The Fourth Hand

by John Irving

  "What about Wisconsin?" Angie panted.

  "I'm going there first thing tomorrow," was all Wallingford said.

  A different voice spoke up from the answering machine; one of the newsroom women had seized Mary's cell phone after Mary dissolved in tears. "You shit, Pat," the woman said. Wallingford could visualize her surgically slimmed-down face. It was the woman he'd been in Bangkok with, a long time ago; her face had been fuller then. That was the end of the call.

  "Ha!" Angie cried. She'd twisted the two of them into a sideways position, which Wallingford was unfamiliar with. The position was a little painful for him, but the makeup girl was gathering momentum--her growl had become a moan.

  When the answering machine picked up the second call, Angie dug one of her heels into the small of Patrick's back. They were still joined sideways, the girl grunting loudly, as a woman's voice asked mournfully, "Is my baby girl there? Oh, Angie, Angie--my dahlin', my dahlin'! Ya gotta stop whatcha doin', Angie. Ya breakin' my heart!"

  "Mom, for Christ's sake ..." Angie started to say, but she was gasping. Her moan had become a growl again--her growl, a roar.

  She's probably a screamer, Wallingford considered--his neighbors would think he was murdering the girl. I should be packing for Wisconsin, Patrick thought, as Angie violently heaved herself onto her back. Somehow, although they were nonetheless deeply joined, one of her legs was flung over one of his shoulders; he tried to kiss her but her knee was in the way.

  Angie's mother was weeping so rhythmically that the answering machine emitted a pre-orgasmic sound of its own. Wallingford never heard her hang up; the last of her sobs was drowned out by Angie's screams. Not even childbirth could be this loud, Patrick wrongly supposed--not even Joan of Arc, blazing at the stake. But Angie's screams abruptly ceased. For a second she lay as if paralyzed; then she began to thrash. Her hair whipped Wallingford's face, her body bucked against him, her nails raked his back.

  Uh-oh, a screamer and a scratcher, Wallingford thought--the younger, unmarried Crystal Pitney not forgotten. He hid his face against Angie's throat so that she couldn't gouge his eyes. He was frankly afraid of the next phase of her orgasm; the girl seemed to possess superhuman strength. Without a sound, not even a groan, she was strong enough to arch her back and roll him off her--first on his side, then on his back. Miraculously, they'd not once become disconnected; it was as if they never could be. They felt permanently fastened together, a new species. He could feel her heart pounding; her whole chest was vibrating but not a sound came from her, not a breath.

  Then he realized she wasn't breathing. Was she a screamer and a scratcher and a fainter? It took all his strength to straighten his arms. He pushed her chest off him--his one hand on one breast, his stump on the other. That was when he saw she was choking on her gum--her face was blue, her dark-brown eyes showing only the whites. Wallingford gripped her lolling jaw in his hand; he drove the stump of his forearm under her ribcage, a punch without a fist. The pain was reminiscent of the days following his attachment surgery, a sickening pain that shot up his forearm to his shoulder before it traveled to his neck. But Angie exhaled sharply, expelling the gum.

  The phone rang while the frightened girl lay shaking on his chest, wracked with sobs, sucking huge gulps of air. "I was dyin'," she managed to gasp. Patrick, who'd thought she was coming, said nothing while the machine answered the call. "I was dyin' and comin' at the same time," the girl added. "It was weird."

  From the answering machine, a voice spoke from the city's grim underground; there were metallic shrieks and the lurching rumble of a subway train, over which Angie's father, a transit policeman, made his message clear. "Angie, are ya tryin' to kill your muthuh or what? She's not eatin', she's not sleepin', she's not goin' to Mass ..." Another train screeched over the cop's lament.

  "Daddy," was all Angie said to Wallingford. Her hips were moving again. As a couple, they seemed eternally joined--a minor god and goddess representing death by pleasure.

  Angie was screaming again when the phone rang a fourth time. What time is it? Patrick wondered, but when he looked at his digital alarm clock, something pink was covering the time. It had a ghastly anatomical appearance, like part of a lung, but it was only Angie's gum--definitely some sort of berry flavor. The way the light of the alarm clock shone through the substance made the gum resemble living tissue.

  "God ..." he said, coming, just as the makeup girl also came. Her teeth, doubtless missing the gum, sank into Wallingford's left shoulder. Patrick could tolerate the pain--he'd known worse. But Angie was even more enthusiastic than he'd expected her to be. She was a screamer, a choker, and a biter. She was in midbite when she fainted dead away.

  "Hey, cripple," said a strange man's voice on Patrick's answering machine. "Hey, Mista One Hand, do ya know what? You're gonna lose more than your hand, that's what. You're gonna end up with nothin' between your legs but a fuckin' draft."

  Wallingford tried to wake up Angie by kissing her, but the fainted girl just smiled. "There's a call for you," Patrick whispered in her ear. "You might want to take this one."

  "Hey, fuck-face," the man in the answering machine said, "did ya know that even television personalities can just disappear?" He must have been calling from a moving car. The radio was playing Johnny Mathis--softly, but not softly enough. Wallingford thought of the signet ring Angie wore on the chain around her neck; it would slip over a knuckle the size of his big toe. But she had already taken off the ring, and she'd dismissed its owner as "a nobody"--some guy who was "overseas." So who was the guy on the phone?

  "Angie, I think you ought to hear this," Patrick whispered. He gently pulled the sleeping girl into a sitting position; her hair fell forward, hiding her face, covering her pretty breasts. She smelled like a delectable concoction of fruits and flowers; her body was coated with a thin and glowing film of sweat.

  "Listen to me, Mista One Hand," the answering machine said. "I'm gonna grind up your prick in a blenda. Then I'm gonna make ya drink it!" That was the end of the charmless call.

  Wallingford was packing for Wisconsin when Angie woke up.

  "Boy, have I gotta pee!" the girl said.

  "There was another call--not your mother. Some guy said he was going to grind up my penis in a blender."

  "That would be my brother Vittorio--Vito, for short," Angie said. She left the door to the bathroom open while she peed. "Did he really say 'penis'?" she called from the toilet.

  "No, he actually said 'prick,'" Patrick replied.

  "Definitely Vito," the makeup girl said. "He's harmless. Vito don't even have a job." How did Vito's unemployment make him harmless? "So what's in Minnesota, anyway?" Angie asked.

  "Wisconsin," he corrected her.

  "So who's there?"

  "A woman I'm going to ask to marry me," Patrick answered. "She'll probably say no."

  "Hey, ya gotta real problem, do ya know that?" Angie asked. She pulled him back to the bed. "Come here, ya gotta have more confidence than that. Ya gotta believe she's gonna say yes. Otherwise, why botha?"

  "I don't think she loves me."

  "Sure she does! Ya just gotta practice," the makeup girl said. "Go on--ya can practice on me. Go on--ask me!"

  He tried; after all, he'd been rehearsing. He told her what he wanted to say to Mrs. Clausen.

  "Geez ... that's terrible," Angie said. "To begin with, ya can't start out apologizin' all over the place--ya gotta come right out and say, 'I can't live widoutcha!' That kind of thing. Go on--say it!"

  "I can't live without you," Wallingford announced unconvincingly.

  "Geez ..."

  "What's wrong?" Patrick asked.

  "Ya gotta say it betta than that!"

  The phone rang, the fifth call. It was Mary Shanahan again, presumably calling from the solitude of her apartment on East Fifty-something--Wallingford could almost hear the whoosh of cars passing on the FDR Drive. "I thought we were friends," Mary began. "Is this how you treat a friend? Someone who's having your baby
..." Either her voice broke or her thought trailed away.

  "She's gotta point," Angie said to Patrick. "Ya betta say somethin' to her." Wallingford thought of shaking his head, but he was lying with his face on Angie's breasts; he considered it rude to shake his head there.

  "You can't still be fucking that girl!" Mary cried.

  "If ya don't talk to her, I'm gonna talk to her. Someone's gotta," the compassionate makeup girl said.

  "You talk to her, then," Wallingford replied. He buried his face lower, in Angie's belly; he tried to muffle his hearing there, while she picked up the phone.

  "This is Angie, Ms. Shanahan," the good-hearted girl began. "Ya shouldn't be upset. It hasn't been all that great here, really. A while ago, I nearly choked to death. I almost died--I'm not kiddin'." Mary hung up. "Was that bad?" Angie asked Wallingford.

  "No, that was good. That was just fine. I think you're great," he said truthfully.

  "Ya just sayin' that," Angie told him. "Are ya tryin' to get laid again or what?"

  So they had sex. What else were they going to do? This time, when Angie fainted again, Wallingford thoughtfully removed her old gum from the face of his clock before setting the alarm.

  Angie's mother called once more--at least that was who Patrick assumed the caller was. Without saying a word, the woman wept on and on, almost melodiously, while Wallingford drifted in and out of sleep.

  He woke up before the alarm went off. He lay looking at the sleeping girl--her untrammeled goodwill was truly a thing of beauty. Patrick shut off the alarm before it sounded; he wanted to let Angie sleep. After he showered and shaved, he made a survey of his damaged body: the bruise on his shin from the glass-topped table at Mary's, the burn from the hot-water faucet in Mary's shower. His back was scratched from Angie's nails; on his left shoulder was a sizable blood blister, a purplish hematoma and some broken skin from her spontaneous bite.

  Patrick Wallingford seemed in dubious condition for offering a marriage proposal in Wisconsin, or anywhere else. He made some coffee and brought the sleeping girl a glass of cold orange juice in bed.

  "Look at this place ..." she was soon saying, marching naked through his apartment. "It looks like ya been havin' sex!" She stripped the sheets and the pillowcases; she started gathering up the towels. "Ya gotta washin' machine, don'tcha? I know ya gotta plane to catch--I'll clean up here. What if that woman says yes? What if she comes back here with ya?"

  "That's not likely. I mean it's not likely she'll come back here with me, even if she does say yes."

  "Spare me 'not likely'--she might. That's all ya gotta know. Ya catch the plane. I'll fix the place. I'll rewind the answering machine before I leave. I promise."

  "You don't have to do this," Patrick told her.

  "I wanna help!" Angie said. "I know what it's like to have a messy life. Go on--ya betta get outta here! Ya don't wanna miss your plane."

  "Thank you, Angie." He kissed her good-bye. She tasted so good, he almost didn't go. What was wrong with sexual anarchy, anyway?

  The phone rang as he was leaving. He heard Vito's voice on the answering machine. "Hey, listen up, Mista One Hand ... Mista No Prick," Vittorio was saying. There was a mechanical whirring, a terrifying sound.

  "It's just a stupid blenda. Go on--don't miss your plane!" Angie told him. Wallingford was closing the door as she was picking up the phone.

  "Hey, Vito," he heard Angie say. "Listen up, limp dick." Patrick paused on the landing by the stairs; there was a brief but pointed silence. "That's the sound your prick would make in the blenda, Vito--no sound, 'cause ya got nothin' there!"

  Wallingford's nearest neighbor was on the landing--a sleepless-looking man from the adjacent apartment, getting ready to walk his dog. Even the dog looked sleepless as it waited, shivering slightly, at the top of the stairs.

  "I'm going to Wisconsin," Patrick said hopefully.

  The man, who had a silver-gray goatee, looked dazed with general indifference and self-loathing.

  "Why don'tcha get a fuckin' magnifyin' glass so ya can beat off?" Angie was screaming. The dog pricked up its ears. "Ya know whatcha do with a prick as small as yours, Vito?" Wallingford and his neighbor just stared at the dog. "Ya go to a pet shop. Ya buy a mouse. Ya beg it for a blow job."

  The dog, with grave solemnity, seemed to be considering all this. It was some kind of miniature schnauzer with a silver-gray beard, like its master's.

  "Have a safe trip," Wallingford's neighbor told him.

  "Thank you," Patrick said.

  They started down the stairs together--the schnauzer sneezing twice, the neighbor saying that he thought the dog had caught an "air-conditioning cold."

  They'd reached the half-landing between floors when Angie shouted something mercifully indistinct. The girl's heroic loyalty was enough to make Wallingford want to go back to her; she was a safer bet than Mrs. Clausen.

  But it was early on a summer Saturday morning; the day was brimming with hope. (Maybe not in Boston, where a woman whose name wasn't Sarah Williams either was or was not waiting for an abortion.)

  There was no traffic on the way to the airport. Patrick got to the gate before boarding began. Since he'd packed in the dark while Angie slept, he thought it wise to check the contents of his carry-on: a T-shirt, a polo shirt, a sweatshirt, two bathing suits, two pair of underwear--he wore boxers--two pairs of white athletic socks, and a shaving kit, which included his toothbrush and toothpaste and some ever-hopeful condoms. He'd also packed a paperback edition of Stuart Little, recommended for ages eight through twelve.

  He had not packed Charlotte's Web, because he doubted that Doris's attention span could accommodate two books in one weekend; after all, Otto junior was not yet walking but he was probably crawling. There wouldn't be much time for reading aloud.

  Why Stuart Little instead of Charlotte's Web? one might ask. Only because Patrick Wallingford considered the ending to be more in tune with his own on-the-road-again way of life. And maybe the melancholy of it would be persuasive to Mrs. Clausen--it was certainly more romantic than the birth of all those baby spiders.

  In the waiting area, the other passengers watched Wallingford unpack and repack his bag. He'd dressed that morning in a pair of jeans and running shoes and a Hawaiian shirt, and he carried a light jacket, a kind of Windbreaker, to drape over his left forearm to conceal the missing hand. But a one-handed man unpacking and repacking a bag would get anyone's attention. By the time Patrick stopped fussing over what he was bringing to Wisconsin, everyone in the waiting area knew who he was.

  They observed the lion guy holding his cell phone in his lap, pinning it against his thigh with the stump of his left forearm while he dialed the number with his one hand; then he picked up the phone and held it to his ear and mouth. When his Windbreaker slipped off the empty seat beside him, his left forearm reached to pick it up, but Wallingford thought better of it and returned the useless stump to his lap.

  His fellow passengers must have been surprised. After all these years of handlessness, his left arm still thinks it has a hand! But no one ventured to retrieve the fallen Windbreaker until a sympathetic couple, traveling with a young boy, whispered something to their son. The boy, who was perhaps seven or eight, cautiously approached Patrick's jacket; he picked it up and put it carefully on the empty seat beside Wallingford's bag. Patrick smiled and nodded to the boy, who self-consciously hurried back to his parents.

  The cell phone rang and rang in Wallingford's ear. He had meant to call his own apartment and either speak to Angie or leave a message on his answering machine, which he hoped she would hear. He wanted to tell her how wonderful and natural she was; he'd thought of saying something that began, "In another life ..." That kind of thing. But he hadn't made that call; something about the girl's sheer goodness made him not want to risk hearing her voice. (And what bullshit it was to call someone you'd spent only one night with "natural.")

  He called Mary Shanahan instead. Her phone rang so many times that Wallingford was
composing a message to leave on her answering machine when Mary picked up the receiver.

  "It could only be you, you asshole," she said.

  "Mary, we're not married--we're not even going steady. And I'm not trading apartments with you."

  "Didn't you have a good time with me, Pat?"

  "There was a lot you didn't tell me," Wallingford pointed out.

  "That's just the nature of the business."

  "I see," he said. There was that distant, hollow sound--the kind of echoing silence Wallingford associated with transoceanic calls. "I guess this wouldn't be a good time to ask you about a new contract," he added. "You said to ask for five years--"

  "We should discuss this after your weekend in Wisconsin," Mary replied. "Three years would be more realistic than five, I think."

  "And should I ... well, how did you put it? Should I sort of phase myself out of the anchor chair--is that your suggestion?"

  "If you want a new, extended contract--yes, that would be one way," Mary told him.

  "I don't know the history of pregnant anchors," Wallingford admitted. "Has there ever been a pregnant anchor? I suppose it could work. Is that the idea? We would watch you get bigger and bigger. Of course there would be some homey commentary, and a shot or two of you in profile. It would be best to have a brief maternity leave, to suggest that having a baby in today's family-sensitive workplace is no big deal. Then, after what seemed no longer than a standard vacation, you'd be back on-camera, almost as svelte as before."

  That transoceanic silence followed, the hollow sound of the distance between them. It was like his marriage, as Wallingford remembered it.

  "Am I understanding 'the nature of the business' yet?" Patrick asked. "Am I getting it right?"

  "I used to love you," Mary reminded him; then she hung up.

  It pleased Wallingford that at least one phase of the office politics between them was over. He would find his own way to get fired, when he felt like it; if he decided to do it Mary's way, she would be the last to know when. And, if it turned out Mary was pregnant, he would be as responsible for the baby as she allowed him to be--he just wouldn't be dicked around by her.