John Irving: Last Night In Twisted River

Just then-at what amounted to a wave of more noxious farting from the dog-Danny’s cell phone rang again.

“Buenos días , Señor Writer,” Lupita said.

“Buenos días , Lupita,” Danny said.

The Mexican cleaning woman didn’t call often. In those ten weeks of the winter when Danny lived on the island in Georgian Bay, Lupita looked after the house on Cluny Drive; she opened and read the author’s mail, she replayed the messages on his answering machine, she kept an eye on the fax machine, too. Once a week, Lupita would compile a list of what she considered was important for Danny to know-in essence, what she believed couldn’t wait until he returned to Toronto. She faxed the list of priority messages to Andy Grant’s office in Pointe au Baril Station.

Danny always left a couple of checkbooks of signed blank checks for Lupita, who paid his bills while he was gone. Most of all, the Mexican cleaning woman demonstrably enjoyed reading the writer’s mail and deciding what was important-and what wasn’t. This doubtless appealed to Lupita’s pride-her sense of herself as having an immeasurable authority, an almost managerial control over the bestselling author’s domestic life.

Danny knew that Lupita would have seized any opportunity that presented itself for her to take charge of the writer’s wretched personal life, too. If she’d had daughters, she would have introduced them to Danny. Lupita did have nieces; she would shamelessly leave their photographs on the kitchen countertop, calling Danny (after she’d gone home) to tell him that she’d “lost” some photos that were dear to her. Perhaps he’d seen the pictures lying around somewhere?

“Lupita, the pictures are on my kitchen countertop-where you evidently left them,” he would tell her.

“The dark-haired beauty in the pink tank top-the one with the wonderful smile and the gorgeous skin? My precious niece, actually, Mr. Writer.”

“Lupita, she looks like a teenager,” Danny would point out.

“No, she’s older- a little,” Lupita would tell him.

Once Lupita had told him: “Just don’t marry another writer . All you’ll do is depress each other.”

“I’m not going to marry anybody-not ever,” he told her.

“Why don’t you stab yourself in the heart instead?” she asked him. “Soon you’ll be consorting with prostitutes! I know you talk to the dog-I’ve heard you!” she told him.

If Lupita was calling him in Pointe au Baril, she was vexed about something, Danny knew. “What’s up, Lupita?” he asked her on the cell phone. “Is it snowing in Toronto? We’re having quite a snowstorm up here-Hero and I are stranded.”

“I don’t know about that unfortunate dog, but I think you like to be stranded, Mr. Writer,” Lupita said. Clearly the weather wasn’t on her mind; that wasn’t why she’d called.

Sometimes, Lupita became convinced that people were watching the house on Cluny Drive; occasionally, they were. Shy fans, a few every year-mildly obsessed readers, just hoping to get a look at the author. Or lowlifes from the media, maybe-hoping to see what? (Another double shooting, perhaps.)

Some sleazy Canadian magazine had published a map of where Toronto’s celebrities lived; Danny’s house on Cluny Drive had been included. Not often, but once a month or so, an autograph-seeker came to the door; Lupita shooed them away, as if they were beggars. “He gets paid to write books-not sign them!” the cleaning woman would say.

Some half-wit in the media had actually written about Lupita: “The reclusive writer’s live-in girlfriend appears to be a stout, Hispanic-looking person-an older woman with an extremely protective disposition.” Lupita hadn’t been amused; both the stout and the older grievously troubled her. (As for Lupita’s disposition, she was more protective than ever.)

“There’s someone looking for you, Señor Writer,” Lupita now told him on his cell phone. “I wouldn’t go so far as to call her a stalker-not yet-but she is determined to find you, I can tell you that.”

“How determined?” Danny asked.

“I wouldn’t let her in!” Lupita exclaimed. “And I didn’t tell her where you were, of course.”

“Of course,” Danny repeated. “What did she want?”

“She wouldn’t say-she’s very haughty . She looks right through you-if looks could kill, as they say!-and she boldly hinted that she knew where you were. She was fishing for more information, I think, but I wouldn’t take the bait,” Lupita said, proudly.

“Boldly hinted how?” Danny asked.

“She was unnaturally informed,” Lupita said. “She asked if you were up on that island you’d once lived on with the screenwriter! I said, ‘ What island?’ Well, you should have seen how she looked at me then!”

“As if she knew you were lying?” Danny asked.

“Yes!” Lupita cried. “Maybe she’s a witch!”

But every Danny Angel fan knew that he’d lived with Charlotte Turner, and that they’d gone to Georgian Bay in the summer; it had even been written somewhere that the allegedly reclusive writer was spending his winters on a remote island in Lake Huron. (Well, it was “remote” in the winter, anyway.) For a Danny Angel reader, this was basically an intelligent guess; it hardly meant that the woman looking for the writer had witchlike powers.

“What did this woman look like, Lupita?” Danny asked; he was tempted to ask the Mexican cleaning woman if she’d spotted a broom, or if the unnaturally informed woman had been attended by the smell of smoke or the crackling sound of a fire.

“She was really scary-looking!” Lupita declared. “Big shoulders-like a man! She was hulking!”

“Hulking,” Danny repeated, reminding himself of his dad. (He was the cook’s son, clearly-repetition was in his genes.)

“She looked like she lived in a gym,” Lupita explained. “You wouldn’t want to mess with her, believe me.”

The word bodybuilder was on the writer’s lips, but he didn’t say it. Lupita’s combined impressions suddenly caused Danny to conjure the spirit of Lady Sky, for hadn’t Amy looked like she lived in a gym? Hadn’t Lady Sky been capable of looking right through you? (If looks could kill, indeed!) And hadn’t Amy been a hulking presence? Somehow the haughty word didn’t suit Lady Sky, but the writer understood that this may have been Lupita’s misinterpretation.

“Did she have any tattoos?” Danny asked.

“Mr. Writer, it’s February!” Lupita cried. “I made her stay outside, in the cold. She looked like an Arctic explorer!”

“Could you see what color her hair was?” Danny asked. (Amy had been a strawberry blonde, he remembered; he’d never forgotten her.)

“She was wearing a parka-with a hood!” Lupita declared. “I couldn’t even see what color her eyebrows were!”

“But she was big,” Danny insisted. “Not just broad-shouldered, but tall-right?”

“She would tower over you!” Lupita exclaimed. “She’s a giantess!”

There was no point in asking if Lupita had noticed a parachute somewhere. Danny was trying to think of what else he could ask. Lady Sky had at first seemed older than the writer, but later he’d reconsidered; maybe she was closer to his own age than he’d thought. “How old a woman was she, Lupita?” Danny asked. “Would you guess that she was my age-or a little older, maybe?”

“Younger,” Lupita answered, with conviction. “Not much younger, but definitely younger than you are.”

“Oh,” the writer said; he knew that his disappointment was audible. It made Danny feel desperate to have imagined that Amy might fall from the sky again. Miracles don’t happen twice. Even Lady Sky had said that she was only an angel sometimes . Yet Lupita had used the determined word to describe the mysterious visitor; Lady Sky had certainly seemed determined. (And how little Joe had loved her!)