John Irving: Last Night In Twisted River

“Too much detail while you’re eating?” Erin asked. “I’ll stop. The clotting comes a little later; there are a couple of other proteins involved. Suffice it to say, there is an artery-plugging clot; this would stem the tide of your friend’s bleeding, and save his life. Cutting off your hand won’t kill you.”

But Danny felt that he was drowning; he was sinking fast. (“Well, writers should know it’s sometimes hard work to die, Danny,” the old logger had told him.)

“Okay, Erin,” Danny said, but his voice wasn’t his own; neither he nor Erin recognized it. “Let’s say that my friend wanted to die. Let’s assume that he wants to cut off his left hand in the process, but what he really wants is to die. What then?”

The doctor was eating ravenously; she had to chew and swallow for a few seconds while Danny waited. “Easy,” Erin said, after another small sip of wine. “Does your friend know what aspirin is? He just takes some aspirin.”

“Aspirin,” Danny repeated numbly. He could see the contents of the glove compartment in Ketchum’s truck, as if the door were still open and Danny had never reached out and closed it-the small handgun and the big bottle of aspirin.

“Painkillers, both of them,” Ketchum had called them, casually. “I wouldn’t be caught dead without aspirin and some kind of weapon,” he’d said.

“Aspirin blocks certain parts of the process that activates the platelets,” Dr. Reilly was saying. “If you wanted to get technical, you could say that aspirin prevents blood from clotting-only two aspirin tablets in your friend’s system, and very possibly the clotting wouldn’t kick in quickly enough to save him. And if he really wanted to die, he could wash the aspirin down with some booze; through a completely different mechanism, alcohol also prevents platelet activation and aggregation. There would be a real synergy between the alcohol and the aspirin, rendering the platelets impotent-they wouldn’t stick to one another. No clot, in other words. Your hand-deprived friend would die.”

Erin finally stopped talking when she saw that Danny was staring at his food, not eating. It’s also worth noting that Daniel Baciaglupo had hardly touched his beer. “Danny?” his doctor said. “I didn’t know he was a real friend. I thought that he was probably a character in a novel, and you were using the friend word loosely. I’m sorry.”

DANNY HAD RUN HOME from Kiss of the Wolf that November night. He’d wanted to call Ketchum right away, but privately. It was a cold night in Toronto. That late in the fall, it would have already snowed a bunch of times in Coos County, New Hampshire.

Ketchum didn’t fax much anymore. He didn’t call Danny very frequently, either-not nearly as often as Danny called him. That night, the phone had rung and rung; there’d been no answer. Danny would have called Six-Pack, but he didn’t have her phone number and he’d never known her last name-no more than he knew Ketchum’s first name, if the old logger had ever had one.

He decided to fax Ketchum some evidently transparent bullshit-to the effect that Danny thought he should have Six-Pack’s phone number, in case there was ever an emergency and Danny couldn’t reach Ketchum.

I DON’T NEED ANYBODY CHECKING UP ON ME!

Ketchum had faxed back, before Danny was awake and downstairs in the morning. But, after a few more faxes and an awkward phone conversation, Ketchum provided Danny with Pam’s number.

It was December of that same year, 2001, before Danny got up the nerve to call Six-Pack, and she wasn’t much of a communicator on the phone. Yes, she and Ketchum had gone a couple of times that fall to Moose-Watch Pond and seen the moose dancing-or “millin’ around,” as Six-Pack said. Yes, she’d gone “campin’” with Ketchum, too-but only once, in a snowstorm, and if her hip hadn’t kept her awake the whole night, Ketchum’s snoring would have.

Nor did Danny have any luck in persuading Ketchum to come to Toronto for Christmas that year. “I may show up, I more likely won’t,” was how Ketchum had left it-as independent as ever.

All too soon, it was that time of year Daniel Baciagalupo had learned to dread-just a few days before Christmas 2001, coming up on what would be the first anniversary of his dad’s murder-and the writer was eating dinner alone at Kiss of the Wolf. His thoughts were unfocused, wandering, when Patrice-that ever-suave and graceful presence-approached Danny’s table. “Someone has come to see you, Daniel,” Patrice said with unusual solemnity. “But, strangely, at the kitchen door.”

“To see me? In the kitchen ?” Danny asked.

“A tall, strong-looking person,” Patrice intoned, with an air of foreboding. “Doesn’t look like a big reader-might not be what you call a fan.”

“But why the kitchen door?” Danny asked.

“She said she didn’t think she was well-enough dressed to come in the front door,” Patrice told the writer.

“She?” Danny said. How he hoped it was Lady Sky!

“I had to look twice to be sure,” Patrice said, with a shrug. “But she’s definitely a she.”

In that Crown’s Lane alleyway behind the restaurant, one-eyed Pedro had spotted the tall woman; he’d graciously shown her to the service entrance to the kitchen. The former Ramsay Farnham had said to Six-Pack Pam: “Even if it’s not on the menu, they often have cassoulet at this time of year-I recommend it.”

“I ain’t lookin’ for a handout,” Six-Pack told him. “I’m lookin’ for a fella, name of Danny-a famous writer.”

“Danny doesn’t work in the kitchen-his dad did,” one-eyed Pedro told her.

“I know that-I’m just a back-door kinda person,” Pam said. “It’s a fuckin’ fancy-lookin’ place.”

The former Ramsay Farnham appeared momentarily disdainful; he must have suffered a flashback to his previous life. “It’s not that fancy,” he said. In addition to whatever snobbishness was in his genes, Ramsay still resented his favorite restaurant’s change of name; though no one had ever seen it, Kiss of the Wolf would always be a porn film to one-eyed Pedro.

There were other homeless people in the alleyway; Six-Pack could see them, but they kept their distance from her. It was perhaps fair to say that one-eyed Pedro was only a half-homeless person. The others in the alley were wary of Pam. Six-Pack’s rough north-woods attire notwithstanding, she didn’t look like a homeless person.

Even one-eyed Pedro could see the difference. He knocked at the service entrance to Kiss of the Wolf, and Joyce-one of the female sous chefs-opened the door. Before Joyce could greet him, Pedro pushed Six-Pack ahead of him into the kitchen.

“She’s looking for Danny,” one-eyed Pedro said. “Don’t worry-she’s not one of us.”

“I know Danny, and he knows me,” Six-Pack quickly said to Joyce. “I ain’t some kinda groupie, or anythin’ like that.” (At the time, Pam was eighty-four. It’s not likely that Joyce mistook her for a groupie-not even a writer’s groupie.)

Kristine ran to get Patrice, while Joyce and Silvestro welcomed Six-Pack inside. By the time Patrice brought Danny back to the kitchen, Silvestro had already persuaded Pam to try the duo of foie gras and duck confit with a glass of Champagne. When Danny saw Six-Pack, his heart sank; Six-Pack Pam was no Lady Sky, and Danny guessed that something had to be wrong.

“Is Ketchum with you?” the writer asked her, but Danny already knew that Ketchum would have come in the front door-no matter how the old woodsman was dressed.

“Don’t get me started, Danny-not here, and not till I’ve had somethin’ to eat and drink,” Six-Pack said. “Shit, I was drivin’ all day with that fartin’ dog-we only stopped to pee and gas up the truck. Ketchum said I should have the lamb chops.”