The Dismantling

by Brian Deleeuw

  But it turned out none of this was necessary, not anymore. Not in 2008. It turned out that plenty of people in what one might think of as the middle class—or people who were once in that class or who wanted to appear to be in that class—were open to the idea. Why not sell something that cost you nothing to own in the first place? It was a kind of entrepreneurship of the body, a utilization of previously untapped resources. These weren’t people in need of food or shelter. These were people in need of a car, college tuition, debt relief. Simon’s very first client wanted LASIK and a nose job; why not, she reasoned, let one surgery pay for two more? As the spring of 2008 slipped into summer, and now turned to fall, the list of people—American citizens, no less—who might be interested in the company’s services grew longer and longer, and Simon’s e-mail inbox began to brim with the kind of inquiries he’d feared he would have to sift through the most wretched corners of the third world to find. As the jobs accumulated, Simon’s ethical queasiness over his role in these transactions was calmed by his donor-clients’ embrace of a wonderfully mutable philosophy of self-empowerment, a worldview that made easy room for the conversion of flesh to cash, for the literal capitalization of the self. These people knew the score, knew what they were getting into, at least as much as they could without having gone through it already. Who was he to stand priggishly in judgment of them or of himself?

  Also, he was making badly needed money—and fast—which didn’t hurt.

  • • •

  IMMEDIATELY after visiting Lenny, Simon told DaSilva about Howard Crewes’s role as sponsor and planner. He also told DaSilva that Lenny was still drinking. But Peter didn’t think this would be a problem: “Can this Crewes guy really pay?”

  “He’s got the money, yeah.”

  “All right.” DaSilva’s voice came through the pay phone clear and strong, Bronx street traffic fulminating somewhere behind him. “Then unless Leonard Pellegrini dies before I can get him into the OR, we’ll make it happen.”

  “Peter,” Simon said. This attitude seemed unusually aggressive for DaSilva, who for the last eight months had preached nothing but risk management, turning aside dozens of candidates, both donors and recipients, because of one irregularity or another. Maybe the success of the last run of deals had emboldened him, or maybe landing a lucrative liver job was incentive enough to bend his own rules. “The guy’s an alcoholic. There’s no hiding it. Forget six months. It probably hasn’t even been six hours since his last drink.”

  “What did I say? I’ll get him in there. Those regulations are too conservative anyway, you know they’re just there to protect the hospital’s ass. Just make sure he tells Klein he’s been clean four or five months and I’ll do the rest.”

  “What about the piss test?”

  “I said I’ll fix it. Worry about your own job.”

  And so a week after his excursion to Long Island, Simon sat in the office, scrolling through a batch of applicant e-mails. Crewes had called Simon the day before to inform him that Lenny was going forward with the transplant. He was doing it, Crewes had said somewhat melodramatically, for his children’s sake, not his own. Crewes and Cheryl, Lenny’s estranged wife, had returned to Lenny’s house the day after Simon’s visit, and they’d sat with him in the kitchen, turning the screws and refusing to leave until he deigned to allow them to help save his life. It was now the morning of Lenny’s physical exam at Cabrera; Lenny and Crewes were due at the office any minute. Lenny was scheduled to undergo a battery of laboratory tests—liver function, electrolyte levels, blood typing, coagulation—as well as radiographic studies of his liver and an EKG. The point was to determine his general fitness for surgery, as well as what sort of characteristics Simon would need to look for in his donor. Simon hoped DaSilva hadn’t exaggerated his ability to massage these test results, or at least to place them into some kind of more favorable context (which most likely meant emphasizing Lenny’s financial solvency by proxy), since Simon was fairly sure the machines would paint an internal picture of widespread alcoholic waste and ruin.

  • • •

  The two men buzzed from street level. Simon let them into the building and waited in the hallway. They exited the elevator, Lenny stuffed into a pinstriped suit like a parody of Mob muscle, Crewes wearing black slacks and a fitted purple sweater, and it was as though the hallway had suddenly shrunk, squeezing in around them. They carried a presence beyond their height and weight, a largeness that must have been a residue from their playing days. It wasn’t arrogance or swagger. It was almost the opposite: a carefulness as they made their way down the hall, a delicacy of motion, as though they were afraid of damaging anything with which they might come into contact. As Simon shook Crewes’s hand, he thought of Alvin Plummer’s body, lying broken on the turf, and was immediately ashamed of the thought.

  He ushered them into the office and sat them on the two chairs facing his desk. He explained the tests, and then asked if the hospital had been in touch regarding the day’s schedule. Lenny said that the transplant coordinator, “a guy named DaSilva,” had called a few days earlier to introduce himself. “He said he’d meet me in the lobby and escort me through the procedures.”

  Simon nodded. “You’ll be in good hands.” He wrote the name and address of a diner on a slip of paper and slid it across the desk. “When everything’s finished, Howard and I will meet you here for lunch. It’s just a few blocks from the hospital.”

  Lenny looked at him very seriously throughout this conversation. Beads of sweat puckered on his upper lip; he slipped a gold wedding band on and off his finger. Under the suit jacket, his white shirt was stippled with moisture. Was he nervous? Maybe, but Simon didn’t think that was it, or at least not all of it. Then he realized Lenny probably hadn’t taken a drink yet that day, or maybe for the last few days, as though he could trick the hospital’s instruments into believing his body to be clean and blameless. Well, good, Simon thought. Better to start late than never. At least he’d have a week of practice at being sober before the screening interview.

  They left Crewes’s Lexus parked on the street and rode the tram across the river. The tram car lifted out of the station and swung above the traffic on First Avenue, climbing alongside the bridge’s vaulted underbelly. As they rose above York, they drew even with the higher floors of an apartment building; Simon caught a glimpse of a cat sunning itself in a window, a curtain tangled in the needles of a cactus. They crested the midsection of the bridge, and he pointed out the curve of the United Nations Headquarters a dozen blocks downtown, the ruined smallpox hospital at the southern tip of the island. Back on the ground, he led them toward Cabrera, stopping a few hundred feet from the entrance. Clusters of nurses and staff sat on the grass outside the hospital, eating their lunches in the sun, smoking, laughing, their scrubs pink, baby blue, lime green—pieces of candy scattered across the lawn. Simon shook Lenny’s damp hand, told him he’d be fine. Lenny nodded, saying nothing; then he walked away, stolid and deliberate.

  • • •

  NOW Simon turned the monitor back around to face him, the last of DaSilva’s cigarette smoke drifting across the office. He stared at Maria Campos’s fake smile and wondered what particular variety of financial misfortune could have pushed her to this decision. She was so young; usually it was the middle aged, the overextended and overleveraged, whose cagey, probing e-mails piled up in his inbox. He’d have to be careful not to reveal his curiosity. He didn’t want to risk scaring her off, and, besides, DaSilva paid him not to pursue these things, to leave the inessential questions about his clients’ lives unasked.

  He dialed her number. Just as he was sure it was about to go to voice mail, she picked up: “Yeah?”

  “Ms. Campos?”

  “What?”

  “It’s Simon Worth, an associate at Health Solutions.” For a few long seconds, he listened to her breathing, the faint murmur of a television in the background. “We’ve been e-
mailing.”

  “Simon,” she said. “Right.” Her voice was raspy, as though she’d just woken up.

  “I’m calling to tell you that our initial evaluation of your candidacy is positive.”

  “That sounds like a good thing.”

  “It is. We’d like to do some testing to assess your compatibility with our client. I have the number of a lab you can visit for some additional blood work and liver imaging. Is that something you want to do?”

  “Livers are worth more,” she said, “aren’t they?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I looked it up.” Her voice straightened, sloughing off its sleepiness. “Liver transplants, they cost more than kidneys. So a piece of liver—a piece of my liver—it’s gonna be worth more than a kidney, right?”

  “In theory, yes.”

  “In theory? Either it is or it isn’t.” She paused. “I’m sorry. I just need to know if this is worth it to me before we go any further.”

  “If you qualify—and I can’t make any promises yet—but if you qualify, we can offer you $150,000.” Silence. “Plus we’ll pay for your travel, which includes two weeks in a Manhattan hotel.”

  “One fifty.” Her voice was neutral, but Simon thought he heard a tremor of the effort required to keep it that way.

  “Yes. You would receive $5,000 in good faith when you arrive in New York. The rest follows the operation.”

  “I’m not trying to be rude, but how can I be sure this isn’t a scam?”

  “You can’t. But what would we get out of flying you across the country and putting you up on our dime?”

  “Not that. I mean how do I know you’ll pay me the rest after the operation?”

  “I suppose you can’t know. But think of it this way: we don’t want anybody angry with us. The way we arrange things, everybody wins. The hospital. The recipient. You, the donor. Everybody’s happy.”

  “I’ve never been to New York.”

  “You’d have $5,000 and two weeks to see how you like it.”

  “Yeah,” Maria said. “So what’s the number of that lab?”

  Simon gave it to her.

  “They’re ready for me?” He could sense her eagerness and at the same time her attempt to suppress it, as though she could take or leave what he was offering. “When can I call?”

  “Today, if you want.”

  “Today is all right,” she said. “Today is good.”

  THE next evening Simon waited in the fluorescent bowels of Penn Station, under the LIRR departures board. He was on his way to Leonard Pellegrini’s house, where they would begin preparations for the Cabrera psychosocial interview. Simon had suggested meeting in his office, but Lenny said he didn’t like taking a train into the city—he wasn’t driving these days—unless he had absolutely no choice. Looking around Penn Station, Simon couldn’t blame him. The place—low ceilings, crappy food, horror-show lighting—would depress anyone. At 6:15 p.m. the station was crowded beyond even what he’d expected. Each time a track number appeared on the board, a portion of the waiting mass of commuters detached itself and stampeded toward the track entrance, a riot of elbows and briefcases and shopping bags. When his train’s number came up, he waited until the rush had cleared and was rewarded with a standing-room spot next to the lavatory, its stale, uric smell wafting through the train compartment each time somebody wrestled open the sliding door.

  After an hour, he stepped out of the train and into the failing dusk. Headlights sliced though the parking lot’s busy shadows. His taxi driver nodded at the address and sped over the Sunrise Highway and past a high school, the football field’s goalposts glowing white against the sky. At Lenny’s house all of the lights were out. Simon opened the screen and knocked on the door. He waited, then knocked again. The door was locked. He dialed Lenny’s number on his cell phone, and he heard the ringing in his ear and its echo inside the house. He stepped back onto the porch and looked up at the second-floor windows. The curtains were pulled tight; if Lenny was in there, he didn’t want anybody to know it. Simon sat down on the porch steps. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. Screw this guy, Simon thought. Why should I help him when he can’t even be bothered to help himself? As he was dialing a taxi to take him back to the train station, a black Lexus swung around the corner and pulled to a stop in front of the house. The driver’s-side window rolled down; Crewes’s head popped out.

  “I drove as fast as I could,” he said. “Lenny just remembered about you. Shit, man, you gotta tell me about this stuff. You can’t expect him to remember.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Get in. I’ll take you.”

  They quickly left Lenny’s town behind, heading north on the Cross Island Expressway. Crewes drove fast, weaving in and out of traffic, Al Green pleading on the stereo. Fifteen minutes later they exited the highway for a new town. Here, large houses were set back from the road; hedges shielded the properties from each other. Crewes drove up a gravel driveway and parked behind six or seven other cars. The house was large, not as big as Crewes’s, but older, more solidly built. A brick chimney rose out of a shingled roof; lights blazed in every window.

  Simon looked at Crewes. “Where are we?”

  “Don MacLeod’s house.” Simon knew the name; MacLeod had played fullback for the Giants during the early nineties, one of those players reliably cited by announcers for the integrity of their “fundamentals.” “Once a month,” Crewes said, “some guys, some retired players with the same problems as Lenny, they come over with their wives. Etta MacLeod hired a therapist to lead some discussions. Sessions, I guess you call them.”

  “The same problems? You mean drinking?”

  “Can be. But more the headaches. The moods. The screwed-up marriages. Get your bell rung enough times while you’re playing, and these things seem to go together.”

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “You think he would come if I didn’t show up at his door and drive him? He and Cheryl went once, when they were still living together. He hated it. Said he was being condescended to. Said it was humiliating. So they never went again. But I knew if I could get him here, she’d come too. That’s her car right there.” He pointed at a maroon Honda. “I drive him, hang out in the car during the meeting. When the session’s over, I’ll come in, have some coffee, and talk to Don. Reminisce about the time I popped his helmet off in a preseason game.”

  “You’re not allowed inside during the meeting?”

  “Of course I’m allowed. But I don’t come here for myself. It wouldn’t be right to sit there and watch, like it’s some kind of show.” Crewes checked his watch. “We’d just arrived when he remembered he was supposed to be meeting with you. This will be over in fifteen minutes. If he doesn’t want to do it now, you can reschedule with him in person. He’ll remember it better that way.”

  They stared at the house in silence for a few minutes, like cops stuck on some desultory stakeout. Simon again felt as though he’d lost control of the situation, this job still refusing to fall in line with the choreographed procedures of his first dozen.

  Crewes said, “I’m guessing you’ve never come across anybody so resistant to having their life saved, huh? But you have to understand what it is for somebody like him to accept help. Asking for help can make you feel like you’re too weak to do it yourself, right?”

  “I guess sometimes it can.”

  “Well, it can for Lenny. And for a lot of us. I didn’t even know what was happening to him until one of the other guys organized a dinner, a team reunion. This was last year. Lenny and I were close when we played together, and we stayed that way for a while after he retired. But over the last few years he drifted away from me. Turned out he drifted away from everybody. I thought he might be at the dinner anyway. When he didn’t show, I wanted to talk to him, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. I kept getting his wife instead.”


  Simon sensed that Crewes had been waiting to tell somebody, anybody, this story. It was something Simon had often run into over the last eight months, this compulsion on the part of his clients to reveal their circumstances and motivations and exigencies, to present their narratives. Part of it was that Simon already knew what was most difficult to tell anybody else—that they were willing to purchase another person’s organ to save themselves—and part of it was that they seemed to seek a generalized absolution it cost him very little to grant. Still, even though it was sometimes difficult not to care, he tried his best to remain uninvolved, to preserve, like Cabrera’s surgeons, a layer of professional distance, all the while hoping he never appeared as callous and mercenary as he sometimes felt himself to be. He was not a judge, but not a friend either; he was a facilitator, a middleman, grease for the wheel, oil for the cog. He would listen to his clients if they wanted him to, even offer an opinion if asked, but his involvement in their lives usually ended the moment the recipient checked out of the hospital and the donor received his cash. Through all of this, he was discovering the moral absolution that strict professionalism offered to its most zealous adherents, a condition, he’d come to realize, second only to freely circulating cash in the essential qualities of a functional modern capitalism. That such detachment—especially justified as it was—happened to suit his own natural personality did not escape his notice either.

  “His wife?”

  “Yeah. Cheryl was still living with him at the time. She kept feeding me all kinds of bullshit. ‘He’s fishing.’ ‘He’s fixing the car.’ ‘He’s napping.’ ‘So why can’t he call me back, Cheryl?’ Finally she slips a bit and says he’s sick. She wouldn’t say how. So I drove out there to see for myself. The drinking was obvious. He didn’t try to hide it. Painkillers too. He didn’t even seem surprised that I showed up. It’s funny, because all he needed to do was get on the phone once and lie to me for a few minutes and I probably wouldn’t have thought about it twice. But he didn’t.”