I park my laptop in front of the window and hook in. Immediately after the cascade of Microsoft tones, a riff that doesn’t seem at all discordant with the Chinese street melodies, I send Cherry an e-mail telling her where I’ve landed. “Ping!” comes her response at once, telling me that the kidnap cabbie will meet me in the lobby with my camera at 9:00 A.M. sharp. I’m uneasy—a feeling exacerbated by the money-saving, low-wattage bulbs throughout the room. Then “Ping!”—I have a new e-mail…from Jade.
HI 84~~~ Is everything ok? i am miss larry and you.. i am really concern about the health of larry. will you stay in Shi long enough for me see you? my father can lend me his railway pass.. Mahybe i am free the next Wenday afternoon. today i am very sad because of missing ~ by the way tell me the name of that girl who take us to KFC. Cherry? I forgot. ok. see you next week. ~~~24
I’m hot yet cold. Fatigued yet jumpy. Hopeful for Larry’s future yet fearful. Happy for the letter from Jade yet apprehensive about meeting the kidnap cabbie in the morning. To soothe my rattled nerves, I turn on the bed lamp to read myself to sleep, but it’s no brighter than a refrigerator bulb, and I soon give up.
“Damn dim bulb!” I say aloud, turning out the light. I’m sounding more Chinese every day.
CHAPTER 11
Return of the Kidnap Cabbie
Do not remove a fly from your friend’s head with a hatchet.
One thing you can say about kidnap cabbies: They tend to be punctual. The stroke of nine next morning finds two individuals tentatively approaching each other in the lobby of the Super 2: an American wearing a meek expression signifying, “Are you the one who almost took away my freedom to see my little boys for the rest of their childhood?” and a Chinese wearing a meek expression signifying, “Are you the one who was mewling in the backseat for no apparent reason?”
I remember the cute dimples. “Friend,” he keeps saying. Okay, he doesn’t have to rub it in. I get it: His friends in the other cab were supposed to drive us to Shi while he went back to BJ to pick up more passengers. I’m a fool—but at least a fool with his throat uncut. We shake hands exuberantly. I also shake hands with the smiling, dimply woman at his side, who seems to be his wife. What, did they get a family rate on dimples? I can tell by the interesting sounds he makes through puckered lips (“Oleo merger, catch a kitchen can”) that he’s pleased by the chrome flashlights I give him. He can tell by my no doubt equally intriguing sounds that I’m pleased not to be sitting on the floor of a closet with my hands tied behind my back with plastic twine. We go outside, and his wife snaps a picture of us in front of his little cab. She tells me how much she likes the picture ( “Knee-bash, knee-bash! Sammy’s dagger so delayed!”) before handing it to me: The strain shows like gnarled rope on my face. Is it significant that his eyes are closed? I find myself wanting to speak the toast that is on the tip of my tongue. Long live the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples! But it won’t come: “Wong we…” We shake hands again all around, and then before toodling off, he remembers to give me one more item he found in the backseat: the distinguished mahogany fountain pen I lifted from my luxury hotel in Beijing.
Oops…
What sort of mood will Larry be in this morning? Truculent? Tearful? Or merely mistrustful? I brace myself for the worst, only to enter his room and discover that he’s radiant! Why wouldn’t he be? He’s watching TV while up to his elbows in a bucket of hot wings.
“Catered by KFC!” he trills. “Apparently they deliver for orders over five bucks. Want some?” he asks, offering me a plastic take-out cup that’s more gravy than mashed potatoes. “It’s a little herbier than at home, and the Coke tastes a little cough-syrupy, but at least I’m eating,” he says.
“You’re not dying to give the local dishes a try?” I tease.
“Dan, back in Beijing I asked Mary to translate the room-service menu, and you know what one of the dishes was called? ‘Dog Won’t Eat It.’ Okay? Even the Chinese call it that. Case closed.”
A questionable lullaby warbles from the softspeakers: You’re a grand old flag, you’re a high-flying flag. The A/C is off, and the temperature is to his liking: semi-sweltering. The room’s loamy with the scent of Larry.
“Uh-oh, here we go again,” he says, pushing himself to a more upright sitting position as a gaggle of eight nurses comes giggling in and surrounds Larry in his bed, posing for pictures. “They’re taking turns by floor,” Larry says, his arms around them. “This is the sixth floor, by my count. They’ve been doing it all morning. Apparently I’m some kind of celebrity in here. It’s a fantasy beyond belief.”
One for the family album: Larry in his hospital gown and shades, sitting atop the blankets like an underworld kingpin, hugging the prettiest nurses west of Shanghai. When at last they leave, the reenergized patient turns onto his side and begins pontificating again, a real blue-streak special. Unfortunately, I haven’t mentally cranked up for the onslaught this morning and don’t tune in, but a stray story line filters through, each worth a Movie of the Week: something about a pusher named Midget who used to be chased all over the globe by a ruthless bounty hunter, but now Midget’s son is in trouble with the law and Midget’s hired his old enemy to find his son so together they can help him; something about fixing up ex-Senator Barry Goldwater with a runway model from Milan, and too bad Goldwater kicked the bucket, because he owed Larry big time; at the end of which he says, “Good morning, Dan. As you can see, good food always makes me feel better. I’m feeling so good I even like this new gown with tiny blue sailboats. Makes me feel like a little boy.”
“Good morning,” I reply, even though now I mostly want to go back to the Super 2 and sleep.
Cherry enters the room for a brief check-in. “Patient good today,” she says. “Better than so-so.”
I smile sympathetically, because I can only imagine what she’s been through with him while I was gone, but I have to keep bugging her: “In terms of our anonymity,” I ask, “is it okay that Larry’s becoming such a mascot in here?”
“Is okay,” she assures me.
“But what about leaks to the authorities? If so many people in the hospital are in on the secret, isn’t there a bigger chance someone will tip off the local police?”
“Is not like that.”
“What is it like? That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“In China we have an old sentence, ‘Take the dead horse to the live horse.’ This is what we try to do with Larry.”
“I have no idea what that even—”
“You the one need a clam pill, not Larry,” she admonishes with a smile. “Everything clicking like clockwork. Larry a fighter!” she says. “He will punch butt all over town.”
Momentarily alone with Larry, I settle sleepily into the plastic couch in front of the overloud Al Jazeera. “So they make a convert of you yet?” I say, watching an avuncular news anchor narrating a documentary on the American invasion of Iraq to the film sound track of Apocalypse Now.
“Actually, despite my being a capitalist fundamentalist, I have to admit they’re more balanced than some stations I could name,” he says. “If I didn’t know they were commie, I’d think it was Walter Cronkite talking.”
He’s having his pre-dialysis blood pressure read again by the ungainly resident from the other night who looks like she was picked on in high school. Larry’s flirting with her, making the requisite joke about how if there’s a spike in the reading, it’s her fault. She can’t understand a word but giggles anyway.
“I swear I’m getting the VIP treatment,” he tells me. “Back in the States, it’s always ‘Buy me, buy me.’ Here it’s ‘Let us help you.’ Whole different mind-set. I tried to give the janitor a tip, and he wouldn’t hear of it. Watch this, bet this resident won’t take a tip either….”
I redirect. “What accounts for your VIP treatment, do you suppose?” I ask.
“Could have something to do with meeting Dr. X last night.”
“You met Dr. X?” I s
ay, jumping to my feet. “I thought he was gone till the end of the week!?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you? He came in at ten P.M., after you left. Dressed very sharp. I’d say basically American style with an Asian twist. Power tie. Power cuff links. He said I have a lot of influential friends in China. That’s apparently what’s motivating him. Not money so much as doing right by our impressive contacts.”
“Antonia!” I breathe. She actually called in a favor for someone she met only once? I’m humbled.
“She must have some kind of muscle, because he said he got a great number of calls and e-mails from people in very high places. And already this morning I was bustled through a battery of tests, no waiting, just wheeled right through.”
“Larry, this is great news!”
His burp sounds like a question mark. “You think so? I do, too,” he says, mopping up the last of some egg yolk with a porous tablet of KFC sausage. “He said he wanted to make me aware of how complicated the situation is, what a ton of red tape he has to jump through to get an exception to the new laws. The gist is, he’s still able to get a few kidneys, not like a year ago when he personally did a hundred and fifty kidneys, but a few. Long story short: Said he doesn’t want to boast, but he’s the right person to pull this off, if anyone can.”
“Larry, this is fantastic.”
The resident removes an IV and instructs him to raise the arm.
“See what a good clotter I am?” he boasts, as no red appears. “Always been an excellent clotter.”
“So was all this conversation with Dr. X through an interpreter, or does he speak—”
“Speaks impeccable.”
“Larry, this is better than I dared hope.”
“I think so, too. He said in America you have to wait for a kidney that’s been sitting in a jar two weeks. Here I get one fresh out of the donor, pop it in with five minutes’ notice. So I’m sitting right here, docile as a lamb.”
“Right,” I say.
As the resident prepares to leave, Larry tells her, “All right, sweetheart, stay out of trouble,” and gives her a buffalo nickel, which she seems to prize. I suddenly realize who she reminds me of—just as suddenly shove the image of Larry’s dead twin, Judy, out of my mind.
“Any mention of the surgery’s price?” I ask.
“That we didn’t discuss,” Larry says. “Nor when it might happen. I didn’t want to push the envelope. I figure this first meeting let’s keep everything friendly, I can always put the hammer to him later.”
“Let’s let it be, then. Don’t breathe another word about it.”
“As you wish, Mr. Bond. I defer to your judgment.”
“And don’t mention that you’ve never actually met Antonia.”
“Roger that. But to expand upon your original question, his English is sometimes good and sometimes not. He’s spent significant time in Great Britain. He has a daughter who’s in college in Miami, but when I asked him which college, he didn’t seem to understand.”
“But Miami’s gold, right? You’ll be able to repay him with Miami.”
“Of course. That’s where I have the most connections. I’ll take her to the Rusty Pelican—my accountant knows the owner—I’ll give her the name of my lawyer who’s on the traffic commission in case she has any parking tickets. I mean, of all the places for his pride and joy to be, she’s in my city. He seemed to understand I can take care of her. It’s all about relationships….”
“Larry, I think we made the right decision not going to the Philippines.”
“I know, plus they just blew up a shopping mall there this morning. I saw it on Al Jazeera.”
“Not only that, they’re illegalizing kidney transplants for foreigners, just like here, but punishable by twenty years in jail and a forty-eight-thousand-dollar fine.”
“I love how you don’t plan things, Dan.”
“You, too, Larry.”
WHY I’M MORE AND MORE FOND OF CHINA
After we go our separate ways—Larry to dialysis and me to some city errands—I wade through various crowds, leaving behind people deconstructing my passage. Even if it’s a gang of teenage punks trying to act disaffected, all is hubbub behind me as they diligently process my greeting: “Hello, how you.”
If it’s a gang of college girls, they’re polite, but afterward they cover their mouths and giggle, thinking they’re out of earshot just because our backs are turned.
When I pass a little park, I see a young tree propping up an older tree, and I understand that it was planted specifically to do that, and:
That reminds me of Larry’s story about his father, Sam, working for his older brother, Irving, and how it was traditional in old Russian-Jewish families for the younger brother to serve and prop up the elder, and:
This makes me feel that the world is connected in all sorts of ways I can’t even fathom.
Every now and then, I can hear the sound of old China, a tinkling of old-fashioned bicycle bells, reminding me that on my last visit I brought bells back for the children next door, and for a couple of years I had the sound of China in my neighborhood at home, and:
This makes me doubly homesick, in a lovely way, for a China that no longer exists and for the neighborhood children who are now grown up.
I feel I can’t get lost. No matter how far I wander, I always have the landmark of the eleven-story hospital, with its two arms outstretched and a water tank like a nurse’s cap on top. And when that’s obscured by smog, I can’t get lost anyway. What a rush, to feel unlosable!
Fireworks are likely to occur anytime, because someone’s always celebrating something. Could be a wedding or just a job promotion, but they ignite out of nowhere with a sound like two tons of pebbles cascading out the back of a dump truck.
When all is said and done, people here seem happy. At least that’s the conclusion I come to after hearing so many of them, including policemen, humming quiet tunes to themselves on the street. Can we say the same about Queens?
When I return, it’s dusk. Back in the hospital, I confront the usual emptiness in the lobby, punctuated by far-off badminton sounds. But the Giant Mushroom has aged forty years in the hours I was gone. New blotches and stains. Those hairline cracks in the crown moldings weren’t there before, were they? That gummy decay around the doorframes? And Larry looks Minged up—smudged and tattered, caved in on himself. I’m horrified to watch him in his sleep, like an emperor from the 1500s in a state of active decomposition. No wonder he’s doing everything in his power to get off dialysis—in the hours since I’ve seen him, they’ve taken out all his blood, scrubbed it clean, and put it back. The procedure leaves him ruined.
Tiptoeing in his half-darkened room, I silently lay out my care package: Sponges. Napkins. Dishwashing soap. Silverware. But the silverware clinks.
“Sam?” Larry mumbles.
“It’s me, Larry. Go back to sleep,” I say, unbagging hand soap, straws, shampoo.
“Who?”
“Me, Dan, your cousin.”
“Oh, hi, Dan. I’m sorry. I didn’t. Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital, in China.”
“I’m sorry. China?”
“Yes, don’t you remember?” I say, opening the bathroom cabinet and laying in toothpaste. “We came to China, and we found a hospital to get you a new kidney.”
He takes this in.
“What time is it?”
“Eight.”
“A.M. or P.M.?”
“P.M.”
“Oh. For a minute there, I thought I had to call Judy and tell her where I was. I’m very.”
“You’re in a safe place, Larry.”
“I’m a little. Can you tell me something? Judy. Is she alive or dead?”
“I’m sorry, Larry. Judy died a couple of years ago.”
“Okay, that’s what I. I just.”
“I know, it’s very misorienting. You’ve had dialysis this afternoon.”
“And my mutha? No, wait. She’s gone, too?�
��
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“It’s the dialysis. When I wake up, sometimes I don’t remember, and then I have to mourn for them all over again.”
“That must be horrible.”
“The one person I never wonder about is my futha, because he was dead to me so long ago. Oh, I’m doozy.”
“Don’t try to sit up, Larry,” I say, straightening his pillow so he can lie back down.
“Dialysis always leaves me weak, but this one was a whopper. I think the dialysis here must be more aggressive than at home.”
“That’s entirely possible, Larry.”
“I was dreaming about my futha. As you know, I had a very faulty bonding with Sam. He resented everything I could do that he couldn’t. When we were in South Miami once, he laughed because I couldn’t read the signs all in Spanish. ‘Now you know what I go through,’ he said.”
“But you had a dream about him?”
He doesn’t answer for a minute, lies there sweating in the half dark.
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, comes the tune from the invisible softspeakers.
“We were fishing, I think. Because one thing we bofe loved to do was fish.”
He coughs sadly for a minute, without sentimentality.
“No, he was dropping me off at school. Second grade. In second grade I just wanted to go home. I just cried and cried to go home. I was worse than Judy.”
He breathes, head sunken on his chest.
“Did you know I had to repeat fourth grade?” he asks. “This for a kid with an IQ of one thirty-one.”
“Because you were too busy rebelling from your teachers?”
“I know where you’re coming from with that question, but no. It was because I was so shy. I was so short on self-confidence that when the teachers called on me, I’d always say I didn’t know, just because I wanted them to get to the next person as quickly as they could.”
Larry's Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China with My Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant--and Save His Life Page 16