“I can’t believe you gave her your mother’s mink coat when you’re not even sure you want to stay with this woman.”
“She liked it very much. She was posing for me, I took pictures. It looked almost as good on her as on a stripper of my acquaintance. Nice way to say ‘hooker,’ incidentally.”
It occurs to me that I could learn a thing or two from Larry’s open-handedness. But now’s not the time to explore this question. Now’s the time for a decision.
“Larry, you’re not thinking straight.”
“Welcome to my world,” he says, pointing to his head as though it’s a third party to these proceedings. “My question is, am I misoriented permanently from the icicle, or just temporarily from the dialysis? I can only hope it’s the former.”
“You mean you can only hope it’s the latter,” I say.
“That’s what I said,” he says.
I don’t bother correcting him that it was his mother the icicle hit. “Let’s get him back to his hotel,” I tell the crowd. “We can make sure he gets his dialysis tomorrow, hopefully.”
The crowd murmurs troubled assent. The kindly woman doctor retreats into the clinic. The translator piles in the front seat of the mini-cab with the driver, and Mary piles in with Larry in back. The tiny car heaves and bounces off. The old man sticks around, still with his chin in his hands and pacing slowly to and fro, looking at nothing but assessing everything.
The smog respires with a life of its own, back and forth, like cloud banks of vaporized Frappuccino, quite tasty.
“So that’s my cousin,” I tell Yuh-vonne, inviting her to sit next to me on a cinder-block bench. “What’s your honest opinion of everybody?”
The black pupils of her eyes dart from side to side, twitching as in REM sleep. She’s hard at work, figuring how much tact to filter in with how much candor.
“Your brother Laurie’s accent I can’t understand,” she says carefully.
“He has traces of a speech impediment left over from having his tonsils taken out too late,” I say defensively. “Or maybe they mangled the surgery. Anyway, his tongue sometimes has a habit of staying in the back of his froat.”
“He sound a little Chinese,” she says.
“Hmmm. And what do you make of his mail-order bride, though Larry doesn’t like us to refer to her that way?”
Again with the REM movement. “Ah, she is not good educated.”
“No?”
“Because her voice doesn’t look beautiful.”
“So there’s no way she could be a college professor, as she claimed?”
“Definitely not! High school maybe. In the distant countryside. Her education basement is very low.”
“I’ll level with you, Yuh-vonne. See, I’m not sure I can trust Mary. Maybe she just wants an American husband to get out of the country, take his money, and then ditch him. I need to figure out if she’s good for him.”
“Ah, maybe just concubine to play with Laurie,” she says, “only to play and not be serious, so to catch better opportunity for herself.”
“We call that a gold digger, where I come from.”
Yuh-vonne thinks a minute, nibbling little dents into her lips. “But maybe Laurie have golden heart,” she says at last. “Maybe they have golden heart together. A relationship between human beings is the hardest thing there is.”
Which gives me something to think about while the old man paces nearby, his chin in his hands.
“It is hard to find person you can trust,” she says at last. “Mary is brave lady. She came to Beijing only to make friends with Laurie. This take a lot of courage. But as for emotional item, I’m not sure,” she says. “Maybe Mary not love Laurie so much.”
“Okay, that’s what I’m wondering.”
“All she worry about is if he dangerous.”
“Larry? He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Unless maybe you were a cousin who got on his bad side.”
“That all she worry about, not how is Laurie doing, only is he dangerous. Also why he never marry before.”
“He’s come close a couple times, but it never worked out.”
“Not because he gayboy?”
“Nah—he likes the ladies, and the ladies like him.”
Yuh-vonne nods. “Mary is not stupid, and she is clever. She knows what she wants. Also, all these people around Laurie, they are her peeps, I think. Three to one. Four to one. Who know how many, their purpose only to chase the money.”
“You think they’re all in collusion?”
“And the taxi driver, too, in my opinion.” Yuh-vonne stands and extends a hand to pull me up. “So now we go back to our hotel?”
Despite myself, I love how she calls it “our” hotel. But suddenly the old man takes a step closer and addresses some sentences in Chinese to Yuh-vonne, who nods and says “Are! Are! Are!” like a toy poodle with its vocal cords cut.
“What was that about?” I ask when it’s over.
“Ow my God, this man is the uncle,” she tells me.
“All this time? While we were talking about Mary?” I ask, as the old man takes a thoughtful step away to give us room to discuss. “Could he understand us speaking in English?”
“Impossible to know,” Yuh-vonne says. “He play cards very close to chest. But also maybe he decipher your party language.”
“Body language?”
“Maybe?”
“How do you do,” I exclaim, grabbing the old man’s hand. He smiles wanly, allowing his limp hand to be pumped but still looking at nothing, certainly not at me.
“Sank you very much,” he murmurs deferentially.
“Well, time to go back to our hotel!” I announce to everyone—teenage girls, urinating beggar; it’s not quite loud enough for the people in the open windows, but I trust they can read my party language.
“Not so fast, homey,” Yuh-vonne says. “Uncle say wait here for Laurie.”
“Why wait here? Larry went back to the hotel.”
“He say Laurie only went for gifts in taxi.”
“But that makes no sense! Why would Larry want to get gifts for the clinic he’s refusing to have treatment in?”
Yuh-vonne gives a shrug as if to say, He’s your brother. But he’s not, of course. She keeps calling him my brother because she can’t fathom why I’d do this for a cousin.
Just then the taxi comes toodling back into the dusty courtyard. Everyone tumbles out but Larry. The taxi driver waddles into the hospital bearing an armload of hastily wrapped presents.
“You got gifts for the clinic you’re rejecting?” I ask Larry.
“That’s how I am, Dan,” Larry explains, patiently cracking his knuckles in the backseat. “I’m a people person. I like to give. Plus, I want to stay on their good side, in case I find myself needing their services at some future date. Just because I’m ill, don’t ask me to change how I do business, please.”
I switch tactics. “So the old man turns out to be the uncle.”
“Yes, and some sort of godfather in the government, I gather. He arranged this clinic. He arranged the taxi. Any case, I suggest we go back to my hotel. I need a pillow very critically.”
I turn to Yuh-vonne. “You want to go back to their hotel with them?” I ask her.
“I am at your service night and day,” Yuh-vonne confirms.
“Can we squeeze in your taxi?” I ask Larry.
“Why not? Save a few bucks.”
This taxi is not like the Red Flag limo with leather seats. It’s more like a circus car trying to accommodate a serious number of misfits. We say good-bye to the uncle and the translator, and soon Larry and I are pressed up together in the ratty backseat, thigh length to thigh length. In all the years we’ve known each other, this is the closest we’ve ever been. He radiates an inordinate amount of body heat.
“I like the uncle, he’s connected,” Larry says. “I’m going to send him a Cross pen-and-pencil set. Something to show honor. If I can work with him, I think we can make a mint together. I can
set him up in Vegas, I know croupiers, I know the sheriff, I know the head of the Chamber. Or forget Vegas, I can fix him up with Sheldon Adelson, who’s only doing the biggest casino in the world in Macau as we speak. My mutha went to grade school with him back in Roxbury-Dorchester. All we need is one percent of his casino. Is one percent too much to ask? With Mary at my side and the uncle in my pocket, we can score big time.”
Yuh-vonne exchanges a few sentences with Mary in the front seat, then clears her throat to get our attention. “Yes, but you see, just now Mary tells me she will leave Laurie,” she says.
I’m shocked. “What? You mean for good?” I ask.
“Sorry to inform,” Yuh-vonne says. “She do not like fiasco at clinic.”
Larry’s self-defense mechanisms are more practiced than mine are. “So she leaves,” is what he says, cracking his knuckles.
“But…but,” I sputter. I’m taking this hard. I’m protective of my cousin and don’t want to see him left high and dry. But I’m also a cheap-skate. “What about the mink coat?” is the first thing I can formulate.
“I’m good for it,” Larry says. “I gave it to her with no conditions. It’s her property.”
“But—”
“She’s free to go if she wishes,” Larry says. “I make no claim on anyone.”
I’m so stunned on his behalf that I feel a little carsick. I look at Yuh-vonne, who looks back at me. We’re sad together on either side of Larry, and a little guilty. While she and I were checking out Mary, Mary was checking us out and deciding it wasn’t worth it.
We ride in silence for a kilometer or two, bumping. The taxi has no shock absorbers or muffler, and we rattle around noisily. After a while I reach in front and squeeze Mary’s right shoulder. This seems to relieve the tension, reminding her that we’re not enemies. She inhales and pats my hand. Yuh-vonne says something to her that sounds to my overeager ears like, “Watch ’em, guam show.” Is it okay for me to hear English in the sounds she makes? The last thing I want to do is dis these people who’re going to such lengths for us. Finally I decide it’s just my brain doing the best it can, and I let it be. “Saudi sandwich way too low,” Mary responds, shuddering with a couple of small sobs and dabbing at her eyes. I can’t tell if I see tears or not. Maybe the way her skin is constructed, it soaks them up before they have a chance to roll down?
“What’re you thinking?” I ask Larry.
He shoots me one of his Mona Lisa smiles. “I could clean up in this country with a coupla Midas shops.”
When we get to Larry’s hotel, Mary’s still dabbing at her eyes, but she seems fine. Larry’s unhappy but taking the blow in stride.
“Where are we?” Larry asks, standing in front of the lobby. “Oh, I didn’t recognize it for a minute. I apologize, everybody.”
We clamber upstairs, each according to his or her capabilities. Various people help various people. As we walk down the corridor—Mary who is not Mary, Yuh-vonne who is not Yuh-vonne, my brother Laurie who is actually my cousin Larry, and the taxi driver who for some reason has come with us—I lag behind to examine a trapdoor in the wall that has captured my attention. When I get it open, it reveals a primitive fire extinguisher inside.
“Curious man,” Yuh-vonne whispers to me with a lewd wink, “always curious man.”
Mary busily fidgets at the room key, an oversize woman always fidgeting with undersize things. Once inside the room, she marches into the bathroom and huffily plucks frilly panties off the shower-curtain rod like Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl. The taxi driver makes himself at home on Larry’s bed, sitting cross-legged on the pillow to work the remote for the TV across the room. Larry plops himself down on the foot of the bed and removes his Businessman’s Running Shoes from his swollen feet. I don’t want him to remove his Businessman’s Running Shoes. Even less do I want him to remove his Freakishly Thin Business Socks, but that’s what he does. Wearing a sphinxlike expression, he rubs his bare toes with both hands. They must be soggy and odoriferous, I think. At this moment I should kick-start a negotiation between the estranged parties, but I’m too busy trying to cover my nose and take tiny surreptitious inhalations, yoga-like.
With me in this handicapped state, Yuh-vonne initiates the conversation. “Mary, do you want to say something to Laurie?” she begins.
Yes, she does. Mary plucks and plucks, Larry rubs and rubs, I cover and cover. With Yuh-vonne interpreting, here’s what it is:
“Mary say she feel very sorry, but to be honest she did everything according to her mind. It all just a mistake.”
“So she’s really leaving?” I blurt, ruining my yoga breath. “Just like that, after corresponding on e-mail for two years?”
My plaintive tone seems to mobilize Larry.
“Did I ever hit her?” he asks, dropping his sphinxlike expression. “I know I was angry today, but I never came close to hitting her. Surely she has to realize that.”
“Larry, do you want her to stay?” I say.
“I don’t want her to leave,” he says, as if making a great concession. His pride’s at stake, and he didn’t get where he is in life by begging.
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere!” I say optimistically. I surrender to the situation, uncovering my nose. “Hear that, Mary? Larry doesn’t want you to leave.”
Mary comes out of the bathroom and wipes her eyes against the black lacy bra in her hands. She turns to Yuh-vonne, snuffling. What should I do? is the question she obviously puts to her in Chinese.
Everything’s in Yuh-vonne’s court for a minute. She launches into heartfelt negotiations with Mary while Larry continues to rub his feet and look indifferent. On the muted TV, a Chinese shopping channel is hawking a lime green Barcalounger knockoff that’s the spitting image of the one I’m sitting on. I’m not sure whether I should feel vaguely famous because of this.
“I don’t like her,” Larry says, rubbing his feet.
“Who? Mary?”
“Mary I like again. And Yuh-vonne I have great respect for.”
“Then who don’t you like?” I ask.
“The taxi driver,” Larry says. “Why does she have to be in on this?”
“The taxi driver’s a woman?” I ask.
“That is my judgment, yes,” Larry says. “And a very expensive one, too. She charged me eight hundred RMB for the use of her cab today. That’s more than a hundred bucks.”
“I thought the uncle was picking up the tab,” I say.
“As did I.”
I look at the cabbie with new respect. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any black-market connections for a kidney, would you?” I ask her.
“King tizzy, shoe can go,” the cabbie says, waving no.
On TV they’re now pitching some kind of bird poison that makes unwanted birds keel over almost immediately. You can rid the whole neighborhood of pesky, noisy birds! At last Yuh-vonne comes out of her huddle with Mary.
“What’s the verdict?” I ask.
“Mary say if Larry take dialysis tomorrow, she will stay three days.”
Despite himself Larry betrays a look of immense relief. “Deal,” he says.
“Our work here is done,” I say, standing up. I feel chastened, realizing how tentative the situation is, not just Larry’s health but everything. I don’t know who anyone is, what anyone knows or doesn’t know, when or where the next shoe will drop. “We go to our hotel now.”
Yuh-vonne hugs Mary in a mutual ballet move, the women patting each other’s shoulders ritualistically. Yuh-vonne kneels to hug Larry, her “Prime” T-shirt riding a third of the way up her bare backside. “Thank you, dear,” Larry says to her, and means it.
Yuh-vonne gives him a lingering look of fondness. “I hope you be happy every day,” she tells him.
Yuh-vonne wants to collect the headset she left in my hotel suite, and in a few minutes she’s back there with me, casually shuffling through my yoga CDs. “Yoga give you the soft bones?” she asks.
Is it a rebuke? A chall
enge? “No, yoga does not give me the soft bones,” I say.
“You mind if I smoke?” she asks.
Ordinarily I would. I would stop her both for general health reasons and because it must be smoke that has stained the backs of her teeth brown, where she’s forgotten to whiten them. Also because it’s getting late. But right now I’m too fatigued from the day’s machinations to object. Besides, it’s amazing to see her smoke, and with a rhinestone cigarette holder yet. Blue curlicues waft from her nose like in a movie from the 1940s.
“I am at your service,” she reminds me, stroking the back of my head.
“So this means what, exactly?” I say.
She answers the question sideways. “I see fortune-teller,” she says, taking her hand away to fetch her iPod from within her purse. “Fortune-teller say I marry two times.”
“What happens to the first husband?”
“Die,” she says with a smile. If that statement’s meant to woo me, it’s the strangest woo I’ve ever heard. She turns on her iPod and holds it up so I can hear the song: “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” by Air Supply.
“We go rooftop now?”
I’m a curious man. But mostly I’m a married man. Bye-bye, Batgirl.
CHAPTER 5
Situation Splendid
A good fortune may forebode a bad luck, which may in turn disguise a good fortune.
Picking up momentum here. We’ve got Larry lined up for remedial dialysis, check. We’ve managed to procure a replacement passport, check. Now at last I can get moving on job number one, finding a secondhand kidney. What’s at stake is so dead serious that I find it essential to maintain a light touch. “Here, black market, c’mere boy….”
Establishing contact with China’s black market is tougher than you might think. Turns out it doesn’t advertise in the yellow pages. Nor can you just go out and hail it the way you would a taxi. You can’t clap your hands and entice it like a puppy, Goo’ boy, want your belly rubbed? And maybe you don’t want to establish contact with it anyway, given that it might end you up in a jail cell with sadistic Chinese soldiers puffing smoke rings in your face….
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 6
