Chapter 1 (p2)
Shadow's lists got shorter and shorter.
After two years he had it down to three things. First, he was going to take a bath.
A real, long, serious soak, in a tub with bubbles in it. Maybe read the paper, maybe not. Some days he thought one way, some days the other. Second he was going to towel himself off, put on a robe.
Maybe slippers. He liked the idea of slippers. If he smoked he would be smoking a pipe about now, but he didn't smoke. He would pick up his wife in his arms (“Puppy,” she would squeal in mock horror and real delight, “what are you doing?”). He would carry her into the bedroom, and close the door. They'd call out for pizzas if they got hungry. Third, after he and Laura had come out of the bedroom, maybe a couple of days later, he was going to keep his head down and stay out of trouble for the rest of his life.
“And then you'll be happy?” asked Low Key Lyesmith.
That day they were working in the prison shop, assembling bird feeders, which was barely more interesting than stamping out license plates. “Call no man happy,” said Shadow, “until he is dead.”
“Herodotus,” said Low Key.
“Hey. You're learning.” “Who the fuck's Herodotus?” asked the Iceman, slotting together the sides of a bird feeder, and passing it to Shadow, who bolted and screwed it tight.
“Dead Greek,” said Shadow.
“My last girlfriend was Greek,” said the Iceman.
“The shit her family ate. You would not believe. Like rice wrapped in leaves. Shit like that.” The Iceman was the same size and shape as a Coke machine, with blue eyes and hair so blond it was almost white.
He had beaten the crap out of some guy who had made the mistake of copping a feel off his girlfriend in the bar where she danced and the Iceman bounced. The guy's friends had called the police, who arrested the Iceman and ran a check on him, which revealed that the Iceman had walked from a work-release program eighteen months earlier. “So what was I supposed to do?” asked the Iceman, aggrieved, when he had told Shadow the whole sad tale.
“I'd told him she was my girlfriend. Was I supposed to let him disrespect me like that? Was I? I mean, he had his hands all over her.” Shadow had said something meaningless, like “You tell 'em,” and left it at that.
One thing he had learned early, you do your own time in prison. You don't do anyone else's time for them. Keep your head down.
Do your own time. Lyesmith had loaned Shadow a battered paperback copy of Herodotus's Histories several months earlier.
“It's not boring. It's cool,” he said, when Shadow protested that he didn't read books. “Read it first, then tell me it's cool.” Shadow had made a face, but he had started to read, and had found himself hooked against his will.
“Greeks,” said the Iceman, with disgust.
“And it ain't true what they say about them, neither. I tried giving it to my girlfriend in the ass, she almost clawed my eyes out.” Lyesmith was transferred one day, without warning.
He left Shadow his copy of Herodotus with several actual coins hidden in the pages: two quarters, a penny, and a nickel. Coins were contraband: you can sharpen the edges against a stone, slice open someone's face in a fight. Shadow didn't want a weapon; Shadow just wanted something to do with his hands.
