The Organ Broker

by Stu Strumwasser

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

  THE DINNER PARTY

  I didn’t hear from Mark for a while after that dinner in February. I wasn’t sure if his curiosity about his “father” had been satisfied, or if I had somehow offended him or Philip. He called me sometime in March and we chatted briefly and casually and then he disappeared for another couple of months. Perhaps I was supposed to follow up? I never seem to know.

  ◆

  I was still seeing Lizzie, although it was mostly over by then. She was a brand manager at P & G. I woke up at Liz’s place on the Upper East Side one morning in May and said, “I might go to California for a few days. Play some golf. Maybe you want to come.”

  “I don’t play, baby,” she replied.

  “Well, you could hang out, do some shopping. We could go out together for dinner at night.”

  “No, I’d be bored while you’re playing golf.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why don’t we play some tennis?!”

  “I don’t play. I’m a golfer.”

  “But we could play together. You need a partner for tennis,” she said playfully, stroking my arm.

  “Yeah. That’s why I play golf.”

  “That’s obnoxious,” she said.

  “I guess,” I replied without offering any kind of apology.

  “Plus the world is ending on the twenty-first anyway.”

  “What?”

  “Some guy in California says the world is ending this month. It’s the End of Days, like that movie.”

  “What movie?”

  “I don’t know,” she said dismissively. Then her tone changed, and with some humor she added, “You’ve got until the twenty-first.”

  “Do I?” We had already been dating for a few months and it had run its course.

  So I ended up flying out to California again to play Pebble Beach by myself, the way I often do. Pebble Beach is the real deal—a beautiful and perfectly designed golf course, and simply a beautiful piece of the world. I belong to several different clubs because it reduces the risk of other members starting to feel too chummy, and the dues aren’t much of an issue. The best way to ruin a lovely round of golf at a world-class course is to join a foursome with some radiologist who remembers me from a prior year and who then forces me to apply part of my brain to remembering details of my back story when I really only want to focus on gauging the crosswind cutting into that dog-leg left.

  I was on the driving range just hitting a few balls to warm up when one of my cell phones went off, piercing the tranquility.

  “Jack? This is Philip. Mark’s friend. Your son, Mark Carson, I mean.”

  “Yes. I know. Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, Jack. Absolutely. Mark and I are having a little dinner party this Friday and we got to talking and well … we’d just like you to come.”

  I was a little taken aback. I had met them for dinner, but that was in a restaurant. I meet people for dinner in restaurants. That’s the proper place to conduct a meeting. It’s a way of doing things. That the invitation related to my son, that I even had a son in the first place, that he was reaching out to me, was unsettling. The fact that it was Philip calling me, not Mark, to make the actual invitation, was touching.

  “Well, sure. Okay,” I said.

  “You’ll come then?” he asked. I knew that it was for Mark’s benefit. He was probably sitting right next to Philip on a couch somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen.

  “Yeah. I’d like that.”

  “That’s great, Jack. It’s this Friday, at eight. I’ll ask Mark to email you our address. Mark, you have Jack’s email, right? … We’ll see you Friday, okay?”

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t booked on a flight back until Sunday, but I changed it and got out the next day. They had clearly made an effort and I didn’t want to disappoint them.

  “Jack,” Philip said, “you understand that our friends, some are straight, and well, several are not, and so, they’ll be there too.”

  “Yeah. I gathered that,” I said with a slight smile.

  “Okay then,” he said cheerfully. “Bye.”

  ◆

  The next morning my other cell rang early. It was already past nine on the East Coast but I was still in California. The area code appeared to be one of the new Florida creations.

  “Hey, New York,” Wallace said.

  “Why don’t you just get New York area codes on your phones?”

  “Ha. Coming from you.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “How goes it, Wallace?”

  “Can we get together? Maybe grab lunch?”

  I paused. The sun was coming up from behind the hotel and my window was facing west, toward the ocean. The light pouring down on the beach was growing clearer and less golden-hued. “Is this about that thing before the holidays? That old client of ours I mentioned that time?”

  “Jack, I don’t hold grudges,” he said quietly.

  “Then why the meeting?”

  “I need a Fifteen,” he said. “Fifteen,” as in the fifteen percent of people on the list who need livers. We called kidneys Eighties and livers Fifteens but didn’t have much need for other code words. When it came to lungs we simply said Lobes. We sometimes joked about Blocks (heart and double lung transplants) and dominoes—three or more transplant patients all forming a chain—because those were parts guys like us could never obtain. Livers, on the other hand, were possible. Most livers come from brain-dead donors on life support. Because the liver regenerates they sometimes find legitimate altruistic donors—the recipient’s cousin or something—but it is much more rare than a kidney. In recent years we’ve even had finders in Johannesburg or China come up with sellers. China had been great for a while—when they were mining the prisoners on death row—but that ended abruptly when the government got more sensitive to “human rights issues for prisoners,” which was code for “we’re keeping the fucking organs here in China now that we have people who can finally afford them, you has-been westerners.”

  “Fifteens are tough,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “And this customer has restrictions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Let’s grab lunch, talk about it then.”

  “Wallace, I’m not in New York right now.”

  “When do you get back?” he asked, casually.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “So maybe lunch on Monday?”

  “Can you tell me what kind of restrictions?” I asked.

  “You know that Coney Island Diner, Jack? The place on 46th off Broadway?”

  “I think so. Maybe.”

  “Meet me there on Monday at one. There’s a lot of detail with this so it’s easier if we get together.”

  “Wallace, can you just tell me what kind of restrictions?”

  “Pain in the ass ones.”

  “So he’s going to have to travel, Captain Steubing?”

  “Certainly will, Gopher,” he said, chuckling.

  ◆

  In the cab coming back from Kennedy, then getting ready to go see Mark and Philip, I thought about the past a lot and frankly, in the moments when I think about the past, I think about Carrie Franco.

  I thought about her in the suburbs of Boston, maybe Quincy or maybe Needham, sitting at that very moment with Mark’s father, Ken, watching a movie. I put on black Valentino pants and a gray Hugo Boss shirt, open at the collar. I went to a good wine shop and found an Antinori Tangianello. I remembered Philip ordering the Gaja Barbaresco and thought he’d probably like another big Italian red.

  They lived on Fifty-seventh between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, a little north and a little east of Hell’s Kitchen and what it turned into—the chic new haven for actors, artists, and the gay community that got tired of Chelsea. It was Philip who opened the door. He wore a thin black sweater with an aqua Izod-looking collar sticking up from under it. That had been in style when I was in college, but apparently it was now retro and stylish again. He smiled when he saw me and said, “Mister Jack.”
He’s drunk, I thought, amused.

  “I brought you something,” I said, and held out the bottle with the label turned up so he could see it.

  “Oh, God, yes!” he said, and laughed a bit, but he seemed subdued. You will come to all of our parties now, Jack.”

  Philip pulled me behind him like a kid as he led me through the apartment. His grip was loose. The apartment was elegant and there was almost no clutter. There were odd sculptures sitting on antique end tables and expanses of untouched wall space obviously left bare by design. There was no television visible, although I later uncovered a hidden and sunken flat screen in the bureau next to the living room curio. When I was twenty-one, like Mark, I had my things in plastic supermarket crates. As he threw my coat on the bed Phil said, “I dragged Mark to the driving range last week. His swing isn’t too bad actually.”

  “I thought he didn’t play,” I replied.

  “He’s been coming with me sometimes lately. But I think it’s because of you,” he said with forced nonchalance.

  I tried not to think about it. No one should be making decisions about anything because of me. That was around six months ago. Mark and I have gone to the driving range together a few times recently. His mechanics aren’t too good but I don’t spend much time telling him why or making suggestions. That wasn’t Phil’s point. We talk about other things.

  Philip and I left the bedroom and joined the others in the living room. Mark was wearing linen pants and flip flops. He also looked loose. There was some whitish film on his hands and wrists. It looked like white paint that had been washed off with turpentine, leaving a thin, bleach-like, residue behind. There were only around twenty-five people but it was sort of crowded because the apartment, while beautiful, was not particularly large. Most of the crowd was older than Mark, probably around Philip’s age, and far younger than me. “Hey,” Mark said. I put my hand out to shake, and he embraced me instead and it was awkward.

  ◆

  “You don’t mind the marijuana, right?” Mark said very quietly. There were a few people passing around a joint.

  “Marijuana?” I said, teasing him for his use of the formal name. “No.”

  He laughed. “It’s kind of a smorgasbord,” he said. “We don’t sit down for dinner so just help yourself to whatever. Don’t eat the sweetbreads. That’s Philip’s thing and it’s shit, but I humor him.”

  “Got it.”

  He looked at me sideways and said, “Thanks for coming, Jack.”

  “No problem.”

  “Philip really appreciates it too. He’s got this thing now about you and me becoming besties. So, thanks.”

  I smiled and said, “Okay. Painting today?”

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, waving his hand. “Let me introduce you to some of our friends.”

  They were an eclectic group of varied age and race. There were several people who identified themselves as lawyers but most of them couched that introduction with a clarifying statement about the non-profits they worked for, or the fact that they were with the ACLU, or even that they were going back to school for graphic arts. Although not a particularly corporate-looking crowd, several wore suits. Others looked no different than the homeless guys playing the sax or the djembe down on the IRT platform.

  “You’re Mark’s stepdad?” I was asked by a short and thin young man, no bigger than a greyhound standing on its hind legs.

  “Sort of. Biological father. His stepfather really raised him but—”

  “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. I meant biological. Have you had the shrimp? These guys do the best Cajun stuff. Philip’s mom is from N’Orleans. Try this,” he said extending a toothpick with a huge shrimp skewered on it. I hastily accepted it and chewed while nodding in an effort to express both my thanks and approval.

  “Philip?”

  “Ha! Yeah. Yes. Do you like Death Cab?” he said, pointing straight up, which I took to indicate the stereo system and therefore the music. “Kurt, by the way,” he added, extending his hand.

  “This band?”

  “Death Cab For Cutie,” he said, and then before I had a chance to answer he added, “No? After your time, maybe?”

  “Not bad. Sort of like the Eagles a little?”

  “Oh, you are a funny one,” he said, sort of hunching over a bit with a laugh and elbowing me lightly in the side.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re a lawyer, Mark said. Isn’t that right?” Kurt asked.

  “I am, yes,” I replied while reaching for another shrimp.

  “All fucking lawyers,” he said with mock disdain.

  “Why, are you a lawyer?” I asked him.

  “Hysterical,” he said without laughing. “I must tell Mark that his biological really is a funny one.”

  I talked to more people and spent a good amount of time talking to Philip and Mark. I even took a hit of a joint with my “biological.” I began to feel so enamored with them after an hour that I felt compelled to make up a story about having another engagement. Even though I had flown back from California to be there, I started to feel claustrophobic and exposed. They all knew my name before I told them. They all knew about me and Mark and that I was a lawyer and played a lot of golf.

  ◆

  Then I noticed Philip sitting quietly on the couch, somewhat slumped in his posture, fingertips of one hand to his forehead. I turned to Mark and found that he was already looking intently in my direction. When our eyes met, I knew.

  “Is he sick now?” I asked softly, so that no one but Mark could hear me.

  Mark nodded. “He’s pretty sick,” he said, also speaking very softly.

  “What does that mean?”

  “His T-cells started spiking. They changed his meds but it only got worse. He’s got full-blown AIDS now.”

  “But what does that mean?” I asked again, like an idiot.

  “It’s AIDS, Jack. It means what it means.” Mark paused for a second, and turned toward Phil and then back to me. “We haven’t really started telling anyone yet, except our parents, but it’s getting unavoidable now. Something was wrong with his medication … It caused problems.” He sighed. “It’s … he’s got heart damage. A problem with his heart now.”

  “They have the cocktail meds for AIDS,” I said. “People live for years now… .” I was looking over at Philip, and Mark was doing the same. He looked back at us, from around twelve feet away. He knew Mark was telling me.

  “They do have medicine for it,” Mark said, sort of absent-mindedly. “Phil held out for a few years but everyone’s different,” Mark added.

  “And now what?”

  “Well, for one thing, he thinks I should know you better and I have to play fucking golf now. I told him I would. I just do whatever he tells me to right now.”

  “He’s a good guy, Mark.”

  “You don’t even know, Jack. He could live off his father’s money, do nothing, like his brother. But Philip works sixty-hour weeks fighting for people who have no one else. It’s all he does these days. The sicker he gets the more he works.”

  A few minutes later I finally made my exit. Philip hugged me when I went to leave and then Mark wrapped his arms around me as well. That was the second time that Mark hugged me that night. While I liked them both for their ease and genuine affection, I was also too uncomfortable to linger in the doorway. I pulled my chest back, gently patted Mark’s upper arms with my hands, and said, “Okay, goodnight,” and made my way toward the elevators.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN:

  STARFISH

  Wallace got to the diner right on time. So did I. We walked straight toward each other from opposite directions on Forty-sixth Street. He’s always right on time.

  “How you been?” he asked jovially as we approached each other. He wore sneakers, as always, a light and stylish leather jacket, and had a backpack draped over one shoulder. He looked like an aged college student, maybe fifty, heading off to class.

  “Hey, Wallace.”

  Once inside we
ordered coffee and neither of us looked at the menu. I noticed that his hair looked gray.

  “Been a while,” I said.

  “Couple of years.”

  “Getting a little gray, pal.”

  He smiled and nodded, touched the side of his head with his free hand. “Well… .”

  The waitress came and we ordered. Wallace got a tomato and spinach omelet, egg white only. He had not ordered an omelet with me ever before. He had once ordered egg salad. I got the turkey club. “So?” I asked, smiling.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s for a woman. Very wealthy husband. Family office wealthy. I’ve networked into some of those channels the last few years. Very concerned about privacy.”

  “Tough blood type?”

  He shook his head energetically in quick, short motions. “AB positive. A snap,” he replied. “Universal receptor.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Husband doesn’t like the traditional route,” he said. I didn’t follow. I cocked my head a bit, and probably looked a bit like a Labrador. “Gotta be a living donor,” he added nonchalantly, taking a big bite of eggs and ketchup.

  “Shit.”

  “New York Jack!” he said, more loudly, motioning at me with one hand extended outward, palm up, as if he was introducing me on a nightclub stage.

  The place was packed, buzzing with loud conversation, the sound of silverware and glasses clinking, chairs pushed along the tiled floor. There were tourists everywhere, odd variations of out-of-place Americans. It was comforting. The normal lunchtime chaos was easy to blend into. I wondered if we had come to know each other too well.