“Any way I can try out the kidney for a few weeks and get my money back if it doesn’t work?” Larry asks.
“Ho ho,” Dr. X says. “Like take for test drive!” Dr. X seems to enjoy the question. I’m the only one in the room, besides Larry, who knows that Larry isn’t joking.
My turn. “Any way I can see the operation?”
“See, how you mean?”
I mime adjusting the focus on a pair of binoculars. “See? Be in operating room to watch.”
Dr. X reacts as if I’ve uttered an ageless witticism. “Oh ho, equally funny. Not even in your country. Not anywhere in world. Surgeon get nervous, slash by mistake, bloody mess everywhere! Oh ho ho!” Dr. X says, leaning back to put his polished loafers on the desk. His eyes are more or less open when he swings his head in my direction. “You not such lousy fellows, you two!”
Even the grandfather clock seems to be enjoying our presence now. The glaze on the ceramic eagles, also the grins of the sheiks, seems to glint along with the bottles of show-off scotch. Besides me, Larry’s the only one in the room who knows I’m not joking.
I seize the opportunity to abet the surgeon’s good spirits with a measured amount of flattery.
“You are a young man to be in such a position of responsibility.”
“Only look young, perhaps!”
“Oh ho ho,” I say. “At the top of your game. And you have traveled the world, I see from the photos.”
“Oh, yes. I have been to your country six time. Conferences in Boston, Chicago, D.C., New York, Miami -”
“ Miami,” Larry says.
“My daughter goes to school in Miami,” Dr. X says.
Larry’s knuckle-cracking goes into double time.
“You know, of course,” I say, “that your patient, Larry, is a professor who lives just outside the Miami city limits. He is in a position to provide help for your daughter.”
“Oh, sank you,” Dr. X says, crushing out his cigarette eagerly in the soil of a plastic geranium.
“Whatever she needs,” Larry adds. “Jobs, references, apartments. I used to own a building not far from the water. Four apartments. They told me I needed to abide by rent control. I gutted the first three floors, made one jumbo apartment. Guess what? Bye-bye rent control!”
I glare at Larry. “But of course there will be rent control for your daughter,” I say.
“Goes without saying,” Larry says, glaring back at me. “This building wasn’t even in Miami, it was in Boston.”
“Whatever she needs,” I repeat. “And I myself live only a plane ride away!”
“Only a plane ride!” Dr. X is delighted by this.
“So we must host you the next time you come to visit your daughter. Larry can show you the best spots for food.”
“Oh, sank you very much.”
“You like sea cucumber?” I ask the surgeon. “Larry is something of an aficionado when it comes to sea cucumber. He knows the best restaurants for sea cucumber in all of Miami!”
“Oh ho ho,” Dr. X says cheerily. He actually rubs his hands together.
Larry’s not one to be outdone, unless it’s in his strategic interest to be so. “And of course you know that Miami is one of the major sea-cruise capitals of the world,” he adds.
“Yes?” Dr. X asks, anticipating happy tidings so acutely that he raises his eyebrows with pleasure. Handsome, handsome man, I decide.
“Yes. To look at my corn-fed appearance, you might think I’ve never ventured beyond the Bible Belt. Maybe just to Montreal to buy knockoff meds. But how wrong you’d be. I don’t think even Dan knows this about me, but I have taken numerous deep-discounted, spare-no-luxury cruises out of Miami, courtesy of one of my ex-students from Puerto Rico who now functions as a flack for one of the major liners.”
“I like cruise very much,” Dr. X says, wide-eyed. “To where they go?”
“They’re so cheap I don’t even ask where,” Larry replies. “She gets me special deals to the tune of two hundred and forty-five dollars per person including port charges for a week in a penthouse suite, outside balcony, marble tub with Jacuzzi, freebie shrimp cocktail at any hour, all the chocolate strawberries you can eat. Good for your head, all this luxury? Put it this way. For two forty-five, that’s the cost of a single psychiatric appointment, and which do you think will make you feel better about yourself? Bottom line: Anyone I say, she can set up with identical privileges.”
“Ooohhh,” Dr. X says, nearly speechless. “You are fortunate man in your connection, I see.”
“Not really,” Larry replies flatly. “She wasn’t anyone I even cared for, particularly. (By this I mean I never felt moved to Privately Tutor her. Very light-skinned, but still not my type. All I did was give her a ten-day extension, and she considers herself forever in my debt.)”
“But I share your zest for foreign experience,” Dr. X says.
“Oh, I see what you’re driving at,” Larry corrects himself. “No, no zest, not for me, not really. Travel makes me depressionistic. Matter fact, after I get home from this trip, if I ever step more than ten yards from my condo again, please shoot me.”
Tick-tick…tock. Jade’s eyes are as dark as marbles.
“Hold everything,” Larry suddenly says. “I may have misspoken. There actually may be a twelve-dollar port charge I didn’t report in the Bahamas.”
“Twelve dollar I can manage!” Dr. X chortles, coming around the desk to clap Larry on the shoulder. “I like the way you operate, Larry. Good head on you shoulder!”
“The appreciation is mutual,” Larry replies without emotion, discreetly shrugging out from under Dr. X’s hand. “And meantime we will keep your secret very silent,” he says.
“Yes, first thing is silence…”
“If asked, Dan here will find a way to disguise all the pertinent facts,” Larry says.
“Disguise very important,” Dr. X says. “Sometime matter of life and death.”
“Dan’s very strong in that department,” Larry says, opening up a second line of assault while I adopt an expression of deep modesty. “Every manner of persuasion. You should have seen the masterful way he talked his way out of things when we were kids.”
“Yes, me, too,” Dr. X says, chortling at the memory. “In Cultural Revolution, I pretend my family all a bunch of poor peasant!”
“That truly is amusing,” Larry says with an unamused expression.
“Just a bunch of hilly-billy dirt farmer!” Dr. X says. He is doubling over with laughter. “Rural weed pokers, even with advance degree!”
“Dan, too,” Larry continues, killing two birds with one stone-making points with Dr. X while taking potshots at me. “During his hitchhiking days, he used to convince his drivers they wanted to go where he was going, not where they were going, even if it was miles out of their way. Did you know he was voted Con Man Who Will Sell the Brooklyn Bridge by his senior class in high school?”
“Well, I was also voted Best Actor, because I wanted to channel my abilities into something artistically acceptable,” I say, firing Larry a cautionary look.
“Didn’t I tell you? My cousin!” Larry says, beaming at me proudly but also with more than a little malice.
Dr. X stops his wheezing to look me over admiringly: my ratty sandals, my filthy white hat. “Yes, that truly impressive,” he says.
“A total bunco artist!” Larry brags.
I cross my legs and clear my throat and do everything but kick Larry under the table to let him know it’s time to start wrapping up.
Larry ignores me.
“All the best writers are like that,” Larry expands. “Faulkner was considered a total goldbricker by his townsfolk. Frank McCourt, the review of ’Tis in his hometown Limerick paper was headlined ‘’Tisn’t.’”
Now I do kick Larry while Dr. X rocks with hilarity at this new information. Down below, where I meet Larry while pretending to adjust my Velcro sandal, I mutter, “How the fuck are you in possession of these facts?”
&nb
sp; “Hey, I read the funny pages like everyone else,” he mutters back, before bobbing above the table again. When I ascend, Dr. X is scribbling his personal cell-phone number on a business card, just in time to present it to me with both hands and the slightest of bows.
“Sank you,” I say, giving him mine, not quite so impressively. But he seems to enjoy the splotches on my well-traveled card, perhaps figuring that an organic business card goes with my getup.
“Perhaps at our next meeting, I will tell you details about my latest breakthrough,” Larry tells Dr. X. “A UFO hotline so people who think they’ve seen a flying saucer won’t feel so alone. They get a friendly voice on the other end of the line taking down their information with the respect they may or may not deserve.”
“UFO! I am UFO buff, big time! Tell me details now!” Dr. X begs.
Larry sadly shakes his head no. “1-800-I SAW UFO, is all for now,” he says.
Dr. X is jittering with so much excitement I half expect him to haul out a violin and start playing “Danny Boy.” Instead he comes around from behind his desk and urgently starts rubbing both of Larry’s shoulders. “I love UFO! UFO give me chance to sharpen party-host abilities, entertain my friends at soirees with many creepy tales!”
“I look forward to telling you more after the surgery,” Larry says indifferently.
“Me as well!” Dr. X confirms, rubbing both of Larry’s shoulders energetically. “So now we have to wait for surgery, but not so long,” he says.
“I hope so, because Larry is visibly weaker than when we got here,” I say. “As you know, he took a fall recently-”
“We are aware of these developments. We monitor closely,” Dr. X says, handing me a camera and gesturing Larry and Jade to clump together with him for a group photo.
“How long do you estimate before surgery?” I say, focusing.
“When get order from high court, perhaps one week, two weeks,” Dr. X says, directing a few phrases to Jade in Chinese while composing his all-purpose professional smile for the portrait. “Usually many months, but since you special friends, I insist to get done sooner. Shhh, secret…”
Two weeks!? How did we just blast past the Badminton Boys from the Middle East? I contain my excitement. I contain my guilt. But what can I tell you-I’m an American: How I channel my guilt is to ask for more.
“If it can be done any sooner, we’d appreciate it…”
“Sooner the better,” Dr. X says. “I know you must be eager to get home to your two little boys.”
Click! Dr. X posing with his suave international smile. Jade staring into the flash so no light escapes her eyes. Larry looking as happy as a mug shot. Carnivore Babes barely managing to fit inside the frame.
“Yes,” I say slowly. “Of course. How’d you know I have two-”
No time to finish my question. Everyone is already shuffling to the door. Pocketing his Cosmos Club matchbook, Larry glides languidly out of the office arm in arm with Dr. X. Jade and I follow in stately fashion, like the parents after a wedding ceremony. We finally managed to get our least-marriageable daughter hitched…
CHAPTER 14. Long, Long Live!
Those who have free seats at a play hiss first.
“Can you believe it?” I explode once our taxi is safely speeding off. “We’re on our way to a healthy kidney!”
“Where!? Now?!” Jade asks.
“No, right now we’re taking what’s called a joyride,” I explain from the front passenger seat. “We’re celebrating the meeting with Dr. X by driving-anywhere, fast-doesn’t even matter where. Whee!”
“Joy die!” Jade says. “Whee!”
No whee from Larry. Of the three passengers in the cab, only Larry isn’t happy, protecting himself from happiness lest it turn on him, like a high-schooler going to the prom but sitting on his carnation accidentally on purpose.
“This good development,” Jade confirms as neon lights flash past outside. “Everything coming up like roses.”
“So the surgeon definitely means what he says?” I ask Jade. “We can count on him?”
“Oh, yes,” Jade says cheerfully. “In my judgment he kill prisoner in two weeks.”
That’s putting it a bit starkly, but it damages my mood only slightly. It’s the equivalent of seeing a baby calf frolicking in a field and realizing it’s this evening’s veal piccata. I’m not quite ready to resume humming “Danny Boy” till I square away a few things.
“And we’re sure it’s a real criminal and not someone who voted against the mah-jongg commissioner or something?” I ask.
“Of course that,” Jade says. “You see how much passion Dr. X was. Chinese generally hide their feelings. But he turn red, voice shake with anger. ‘Kill hundred time!’ Only because it is bad-bad criminal.”
“What’d he say to you in Chinese when I was taking your picture?”
“He ask me, ‘He really the cousin?’ He want to make sure you are not journalist wanting story, or maybe double-oh-seven, like me!”
“Oh, right, I forgot you’re Mata Hari,” I say. “But seriously, how careful do we have to be about that stuff? I’ve gotten a strange vibe from Cherry.”
“Cherry, no!” Jade scoffs. “In my opinion always good to keep eyes open. But Cherry I believe no threat.”
This completes my good humor. I’m in a triumphant mood that nothing can wreck. Yes, the triumph has a twist to it: a bit of heartlessness mixed in with my high spirits, knowing that someone else is to die for Larry to live. But I’m relieved that the donor is a bad-bad criminal…and I’m fairly confident that the recipient is not a bad-bad criminal…so it’s a trade-off, the survivor’s dilemma. We pass the Red Guards waltzing on the terrace near the Old Faithful fountains, but we’re going so fast that my shiver’s only momentary.
Mostly what I am is ravenous. “What say we celebrate by chowing down,” I suggest. “Where shall we eat? Larry, your choice.”
Maybe he feels the mix of emotions, too? He’s acting more than usually subdued, sitting like a lump of concrete in the back with Jade. Or maybe it’s just his baseline moroseness. “Let’s have a change of pace,” he says without enthusiasm. “I’m in the mood for something authentic. How about Friday’s?”
“You mean the New York chain? They have a franchise here?”
“I saw a flyer when I went for my stroll the other day,” he says. “Good to get a little variety in my diet.”
I turn to the cabbie beside me in the front. Aside from being a speedy driver, she’s what you’d call a full-figured gal: a Chinese Queen Latifah, complete with freckles and a chesty laugh from smoking or just exuberant living. “You know Friday’s?” I ask her. “We go Friday’s?”
“Friday’s!” she whoops, picking up on my mood. “We go Friday’s!”
“Friday’s!” I whoop back at her. After weeks of Chinese food, the prospect of bloodred American beef at a New York-style restaurant is making me drool. “Friday’s, yeehaw!”
“Friday’s, yahoo!” she bellows.
“I’m trying to remember an old expression,” I tell her. “Yong yay, mong mee or mong may, something like that…”
“Give it up!” laughs Jade from the backseat.
And suddenly it comes to me. In a flash, I’ve got it back, fully formed. I try it tentatively at first, sounding it out:
“Jong may yo yee wan-su-aee.”
The cabbie’s the first to hear it. “Wan-su-aee?” she asks, her freckles blinking at me.
“Yes,” I say. “They used to compliment my pronunciation, twenty-five years ago.” I try it out again, a little more confidently. “Jong may yo yee wan-su-aee.”
The cabbie looks startled, then very happy. “Jong may yo yee wan-su aee,” she confirms.
“Yes,” I say, “long live the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples!”
Jade in the back is bouncing up and down in her seat. “Jong may yo yee wan-su-aee,” she booms.
“Long live!” cries the cabby, honking her horn and weavi
ng in and out of traffic. “Long, long live!”
It’s mine again, in a flash. “Unbelievable!” I say. “It just came back to me!”
The cabbie’s as excited as I am, exulting something similar. “La-la believable!” she shouts, beeping the horn in jubilation. “Jong may yo yee wan-su-aee!”
Our joyride delivers us to Friday’s-which turns out to be half American chain restaurant knockoff, half traditional Chinese kitchen. Jade’s never been inside an American eatery before, and she looks amazed. Is it the concept of silverware? Or the photo of the monster mushroom-bacon burger on the plastic menu, along with the Chinese specialties? I feel guilty even considering a burger, as though I’d be doing my stomach no favor after weeks of lighter Chinese fare.
“I want cock no ice,” Jade orders sweetly.
“Make that three Cokes no ice,” I amend. But am overruled by Larry, halfheartedly trying not to be a party pooper.
“No soft drink for you, dear,” he tells Jade. “You’re getting a genuine American cocktail.”
To the waitress he says, “ONE COCK FOR DAN,” not noticing that he’s adopted Jade’s pronunciation. “ONE STRAWBERRY SCHNAPPS FOR THE LADY, WITH A COUPLE OF EXTRA CHERRIES ON TOP. SAME FOR ME,” he adds, explaining, “I need to live a little.”
His words contain so little life, however, that when the drinks come, about thirty seconds later, I try to lift his spirits by pointing my index finger at him in victory.
“You’re getting your Princess!” I tell him. “Your Princess, a kidney!”
He doesn’t seem to grasp my meaning and grasps my finger instead, not letting go.
“You’re getting your surgery within two weeks,” I say, lifting my glass. “Toast to Chairman Larry!”
“To a soon surgery!” Jade echoes. She takes her first sip of schnapps, which, by evidence of her face, is a revelation.
“Let the record show that I continue to have a very bad premonition about it, however,” Larry reminds me.
“Nothing can wreck my mood right now,” I tell Larry. “Not even having my pointer finger mauled by you.”
He seems embarrassed that he’s still grasping my finger, lets it go, and takes his first cautious sip of his drink, coughing at its strength. “Do you think Dr. X took it all in?” he asks. “Those references to Paul Volcker may have been a little much.”
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