Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China

by Daniel Asa Rose

  “Write this down,” Larry instructs. “C56488.”

  “You got the plate? Then why’d you ask me?”

  “Double-checking.”

  Larry shouts through the faulty partition to the cabbie, eighteen inches away, as though he’s hard of hearing. “WE GO SHI, YES?”

  “Friend, yes, friend,” says the cabbie, checking his rearview every couple of seconds for the shadow cab. He reaches into the dusty storage area beneath the dash and brings out a cell phone from among the loose papers there. His dimple’s vanished as he makes a call with one hand and starts conspiring with the person on the other end.

  I’m sweating a new kind of sweat now, colder than the one back in Beijing. It’s as though my cranium has sprung a leak; the fluid seeps down to my armpits, where it drips into a bottomless space. Shouldn’t my shirt soak up the sweat? But it drips, drips, into a measureless void. Where’s my sense of humor? But I can find nothing remotely amusing about this situation. In preparation for anything, I stash my passport and wallet in a buttoned pants pocket, adjust my fake Rolex so it doubles as brass knuckles. Larry takes out a ballpoint pen and clicks it a few times, making sure the point is exposed. “In the event of a situation, I’m using this to go for his eyes,” he says.

  I keep staring at the faulty partition between us and the front. It’s meant to protect the cabbie, but it comes only halfway up. In a pinch I could get my hands through to throttle the cabbie. But my mind is lagging. I keep wondering why anyone would install such a half-assed partition? I flash on the image of a bridge near my house that became such a favorite of suicide jumpers that they finally put up a fence. Only trouble was, there were ten-foot-wide gaps in the fence every thirty feet. Wouldn’t you think the line between life-and-death predicaments would be more foolproof?

  We gravel on in silence for a few more minutes while I laggingly think about fences, suicide, murder. I call Cherry’s hospital office and leave a message on her machine, trying not to let panic creep into my voice. I text-message my wife at home: “Kidnap cab? C56488.” At a stop sign, the shadow cab pulls up to us. Two burly guys measure us with their eyes. Do they want to take us on? Too bad Larry doesn’t have his beloved firearms with him. He does look pretty ferocious in his box-turtle sunglasses, like a Miami tough guy-so long as they don’t know how sick he is. Without being invited to, I reach into his satchel for an extra pair of box-turtle shades and put them on, too.

  “I don’t think we’re being unduly paranoid, do you?” I ask him.

  “Better more duly than less duly,” he says, clicking his ballpoint calmly.

  His voice is so serene that I can’t help but be flooded with admiration. How many degrees of impassive Larry’s face is capable of! If someone had told me ten days ago that I’d be spending this kind of time studying my cousin’s face like it was a da Vinci, I don’t know what I’d have thought. But I let Larry take charge. He’s better at distracting me than I am at distracting him, clicking his ballpoint pen in readiness, rotating his feet in their Businessman’s Running Shoes, which I realize now could double as ballbusters.

  “Ever watch Sopranos reruns, Dan?” he asks.

  “I thought you didn’t do popular culture,” I point out.

  “HBO!” he says, as if it’s understood those initials are above the fray. “The reruns hold up surprisingly well. Nevertheless, the premise is still implausible. They make Tony out to be some New Age gangster with higher qualities: loyalty to his children or whatever? No, I’m sorry. I’ve been around these people, and let me tell you: Tony is a street thug. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. No higher education. No advanced degrees. He kills people for disrespecting. What, he couldn’t just beat them up? Especially since the guy has an IQ of a hundred and thirty-six-check it out, fifth season-that’s five points higher than me in my prime. He should know better. (That said, however, I must admit that I like Tony’s house very much. Very tasteful. In most areas he’s a very confused guy, but I have to hand it to his home decorator.)”

  I try to meet Larry halfway in the coolness department, even though it’s all bluff on my part. “Larry, now’s as good a time as any to ask about something that happened once when we were kids on the Red Line and those guys wanted to mix it up with us, remember? I was kind of anxious, but you wanted to fight?”

  “I remember,” he says, flexing his hands with his improvised brass knuckles.

  “Was I being a wuss?”

  “One time doesn’t make anyone a wuss,” he assures me. “You had a sheltered upbringing. You didn’t understand that it’s better to just get hit a few times than spend your life fearing being hit.”

  “Really? That strikes me as profound,” I say.

  “Okay, you want me to talk about fistfights,” he says. And he’s right: I do want him to talk about fistfights. He’s diagnosed my anxiety accurately-hell, he probably diagnosed it decades ago-and knows I need him to fill me in on everything I’ve missed in my coddled existence and have to catch up on double-quick.

  “The first thing to know is that every fight is different,” he says. “And none are like Muhammad Ali in the ring. Most are scuffles with very few clean punches. But the secret to all fistfights is the element of surprise. You know how I’d handle it if I were to get in a fight now, in my condition? I’d pretend to be hurt and cower, then as soon as he didn’t expect it, I’d punch his lights out. Surprise is key.”

  Okay, this is helpful. Hearing Larry’s lethargic, even-keeled voice with all its various speech impediments is keeping me calm.

  “Larry, another incident,” I say. “Remember that time we were trying to park in South Boston one night and that black guy stole my space and you told me to stay in the car, but I got out and started walking over to talk about it. He smiled and adjusted his posture so subtly that suddenly I got the feeling he was packing heat. Or whatever you call it. And I got back in the car. Was I right to get back in?”

  “You were wrong not to stay in the car in the first place.”

  “All right, good,” I say, nodding my head. “So let me ask another question. That slick hotel manager back in Beijing. Nice guy, right, even though he had ulterior motives for helping pack you up?”

  “Guy was a huckster,” Larry says. “I saw the way he was eyeing my tea sets. If they arrive with so much as one swizzle stick missing, I’m all over him with the authorities.”

  I yawn, suddenly exhausted with insight. “I didn’t sleep well last night,” I say. “The phone kept ringing.”

  Larry looks at me as though I’m mentally endangered, then enunciates carefully, “Hookers. They rent a room in the hotel and then call all the other rooms, one after the other, hoping to get lucky.”

  So help me, the guy is brilliant. His talk is aimed with dead-eye accuracy to simultaneously comfort and toughen me up. Feeble, ill, and homesick as he is, he’s taking care of his older cousin.

  “So…ah, hookers, Larry? Do you really know them socially?”

  “Mostly they’re sad people who can’t find a better way of life,” he confirms. “On the other hand, a lot of regular women don’t even charge, and that’s sadder. And on an additional hand, if someone wants to give me one for my birfday, I won’t object.” He registers my appreciative expression. “I can see you’re soaking this up,” he says. “So I’m going to resume by thanking you again for the fake Cartier watch, and I’m going to tell you why it’s important. It’s a power prop to go along with my other power props that tell the world I’m a success.”

  “Power props?”

  “When I was first starting out, I got myself invited to the Cosmos Club off Dupont Circle in D.C.,” he says. “One of the most exclusive clubs in the world. Teddy Roosevelt’s still trying to become a member, ha ha. Long story short, I was invited for dinner when I was eighteen. Not worth going into details, but I managed to scoop up a dozen match-books, knowing they’d come in handy someday. Sure enough, three years later I’m entering into negotiations with a hotshot lawyer who pulls out
an expensive cigar. I’m there with a light, after which I place down the matchbook facing the guy. Guy reads the inscription, Cosmos Club. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ the lawyer asks.”

  “You were pretty savvy for being so young,” I put in.

  “Nah, way too obvious. You know what I would do differently today? Place down the matchbook facing myself. So you catching on?” Larry asks. “It’s not like you don’t know this stuff abstractly, it’s just that you never had it spelled out for you in the context of real life. Let me give you another example.”

  And so forth. Somehow, before I know it, we’re at the hospital. I’ve gotten both more worldly and more world-weary with each tale. The shadow cab has drifted away. How many pounds have I lost, in sweat and anxiety? I’ll never know. Nor do either of us know if the whole scare was a false alarm. Maybe they took stock of us back at the stop sign and felt they’d get too scratched up? Maybe our cabbie became mesmerized by all of Larry’s gobbledygook and dropped the ball? We’ll never know. Anyway, a couple of exhausted men in box-turtle sunglasses and Rolex brass knuckles are finally delivered to the hospital entrance, safe and sound. I’m only too happy to pay the cabbie in full, even tipping him twenty RMB for not kidnapping us. Ciao, ciao. “Oh, and I’ll take a receipt, please.”

  Stepping out of the cab, I thank Cool God that the scare is over. But when I look back at Larry, expecting to see a similar relief on his face, I see nothing but a blank stare, slack and emotionless. For him, looking up at the eleven floors of this great, grim hospital, the Giant Mushroom of Hope and Dread, the real scares are just beginning.

  CHAPTER 10. Welcome to the Super 2

  Without rice, even the cleverest housewife cannot cook.

  Suddenly silent. The glass doors of the hospital close behind us to seal out all sound. No honking, no jostling. All is shiny emptiness, a great big McSpace Age lobby that is eerily vacant except for a couple of severe-looking, vaguely threatening Arab men who saunter through, holding hands. Relatives of patients? From far off I hear the sound of…a badminton birdie being hit? Larry and I walk toward the elevator bank, followed by a maid who soundlessly polishes off our footsteps so no dust remains on the glittering marble.

  On the ninth floor, still ghostly quiet, there are a few patients sitting around on windowsills and wearing colostomy bags. In their Yankee uniforms with limbo dinge, they’re from no country but the Land of Weary. We make it to the nurses’ station and say we are looking for Cherry. When she arrives, toting her ever-present pocketbook, she escorts us to Larry’s new home: a double-room suite with twin beds, fridge, and flat-screen TV. I plug everything in and feel the room buzz to life.

  “Did we miss lunch?” Larry inquires.

  “No lunch,” Cherry replies.

  “Are we too early for dinner? I finished my last Girl Scout cookie twenty-four hours ago.”

  “No dinner.”

  Turns out they don’t serve food in this hospital. Families have to bring their own. There are no plates for patients to eat on. Or glasses to drink from. Or towels. Or soap.

  “Or toilet paper,” Larry calls out from the bathroom.

  “Is Dr. X around?” I ask. “I’d feel better if we could talk to him directly.”

  “He at conference, back at end of week.”

  In his absence, preliminary tests are taken by two of the medical residents we met last night: a gangly man who suffers from acute self-consciousness and an ungainly woman who could profit from a little more self-consciousness. Have they never schooled female residents to sit with their legs closed? The poor woman looks like she’s struggled over every hill she’s ever come across and reminds me of someone I can’t put my finger on. One good sign, however-and I’m desperate for good signs-is that she’s very adept at spinning a purple pen around in her hands. Great manual dexterity.

  I offload all of Larry’s stuff in his room, his suitcases and crate of teacups, and help him get organized. “Also, you should give me your passport for safekeeping,” I say.

  “I’m a big boy, I’ll keep it with me.”

  “Larry, we went to a lot of trouble and expense to get a replacement. We can’t afford to lose it again.”

  “More important, we can’t afford to lose my self-respect,” he says, reaching down to retie his shoe slowly enough that finally I just do it for him. “So that’s the way it’s going to be.”

  His obstinacy is a healthy sign, I decide. I’ll choose my battles. “Fine,” I say, making a mental note to steal it later if it comes to that, “but where will you keep it so you don’t lose it?”

  “In my slacks.”

  Slacks? Why not just call them chinos, britches, knickerbockers? What generation is he from?

  “Better yet, I’ll keep it in this Kleenex box with my glasses and wallet. Since I apparently won’t be wearing trousers.”

  Jodhpurs, lederhosen, pantaloons?

  He changes into a hospital robe.

  The compressor of the fridge starts making prudish squawking noises. Larry turns up the volume of the flat-screen TV on the only station he can find that’s broadcasting in English: Al Jazeera.

  “Is there a way to shut off the music?” I ask, because a lullaby-type tune warbles softly from invisible ceiling speakers. The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout…

  “And the A/C?” Larry asks. “I’m not accustomed to the arctic blast.”

  “By the by,” Cherry says, not hearing us, “we need two thousand RMB to start account rolling. For diagnostic workup, such and such.”

  Apparently everything’s done in cash on the barrelhead: Before we can get under way, we have to open our wallets and fork over almost all the bills we have on hand. Next they want to see the medications he’s on. Larry rummages until he finds two leather satchels and empties their contents onto the glass tabletop. Seventeen plastic vials in all. The residents start giggling.

  “You take these every day?” Cherry translates, clucking with dismay.

  “Two and sometimes three times a day,” Larry answers.

  The residents’ amusement turns to disbelief as they turn the vials around and around, as if inspecting cucumbers too rotten to buy. “But these pills do not work,” Cherry says. “Blood pressure is two-fifty over two hundred,” she says.

  Larry shrugs. “I’m just showing you the cards I’m holding,” he says.

  The residents confer until they reach a decision. All medications from home will be stored in a safe place where Larry will have no access to them. “First thing first, we remove pills, then see how your condition is,” Cherry says.

  “Cold turkey?” Larry asks. “What about my antidepressionists? You sure that’s safe?”

  “First thing first,” Cherry says. “We must bring down blood pressure, also resume dialysis starting tomorrow. As needed, we give you clam pill to keep you clam.”

  Before undressing, Larry empties the contents of his shirt pocket. Two pairs of reading glasses, two pairs of shades. A handful of American change. Business cards from the crew of the plane he took here from Florida. Tube of toothache gel. While I unpack Larry and get him settled in-he won’t part with his Businessman’s Running Shoes, a concession they allow him-a woman comes into the room and gives Larry a Chinese-looking haircut. A man comes in and takes Larry’s picture. Larry morosely pays each visitor, though each puts him to some discomfort. “Is all this really necessary?” Larry asks when yet another man comes in to sell him a bunch of plastic clothespins.

  “It up to you,” Cherry says. Apparently none of the visitors are connected to the hospital in any way. They’re free agents from the street, peddling their goods up and down the corridor just as they do on the sidewalk outside.

  The compressor of the fridge heaves one last squawk and shudders to a stop. The Al Jazeera news anchor is issuing a statement denying reports that they recently broadcast a beheading on live TV. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. “Can we get another couple of blankets in here?” Larry asks, shivering in h
is paper-thin hospital gown.

  “Again it up to you,” Cherry says-meaning that the hospital won’t provide another one but we’re free to buy one elsewhere. Since no more peddlers seem to be coming by-did the word go out that Larry’s wised up?-I conclude it’s left to me to provide. I stash my suitcase here for the time being and set off to hunt and gather.

  “See you soon,” I say, squeezing his shoulder. It feels abrupt, but I’d better get some nourishment in him before he keels over.

  At the elevator bank, I have time to examine the hospital a little more carefully. For a structure built just two years ago, it looks roughly used-like so many things in this country, subject to instant antiquing. It seems antiseptically clean, but on closer inspection it looks Minged up-mildewing in easy-to-reach places, its plaster wizened twenty minutes after application. Brand-new walls have scuff marks as though they’ve been around fifty years, the putty gouged out in places, the paint moldering. Right before my eyes, this ultramodern hospital shows signs of dissolving back to the sand from which it sprang. Is this why the Chinese language has no past or future tense-both are here now, in the crumbling present?

  Yet another in a series of Inscrutables. The word’s less offensive as a noun, for some reason, less patronizing and pat.

  “You still here?” Cherry says, passing through the elevator bank a few minutes later on her way to the stairwell. “I forgot tell you, elevator only go up.”

  Outside in the smogosphere, I have a chance to list the other Inscrutables I can’t get my mind around.

  INSCRUTABLES…ITEMIZED

  Inscrutable of the stockings: Why do the Chinese of both sexes wear ankle stockings, even with sandals? It offends every fashion sense…

  Inscrutable of the bus squat: How can people stay so long in the age-old Chinese position of waiting, snoozing on their heels for hours if need be, waiting for a bus that may never come?

  Inscrutable of the One-Child Policy: Where are the pregnant people? They’re almost as invisible as members of my own generation. Intellectually I grasp the concept that the government must limit population growth, but how can a people who’ve had extended families for eons put up with a policy that mandates only one child per family, and thus no siblings, aunts, or uncles?