Daniel Rose - Larry's Kidney, Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China

“Pardon me for not getting up,” he says, muting the TV without seeming to move a muscle. “I’m exhausted from yesterday’s dialysis, which was particularly aggressive. Though you should have seen how glad everyone at the clinic was to have me back. Those gift-wrapped Mao manicure sets were a sound investment, turns out.”

Towering over him, Mary is waiting on him hand and foot. “Professor…pillow?” she asks, plumping it behind his back while also clicking the sound on again with her own remote.

“Bless your heart, that’s ever so much better,” he says, using the locutions he picked up from his elderly immigrant parents. He clicks off the sound. She clicks it back on. “So how’re you making out?” he asks me.

“The street sweepers are pretty much in agreement that there are no kidneys to be had, but I still have a few construction workers on the case,” I tell him. “Meanwhile we’re coming down to the wire. If we don’t find something in the next forty-eight hours, it’s Philippines here we come.”

“You’re kidding about the street sweepers, right?”

“Only a little,” I say. “The bushes are being beaten for you, man.”

Click. Counterclick. I still can’t locate the source of that subtle piney scent.

“I’m glad to see that Mary has a mind of her own,” I add.

“Oh, she has a strong spirit,” he says, closing his eyes. “Though I must say I admire the concept more than the execution.”

“So how’s the courtship going?” I ask.

He starts ticking off on his fingertips. “I know she means well, but I generally like a little more conversation with my partners,” he says. “She’s surprisingly guarded about herself. Matter fact, it took me two days to get the weather forecast out of her. Plus, she keeps forcing flower tea on me to enhance my yin. Tell me honestly, Dan, do I strike you as someone who wants his yin enhanced? On the other hand, I can blather and blather and she doesn’t mind. It’s better than being with my therapist.”

“You really have a therapist? When’d you decide they weren’t all narcs out to bust you?”

He doesn’t bother answering me, opening his eyes to squirm upright on the slippery chaise. “In summation, Mary and I have a real rapport,” he says, “though it may be a while before she’s cooking gefilte fish and stuffed cabbage.”

Well, it’s obvious something is making him feel good. He’s smiling more than he has on this entire trip. I can even confirm how many teef he’s lost due to kidney disease. Precisely two.

“She seems to like you well enough,” I note.

“And, Dan, not to sound stuck up, because I’m really not, but she’s not the only one,” he says, raising his boxy shades to glance at me. “You should see the receptionists at the front desk making goo-goo eyes whenever I walk by. I mean, when did I suddenly become so attractive to Chinese women? Maybe it’s one of those deals where foreign women find dumpy-looking Americans hot because they don’t know any better.”

“Or maybe you’re handsomer than you think, Larry.”

“Thanks, but I know what I am. I’m penetrating. I’m pithy. I’m down to earth in a good way-but handsome? No, that’s not me.”

“Maybe you’re handsomer than you look,” I suggest.

Click. Counterclick.

“That’s deep, Dan. I’ll think about that. I always think about what you say. But, to be frank, I’ve never experienced anything like it. It’s as if Mary worships the ground I walk on.”

“Or maybe she worships your passport.”

“Pffft!” Mary has opened another Coke can for Larry. The miracle of carbonation seems to catch her by surprise every time.

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Larry says, taking a sip. “I’m not so vain that I’m not weighing that as an active possibility. In fact, I’d like you to help me weigh that, if you wouldn’t mind. I could use an extra set of judgments.”

But now, as though she’s caught the tenor of our conversation, Mary wants to put in some comments of her own. “Professor no eat!” she tells me, a complaint and a question all at once.

“I’m eating, dear,” Larry says. “I’m not eating sea cucumbers, it’s true, but I’m eating a balanced diet of shortbread cookies with lemon icing and shortbread cookies dipped in fudge. Maybe it’s not your idea of a balanced diet, but I’m a big boy. You don’t need to mutha me.”

Where have I heard this affectionate brand of squabbling before? It comes to me: in the kitchen of Larry’s parents, Rivie and Sam, back in Lynn, Massachusetts -the same mix of exasperated fondness. They would chuckle for the benefit of any onlookers as they sparred.

Click. Counterclick.

I think I figure out where the piney scent is coming from. I’m not positive, but does Mary have one of those Little Tree Air Fresheners hanging around her neck for a pendant?

Scrunching forward so that he resembles the wrinkled old elephant in Babar, Larry offers me the box of Girl Scout cookies. Again I decline. But again Larry dislikes having his generosity stymied. “Here, take some cab fare, then. Who knows how much you’re putting out racing all over town? Mary, will you give Dan some bills from my wallet? And help yourself to some more while you’re at it,” he tells her.

She’s become very familiar with his wallet in the past two days, I note. I refrain from saying anything. It’s his money; he can do what he wants, especially with that quarter-million-dollar icicle/truck settlement.

Larry settles back on his chaise, disappointed that I keep refusing his money. My failure to press the advantages life affords me has always been a source of chagrin to him, a symptom of my white-glove upbringing.

Mary leans forward with her air freshener dangling and starts probing me for hard data about her affianced. After all, it’s a two-way street, this marriage thing. She has a checklist to satisfy, too.

“He big-ah boss, yes?”

“I’m not a big boss,” says Larry, who seems to have less trouble understanding her than I do, maybe because of his own speech issues. “It’s just that she has to know that what I say goes. Like, if I say we go breakfast, we go breakfast. She has to do it my way. I don’t think that’s unreasonable, do you?”

“He-ah very big professor?” she tries again.

“They don’t come any bigger,” I confirm. “In fact, forget professor, he’s a commissioner! Back in Florida he’s like the world commissioner of pool chairs! He’s practically chairman of his condo association, and that’s one nasty campaign to engage in, am I right, Larry?”

Larry cracks his knuckles. “I’m thinking of maybe running sometime,” he allows.

“What’d I tell you?” I crow. “Chairman Larry!”

“Chairman Larry,” Mary says, satisfied. She seems to admire the sound of this very much.

“Hope you don’t mind a little ribbing,” I say to Larry as an aside.

“It’s your nickel, you’re entitled,” he says, cracking his knuckles again, an activity that sounds a little like muffled gunfire.

As if reading my mind, Larry embarks on a fond reminiscence of the weaponry he used to carry. I don’t listen to a lot of it, because, again, I don’t want to get sucked in. I can be of most assistance to him if I maintain my distance. When I tune back in, he’s talking about the gun he used to have that was in the shape of a wallet. If a perp demanded your wallet, you pulled it out like you were complying, and then you shot him dead.

“I really miss my firearms,” he says, sighing, as though talking about an offspring who left for college in Hawaii. “I carried a gun for eighteen years. I feel very naked without a weapon. In particular I miss my.25-caliber jet fire Beretta. Very small, fit inside my palm. It was so highly concealable I used to take it to bar mitzvahs and weddings.”