Untenable. Gotta go.
“Pound it,” Abu says, giving me another fist bump before I race off to the elevator bank. “Keep it real.”
Maybe five months? At the rate he’s going, I doubt that Larry will be alive in five months. I need to hunt down the truth behind these terrible numbers. Cherry’s at the nurses’ station down the hall from Larry’s door, jumbo pocketbook in hand, conferring with the resident who looks like Judy. I pull her aside.
“Cherry, you and I need to talk hard balls,” I say. “I’ve been speaking to some of the Middle Easterners-”
She cuts me off. “Every case different,” she reminds me. “They have no Restriction, therefore less hazard, less hurry.”
“Is it possible we might have to stay here four or five months?”
Giggling is the last thing I’d expect at this juncture, but giggling is what Cherry gives me, her hand in front of her mouth, modestly covering her teeth. “Oh, no,” she says. “You special guests with many friends on Chinese soil. Big guanxi, not little guanxi. Don’t have to wait so long.”
“Then how long? Larry’s weaker every day.”
“So I think we give you the answer to this question other day.”
“Really? I don’t recollect getting an answer.”
“That answer is we do not know.”
“Oh, yeah, that answer I remember. But can I at least set up a meeting with Dr. X to discuss the time frame, and also the price, because Larry is not a rich man…?”
“He on the fly, very difficult to catch. You may try his secretary on floor four.”
“May I try her now?”
“She also difficult to catch: in, out, everywhere. Also, this after-hour.”
“It’s only ten to five.”
“Yes, but this Chinese time. Maybe she gone already. In China if you want to be sure, better choice to see early morning, say six A.M.”
Suddenly it hits me. Ow my God, is Cherry not to be trusted? Her evasiveness may or may not be legitimate, but is there something else going on? Is she keeping us in the dark on purpose, the better to keep tabs on us? Is that what the pocketbook’s about-it contains secret files on us?
And just as suddenly she seems to sense that I’m onto her. Her face widens into an extra-sweet smile as she tosses her hair.
“Hey, tonight Friday, big hoedown party night, could be? You want take Larry to restaurant? Par-tay! Par-tay!”
I’m thrown. Perhaps I’m meant to be thrown.
“What do you mean, outside the hospital?”
“Good for patient morale,” she says.
“But-”
“Larry say he like Peking duck,” she says sweetly. “Very good restaurant for just such a treat around the corner.”
“But…is he okay to go? I mean, how could we even get him down all the stairs from the ninth floor?”
She finds me amusing. I’m the one who called her from the backseat of the kidnap cabbie, after all. Oh, it pains me to recollect the message I left on her answering machine. I blush anew as she chuckles at me.
“Elevator not still broke, Daniel. Only one day broke. How you think your brother get to dialysis on sixth floor?”
My cousin, I want to say. But there’s so much going on in my brain, trying to figure out whether I’m being paranoid again, that for once I hold my tongue.
I open the door to Larry’s room, and there he is already dressed for dinner in heavy trousers, short-sleeved business shirt, and wool sport coat. So wait-Cherry suggested Peking duck to him before I grew suspi cious? Maybe she didn’t make this offer to throw me off the scent? The truth, once again, is that I can’t tell friend from foe. Perhaps she’s no more a spy than our poor cabbie was a kidnapper? I’m on the other side of the planet, after all, where upside down is right side up. I don’t know my ass from my elbow.
I turn to Larry, about to say, You’re not going to be too warm in that outfit?-but for the second time in as many minutes I keep it to myself. Larry has his own truth, as Cherry has hers, maybe even as the Red Guards have theirs. Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it, though.
No question: Larry is failing. Walking down the corridor with me, on the way to dinner, he takes tentative baby steps. Descending eight floors by elevator leaves him breathless. By the time we make it across the cavernous lobby downstairs, he’s perspiring so much from the effort that he takes off his sport coat and asks me to hold it. He grips my shoulder to negotiate the curb by the sidewalk. I’m not prepared to hold his hand, but I do take his upper arm when crossing the street and can’t help noticing that the skin up there is pudgy soft, just like when he was a kid.
“Slow down,” he says. “If I don’t concentrate on standing upright, I’ll fall over.”
I surprise myself by not being impatient. It’s actually interesting to go at his pace; he points out things I wouldn’t have noticed at my usual speed. “Someone could make a fortune installing banisters in this country,” he says, noting the lack of railings everywhere. “We can’t go more than five yards without the walkway changing.” He’s right: The ground surface that passes for sidewalk goes from pebbles to puddles to rutted tar. It’s like my finding it advantageous to not speak the language-his perceptions are sharpened to compensate for his shortcomings. Two handicapped men in China, with only our wits to get us through.
“Eight A.M.,” he says. But my brain’s so busy working overtime that I’ve misheard him. What he actually says is “ATM”-pointing out a cash machine I hadn’t noticed before.
“It’s a good one,” he says, trying it out. “I’m going for broke.”
Unlike most of the ATMs I’ve been trying up till now, this machine’s not on the blink, and Larry is able to make repeated withdrawals. He’s already gotten seventy-five hundred RMB, about a thousand dollars in small bills. “This is better than Atlantic City,” he says buoyantly, playing it like a slot machine until his pockets are bulging.
Approaching the restaurant, the sidewalk path is so narrow and dark-lit only by passing headlights-that we shuffle single file. The mud is slippery from a shower earlier today and feels ancient in its slickness. As for the air quality? “If I were flying in fog this thick, I’d use instruments,” Larry notes.
In the gloom an excitable old man is playing “Danny Boy” on a violin, almost jittering with energy. Beyond him a line of street hawkers affords Larry an opportunity to teach me the art of bargaining.
“NO TOURIST PRICES,” he says to the first hawker he encounters. Larry’s stiffened for the confrontation, wrapped so tight he could be mummified. “WE’RE NOT STUPID WESTERNERS. WE’RE NOT WHATEVER YOU THINK WE ARE.”
“Go easy,” I tell him. “I don’t think they follow-”
“He knows more than he’s letting on,” Larry says.
“Good-friend price,” says the hawker, who wears a flowing Fu Manchu and is smiling with a kind of joy to be in our company.
“I’M NOT YOUR GOOD FRIEND,” Larry says. “I’M A BLACK-BELT NEGOTIATOR. Now watch this,” he tells me, “it’s called low-balling. He wants sixty-eight RMB for the lighter, right? That’s only about eight dollars American, if my calculations serve. But does he think I’m a schmeggege? Instead of coming in at sixty-four, I shock him into a whole new stage of negotiations. FOUR!” he barks.
The hawker looks deeply disappointed in us. “No four. Forty-eight,” he says.
“FOUR!” Larry barks again. “Another tactic I use,” he continues, “is to offer to buy in quantity. Ask for a half dozen of anything, suddenly they’re interested. SIX FOR EIGHT!” he barks.
The hawker looks as though he’s reached his tongue into the most fragrant of honey pots only to be stung by a bee. “No six for eight!” he says. “Forty-two each!”
This goes on for another minute while the crowd watches raptly to the tune of “Danny Boy” and the hawker seems alternately joyous and bee-stung.
“Finally, don’t be afraid to walk away empty-handed,” Larry counsels, walking away empty-handed. A
s my hunched-over cousin crosses the street, I pick up four lighters for twenty RMB, to the delight of all.
I’m chuckling to myself when I catch up to him. What a schmeggege, whatever that is! And suddenly the schmeggege saves my life-pulling me back from a cab that comes as close as a bull in a bullfight. Weak and misoriented as he is, he yanks me out of harm’s way while I’m crossing the street. I didn’t bother checking both ways, too busy feeling superior…
Entering the crimson restaurant, Larry and I spontaneously start to cough from the spice in the air. But soon our lungs adjust, and after being cut ahead of in line twice, we’re seated next to a table of four businessmen. From their overrelaxed manner, I can tell they’ve put a few away and will be smoking like chimneys before long. I request a table far from everybody, a window seat facing the dark street, all by itself. But no sooner have we settled in than the empty table next to us is taken by a man who begins smoking like a chimney.
“You know, we haven’t spent this much time together since we were kids,” Larry says conversationally, settling himself with a groan of relief. “Have you noticed we’re starting to look alike? We’re walking around with the same watch, the same kind of camera; even our expressions are practically identical.”
The way I see it, it’s not that we’re alike as much as he’s in culture shock, casting about to make connections with anything remotely familiar. It’s how he handles his homesickness. The food on the waiter’s tray reminds him of something his mother might have had in the old country: like kasha that hasn’t been cooked right, like chicken soup except that shrimp heads are trying to mate on the surface.
“By the way, just so there won’t be any misunderstandings later, this is on me,” Larry says, studying the menu in Chinese.
“Don’t worry about it, I got it,” I say.
“I’m not worried, I’m paying,” he says.
“You paid the last several times,” I point out.
“That’s a reasonable thing to say, but no,” he says.
“Larry, I want to pay.”
“You want to? That’s a nice impulse. Just understand it’s my treat. Accept it.”
I do so, but with a certain unease. It’s not merely politeness on my part. It’s not merely that it reminds me of his father giving away silver dollars he didn’t have. It’s also that Larry and I have a history of him paying for my meals, and they haven’t ended up well. Every time he wanted to interest me in gold coins just before the price of gold plummeted, or a Boston condo as the real-estate bubble was on the point of bursting, he would take me to lunch and insist on paying. I’d save thirty bucks on the bill and end up thousands in the hole.
The waitress arrives with a free hors d’oeuvre plate of little watermelon cubes. “Another spellbinder,” Larry remarks. “This country has the best-looking women I’ve ever seen. I find ninety percent of them attractive and twenty-five percent of them gorgeous.” He puts down the menu and addresses her. “I WANT TO ORDER PIZZA WITH EXTRA ONIONS, MUSHROOMS, WHAT I CALL TACO BEEF, BUT REALLY ANY BEEF WILL DO, PEPPERONI-”
“Larry-”
“Am I talking too fast again? I never remember to slow down.”
“Larry, there’s no such thing as pizza here, much less taco beef. Besides, I thought you were cool with Peking duck.”
“You win,” he says, showing me the whites of his palms in submission.
“Peking duck for two,” I tell the waitress. “And two middle Cokes.”
“Duck not ready for half a clock,” she warns us.
That’s fine. This will give me a chance to ask Larry something I’ve been wondering about for a while. But first Larry has to slip the waitress a bill that amounts to 100 percent of what the entire meal’s going to come to.
“YOU’RE PRETTY AS A PINUP,” he tells her.
She preens.
“Doesn’t speak a lick of English, but all girls know the word ‘pretty,’” Larry says, giving her another 100-percent tip. Twice the price of the meal.
“Larry, you’ve got to preserve your capital…”
“She’s working hard, she deserves it.”
“But, Larry, they don’t even tip at the end of meals in this country.”
“That’s not my fault.”
Fine. I concede again. It’s a series of mutual compromises. He’s sampling the native cuisine. I can let him tip to his heart’s content.
“So, Larry, I’ve always wanted to ask you this. I’m only asking now because you’re plying me with duck. But are you mobbed up?”
This question seems to please him and make him tight-lipped at the same time. He pops a Beano, then reaches over to snag one of the watermelon cubes, each with its own plastic dragon toothpick. “I don’t want this to go wide, but yes,” he says, and launches into a blue streak of mini-sagas that he says must be off the record. Most of it’s too complicated for me to follow anyway. All I get are some choice names and phrases: “A-hundred-and-fifty-percent financing.” “Disappeared in ’92.” “Unfortunately also deceased.” “Political asylum for Russian girlfriend.” “Embezzled billions, but they could only get him for making free calls from pay phones.” It’s a lot of generalized innuendo, and the only way to keep my head from spinning is not to follow too closely. Still, is it possible he knows the people who offed Jeffrey Dahmer in prison?
“But better than the mob,” he says, coming out of deep background, “are my connections with the MM.”
“You mean the Motor Men?”
Larry shushes me and turns stiffly in his cushioned seat to see who might have overheard. “The mob’s easy to infiltrate. The MM’s twice as hard, but this has to be even deeper background, because these guys lack any sense of humor whatsoever.”
So here’s a disguised account of what he tells me about the MM.
“In Miami, a few miles south of my domicile,” he begins, “there’s an allergist I grew up with who found himself with a client who it turns out is a member of the MM. This client had a stuffed-up nose, couldn’t figure out what the problem was. Milton diagnoses the problem as being the fault of a cat living in the MM’s clubhouse. Client gets rid of the cat, presto, problem solved, client’s so grateful he starts referring Milton to other members who also turn out to have allergy problems. Who knew the MM had such sensitive nasal issues? Soon Milton finds himself in a pickle. What’s he gonna do with patients who are basically hard-core criminals-find the nerve to throw them out? Soon there are six or seven members of the MM as clients, including the leader of the local clubhouse we’ll call Killer. They’re filling up his waiting room in their chains and leathers, and for some reason they took a shine to Milton, started offering him some of their whores that he regularly declined. But Milton ’s basically a sissy who got a kick out of this proximity to real life and bragged about it to me on one occasion. Not really bragging. Allergist bragging. Any case, I had a problem with a tenant I was sleeping with. She couldn’t make rent because she was in debt for cocaine for two grand that some black guy in Overtown had advanced her. He didn’t want the money. Pretty little red head, he wanted to pimp her out. She didn’t know what to do so came crying to me. I checked her out, spoke to her sister, who’s a petroleum engineer in Sioux City, tells me she’s basically a good girl but she’s in over her head. So I said, ‘Tammy, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.’ Had Milton set up a meeting between me and Killer. I lay out the situation, they agree to pay the pimp a visit, I’ll drive.”
Here Larry interrupts himself to wet his whistle. “Dear, could I bother you to remind you about those middle Cokes?” he asks the waitress in a normal tone, as casually as though she were working the pub at his condo club. “Actually, bring the whole bottle,” he corrects.
Larry gazes out the window at the black night. “I must say the local truckers have remarkably bad aim. They hardly ever hit the bicycles,” he says, and no sooner are the words out of his mouth than down one goes. Not a serious accident. The bicyclist brushes herself off and shakes her fist at the t
ruck that winged her.
“Not to take anything from the guy in the famous Tiananmen Square photo, standing up to the tank,” Larry says. “But it does give you perspective to be here. Face-offs like that are an everyday occurrence. It’s called traffic.”
“Let’s get back to the story,” I propose.
“This next part involves a knife,” he warns me.
“How big a knife?”
“Here to here,” he says, opening his arms exactly as wide as our restaurant table.
“Basically like a saber?”
“That’s your word,” Larry says. “Whose saga is this, yours or mine? When it’s your turn, you can use all the clichés you wish, but right now I’ve got the floor. You ready?”
“Shoot,” I say.
“So we drive to Overtown. I stay in the car. Ten, fifteen minutes tops, they come back down and say it’s all set, he’s moving to his mutha’s in Chicago in the morning. Tammy’s off the hook. What they did was take a knife to his balls. They show me the knife, it’s as aforementioned. They place it against his balls and give him a little cut, just enough so he has to go to the hospital for a couple of stitches. Careful to break only one toof when they put a gun in his mouth. ‘Notice we’re not wearing masks,’ they tell the pimp. ‘That’s because we want you to remember our faces. In fact, every night before you go to sleep for the rest of your life, we want you to remember our faces. See? Ramon here’s got a scar on his chin. And see, I’ve got a cute little button nose? My mother used to call me Button-Nose. But you can’t call me Button-Nose. You can’t call me shit. All you can do is remember our faces and pray that nuffing bad better happen to Tammy. Because if anything ever does, even if she takes a tumble getting on a bus, we’re gonna assume you caused it and come after you. You’re her insurance company. You better hope she has a nice long life.’”
End of saga. Larry starts counting the broken eggshells overflowing the ashtray from the previous diner’s meal.
“So what happened?” I ask.
“I told you, he moved in with his mutha! Weren’t you listening?” Larry conceals his annoyance by stretching across the table to spear another watermelon cube.
Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China Page 18
