To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
My cousin and I were young together. Now we’re young no more. But at least Larry’s life is preserved for the time being. One year later, his kidney’s going strong.
Such is not the case for the rest of him, however. He’s a fifty-something-year-old man with a thirty-something-year-old kidney living inside him. The kidney’s willing; the body’s in decline. How long they will continue to work together is anyone’s guess. He’s weaned himself off his quad walker, limps along with only a cane, and rarely speaks of suicide.
Ironically, the only medical complication of the whole ordeal arose shortly after he returned home-and it was not from the Chinese side of things but the American. He landed in a Florida hospital for a week either because he wasn’t taking his antirejection meds or because his American doctors misread the instructions from Dr. X and prescribed four times the antirejection meds he required. To hear Larry tell it, it could have been either, but in any case he was nothing but delighted about this for a time, because he figured he could sue the doctors and recoup what he put out for his trip to China…before ultimately deciding against it.
Did Mary talk him out of it? But why? Did it go against her convoluted code of ethics? We may never know the complexities of that human being…because she’s gone. When all was said and done, her miscommunications, her cultural misapprehensions, whatever name we want to put on it, proved too much for Larry. He wanted nothing more than to live out his days in wedded bliss with her down by the pool at his condo-maybe he’d take up crochet, maybe she’d be phoning in hits to the mob-but it was not to be. They remain pen pals, and he demonstrates his continued fondness by sending her gifts through the mail.
For her part, Mary has put herself back on candeyblossoms.com. With the correct data this time.
There was another woman Larry met in China, a nurse who caught his fancy. Not the medical resident who resembled his dead twin, but a nurse from the dialysis clinic outside Beijing where he refused treatment. A nurse I never met and about whom Larry breathed not a word the entire trip. Maybe she had something to do with his refusal to undergo dialysis that day in the dusty courtyard? Maybe that was why he insisted on getting gifts for everyone there? I don’t know and am content to know that I’ll never know. A genuine Larry Inscrutable.
Of which there remain many. Has he dropped his fatwa against Burton? I’m not sure. I would think that the fact that I’ve included it in a book about our adventure would satisfy Larry that he’s made his point…or at least scare him out of it, since it’s now a matter of public record. But I simply don’t know. He’s a tree stump-immovable by its nature, ultimately unknowable. All I can do is inform Burton of the continuing threat, and this I am hereby doing.
I assume Larry has not put a fatwa on me, but I did do him a pretty big favor, so I’m just not sure.
I do know that Larry has been a bit troubled, off and on, by the idea of my announcing our mission to the world this way. It breaks the second of his cardinal rules, which is: Never admit to a crime. No matter what, never admit to a crime. When I explain that we didn’t commit a crime, exactly, there’s a Mona Lisa silence on his end of the line, and my admiration for da Vinci knows no bounds.
Cardinal rule number one, by the way, is: Never sign your name. I don’t know how a person is supposed to follow that, but Larry swears by it. Sign George Washington or Sgt. Pepper, but never sign your name.
Neither rule, incidentally, prevents him from running for chairman of his condo association, a race he thinks about entering, if he judges he’s up for the nastiness such a campaign often entails.
After getting home, did it briefly cross Larry’s mind to maybe send me a strawberry shortcake, by way of thank-you? I’m romantic enough to think that maybe it did. I do know that I briefly considered sending him a 1909 VDB-S penny, in tribute to all we’ve shared. But I ultimately decided against it. Maybe something similar went on with him. Or maybe it slipped his mind.
Oh, talk about slipping the mind: the nurse, I almost forgot. Larry is actively courting her by e-mail and plans to go back to China to see if they’re meant to be together. If it doesn’t take, he hopes to finish out his days in China anyway. Despite how arduous our adventure was, he grew very fond of China and considers our two months there one of the best times of his life. “Plus, way cheaper.”
As for me, I’m grateful to be back with my family, pooling our body heat. My wife remains incomparable, Spencer continues to teach me about kindness, and Jeremy has taken up the sax, a development that has necessitated the return of my earplugs. The ducks are fine, again for the time being. All is temporal. “What does not change,” as the old gravestones say.
One last thing to report. When the weather warmed again, after a brutal winter, I put on shorts I hadn’t worn since leaving China that last night. I found a folded up, handwritten note inside my front pocket. I’ll leave it to you to name the person who put it there, but she must have done so around the time I was sneaking a note into her purse. This is what it said: “If you are ever sick, come back to China and I will take care of you.”
I thought that was kind of nice.
Farewell, and (Cool) Godspeed to us all.