Atdtda35, After a few sociable rounds, 995

[Paul Nightingale]

We have gone from a bar where Frank meets Melpómene (at the start of 66.6 on
990) to one where he meets Doc Willis, the ‘onetime disappointed beau of
Frank’s sister Lake’ (995) and a reminder that Frank has gone back but can
never (‘onetime’) go back. Above the section break, the final paragraph of
66.6 describes the ease with which capitalism might cross borders and treat
space as a fiction; here, the first paragraph replicates the opening of the
previous section (Willis, ‘just off his night shift’, reminds us of Frank’s
similar retirement to El Quetzal Dormido) and also takes the reader further
back in the narrative, time as a fiction (on 922, 63.2 ends with Frank
considering Ewball and Stray, then reflecting upon Lake’s relationship with
Deuce Kindred). Doc then suggests (‘I didn’t once ask about your sister’)
that he too has been taken back in time: the Denver they each currently
inhabit is far removed from the past they recall.

Doc’s reference to acupuncture provides, following accounts of Günther’s
plantation on 987 and 989-990, reference to another kind of modernisation,
the co-existence of mainstream and alternative medicines: we might go back
to ‘young Willis Turnstone, freshly credentialed from the American School of
Osteopathy’ on 309 and the subsequent magic he performs on Jimmy Drop’s bad
back on 310, where Willis confronts tradition in the Old West. Here, of
course, the Old West is invoked by any reference to the Traverse pursuit of
Webb’s killer: Willis the ‘onetime disappointed beau’ will have one
recollection of Lake, Frank another.