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

“Relatively simple operation, easier than for the donor, apparently. So long as they don’t drop it in with chopsticks, I have no complaints.”

From the hallway outside the room comes the squeak of nurses’ shoes skittering by, the scuff of patients’ slippers shuffling sadly behind their silent IV cranes. At street level a truck passes by sounding like a helicopter, its engine so defective we can make out its whop-whop-whop through our single pane picture window nine stories up. On TV they’re advertising a beauty cream you rub on top of your breasts to enlarge your bosom. Flat-chested women wearing expressions of scowling deprivation have no luck flagging down taxis, while a full-figured gal wearing an expression of satisfied happiness has great luck. What’s her secret? We see her in the privacy of her boudoir, where she’s applying beauty cream to the top of her chest. The beauty cream draws fat cells, represented as fizzy bubbles, up up up from the abdomen, where they do no good, to settle in the pleasing bosom area. And that’s all there is to it. A twofer: The fat cells leave an area where they’re not wanted and congregate in an area where they are wanted. Why didn’t Larry think of that? Now the formerly flat-chested women are able to snag all the taxis they could ever need!

“Anything else I can get you tonight?” I ask. “Shall I see if I can hunt down some Halloween candy, Alka-Seltzer, anything?”

“It’s getting late,” Larry says, peering at each wrist in turn, where his watches were before he misplaced them again. “Hadn’t you better find yourself a hotel room or something?”

Kind of embarrassing, to be invited out of the hospital room by the patient. It reminds me of the time my mother in the nursing home said she was seeing too much of me. But anyway, I’m a free man in China, free to hump my suitcase down eight flights of stairs to the lobby, empty as always except for a couple of stern Middle Eastern-looking men idling through, carrying badminton rackets. Outside, the sidewalk culture is booming in all its low-tech multiplicity. Residents unfold their sling chairs to watch TV, play cards, weld auto parts, scissor noodles, get a trim around the ears, practice calligraphy with fat water-filled brushes on the asphalt, or enjoy what appears to be the exquisite bliss of ventilating their socks. The air is by turns delicious and putrid.

When I get to the lodging Cherry has recommended, I find it a very proper hotel in a sylvan glade. Quiet, safe, and utterly unacceptable. I want noise, strife, peril! Now that my expense account has expired, I also want one with little Styrofoam cups for coffee instead of exquisite china with lids. I want fake wood laminate and cheap broadloom to cover a multitude of sins. I want to feel I’ve come down in the world, meeting life on its terms, on the road! Of all the hotels I pass, my first choice is a clean Chinese chain hotel on a busy intersection smack-dab on the main drag, except it’s just beginning to be built and looks like it won’t be ready for six months. But wait, there’s a light on in the lobby…

“I’d like a window facing the street,” I tell the front desk.

They just dug the foundation a week ago, and already the second floor’s ready to rent while they work on the rest night and day. With its immaculate glass-and-tile lobby, it’s less a Mini-Mushroom than a Sinoized Super 8; I immediately dub it the Super 2, because it’s about one-quarter as fancy. It’s also old-school enough that I receive a carbon-paper receipt for my deposit and a quizzical look when I ask about gym facilities. Perfect. The stern receptionist with an incongruous jabot indicates that I’m the first Westerner to stay there, then asks if I’d like to buy a flashlight in case of power outage. She’s having a special on matching chrome sets: two for about a buck. What do I look like-someone who can’t pass up a sale?

“Hello, room,” I say, making friends as I enter. It’s always been my habit to speak immediately to my hotel rooms, knowing from long experience that the first impression a room gets of you is the most important. “I’ll be your new roommate. If any state spies want to nab me for illegal transplants, I’d appreciate it if you’d trip them up long enough for me to make my getaway…”

It’s hot yet drafty. I remove everything from my pockets and drape my shorts over the chair, checking the coins out of habit from when I had a penny collection as a kid-you never know when a 1909 VDBS Lincoln might turn up. Opening the window wide, I get a full blast of the Chinese night music: car engines like tractor motors, the screech of bicycle brakes like just-run-over puppies, the deep plaintive call of street vendors like mating bullfrogs (“Brown cowwwww-uh? Brown coww www-uh?”), the up-close stuttering of pneumatic hammers in the hotel. All the commotion is a comfort somehow. Maybe because it’s nice to visit a culture that’s growing and isn’t so obviously hurtling down the tubes. Although it’s not really fair that some cabbies use siren-type air horns.

I park my laptop in front of the window and hook in. Immediately after the cascade of Microsoft tones, a riff that doesn’t seem at all discordant with the Chinese street melodies, I send Cherry an e-mail telling her where I’ve landed. “ Ping!” comes her response at once, telling me that the kidnap cabbie will meet me in the lobby with my camera at 9:00 A.M. sharp. I’m uneasy-a feeling exacerbated by the money-saving, low-wattage bulbs throughout the room. Then “ Ping!”-I have a new e-mail…from Jade.

HI 84~~~ Is everything ok? i am miss larry and you… i am really concern about the health of larry. will you stay in Shi long enough for me see you? my father can lend me his railway pass… Mahybe i am free the next Wenday afternoon. today i am very sad because of missing ~ by the way tell me the name of that girl who take us to KFC. Cherry? I forgot. ok. see you next week. ~~~24

I’m hot yet cold. Fatigued yet jumpy. Hopeful for Larry’s future yet fearful. Happy for the letter from Jade yet apprehensive about meeting the kidnap cabbie in the morning. To soothe my rattled nerves, I turn on the bed lamp to read myself to sleep, but it’s no brighter than a refrigerator bulb, and I soon give up.

“Damn dim bulb!” I say aloud, turning out the light. I’m sounding more Chinese every day.

Do not remove a fly from your friend’s head with a hatchet.

One thing you can say about kidnap cabbies: They tend to be punctual. The stroke of nine next morning finds two individuals tentatively approaching each other in the lobby of the Super 2: an American wearing a meek expression signifying, “Are you the one who almost took away my freedom to see my little boys for the rest of their childhood?” and a Chinese wearing a meek expression signifying, “Are you the one who was mewling in the backseat for no apparent reason?”

I remember the cute dimples. “Friend,” he keeps saying. Okay, he doesn’t have to rub it in. I get it: His friends in the other cab were supposed to drive us to Shi while he went back to BJ to pick up more passengers. I’m a fool-but at least a fool with his throat uncut. We shake hands exuberantly. I also shake hands with the smiling, dimply woman at his side, who seems to be his wife. What, did they get a family rate on dimples? I can tell by the interesting sounds he makes through puckered lips (“Oleo merger, catch a kitchen can”) that he’s pleased by the chrome flashlights I give him. He can tell by my no doubt equally intriguing sounds that I’m pleased not to be sitting on the floor of a closet with my hands tied behind my back with plastic twine. We go outside, and his wife snaps a picture of us in front of his little cab. She tells me how much she likes the picture (“Knee-bash, knee-bash! Sammy’s dagger so delayed!”) before handing it to me: The strain shows like gnarled rope on my face. Is it significant that his eyes are closed? I find myself wanting to speak the toast that is on the tip of my tongue. Long live the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples! But it won’t come: “Wong we…” We shake hands again all around, and then before toodling off, he remembers to give me one more item he found in the backseat: the distinguished mahogany fountain pen I lifted from my luxury hotel in Beijing.