“And it’s not going to leak out to the authorities?”
“Chill, Daniel. Do not ransack yourself.”
Agreed: I should not ransack myself. It’s high time to get the silence and space I need. Fortunately, to this end, the elevator goes both up and down.
“Hello, Saudi Arabia,” I say to my friends in long robes, whom I haven’t seen in weeks.
“Hello, America,” they say to me. “Bush still suck, eh?”
“Big time.”
“Beeg time, beeg time.” They parse my words.
As usual, the women of the second floor are invisible—the Pakistani wives in blue shawls, the Egyptian mothers in head scarves and beads, the Yemenite sisters with wide belts and swaying hips. It’s the men who speak loudly, gesture broadly, pop their pecs before serving the birdie. But you get the feeling it’s the women behind the scenes who are conducting life, quietly making it all happen.
Abu, my Pakistani friend, has apparently been celebrating his birthday for three days. “Twenty-six years of age!” he boasts, accepting a soup bowl of cake that his mother offers with lowered eyes. “New cake every day!”
After receiving a short scolding from her son about too much frosting, the mother mutely sidles off to resume prayers on her little mat.
“Tomorrow we cut the cake again, four days!” he promises me.
“I’ll be here,” I say.
“So now I show you better exercise?” Abu asks me.
“Depends what you have in mind,” I say.
“You are familiar with the Vespa motor phenomenon?”
“Minimally.”
“Come with me.”
And for the next three hours, he rides me around on the back of his Vespa motor phenomenon, showing me a city I didn’t know existed. Muslim restaurants. Breweries and textile factories. Massage parlors conducted by blind men, who’re alleged to have more sensitive fingertips. Massage parlors that specialize in foot rubs with flaming glass cups placed against the soles to stimulate circulation. Massage parlors that—
“Why does your hat not fly off?” Abu calls to me from the front.
“It’s well trained. It knows it won’t get dessert tonight if it misbehaves,” I call back.
Laughing, Abu guns it. Last stop is an antique skyscraper hotel with a crenellated castle roof, glimpsed between cloud banks of smog. Abu instructs me to walk through the lobby as though we own the place, straight to the elevator, up to the top floor where there’s a stuffy old gym, 1920s vintage. A small swimming pool whose green water looks like it hasn’t been rippled since talkies were invented. A wooden contraption with rollers to wring the water from bathing suits. A machine you stand in that’s supposed to cook the pounds off, probably banned in the United States a century ago. And a stationary bike that feels like you’re riding a manual typewriter. But it works. The whole place is like an aboveground dungeon, with tiny windows of leaded glass through which I can see the city operating below like a toy-train village with thousands of whirring parts, all its flywheels and cogs clicking in sync. When the windows are cranked shut, it’s as if a mute button has been pushed. Blessed silence reigns: no more raucously melodious street cries, no more unstoppable firecrackers. Best of all, no more Larry-Mary noise. The only sound is Abu expertly penetrating the green water as he practices his half gainers from the diving board, slick and quiet as a coin entering a pay phone. It’s enough to bring me back the next afternoon, and the next. Every silent hour I spend up here, daydreaming to my heart’s content, is one I don’t spend with the non-silent hyphenate next door.
Then one night a phone call I wasn’t expecting.
“Huwwo?”
“Huwwo.”
“Huwwo?”
“Yes, is this Larry?”
“Yes, Dan, what do you need?”
“I don’t need anything. You just called me.”
“No, you just called me.”
Beat, garbled.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Dan, Mary is telling me that she called you. She just woke me up and handed the phone to me.”
“Well, why did Mary call?”
“I’ll ask her. Mary, why did you call Dan and hand the phone to me?…Not yes, Mary. That’s not an answer to why did you call…”
“Larry—”
“Not sure, Mary. Not uh-huh, Mary. Why. Did. You. Call. Dan.”
“Larry, does Mary need something from me?”
“I know he’s my cousin, Mary. Mary, stop! I don’t want a pedicure! [ Garbled] Because I don’t care for a pedicure, Mary, it’s as simple as that.”
“Larry, listen, why don’t you call me back when you get this straightened—”
“I am being patient, Mary. Do you hear me raising my voice, Mary? Do you see me raising my fist?”
“Larry, it’s four in the morning. Can we maybe resume this another—”
“DAN!? DAN!?”
“Yes, Mary,” I say as Mary takes the phone, “there’s no need to shout.”
“DAN!? LARRY NOT MARRY ME!”
“He’s not marrying you, Mary?”
“NOT MARRY ME AT ALL!”
“Okay, Mary, let’s talk about this in the morn—”
[Click.]
Knock-knock. In the morning I go to Larry’s room, and we do talk about it—a powwow between distant allies who have no particular warmth to pool but do have business to conduct. Then again, Larry’s room has a lot of warmth to pool.
“So the bridesmaids’ dresses are on hold?” I ask, fanning myself with both hands, kicking pistachio shells out of the way as I sit on the molded-plastic school chair.
“Don’t get me wrong. Compatibility remains high,” Larry says in a monotone that’s more mono than usual. “As a matter of fact, I believe I may be falling for her, somewhat violently. Just look at her preparing my pistachios. She lines up the piles so all I have to do is delve. I’d like nuffing better than to do right by her, marriage-wise. It’s only the trust issue I’m continuing to monitor.”
“Anything in particular bothering you?”
“Not to the best of my knowledge,” he says, squirting back a blast of nasal spray and blinking at me blankly.
“But I mean, you wanted to talk—”
“Oh, I see,” he says, his concentration coming back. “Yes, in that case, one thing. As you may or may not know, Mary is very diligently studying the English workbooks I got her. But the other day I offered to buy her English-language CDs that she could play on her computer at home, and she told me she didn’t have a computer.”
“I fail to see the signifi—”
“Dan, don’t you remember? I sent her three hundred and fifty dollars to buy a used laptop a year ago. It was one of the first transactions between us, and she was most appreciative.”
“Oh,” I say, my heart sinking. “I see. So you’re saying—”
“That she pocketed my money.”
Why do I feel my heart aching? Not because I like Mary so much, but because Larry was so happy with her for a time. I could count the missing teeth in his smile! Wouldn’t it have been great if she and Larry could wander off into the sunset together, arm in arm? The Larry-Mary military-industrial complex forever?
“I’d like to work things out between us, but only if I conclude she’s not using me to ride my passport to the promised land. And for my part, I want to make sure I’m falling for her for the right reasons, not only for the way she tends to my laundry needs, though she continues to do that like nobody’s business, including my most intimate apparel.”
“But if she does your knickers while taking you to the cleaners, that doesn’t seem to be a very good trade, Larry.”
“But I’m impaired! I’m not sure I can trust my judgment. Am I genuinely fond of her, or am I only rescuing her to assuage the guilt I feel for letting Judy slip away?”
I don’t know: The whole Judy question is a difficult one for me. As is the question of how comfortable Mary has become with me—comfortable enough to sit there wearing pan
tyhose with no skirt so I can’t help seeing that her panties are valentine red. A new tune warbles forth from the softspeakers: Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water….
“Is she still giving your credit card a good workout?” I ask.
“I don’t mind her using my credit card. In fact, I encourage it.”
“Because it’ll atrophy if it isn’t exercised daily?”
“Ha ha, good one,” he says without smiling.
I look at Mary dividing the pistachios into various piles for Larry to enjoy. “Larry, I have to tell you, all you’re saying sends up red flags to me. Did it ever occur to you that she might have stolen your passport that first week, sold it to the black market, or worse?”
“What, identity theft? No, I have to admit that never occurred to me, but it’s not that far-fetch—”
He interrupts himself. “Mary, that’s more than enough piles, thank you. Could you call the nurses’ station and ask them to send us a fan? I want to make Dan as comfortable as I can. A fan, a fan?” He makes whirring motions with both arms until Mary grasps what he means and tentatively picks up the phone.
“Another thing,” Larry says to me. “For the first time, she appealed to me directly for money, sixty-six dollars U.S. That rounds out to five hundred RMB.”
“Did she ask for sixty-six dollars or five hundred RMB?” I ask.
“Sixty-six dollars. Sounds smaller that way,” Larry says. “Clever girl.”
Meanwhile clever girl is talking to the nurses’ station. “Call…fan. Call…fan,” she’s saying into the receiver. With her other hand, she undoes the top of her fur coat to let a little air in.
“What’s with the crucifix, by the way?” I ask Larry, seeing it glinting there in the opening. “It’s more chic than an air freshener, I’ll give you that, but did she become Catholic all of a sudden?”
“As far as I can make out, it’s more a good-luck token than a fashion statement,” Larry explains unhelpfully. Mary gives up on the phone and sets herself to new, non-pistachio-related business.
“So how’d you respond to her appeal?” I ask him.
“I gave her half. I gave her sixty-six dollars,” Larry says with satisfaction. “Two can play this game.”
“Larry,” I say, “that’s whole. Sixty-six is whole.”
Larry thinks about this. I expect him to say, “Oh, sorry, my head.” Which would worry me enough. But instead he says something that worries me more. He says, “Look how she’s going after my blackheads now. Bofe shoulders. Try getting an American girl to do that.”
“Larry,” I say, gripping him on his soft arm, “I need you to know this. My jury’s really out on this person. Starting with the fact that she’s not who she said she was.”
“Few of us are.”
“But think about it. Maybe all we need to know about her is that she claimed she was five foot two?”
“Or maybe that she keeps taking a ten-hour train ride to save me airfare?”
“Or maybe that she said she was fluent in English?”
“But she bought me bananas the other day,” Larry counters. “Not that I could stomach them, but still it was a nice gesture, I felt.”
“Hmmm,” I say, holding up my hands as if weighing two sides of a difficult equation. “Bananas, fraud; fraud, bananas.”
“Her language is improving,” Larry says.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I say.
“She’s sacrificed a lot for me, being here so many days.”
“And been well compensated for it.”
“She’s willing to look after me all my life.”
“Which you hopefully won’t need, since getting you back on your feet was the idea for coming here. Larry, her name’s not even Mary, maybe that’s the long and short of it.”
Mary doesn’t even look up at the sound of the familiar syllables. I feel like we’re conducting a test for a deaf person in an old movie.
“Do you think maybe she’s retarded?” Larry asks me then. “Maybe that’s where I got the erroneous idea that her son was retarded, because I’m pretty sure the word ‘retarded’ was in there somewhere in our early negotiations.”
I reflect on the acrylic sweater that Mary recently bought me with Larry’s credit card, of questionable use in this stifling heat. “It’s an attractive supposition, but I don’t think—”
“Fan!” Mary announces with sudden impatience. “I get now me!”
The second she’s out the door, Larry begins pointing to the corner behind the dresser. “The stash is over there,” he says with no emotion.
“Stash? Oh, come on, Larry, we’re not in enough danger without you deal—”
“Not that kind of stash,” he says. “Mary’s stash. Look.”
I’ve seen animal stashes before, where squirrels stockpile parts of nuts along with stray twigs and bottle caps, and that’s what this shopping bag of hospital throwaways resembles. Gauze pads. Rubber bands. Shower-curtain rings.
“I don’t know what to think,” Larry says with some embarrassment, as if the quality control is far below his standards. “It’s like we’re on the same page about so many things, but then I see her hoarding these things away.”
“Could she possibly be hoarding them for you?”
“Except I’m not in the habit of using Tampax,” he points out. “Plus, there’s the issue of the phone bill….” Larry hands me a receipt that totals four hundred dollars for the past two weeks.
“Just from the phone in our suite?” I say, pocketing the bill in disbelief.
Suddenly Larry seems to sag, jellying down in defeat. “I’ve had it with this country,” he says. “I’m so sick of the pillows, they’re like beanbags full of I don’t know what, kidney beans maybe, that crackle under my ear.”
“Really? I kinda like ’em.”
“I have no doubt you do. I don’t. You have the security of the upper middle caste, so temporary squalor may not bother you, but it does bother me. I just want to go home. Everyone sounds like Desi Arnaz. When I want something, they say uh-huh, uh-huh, and nuffing happens. I try to tell myself it’s not so different here, but then I see something like hospital administrators in a conference room Dancercising with Chinese fans, and it throws me. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, Dan, it’s just that I come from America, the toilet-paper capital of the world, and here I have to mime to wipe my ass—”
“I brought us some new rolls this morning,” I remind him.
“Gee, just when I was getting used to using the paper money,” he says. “But seriously, the M&M’s don’t taste the same, nuffing’s the same, everything tastes like China. And you know why everyone squats in this country, Dan, instead of sitting? I finally figured out why. It’s because every single spot has been peed on. Think about it: For thousands of years, millions of people have finally managed to hit every inch. And have you noticed how everyone keeps saying, ‘nigga nigga nigga—’”
“That’s just a filler-type word, Larry. It’s the equivalent of our ‘mmhmm.’”
“I’m not judging, Dan. I’m just saying it offends me. I’m doing my best not to say ‘Chink,’ and this is how they repay me, by getting to say that?”
“Okay,” I say, “but to be fair, none of this is Mary’s fault.”
“It’s all part of my horrible China experience,” Larry says. “Plus which, I can’t get a word out of Mary about her family. I don’t know if they’re a bunch of opium addicts or what. And her health is iffy. Apparently she’s had swelling of the ankles for two years, but she won’t let me get anyone in the hospital to look at them. So what it all boils down to, I can’t trust my database of emotions anymore. You’re supposed to be my sous-chef or whatever the term is—what do you think?”
A pause while I get to watch Larry clean the inside of his ears with a piece of hardworking tissue paper before depositing it in the orangey remains of his McFish chowder. Motorcycles pass by on the street nine stories below, sounding like a parade of broken l
awn mowers.
What I think is, Mary’s come back with a fan. Against all odds, she’s not carrying a vacuum cleaner trailing a river of lint, or a stovepipe ripped out of some peasant’s hut, or a diseased dachshund she’s planning to cook. She’s bringing in a real live fan, and she’s plugging it into a real live socket. That goes in the credit column. But what I also think is that there’s this thing Mary does with her mouth that’s not pretty, like she’s getting ready to spit pig’s knuckles out on a tablecloth. I also think that every time we’ve shared a taxi, she makes Larry slide across the backseat, instead of letting him sit where it’s easiest for him and going around herself to the opposite door. I also think that from the beginning she’s always gotten us lost in this, her country; that she smells like she’s been sneaking into Larry’s Aqua Velva aftershave; that she talks on the phone to people in low tones, and when, to be conversational, I ask what she’s talking about she says, “Talking bout.”
And she looks like she’s lying.
“Well?” Larry says.
Okay, what I really think is twofold. Number one, I think I ought to investigate candeyblossoms.com myself. Because in case Mary isn’t going to pan out, I could better advise Larry if I have a sense of the field out there.
Larry agrees. “Take it out for a spin. Try running Shi and see what you come up with. Just make sure you limit your search to ages twenty-five to thirty, or you’ll be completely overrun. Oh, and be advised that in their profiles read ‘mistakes’ as ‘kids.’ If they say they’ve made three mistakes in life: three kids.”
I log on. I’m not going to lead any of the women on or set up a date; that would be worse than viewing time-sharing solicitations solely to collect the free gifts. It’s unethical to waste people’s time. But there’s nothing wrong with swapping a little screen info for educational purposes, is there?
Then, with a click of the mouse, there they are—like when my childhood pet hamster produced babies—a sudden rush of vulnerable bodies: so many candey blossoms that they threaten to litter my hard drive. Is that what they are, these Third World brides, just so much helpless brood? Or are they sophisticated young ladies availing themselves of modern technology? It’s an exploitative situation to be sure, but don’t both parties get something out of the deal?
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 23