"It doesn't hurt Medea," the doctor insisted.
"Have you tried it around your neck?"
"Rudy, the collar isn't for people--it's for dogs!"
Then their conversation turned to the Super Bowl, and why Zajac had wanted Denver to win.
When the phone rang, Medea scurried under the kitchen table, but the message from Dr. Zajac's answering service--"Mrs. Clausen called from Wisconsin"--caused Zajac to forget all about the stupid dog. The eager surgeon called the new widow back immediately. Mrs. Clausen wasn't yet sure of the condition of the donor hand, but Dr. Zajac was nonetheless impressed by her composure.
Mrs. Clausen had been a little less composed in her dealings with the Green Bay police and the examining physician. While she seemed to grasp the particulars of her husband's "presumably accidental death by gunshot," there was almost immediately the expression of a new doubt upon her tear-streaked face.
"He's really dead?" she asked. Her strangely futuristic look was nothing the police or the examining physician had ever seen before. Upon establishing that her husband was "really dead," Mrs. Clausen paused only briefly before inquiring, "But how is Otto's hand? The left one."
CHAPTER SIX
The Strings Attached
IN BOTH THE Green Bay Press-Gazette and The Green Bay News-Chronicle, Otto Clausen's postgame, self-inflicted shooting was relegated to the trivial end of Super Bowl coverage. One Wisconsin sportscaster was gauche enough to say, "Hey, there are a lot of Packer fans who probably considered shooting themselves after Sunday's Super Bowl, but Otto Clausen of Green Bay actually pulled the trigger." Yet even the most tactless, insensitive reporting of Otto's death did not seriously label it a suicide.
When Patrick Wallingford first heard about Otto Clausen--he saw the minute-and-a-half story on his very own international channel in his hotel room in Mexico City--he vaguely wondered why that dick Dick hadn't sent him to interview the widow. It was the kind of story he was usually assigned.
But the all-news network had sent Stubby Farrell, their old sports hack, who'd been at the Super Bowl in San Diego, to cover the event. Stubby had been in Green Bay many times before, and Patrick Wallingford had never even watched a Super Bowl on TV.
When Wallingford saw the news that Monday morning, he was already rushing to leave his hotel to catch his flight to New York. He scarcely noticed that the beer-truck driver had a widow. "Mrs. Clausen couldn't be reached for comment," the ancient sports hack reported.
Dick would have made me reach her, Wallingford thought, as he bolted his coffee; yet his mind registered the ten-second image of the beer truck in the near-empty parking lot, the light snow covering the abandoned vehicle like a gauzy shroud.
"Where the party ended, for this Packer fan," Stubby intoned. Cheesy, Patrick Wallingford thought. (No pun intended--he as yet had no idea what a cheesehead was.)
Patrick was almost out the door when the phone rang in his hotel room; he very nearly let it ring, worried as he was about catching his plane. It was Dr. Zajac, all the way from Massachusetts. "Mr. Wallingford, this is your lucky day," the hand surgeon began.
As he awaited his subsequent flight to Boston, Wallingford watched himself on the twenty-four-hour news; he saw what remained of the story he'd been sent to Mexico City to cover. On Super Bowl Sunday, not everyone in Mexico had been watching the Super Bowl.
The family and friends of renowned sword-swallower Jose Guerrero were gathered at Mary of Magdala Hospital to pray for his recovery; during a performance at a tourist hotel in Acapulco, Guerrero had tripped and fallen onstage, lancing his liver. They'd risked flying him from Acapulco to Mexico City, where he was now in the hands of a specialist--liver stab wounds bleed very slowly. More than a hundred friends and family members had assembled at the tiny private hospital, which was surrounded by hundreds more well-wishers.
Wallingford felt as if he'd interviewed them all. But now, about to leave for Boston to meet his new left hand, Patrick was glad that his three-minute report had been edited to a minute and a half. He was impatient to see the rerun of Stubby Farrell's story; he would pay closer attention this time.
Dr. Zajac had told him that Otto Clausen was left-handed, but what did that mean, exactly? Wallingford was right-handed. Until the lion, he'd always held the microphone in his left hand so that he would be free to shake hands with his right. Now that he had only one hand in which to hold the microphone, Wallingford had largely dispensed with shaking hands.
What would it be like to be right-handed and then get a left-handed man's left hand? Hadn't the left-handedness been a function of Clausen's brain? Surely the predetermination to left-handedness was not in the hand. Patrick kept thinking of a hundred such questions he wanted to ask Dr. Zajac.
On the telephone, all the doc
tor had said was that the medical authorities in Wisconsin had acted quickly enough to preserve the hand because of the "prompt consideration of Mrs. Clausen." Dr. Zajac had been mumbling. Normally he didn't mumble, but the doctor had been up most of the night, administering to the vomiting dog, and then--with Rudy's overzealous assistance--he had attempted to analyze the peculiar-looking substance (in her vomit) that had made Medea sick. Rudy's opinion was that the partially digested duct tape looked like the remains of a seagull. If so, Zajac thought to himself, the bird had been long dead and sticky when the dog ate it. But the analytically minded father and son wouldn't really get to the bottom of what Medea had eaten until the DogWatch man called on Monday morning to inquire how the invisible barrier was working, and to apologize for leaving behind his roll of duct tape.
"You were my last job on Friday," the DogWatch man said, as if he were a detective. "I must have left my duct tape at your place. I don't suppose you've seen it around."
"In a manner of speaking, yes--we have," was all Dr. Zajac could manage to say.
The doctor was still recovering from the sight of Irma, fresh from her morning shower. The girl had been naked and toweling dry her hair in the kitchen. She'd come back from the weekend early Monday morning, gone for a run, and then taken a shower. She was naked in the kitchen because she'd assumed she was alone in the house--but don't forget that she wanted Zajac to see her naked, anyway.
Normally at that time Monday morning, Dr. Zajac had already returned Rudy to his mother's house--in time for Hildred to take the boy to school. But Zajac and Rudy had both overslept, the result of their being up most of the night with Medea. Only after Dr. Zajac's ex-wife called and accused him of kidnapping Rudy did Zajac stumble into the kitchen to make some coffee. Hildred went on yelling after he put Rudy on the phone.
Irma didn't see Dr. Zajac, but he saw her--everything but her head, which was largely hidden from view because she was toweling dry her hair. Great abs! the doctor thought, retreating.
Later he found he couldn't speak to Irma, except in an uncustomary stammer. He haltingly tried to thank her for her peanut-butter idea, but she couldn't understand him. (Nor did she meet Rudy.) And as Dr. Zajac drove Rudy to his angry mother's house, he noticed that there was a special spirit of camaraderie between him and his little boy--they had both been yelled at by Rudy's mother.
Zajac was euphoric when he called Wallingford in Mexico, and much more than Otto Clausen's suddenly available left hand was exciting him--the doctor had spent a terrific weekend with his son. Nor had his view of Irma, naked, been unexciting, although it was typical of Zajac to notice her abs. Was it only Irma's abs that had reduced him to stammering? Thus the "prompt consideration of Mrs. Clausen" and similar formalities were all the soon-to-be-celebrated hand surgeon could manage to impart to Patrick Wallingford over the phone.