The Fourth Hand by John Irving Page B

marginalize more than Patrick Wal ingford; it was also to marginalize the news. A women’s conference in Japan had been reduced to a story about a matronly and histrionic Englishwoman threatening to take off her clothes at a panel discussion on rape—in Tokyo, of al places.
    “Wel , wasn’t that cute?” Evelyn Arbuthnot would say, when she saw the minuteand-a-half story on the TV in her hotel room. She was stil in Tokyo—it was the closing day of the conference. Wal ingford’s cheap-shot channel hadn’t even waited for the conference to be over.
    Patrick was stil in bed when Ms. Arbuthnot cal ed him.
    “Sol y,” was al Wal ingford could manage to say. “I’m not the news editor; I’m just a field reporter.”
    “You were just fol owing orders—is that what you mean?”
    Ms. Arbuthnot asked him.
    Evelyn Arbuthnot was much too tough for Patrick Wal ingford, especial y because Wal ingford had not recovered from a night on the town with his Japanese hosts. He thought even his soul must smel like sake. Nor could Patrick remember which of his favorite Japanese newspapermen had given him tickets for two on the highspeed train to and from Kyoto—“the bul et train,” either Yoshi or Fumi had cal ed it. A visit to a traditional inn in Kyoto could be very restorative, they’d told him; he remembered that. “But better go before the weekend.”
    Regrettably, Wal ingford would forget that part of their advice.
    Ah, Kyoto—city of temples, city of prayer. Someplace more meditative than Tokyo would do Wal ingford a world of good. It was high time he did a little meditating, he explained to Evelyn Arbuthnot, who continued to berate him about the fiasco of the coverage given to the women’s conference by his “lousy not -thenews network.”
    “I know, I know . . .” Patrick kept repeating. (What else could he say?)
    “And now you’re going to Kyoto? To do what? Pray? Just what wil you pray for?” she asked him. “The most publicly humiliating demise imaginable of your disaster-and-comedy-news network—that’s what I pray for!”
    “I’m stil hopeful that something nice might happen to me in this country,”
    Wal ingford replied with as much dignity as he could summon, which wasn’t much.
    There was a thoughtful pause on Evelyn Arbuthnot’s end of the phone. Patrick guessed that she was giving new consideration to an old idea.
    “You want something nice to happen to you in Japan?” Ms.
    Arbuthnot asked.
    “Wel . . . you can take me to Kyoto with you. I’l show you something nice. ”
    He was Patrick Wal ingford, after al . He acquiesced. He did what women wanted; he general y did what he was told.
    But he’d thought Evelyn Arbuthnot was a lesbian! Patrick was confused.
    “Uh . . . I thought . . . I mean from your remark to me about that Danish novelist, I took it to mean that . . . wel , that you were gay, Ms. Arbuthnot.”
    “That’s a trick I play al the time,” she told him. “I didn’t think you’d fal en for it.”
    “Oh,” Wal ingford said.
    “I am not gay, but I’m old enough to be your mother. If you want to think about that and get back to me, I won’t be offended.”

    “Surely you couldn’t be my mother—”
    “Biological y speaking, I surely could be,” Ms. Arbuthnot said. “I could have had you when I was sixteen—when I looked eighteen, by the way. How’s your math?”
    “You’re fifty-something?” he asked her.
    “That’s close enough,” she said. “And I can’t leave for Kyoto today. I won’t skip the last day of this pathetic but wel -
    intentioned conference. If you can wait until tomorrow, I’l go to Kyoto with you for the weekend.”
    “Okay,” Wal ingford agreed. He didn’t tel her that he already had two tickets on
    “the bul et train.” He could ask the concierge at the hotel to change his reservations for the train and inn.
    “You sure you want to do this?” Evelyn Arbuthnot asked.
    She didn’t sound too sure herself.
    “Yes, I’m sure. I