A/N: American Gods by Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite books and I can’t recommend it enough. My fanfiction is no attempt to improve upon it. Just my way of relishing Gaiman’s wonderful characters and storylines.

Rating: R for language and sexual suggestion.

Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters. I just adore Gaiman’s work. Sue me and gain painful sensations as my voodoo doll goes to work. Mwahah.

Night Life of Florida

It was a tiny bar in a seedy town ten miles south of the Florida state line. Humidity fogged the stale night air and mosquitoes hummed a merry tune of bloodlust, the stench of skunks in the fields nearby tainting the beer he drank, coating his tongue distastefully. His head was bent close to the scarred countertop of the bar, the red Budweiser sign flickering over him and bathing his head erratically like a splash of blood trapped between falling and landing for all eternity. The pool table clicked away as the cues hit their targets and the balls rolled into the baskets in the corners. A television buzzed ESPN’s Baseball Tonight and men grunted their approval at Miami’s latest win over San Diego.

Yet Shadow paid attention to only his beer and his rambling thoughts . . .

He missed her tonight. Laura. It had been two years since she had died for good up there on Lookout Mountain. She was whispering beautiful nothings in his mind, licking her phantom tongue along his earlobe, trailing her invisible hand along his sweaty thigh. He only had her as the specter in his thoughts now and he damned himself for allowing his soul to be so haunted. Two years after her final death and he was no better off than he was when he slept that first night knowing she had gone where he couldn’t follow. She was smiling her brilliant smile at him, sitting on his lap, and stroking back his hair. Calling him her Puppy and nuzzling her nose against the stubble on his cheeks.

Ease up, sweetheart. A man can take only so much teasing.

Shadow sighed and took a deep sip of his warm beer, gripping the clear brown bottle tightly between his massive fingers. He had always been a giant of a man and he supposed he was the real Hercules, a son of a god. But he wasn’t immortal and had no desire to ever be so. To have only the crazy gods for company for the rest of his life was not the grandest of desires. Somewhere his father was out there, reborn and probably in some young girl’s bed. Odin. Wednesday. The All Father. His father.

Yeah, well, fuck you, Father. I don’t need you.

Shadow had only seen his reincarnated father once since he had been murdered by the new gods of technology. Reykjavik, Iceland had been incredibly beautiful to him and Odin had appeared as the Lord Asgard. Their conversation was brief although they knew each other but there was none of the loving father and son sayings that Shadow never expected to hear. Shadow had walked away first and Wednesday had become a dead and cackling face in his mind.

Here Shadow was now. Trapped in a one-horse town in Florida. His car had broken down and after five hours, a state trooper had passed by on the two-lane highway to inquire if Shadow needed help. Shadow had refrained from the easiest of smart ass replies and asked for a lift to the nearest garage. Soon after that, the state trooper had checked out Shadow’s file and discovered an ex-felon in his midst. Thus Shithole, Florida’s burly sheriff had pointed a chubby finger at Shadow and told him to get a move on as soon as the radiator had been replaced. Shadow had merely nodded and strolled over to the Whiskey Water, a dirty little bar that served hot beer and cold nachos.

Shadow wondered why he couldn’t have at least sprouted wings upon his discovery of his parentage.

You think that’d be cool, baby? To fly away? To soar over a field of wildflowers and shower them upon your grave? How about that, Laura? I could be the Mourning SuperShadow.

Shadow cleared the hitch in his throat and polished off his drink. He slapped a ten on the bar and nodded curtly to the obsequious bartender who was polishing already polished glasses. He stood and turned to go before a slim hand came to rest on his shoulder. He turned and looked at the beautiful woman painted like a tramp smiling beatifically at him.

"Are you really going to leave before buying me a drink, Shadow? With this heat a lady can become very parched and no man likes a dry tongue." Hair like rich honey was permed and tightly wound in braids around her head in the form of a coronet. Her fishnet halter top and leather miniskirt left little to the imagination and the various men in the bar had taken a fascinated notice in her.

Shit.

Shadow sat back down and the woman straddled the barstool next to him, her legs spread around and her high heels skimming the lower rungs of the seat. She grinned at him and ordered a drink: Sex on the Beach. Shadow ground his palm against his eyes and cursed his car for landing him in the vicinity of a goddess.

"So, baby, what brings you around here? I was beginning to think I was going to be stuck with these impotent yokels for way too long!" She scoffed at the men staring at her and even giggled when one man took a step toward her and Shadow. "Back away, Joe Bob or Bobby Joe, before I feed you your balls." She gave a throaty laugh as the man moved back around the pool table to put distance between himself and her.

"My car broke down. And trust me, I didn’t come here for you." Shadow ordered straight Scotch and downed his shot in one while signaling for more.

"Oh, you break my heart, Shadow. You really do. I’m all dressed up for you and you haven’t even the kindness to compliment my outfit." She pouted at him and licked the rim of her glass while watching him from the corner of her eye.

"It’s great. You look like the finest prostitute money can buy around here. Listen, I’ve yet to meet you before so why don’t you save me the trouble and just tell me who you are."

"I would have thought it would be obvious but I suppose not." She held her hand out for him to kiss it. "I’m Aphrodite, baby, and you had better be pleased to make my acquaintance."

"Thrilled, I’m sure. I’ll tick your name off on my list of immortals. Why is a Greek goddess hanging around here looking like . . . that?" Shadow gave a vague gesture to Aphrodite’s apparel. He felt certain the immortal had fallen on hard times like the other old gods but surely she could have found somewhere better to live out her present century.

Aphrodite shrugged and looked at herself in the mirror behind the bar. Her hand went up to correct the smudges to her dark blue eyeshadow. "I’m in hiding. Trying to keep on living while these bastards take over the world. I get by on sex and making the men in this town worship me but this isn’t existence. I thought . . . I thought maybe you had come to get me out." She swallowed hard and blinked back tears. She hadn’t cried for so long, she was surprised she could remember how.

"Sorry but no. I’m living for purely selfish reasons now and staying away from you people is my biggest priority." He gulped more Scotch down his already burning throat.

"They killed Cupid, you know. Murdered my poor sweet boy. You don’t even want to know what they did to Psyche. I never liked the bitch but no god ever deserves pain such as what she suffered. Fucking humans. Your race needs to die out." She spit the words out as though venom could burn its way through all the horror of what she had seen.

"Yes, eternity’s hell, isn’t it? I’m sorry to hear about Cupid and Psyche but there’s nothing I can do for them, you, or anyone else." Shadow slapped a fresh twenty on the bar and stood once more to leave.

"You became bitter, Shadow. Somewhere after Rock City and your newfound wisdom in life something went seriously wrong, didn’t it? You aren’t supposed to be this way. You’re supposed to help me, get me out of here. Save the old gods!" Aphrodite had begun screaming at him as though volume and pitch would drive home the sense of her words.

Shadow turned around.

"I owe you nothing. I have nothing. I’m a mortal and you’re a god. So save yourself." He walked out the door and into the hot night.

Aphrodite gave a shrill scream and began sobbing even as men around the bar huddled close to her, their lips and hands on her. They would worship her. Provide for her. Give her the sustenance she craved. She turned and looked at the sweaty, drunken men surrounding her even as they began stripping off their clothes to perform their nightly ritual for her.

It wasn’t enough.

She ran outside, tripping in her dirty heels, screaming Shadow’s name over and over. The litany became hoarse and she was reduced to whispering for him as she ran for the garage. Her worshippers ran after her in their states of undress, their nudity unseen by the humid Florida countryside.

Aphrodite ran to the yellow lights of the garage. She threw herself down upon the hood of Shadow’s car as he paid the mechanic and got behind the wheel.

He watched as she lay upon the warm metal hood. Her teary, stained eyes pleaded with him.

He started the engine and she began to whimper and clutch the windshield wipers with her beautiful, graceful hands.

I’m going to really regret this.

Shadow sighed and motioned for her to get into the car. She scampered off the hood and dove into the passenger seat, whispering her thanks over and over. He refused to say anything and just put the car into gear and drove off. They sped past her gaggle of men even as they stared in bewilderment at their departing goddess.

"Where are we going?" she asked him softly, wrapping her arms around her legs and looking out upon the black fields and starry skies.

"I don’t know," said Shadow. "Hopefully somewhere good."

The car sped along the dark highway where nothing save the car and the pavement uttered a word of progress. Nature enveloped the little car in a nocturnal hush, deer scampering across the road ahead of them. Life rushed by at 80 miles per hour as time stood still in the hot night. Nothing promising lay either before them or ahead of them.

Shadow just drove along and kept to himself as his Laura whispered beautiful nothings in his mind.