancee.”

“Not to worry. She thinks I’m you.”

“Will you stop saying that?”

Spider spread his hands in a saintly gesture, then ruined the effect by licking his lips.