Chapter 12

Page 76

inner torpedo
I.e., inner hitman

Page 77

some frail little tubercular seamstress
Reference to Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème. Mimi is a seamstress. She is ill and dies of a cause never stated in the opera, but is widely understood to be tuberculosis.

picking up an easy spare
bowling terminology... knocking down a pin left standing

make with the clodhoppers
Start dancing?

Page 80

the American Indian belief [...] that once you save somebody's life, you're responsible for them in perpetuity
This feels like it ought to belong to some Native North American ethic of reciprocity or spiritual obligation, but it’s actually a pan-cultural motif, not a single, codified "American Indian belief" or "an old Indian saying."