Status Updates From The last chairlift

An avalanche kills the Little Barlows. The snowshoer had seen "a kind of crazy rapture, or at least relief on their frozen faces. She's seen (or had imagined) "the intense joy or at least relief" parents feel when they know their children will outlive them.

Irving addresses the AIDS epidemic through one of his minor characters.

Bob hope jokes about AIDS at the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty. It was particularly risqué.

There's a fellow writer in line after Adam's reading. Her name is Wilson. He imagines having sex with her.

Adam's friends, Nora and Em, do routines at a performance venue called the Gallows. It was getting harder to be funny about anything already at the end of the 1970's. And they called themselves Two Dykes, One Who Talks.

Adam's mother would stand close to the person she was talking to and hold his or her wrists.