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

“Over the next few days, I’m going to be in need of some rather non-traditional tour-guide services,” I tell her when we get there. “You available to step off the straight and narrow?”

“I am at your service night and day,” she says.

“Bingo,” I say. “What’s the forecast?”

“Smoky.”

As I open the car door, a flash of something comes back to me. I turn to face Yuh-vonne. “Jong may, jong moy…?” I say experimentally, trying to remember the toast I knew twenty-five years ago. “Long live the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples: jong mee?” But it escapes me.

Yuh-vonne disregards my effort and grips my hand meaningfully. “Night and day,” she says.

A sly rabbit will have three openings to its den.

Chamomile. The smell of chamomile.

After a good day’s sleep, I wake at 5:00 P.M.-it’s 5:00 A.M. at home-with visions of kidneys floating in my mind like dust motes on the surface of my eyes. I shake them off and lift my head from the chamomile-infused pillows. My expense account has provided me a luxury suite with private butler who brings me coffee that is distinguishable from tea-a welcome change from the beverage they served twenty-five years ago in this very hotel. The lobby, when I descend, is a castle, complete with Flemish tapestries and high-gloss Clinique counter, behind which a fashion model in heavy mascara crouches in the deep-knee-bend position of waiting, patiently picking her toes.

In minutes I’m cabbing my way through the steam heat to Larry’s discount hotel, which is basic but perfectly decent. In the small greeting area, a row of five receptionists who look like the stunning women vamping it up in those Robert Palmer music videos from the eighties-identical tight black dresses and tight black hair-giggle uniformly and direct me to a unit across the grass courtyard, second floor.

I knock at Larry’s door and am greeted by the sound of a key fiddling in the lock from the inside: fiddling, fiddling. Finally the door is swung open by a giant cleaning lady in a thick coat, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows and suds dripping off her hands, who immediately bows out of the way to give me my first sight of Larry, rising from a chair in the back of the room. But if the cleaning lady’s a larger figure than I expected, and more overdressed, Larry is smaller and underdressed. I haven’t seen him in years and am surprised by how he’s shrunk. He’s naked except for a pair of saggy underpants, a boxy pair of sunglasses, and his Businessman’s Running Shoes. Not that he’d ever dream of running three steps, but he wouldn’t be caught dead without his Businessman’s Running Shoes.

“Huwwo, Dan,” he says in the monotone he always uses to keep himself from getting too happy or too sad.

“Throw on a robe and I’ll hug you,” I say.

“Oh, that’s an inducement,” he deadpans. Larry’s emphatically not the hugging type. Nor am I in this case. He looks so terrible that I find myself wanting to keep our cooties very separate.

We’re both relieved to shake hands.

But even at arm’s length, his diminishment is a shocker. He’s slumped to the point of being stooped. He’s lost a lot of weight, way down from the 280 pounds he was at his peak, but this isn’t the sort of weight a person wants to lose. I clap him on the shoulder and find the wasted shoulder of an old man. He’s lost one, maybe two additional teeth in his head-I’m not sure, because he doesn’t smile enough for me to count. His sunglasses mask the slight edge of menace he always used to have, making him look almost benign, like a box turtle you could keep for a pet. But his face is bleak-puffy and pinched at the same time. Mostly it’s gray: He lacks a blood-cleaning kidney to give him the rosy hue of health. As if to make up for the absence of pink, however, the insides of his arms are the color of Coca-Cola.

“What’s with the bruising?” I ask, discreetly wiping my hands.

“Dialysis,” he tells me. “My nurses in Florida basically treat me like a pincushion, though you’d think they’d be able to find this,” he says, revealing an ugly blue knob on his forearm.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Fistula,” he says. “It’s where my surgeons in their wisdom fused my vein and artery to provide better access to my circulatory system.”

“Jesus,” I say. Because I never expected he’d look this bad. “Nice watch, anyway,” I say, referring to the fake Rolex dangling from his skinny wrist like a bracelet.

“Like it? It’s yours,” he says, shucking it from his wrist.

How could I have forgotten? Larry’s generosity is so old-school that it’s impossible to compliment anything about him without immediately receiving it as a gift. It’s no exaggeration to say he’d give you the shirt off his back. I once made the mistake of complimenting an undershirt and immediately received a polyester wife-beater, still warm from his ribs.

“No thanks, got one,” I say, dismayed that I do indeed have a fake Rolex just like his. Bobbsey Twins with my cousin Larry wasn’t the look I was going for.

“Suit yourself,” he says. “How about a calfskin billfold, I brought some extra ones for gifts, or a leather carrying case, or some cash to help with your flight?”

Larry used to handle money like a gambler, shuffling a wad of crisp bills like a fresh deck of cards. But now he grunts to extract a single bill from his aromatic wallet while the rest fall to the floor, presenting him with the problem of how to bend down to get them.

“No thanks, I’m set,” I say, kneeling to retrieve the cash while I take stock of my cousin. This was Larry, the little fatty who used to delight in running up the down escalators? Who used to crack me up by putting his lips right against the grille of a fan and mumbling Clint Eastwood lines through the moving blades? “Go ahead, make my day.” How did someone of my generation become so hunched and withered? Any doubts I might have had about coming to China have vanished with the sight of him.

“I can’t begin to tell you how tired I am,” he says, collapsing into his chair and beginning a ten-minute discourse on what end-stage renal disease feels like. For someone in such a state of fatigue, it’s as if his mouth operates on a separate generator. I only half listen to the gruesome account, because I need to preserve my spirit; if I’m going to be of any use to my cousin, I have to stay upbeat, which means being selective about how many depressing details I allow in. I take the opportunity to indulge in a little daydream about being at home with my wife and kids, who’ll be starting school tomorrow, fourth and seventh grades. “You have no idea,” he concludes ten minutes later, digging both thumbs into his eyes wearily. “ I had no idea before I got sick. I thought kidney disease was something you could take a pill for. And this Peking Opera doesn’t help,” he adds, indicating the colorful pageant screeching away on the wall TV. “It’s been playing nonstop since it clicked on apparently by itself this morning, and I can’t shut it off. (No kidding, have you heard this stuff?” he adds. “I mean, it makes Yoko Ono sound like Frank Sinatra.)”

“Can’t you unplug it?” I ask.

“You’re welcome to try,” he says. “Maybe you’ll have better luck than I’ve had.”

He coughs feebly for a while-the remnants of a bronchial infection that came with dialysis, he says-while I find the plug right behind the set and pull it out of the wall.

“Mystery solved,” he says, relishing the sudden silence. “By the way, just FYI, I reserve the right to kill myself at any time, Dan. My mutha is dead, my futha is dead, my sister is dead, there’s only me left and I don’t owe anything to anyone. And just so we’re clear, if anyone tries to stop me, I would consider it the most egregious thing you’ve ever done.”