"I saw your boyfriend today," said Mrs. Noah. Her given name had been Eutheria, but in the previous three decades nobody had used it to her face but her late husband, and following his death it had atrophied and was unlikely to be used again in her lifetime.
"So did I," said Rosie. "My god I love that man."
"Well, of course. You're marrying him, aren't you?"
"Well, yes. I mean, I always knew I loved him, but today I really saw how much I loved him. Everything about him."
"Did you find out where he was last night?"
"Yes. He explained it all. He was out with his brother."
"I didn't know he had a brother."
"He hadn't mentioned him before. They aren't very close."
Rosie's mother clicked her tongue. "Must be quite a family reunion going on. Did he mention his cousin, too?"
"Cousin?"
"Or maybe his sister. He didn't seem entirely sure. Pretty thing, in a trashy sort of way. Looked a bit Chinese. No better than she should be, if you ask me. But that's that whole family for you."
"Mum. You haven't met his family."
"I met her. She was in his kitchen this morning, walking about that place damn near naked. Shameless. If she was his cousin."
"Fat Charlie wouldn't lie."
"He's a man isn't he?"
"Mum!"
"And why wasn't he at work today, anyway?"
"He was. He was at work today. We had lunch together."
Rosie's mother examined her lipstick in a pocket mirror, then, with her forefinger, rubbed the scarlet smudges off her teeth.
"What else did you say to him?" asked Rosie.
"We just talked about the wedding, how I didn't want his best man making one of them near-the-knuckle speeches. He looked to me like he'd been drinking. You know how I warned you about marrying a drinking man."
"Well, he looked perfectly fine when I saw him," said Rosie primly. Then, "Oh Mum, I had the most wonderful day. We walked and we talked and - oh, have I told you how wonderful he smells? And he has the softest hands."
"You ask me," said her mother, "he smells fishy. Tell you what, next time you see him, you ask him about this cousin of his. I'm not saying she is his cousin, and I'm not saying she's not. I'm just saying that if she is, then he has hookers and strippers and good-time girls in his family and is not the kind of person you should be seeing romantically."
Rosie felt more comfortable, now her mother was once more coming down against Fat Charlie. "Mum. I won't hear another word."
"All right. I'll hold my tongue. It's not me that's marrying him, after all. Not me that's throwing my life away. Not me that'll be weeping into my pillow while he's out all night drinking with his fancy women. It's not me that'll be waiting, day after day, night after empty night, for him to get out of prison."
"Mum!" Rosie tried to be indignant, but the thought of Fat Charlie in prison was too funny, too silly, and she found herself stifling a giggle.
Rosie's phone trilled. She answered it, and said "Yes," and "I'd love to. That would be wonderful." She put her phone away.
"That was him," she said to her mother. "I'm going over there tomorrow night. He's cooking for me. How sweet is that?" And then she said, "Prison indeed."
"I'm a mother," said her mother, in her foodless flat where the dust did not dare to settle, "and I know what I know."
Grahame Coats sat in his office, while the day faded into dusk, staring at a computer screen. He brought up document after document, spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Some of them he changed. Most of them he deleted.
He was meant to be traveling to Birmingham that evening, where a former footballer, a client of his, was to open a nightclub. Instead he called and apologized: some things were unavoidable.
Soon the light outside the window was gone entirely. Grahame Coats sat in the cold glow of the computer screen, and he changed, and he overwrote, and he deleted.
Here's another story they tell about Anansi.
Once, long, long ago, Anansi's wife planted a field of peas. They were the finest, the fattest, the greenest peas you ever did see. It would have made your mouth water just to look at them.
From the moment Anansi saw the pea field, he wanted them. And he didn't just want some of them, for Anansi was a man of enormous appetites. He did not want to share them. He wanted them all.
So Anansi lay down on his bed and he sighed, long long and loud, and his wife and his sons all came a-running. "I'm a-dying," said Anansi, in this little weeny- weedy- weaky voice, "and my life is all over and done."
At this his wife and his sons began to cry hot tears.
In his weensy-weak voice, Anansi says, "On my deathbed, you have to promise me two things."
"Anything, anything," says his wife and his sons.
"First, you got to promise me you will bury me down under the big breadfruit tree."
"The big breadfruit tree down by the pea patch, you mean?" asks his wife.
"Of course that's the one I mean," says Anansi. Then, in his weensy-weak voice, he says, "And you got to promise something else. Promise me that, as a memorial to me, you going to make a little fire at the foot of my grave. And, to show you ain't forgotten me, you going to keep the little fire burning, and not ever let it go out."
"We will! We will!" said Anansi's wife and children, wailing and sobbing.
"And on that fire, as mark of your respect and your love, I want to see a lickle pot, filled with saltwater, to remind you all of the hot salt tears you shed over me as I lay dying."
"We shall! We shall!" they wept, and Anansi, he closed his eyes, and he breathed no more.
Well, they carried Anansi down to the big breadfruit tree that grew beside the pea patch, and they buried him six feet down, and at the foot of the grave they built a little fire, and they put a pot beside it, filled with saltwater.
Anansi, he waits down there all the day but when night falls he climbs out of the grave, and he goes into the pea patch, where he picks him the fattest, sweetest, ripest peas. He gathers them up, and he boils them up in his pot, and he stuffs himself with them till his tummy swells and tightens like a drum.
Then, before dawn, he goes back under the ground, and he goes back to sleep. He sleeps as his wife and his sons find the peas gone; he sleeps through them seeing the pot empty of water and refilling it; he sleeps through their sorrow.
Each night Anansi comes out of his grave, dancing and delighting at the cleverness of him, and each night he fills the pot with peas, and he fills his tummy with peas, and he eats until he cannot eat another thing.