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

Of course, none of this means we can’t still be competitive with one another. I’ve entered the Badminton Boys’ round-robin tourney and been steadily working my way up the ranks till I’m contending for the semifinal doubles playoff. It’s Pakistan and America versus Saudi Arabia and Qatar, cutthroat but quiet in the little hallway.

Cherry looks on approvingly. “Very springy, Daniel. You reminding me of Israeli patient last year.”

“You had a patient from Israel?” I say, almost losing a lob in my surprise. “How’d he get along with…everyone?”

“He faced with same difficulty as everyone, so became brother to brother,” she says. And I can believe it. The Giant Mushroom is sort of a no-man’s-land, an island of neutrality in a world of shooting, machine-gunning, bombing-we can hear it through the windows…

Oh, wait, this is a nation at peace, for the time being. Must be the sound of hammering, drilling, digging. All around the hospital are the sparks of welders, the roll of cement tumblers, the spray of pressure hoses. One wing of the hospital is demolished overnight. A new wing appears in two days. All is as wirl with change except in our ninth-floor cave where we’re suspended, waiting out our time as the dynasties inexorably rise and fall through the Shang, the Qin, the Shun, the I Ching… Who knows how many eras are passing or even where we are? I could be in China, for all I know.

Time at its most basic consists of waiting, and wait I do, either in my half of the cave or back at the Super 2, waiting till nightfall to emerge, like the fair ladies of old China who wouldn’t go out in the sun lest it ruin their porcelain complexions. I have everything I need in my room: yoga CDs, scallion bread, chocolate, Bengay I borrowed from Larry that really helps my strained neck. The concerned housemaid knocks and knocks until I finally open up. “Clean you room?”

“I no need,” I say, waving my hand no.

“I no need?” she says, furrowing her brow.

“I’m happy as a clam in here,” I say. For I truly am. Two-week-old water stains dating from the time of the Ten Kingdoms? I won’t look at ’em. Annoying little alarm that goes off every time I open the hall door? I’ll keep the hall door shut. Other than Larry-Mary, I deal with very few people in the world besides my strapping housemaid, with blue stitches in her chin. For a while I feared they were whiskers, but she shows me close up that they’re the ends of blue threads. Did her husband bust her one? Another Inscrutable. I’ll never get to the bottom of it. More like my den mother than my housemaid, she took me under her wing weeks ago, one time hemming the waistline of my pants, which had gotten two inches too big, another time showing me a photo album of her husband and son. This time she snaps the skin-thin green rubber glove off her hand and roughly rubs my bare knee to indicate that it’s too cold to wear shorts.

“I know, but I’m hot!” I say. “I’m on fire because we’re getting Larry the last kidney in China. Now all we need is for it to happen-with no mishap!”

But she’s tricked me, taken advantage of my loquaciousness to sneak past me into my room with her vacuum cleaner, which is missing its wide-mouth nozzle attachment. Back and forth she goes, up and down, with just the naked end of the pipe-inch by inch to catch a stray crumb or chase down a thread, leaving a network of graceful squiggles on the carpet. Was this how Chinese calligraphy was born in eons past, I amuse myself wondering-from a deficient vacuum-cleaning system on a wall-to-wall?

But Dr. X was right. I do miss my boys. I’ve been putting off calling home, saving it for a treat. Usually, when I’ve called around the globe before, the connection has been more crystal clear than the one through the wall to Larry’s room, but this time it’s distant, faded like a coloring book left in the windshield of the family car. Plus, the voices on the other end seem a little more matter-of-fact than is my liking.

“How’s everything, Spence my man?”

“Fine, except when we play Scrabble, Mom keeps insisting that ‘bizou’ isn’t a word, and I’m positive it is! Just because it isn’t in the dictionary only proves what a stupid dictionary it is, because I’m positive.”

‘ “Bizou,’ huh?”

“When I said ‘slopey’ was a word, I wasn’t positive, but with ‘bizou’ I’m positive, I know I’ve heard that word.”

“No doubt you have.”

“And don’t say that just to appease me, Dad, like how you agreed when I said we should send Jeremy to live in another family. And while we’re on the subject? Jeremy keeps saying he’s deeper than me just because he cries at American Idol, but I don’t think that makes him deep. I think that makes him temperamental.”

“I KNOW WHAT TEMPERAMENTAL MEANS!” comes a voice from another phone line being picked up.

“Jeremy, I’m having a private talk with your brother. Can you wait your turn, please?”

[Click.]

“Spencer, you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“Can you speak up? It’s a little-”

“I am speaking up.”

“You know, whatever your brother is or isn’t doesn’t take away anything from you,” I say. “You’re two different individuals, with two different needs and wants, like…um, like…”

“Like you and Larry,” he says.

“Yeah, like me and Laurence,” I say with a mock French accent-but he doesn’t remember the reference. How has our little motif bitten the dust in just a few weeks of neglect? How fragile are our connections? While I was throwing my net vines wide here, were they withering at home? Uneasy, I change the subject. “So what’s the deal, no new awards to report? What happened, you fall off the wagon again?”

“Demon rum, gets me every time. But seriously, Dad, I have a serious request to make. Did you mean it back on the chairlift when you said Mom could be hell on wheels?”

“Of course not, honey. We were just fooling around. What’d you think?”

“I think we all should be kinder with each other, all the time.”

“Even when everyone knows we’re just fooling around?”

“Yes, because people are very hurtable, Dad.”

I’m silent from my side of the world. For some reason I think about how kind everyone in China has been to me the past six weeks-even the dry cleaner across the street. When the band was coming off my panama, the lady in the dry-cleaning shop stood there stitching it back on for fifteen minutes, and when I displayed my wallet to pay her, she wrinkled her nose at me and pushed me out the door.

“Sold,” I tell him. “Kindness it shall be.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Thank you, Spence. You’re a wonderful young man.”

“Well, I’ve got a pretty good vocabulary, anyway, I guess…”

Then it’s his little brother’s turn. “Hi, Dad.”

“Wow, Jeremy, you sound subdued.”

“That’s ’cause I hate my brother.”

“Wow, for real you do?”

“For real. I wish he weren’t even living here.”

“Sounds pretty bad. If he didn’t live there, how long d’you think before you’d miss him?”

Jeremy calculates. “At least two hours,” he says vehemently.

“Well, I can only pray that your relationship will survive,” I say. “Tell me what else is new. How’re your inventions?”

“I don’t make them up anymore, that was stupid… OH, BUT, DAD! DAD!” he says, exploding into capital letters at last. “I MADE TWENTY BUCKEROOS AT MY LEMONADE STAND YESTERDAY!”

“Jeremy-how much of that is exaggerating?”

Spencer picks up another line. “It’s true, Dad. For once he’s not lying. One guy gave him like sixteen dollars for a single cup.”

“Thanks, Spence. Can you let me resume talking to Jeremy privately now?”