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

“I’m not sure what to make of it,” Larry says, deeply unstartled but with steel in his voice. “Can you get the number off his license plate?”

I try to turn in the backseat, but I haven’t done yoga the whole time I’ve been in China and am too stiff to move sufficiently.

“Write this down,” Larry instructs. “C56488.”

“You got the plate? Then why’d you ask me?”

“Double-checking.”

Larry shouts through the faulty partition to the cabbie, eighteen inches away, as though he’s hard of hearing. “WE GO SHI, YES?”

“Friend, yes, friend,” says the cabbie, checking his rearview every couple of seconds for the shadow cab. He reaches into the dusty storage area beneath the dash and brings out a cell phone from among the loose papers there. His dimple’s vanished as he makes a call with one hand and starts conspiring with the person on the other end.

I’m sweating a new kind of sweat now, colder than the one back in Beijing. It’s as though my cranium has sprung a leak; the fluid seeps down to my armpits, where it drips into a bottomless space. Shouldn’t my shirt soak up the sweat? But it drips, drips, into a measureless void. Where’s my sense of humor? But I can find nothing remotely amusing about this situation. In preparation for anything, I stash my passport and wallet in a buttoned pants pocket, adjust my fake Rolex so it doubles as brass knuckles. Larry takes out a ballpoint pen and clicks it a few times, making sure the point is exposed. “In the event of a situation, I’m using this to go for his eyes,” he says.

I keep staring at the faulty partition between us and the front. It’s meant to protect the cabbie, but it comes only halfway up. In a pinch I could get my hands through to throttle the cabbie. But my mind is lagging. I keep wondering why anyone would install such a half-assed partition? I flash on the image of a bridge near my house that became such a favorite of suicide jumpers that they finally put up a fence. Only trouble was, there were ten-foot-wide gaps in the fence every thirty feet. Wouldn’t you think the line between life-and-death predicaments would be more foolproof?

We gravel on in silence for a few more minutes while I laggingly think about fences, suicide, murder. I call Cherry’s hospital office and leave a message on her machine, trying not to let panic creep into my voice. I text-message my wife at home: “Kidnap cab? C56488.” At a stop sign, the shadow cab pulls up to us. Two burly guys measure us with their eyes. Do they want to take us on? Too bad Larry doesn’t have his beloved firearms with him. He does look pretty ferocious in his box-turtle sunglasses, like a Miami tough guy-so long as they don’t know how sick he is. Without being invited to, I reach into his satchel for an extra pair of box-turtle shades and put them on, too.

“I don’t think we’re being unduly paranoid, do you?” I ask him.

“Better more duly than less duly,” he says, clicking his ballpoint calmly.

His voice is so serene that I can’t help but be flooded with admiration. How many degrees of impassive Larry’s face is capable of! If someone had told me ten days ago that I’d be spending this kind of time studying my cousin’s face like it was a da Vinci, I don’t know what I’d have thought. But I let Larry take charge. He’s better at distracting me than I am at distracting him, clicking his ballpoint pen in readiness, rotating his feet in their Businessman’s Running Shoes, which I realize now could double as ballbusters.

“Ever watch Sopranos reruns, Dan?” he asks.

“I thought you didn’t do popular culture,” I point out.

“HBO!” he says, as if it’s understood those initials are above the fray. “The reruns hold up surprisingly well. Nevertheless, the premise is still implausible. They make Tony out to be some New Age gangster with higher qualities: loyalty to his children or whatever? No, I’m sorry. I’ve been around these people, and let me tell you: Tony is a street thug. No redeeming qualities whatsoever. No higher education. No advanced degrees. He kills people for disrespecting. What, he couldn’t just beat them up? Especially since the guy has an IQ of a hundred and thirty-six-check it out, fifth season-that’s five points higher than me in my prime. He should know better. (That said, however, I must admit that I like Tony’s house very much. Very tasteful. In most areas he’s a very confused guy, but I have to hand it to his home decorator.)”

I try to meet Larry halfway in the coolness department, even though it’s all bluff on my part. “Larry, now’s as good a time as any to ask about something that happened once when we were kids on the Red Line and those guys wanted to mix it up with us, remember? I was kind of anxious, but you wanted to fight?”

“I remember,” he says, flexing his hands with his improvised brass knuckles.

“Was I being a wuss?”

“One time doesn’t make anyone a wuss,” he assures me. “You had a sheltered upbringing. You didn’t understand that it’s better to just get hit a few times than spend your life fearing being hit.”

“Really? That strikes me as profound,” I say.

“Okay, you want me to talk about fistfights,” he says. And he’s right: I do want him to talk about fistfights. He’s diagnosed my anxiety accurately-hell, he probably diagnosed it decades ago-and knows I need him to fill me in on everything I’ve missed in my coddled existence and have to catch up on double-quick.

“The first thing to know is that every fight is different,” he says. “And none are like Muhammad Ali in the ring. Most are scuffles with very few clean punches. But the secret to all fistfights is the element of surprise. You know how I’d handle it if I were to get in a fight now, in my condition? I’d pretend to be hurt and cower, then as soon as he didn’t expect it, I’d punch his lights out. Surprise is key.”

Okay, this is helpful. Hearing Larry’s lethargic, even-keeled voice with all its various speech impediments is keeping me calm.

“Larry, another incident,” I say. “Remember that time we were trying to park in South Boston one night and that black guy stole my space and you told me to stay in the car, but I got out and started walking over to talk about it. He smiled and adjusted his posture so subtly that suddenly I got the feeling he was packing heat. Or whatever you call it. And I got back in the car. Was I right to get back in?”

“You were wrong not to stay in the car in the first place.”

“All right, good,” I say, nodding my head. “So let me ask another question. That slick hotel manager back in Beijing. Nice guy, right, even though he had ulterior motives for helping pack you up?”

“Guy was a huckster,” Larry says. “I saw the way he was eyeing my tea sets. If they arrive with so much as one swizzle stick missing, I’m all over him with the authorities.”

I yawn, suddenly exhausted with insight. “I didn’t sleep well last night,” I say. “The phone kept ringing.”

Larry looks at me as though I’m mentally endangered, then enunciates carefully, “Hookers. They rent a room in the hotel and then call all the other rooms, one after the other, hoping to get lucky.”

So help me, the guy is brilliant. His talk is aimed with dead-eye accuracy to simultaneously comfort and toughen me up. Feeble, ill, and homesick as he is, he’s taking care of his older cousin.

“So…ah, hookers, Larry? Do you really know them socially?”

“Mostly they’re sad people who can’t find a better way of life,” he confirms. “On the other hand, a lot of regular women don’t even charge, and that’s sadder. And on an additional hand, if someone wants to give me one for my birfday, I won’t object.” He registers my appreciative expression. “I can see you’re soaking this up,” he says. “So I’m going to resume by thanking you again for the fake Cartier watch, and I’m going to tell you why it’s important. It’s a power prop to go along with my other power props that tell the world I’m a success.”