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.”
My mind tunes him out, because I’m thinking about why he couldn’t find the TV plug-that’s not like the Larry I remember. His phlegmatic exterior has always masked a razor-sharp brain, but is something more wrong with him? Is his physical deterioration only half the story? I watch the cleaning lady on her hands and knees in the bathroom, scrubbing the floor around the toilet. She really throws herself into it, a big woman made even bigger by the coat she’s bundled up in, a suede-and-sheepskin affair that just about doubles her mass. When I tune back in, Larry’s still going: how a transplant is a treatment not a cure, how even the best outcome means he’ll be on expensive antirejection drugs forever, how he won’t settle for being an invalid in a chair.
“Larry,” I say, “you have to realize this is your depression talking.”
“Yeah, well, if it’s talking, I’m listening,” he says morosely. Then flashes a milky-mild smile that makes him look a little like the Mona Lisa. “Of course, I could run out of cookies at any moment, and then my life will be a moot point,” he says, reaching into the suitcase at his feet, where I glimpse several boxes of Girl Scout cookies. “You didn’t think I was going to chance eating the native cuisine, did you?” he asks, offering me a Caramel de Lite. “So how’s your hotel? Classier than this one, I assume.”
“Only because the magazine’s paying for it,” I say. I’m a little embarrassed for my better circumstances, and hope I’m not giving off the scent of chamomile. “It’s the same one I stayed in twenty-five years ago, though a lot nicer this time, I have to say.”
“That the one where the coffee was so bad?”
“You have an amazing memory, Larry.”
“I remember everything you ever told me, Dan. I look up to you, you’re my big cousin. Matter of fact, wasn’t that where you shtupped a stewardess on the rooftop?”
Scrub, scrub, scrub.
“Okay, I can see by your face that was a lifetime ago,” he says. “You don’t want to be reminded of your divorce days. I just want to show how much you’ve always meant to me, not that your wife ever needs to know. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, as far as I’m concerned. And you can quote me.”
“I think you must have misheard me, Larry.”
“I don’t believe so, Dan. You told me a lot of stuff in those days. But in your defense I ought to say that you were hitting the hooch pretty hard back then, Dan. I’m glad you stopped. What was the final straw, don’t mind my asking?”
“Larry, let’s try very hard to keep this on you.”
“Good idea. And now that we’re clear about your colorful past, maybe it’s time I come clean and mention one other little thing I neglected to say until now.”
The cleaning lady moves from the toilet to the sink fixtures: scrub, scrub, scrub.
“I know transplants are illegal, Larry. You already leveled with me.”
“Took me long enough, though. I was pretty nervous, trufe be told.”
“I understand. You didn’t want me to take it the wrong way.”
“I’m glad you accept me with my flaws, Dan.”
“I…uh…do.”
“That means a great deal to me. So by the same token, there’s one other thing I don’t want you to take the wrong way either. You can see how visibly nervous I am all over again.”
“Just spit it out,” I say. “What am I going to do, bite your head off? I’ve come all this way to help.”
“And you are helping, just by being here. I can’t tell you what a comfort it is, your presence alone.”
“I’m glad, Larry. So?”
“I’m getting married.”
“Larry, congratulations,” I say, so relieved it wasn’t bad news that I have to stop myself from giving him a hug. “Why would I get mad at that? That’s wonderful news!”
He looks as pleased as a box turtle given a fly carcass to munch on. “You were right as usual, Dan. I didn’t have to be nervous after all. Thank you for supporting me.”
“Wow, a lifelong bachelor getting hitched after all these years.”
He accelerates his monotone just a bit. “Yes, I’m very excited about her,” he continues. “I’ve never been with someone who shares so many of my values. She doesn’t drink, doesn’t gamble, doesn’t run around. She’s basically stable, like I am. It’s like we’re in sync. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.”
“I’m thrilled for you, Larry. So when’d you meet her?”
“Well, it’s in process,” Larry says. “I think it only prudent that I spend a little time with her first.”
There’s silence for a moment while the only sound is the scrub, scrub, scrub of the brush gnawing at the faucet.
“Larry, are you telling me you’re meeting her here for the first time? That this was another reason you wanted to come to China?”
“Dan, I can’t believe you of all people would expect me to marry someone sight unseen. Plus which, your opinion of her is very important to me, Dan. You’ve always been an excellent judge of character.”
He registers the expression on my face.
“Besides,” he says, “don’t act like I didn’t give you fair warning.”
“What are you talking about?”
“On your chairlift, Dan. I distinctly remember you mishearing me.”
“Larry, it wasn’t the best connection in the world. I could barely make out-”
“When you thought I was feeling merry.”
A pause while something irreparable snaps in my brain.
“Larry, maybe I half heard you but it certainly didn’t register. There was a lot coming at me then.”
“I grant you there may have been some psychological blocking on your part-‘merry,’ ‘marry,’ plus her name is ‘Mary’-it was a lot to take in.”
Speech fails me. I sink into a chair.
“Well, anyway,” he says, “who the hell cares, as you like to say. Besides which, I wouldn’t want to burden an upper-caste person such as yourself with crass commercial concerns, but it would have been fiscally irresponsible of me to shell out for a ticket to come all this way and not get my money’s worth, see what I’m saying? Doesn’t a twofer sound like a better deal? Get a kidney and throw in a bride for free. One from Column A, one from Column B. (And I trust that’s not a racist thing to say, because racist is the last thing I want to be, under the circumstances. I’m a guest of the Chinese, they’re not a guest of me. Notice I’m making a concerted effort never to use the word ‘Chink’ while we’re over here.)”
“That’s good of you. But, Larry,” I say, trying to sound out my words clearly, “you misrepresented the situation.”
“I fudged, Dan. Let’s not pussyfoot around or make it sound prettier than it was. I fudged, fair and square, but do you honestly think you would have gotten on that plane if I’d kept you in the loop? It was for your own good, in a way. You would have been riddled with doubt if I hadn’t protected you from the trufe.”
I look around to turn up the air conditioner but see there isn’t one. No wonder I’m sweating through my clothes.
“Don’t look at me that way, Dan. Am I commenting on your goatee and earring, distasteful as I may or may not find them? I realize you’re a different person from the way we were as kids. Live and let live, that’s my motto. We all gotta eat.”
“I could get very mad at you now, Larry.”
“And I could point out to you, Dan, hopefully not for the first time, not to get mad at the messenger. Would you prefer I continue to spring nuffing but half-trufes on you, so pretty soon you know even less whether you’re coming or going?”
He’s right, I don’t want that. I’m having enough trouble telling what I’m doing. Am I daydreaming again, or am I really hearing him say that Mary advertised herself on candeyblossoms.com as “a petite thirty-five-year-old professor of architecture at a prestigious university with great command of the English language and a six-year-old ballerina daughter who’s cute as a button”? Is he really telling me that he especially loves the ballerina part because of how much he loves kids, he’s got like a dozen godchildren including one from a dean at his college who’s a nun, couldn’t have her own kids but adopted one from Ecuador, who more or less authorized an all-purpose recommendation letter that he carries on his person everywhere he goes? “This is to certify that Larry Feldman is a highly respected intellectual with advanced degrees in mediation/negotiation and a license to practice the art of real estate in countless American states. Any assistance you extend this VIP will be devoutly appreciated in the highest circles.” And that he took as inspiration the notes I forged in high school to get out of detention?
I’m not sure; it’s something to that effect. But one thing I am sure of is that I didn’t come halfway around the world to talk about me. I tell him so.
“You’re right, Dan. I’m just saying: You’re an inspiration to me. And just between us, I understand it’s stacked against artists in our society; no one can blame a forged signature here and there to help you make your way. (And in case I haven’t said this before, thank you for coming on this trip, and please extend my thanks also to your wife, I appreciate her making this economic and emotional sacrifice so that I can hopefully attain just a fraction of the marital bliss with my wife that you no doubt enjoy with yours.)”
So help me I’m spellbound. At a certain point, and it happened several minutes ago, I don’t even try to resist. I’m held captive by a snake charmer-perhaps the only one in the world who talks with parentheticals. Yet I must admit there’s a certain relief in surrendering to such masterful manipulation. It’s like being very tired of holding your head up straight and then deliciously allowing yourself to relax your neck and fall asleep at last. Concessions are made. Forgiveness is found. Maybe this is the sweet submission that members of a cult feel. God help me, I’m joining the cult of Larry.
“Okay,” I say, rousing myself to speak after a long silence, “so when do I get to meet the bride?”
“You just did. That’s her,” he says, raising his chin to the woman scrubbing the sink.
My head snaps upright, straining a muscle in my neck. I try to find an ounce of delicacy.
“But, Larry,” I manage to say, “she’s not quite the way she described herself.”
“Tell me about it. I’m as surprised as you are. She’s forty-nine if she’s a day, she’s built like a linebacker, she said a hundred and twenty pounds, I judge more like one-sixty, maybe she teaches electronics as a substitute teacher at a rural high school way the hell out in the sticks somewhere near the border with North Korea. I’m still researching that one.” He up-ends a Coke bottle with Chinese squiggles on it and takes a tiny sip. “Oh, and she doesn’t have a six-year-old daughter, cute as a button. She has a twenty-four-year-old mentally endangered son-challenged, threatened, whatever the correct term is. Not that I have anything against retarded people. My beloved sister, Judy, was no great shakes herself in the gray-matter department, rest her soul, though she was surprisingly adept when it came to crossword puzzles. Being shy was mostly her problem. Retiring. Well, you remember, Dan: Did you ever see her make conversation at a family function, other than the time she was so excited about getting accepted into that special program for epileptics?”
“Wait,” I say, trying to shake off the blitz of words. “If Mary’s not the way she described herself, isn’t the deal off? I mean, truth in advertising, right? Doesn’t that nullify the arrangement?”
“Not at all, Dan. I very much respect the fact that she misrepresented herself. It shows a native cunning that I appreciate. Not once in our two years of e-mail correspondence did she tip her hand. Plus which, it’s flattering in a way. She made all that up just to impress me? Well, pardon me, but I am impressed.”
“But she lied, Larry!”
“Yes she did, and I’m putting that in the equation, but on the other hand we have all those things I mentioned in common, plus she has an uncle who I gather is some sort of muckety-muck in the government, at least inasmuch as he is able to put me in touch with a clinic where I can get my dialysis, starting tomorrow. Which is not a minor consideration, given my health and also my desire to make a few business deals on the side, if at all possible. He also threw in a taxi driver free of charge for the week, which I think is a nice gesture. So I am very much against rushing to judgment. Who am I to judge a book by its cover? You’re an author, Dan, you should know what I’m talking about. How would you like it if everyone judged your books by their covers?”
“They do!”
“But don’t you wish they didn’t?”
I know there’s got to be an answer to this, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is. I rub my neck, where I strained it. Finally it comes to me, feebly. “Well, it’s your call, Larry.”
“Yes it is, and I’m glad you remember that,” he replies. “Be careful not to prejudge in life, is all I’m saying, Dan. Didn’t you once tell off a friend’s fiancée on the eve of their wedding, only to regret it when she proved a loyal wife a decade later?”
“I can’t believe I’ve told you my whole life’s story.”
“You don’t want to make that mistake again, Dan, especially with the cross-cultural difference between us and the Chinks. What? What?”
A pause.
“Nothing, Larry. So, do you want to make the introductions or what?”
“Mary?” he calls in the direction of the bathroom. “Mary?”
When she doesn’t respond after his second call, he puts frail fingers in his mouth and executes a brutal, cab-hailing whistle. “Mary, put down that brush like I told you and get in here!”
“Yes, ah, Professor?” she says, scurrying in and slipping onto Larry’s lap, dwarfing her betrothed so I can’t see the face that continues the introductions.
“Dear, this is the man I used to think was James Bond.”
“I was so not.”
“That’s how you appeared to me growing up, Dan, what can I say? The adoring eyes of a younger cousin. You had this savvy fair. I don’t know if it was dumb luck or what, but no matter what kind of jam you got yourself in, you always came out smelling like a horse.”
We shake hands while I crane around Mary to see Larry beaming in his low-key way. “Ten hours she spent on a train to get here. She wouldn’t let me pay for plane fare, bless her heart.”
“How do you do,” I say, watching in amazement as my hand is en-cushioned by hers.
“I saved his life after college,” comes Larry’s matter-of-fact voice from behind Mary. “I already had my own real-estate firm at eighteen, lent him a spare bedroom when he didn’t know how he was going to support himself as a writer. Girlfriend was cheating on him, so he got two shrinks and cheated on them by not telling them about each other. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why neither of them prescribed Valium so you didn’t have to steal mine.”
“You knew I was seeing two shrinks?” I say, trying to fetch back my hand.
“Now, as to why you needed to cheat on two shrinks, that I wouldn’t hazard a guess. I’m a professor of mediation, not a medical specialist. You’ll have to ask one of the doctors in the family if you’re interested in getting a handle on that. What is their professional opinion of our venture, by the way? I probably don’t want to know, right?”
“Probably not,” I say. “They’re so against it I call them the Disapproving Docs.”
“So tell me.”
I shift in my chair, partly out of sympathy for the weight Larry is carrying.
“They’re skeptical, to say the least.”
“And to say a little more?”
“They disparage the whole enterprise,” I say, “but you have to expect that. They reflect the conservative American medical establishment. Their official line is that we’re ‘irresponsible’ for leaving the warm grip of American medicine, even though American medicine is telling you to bide your time for ten years. Want me to continue?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Well, to play devil’s advocate for a minute, you have to admit they have a point, Larry. What do we know of the cleanliness over here? Of how they track organs? There are so many variables, it’s just a shame you couldn’t call on Burton for guidance.”
Mere mention of the name transforms Larry. Suddenly he looks less like a box turtle than a snapping one, neck recoiled, capable of inflicting real damage. “Dan, that is so far from anything I would do.”
“I know, but there’s no discounting the fact that Burton is one of America ’s leading doctors, after all. You sure know how to pick your enemies.”
“Any case, whatever you do, do not tell Burton where we are. He would like nuffing better than to put the kibosh on this, just to get back at me.”
“I don’t think medical professionals operate like that, Larry.”
“I hope you’re right, Dan, for his sake. Because he may think he wants me to die of renal failure and just fall off the end of the earth, but he definitely wants me to live a long life. He has no idea how much he wants me to live a long life.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nuffing, Dan,” he says, becoming benign again. “Here, have a peanut butter patty, these ones are my favorite.”
“You didn’t bring any of the sugar-free chocolate chips, in your condition?”
“Sugar-free is for sissies, Dan.”
“Then there’s the ethical question,” I continue, declining the treat. “All the docs in the family are opposed to ‘shopping for body parts,’ as they put it, maybe even from a prisoner. What’s your position on that anyway?”
“My position? Here’s my position: This nonprisoner needs a kidney. Execute someone of my blood type!”
“But seriously-”
“I’m dead serious.”
And he is. This is such a horrible thing to hear him say, so against every principle of decency I’ve been brought up to believe, that all I can do is pretend it came from someone else-I can’t see the speaker anyway-and change the topic.
“So aside from Mary being, uh, not petite, what’s your assessment of her after a few hours?” I ask him.
“Other than the fact that she lied about her size and her age, which I take as a girl thing, I find myself more comfortable with her than just about any woman at home,” comes the voice behind the wall of Mary. “Is she perfect? No. Her English is subpar. She keeps trying to check me for lice, but that might be cultural. Despite her being kind of a clean freak, as you can see, I think we have enormous amounts in common.”
“So you like her?”
“I do-uu,” he says with surprising ardor, peering at me over his shades and opening his eyes so wide I’m startled by their Paul Newman blueness. No wonder that women have always been eager to help him. “She gets my jokes,” he continues. “Don’t ask me how, but she laughs at the right time. She insists on hand-washing my socks. It’s like being in Sho gun. If only she’d put out, everything would be great.”
“You’ve come halfway around the world and haven’t consummated?”
“Didn’t you notice the separate single beds? It’s like Donna Reed in here. But we have an awful lot in common. Did I mention that she hand-washes my socks?”
There’s a pause during which I’m hoping Larry’s regretting his words because of how chauvinistic, politically incorrect, and generally hideous they sound. But apparently he’s not regretting them, because toward the end of the pause he cranes his head around to send Mary a lascivious wink.
“Dan made good use of my spare bedroom, I’ll tell you that,” he says.
“Hey, Larry made good use of it, too,” I tell her defensively. “When I came back from a weekend away, the door was busted down and there was a picture of my bed on the front page of the local paper under the headline ‘Biggest Bust in Two Years.’”
“Which made us even-steven in the drug department,” Larry says. “Dan stole my Valium. I allowed an associate of mine to stash a little dope under his mattress in his absence. Not that I would ever partake myself, Mary. As I may or may not have told you, I never touch the stuff, because: One, I like staying in control. Two, always a bad idea to invade principal. And three, dealing it back in the seventies was strictly business.”
I reflect that Larry is pretty straight, when it comes right down to it. No drink, no drugs, no unisex salons. He tried a joint back in 1970, fainted. He doesn’t even chew gum-behavior unbefitting a businessman, in his opinion. That’s why he always keeps a sharp crease in his pants. Have I even seen him wearing a T-shirt, or shorts for that matter? Of course not. According to Larry, who’s gonna respect you if your knees are showing?
Larry turns to me and adds some confidential information. “Best art thief in the business, incidentally.”
“Who was?” I ask. “Your ‘associate’?”
“Moishe the ringleader,” he says. “Moving dope was just a sideline compared to his interest in art. Speaking of which, they’ve never solved the Gardner Museum heist, you know, Dan.”
“I don’t want to know, okay, Larry? Let’s have a rule that you not tell me anything I can’t repeat in court, okay? Besides, we’ve lost our audience.”
Mary has slipped back into the bathroom to resume scrubbing, leaving Larry with a frontal sheen of sweat in her absence.
“Did she even understand a word we were saying?” I ask.
“A couple here and there, maybe,” he says. In silence we watch Mary as she continues sanitizing.
“Are my eyes getting worse, or is there really a step in the threshold going into the bathroom?” Larry asks.
“That’s to keep out evil spirits,” I tell him.
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot for a minute,” he says. “Because evil is so dumb it doesn’t know how to crawl up a step.”
We continue watching Mary while I refrain from reminding Larry that a sardonic attitude will not help us while we’re at the mercy of this splendid nation. “What’s with her heavy coat on a day like today?” I ask him.
“It’s a gift I sent her last month,” he tells me. “Warmest coat L. L. Bean sells. She was thoughtful enough to bring it here so she could model it for me. It’s minus-forty degrees where she lives. The North Koreans think they’re getting someplace good when they escape their homeland, apparently, but it serves them right. Minus-forty, the same temperature as Moscow, plus it has one of the biggest open mine pits on the planet. Not very appealing. Anyway, the poor dear has to go out in minus-forty-degree weather to send me an e-mail, plus avoid falling into the pit. Even the thought of her going out in that abusive situation makes me shiver.”
Larry has always been openhanded to a fault. In this he takes after his father, Sam, the lovable but illiterate garage mechanic, who would stand there between hospitalizations passing out silver dollars to the children. The less he had, the more coins he passed out. Though Larry had numerous bitter issues with his father and would be loath to acknowledge any resemblance to him, he does basically the same thing. The less, the more. During the recession of 1990-91, hard times for his Tuxedo Band-Aids (first aid for black-tie affairs) or whatever product he was pimping back then, Larry never showed up at a family member’s house without some pricey secondhand offering in the trunk of his Studebaker Avanti. He specialized in bulky items: dehumidifiers, microwave ovens, even, during one dubious venture into gaming that I forbade him to tell me about, pinball machines. It isn’t exactly a dirty secret per se, but it’s worth noting that almost every member of our clan has a pinball machine in his or her cellar, vintage mid-seventies, obtained in ways none of us wants to hear about. Larry never drove up anyone’s driveway empty-trunked. Air conditioners, too-something we could certainly use right now in this airless hotel room.
“It must be ninety degrees in here,” I point out. “Couldn’t she just model the coat for you and then take it off?” I ask.
“It’s an honor thing, I gather, some Asian way of displaying loyalty,” Larry says, mopping his brow not very effectively with the Coke bottle. “Or subservience or something. You tell me-you’re the China hand.”
“Larry, I’m not a China hand. I’ve been here four times total, and the last time I was thrown in jail, for God’s sake.”
“Mary’s got to hear this story,” Larry says. “You were clowning around in some forsaken outpost in Tibet, right, drunk on barley beer? Offered to sell some Chinese soldiers a basketball signed by the Dalai Lama, something like that?”
“Larry, do you mind if we don’t revisit that adventure? It still gives me hives.”
“Did they waterboard you? Mary’s gonna love this.”
“I think we’ve established that she doesn’t have great command of English, Larry.”
“At least tell her about the sadistic soldiers blowing smokes rings in your face.”
“Larry, no one in this country wants to hear stories from the past. It’s all Great Leaps Forward, haven’t you noticed? Besides, she can get the whole traumatic tale off my Web site if she’s curious.”
“Well, all I can say is, it’s beyond me how you’d be willing to come here again. I’m amazed you’re not freaked by the Chinese after that, Dan.”
“Who says I’m not freaked?” I say. “I thought I was lost to the world, and vowed that if I got out, I’d never step foot in this country again.”
Larry takes in this confession with the seriousness it calls for. “I guess bottom line is you want to make sure to avoid a jail cell this time around,” he says.
“You could say that, yes.”
“Okay, so help me find my trousers. You ready to go?”
“Go where?”
“The airport, I keep telling you. I forgot most of my luggage at the terminal. In the excitement of meeting Mary and so forth, it slipped my mind. Or maybe this is the first time I’ve told you. See, that’s my mental impairment again.”
“Larry,” I say.
“Yes, Dan.”
“What mental impairment?”
Larry looks me in the eyes for perhaps the first time since I entered his room.
“I’m pretty sure I told you about my mental impairment, Dan.”
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” I say, looking back in his.
“Well then, there it is again, case in point: my impairment. As you may have noticed, I tend to babble a bit. Misplace things, get confused, what have you. Our task is to determine whether this is the natural result of the dialysis, which scrambles my blood chemistry, or if it has to do with the disability suit.”
“Larry,” I say.
“Yes, Dan.”
“What disability suit?”
“Okay, I’m not going to quibble,” Larry says. “Maybe I already told you about it and maybe I didn’t, but long story short, what do you think’s funding my trip?”
“So wait, I may have heard something about it on the grapevine: Is this the disability suit for getting hit in the head by a falling icicle?”
“No, it is most definitely not,” Larry says, offended. “The icicle suit was the one I filed on behalf of my mutha, the settlement of which was nuffing compared to my own disability suit, for being rear-ended by a truck.” His anger settles down a bit. “I can see where it might be tricky to keep them straight, however,” he adds generously. “For the duration, if you wish to refer to either as the icicle suit, I have no quarrel. Any case it was a quarter-million-dollar settlement, after lawyers’ fees. Sweetest words I ever heard come out of a jury foreman’s mouth: ‘We find the plaintiff cognitively impaired.’ But the downside: Cost me twenty-two IQ points, and Dan, as you know, my claim to fame has always been that I’m the dumbest member of Mensa-I had the lowest IQ you can have and still be a member. But now I can’t even seem to locate my toofbrush.” He raises his voice. “Mary, do you know what I did with my toiletry bag?”
On her knees in the bathroom, Mary holds up the bath mat, nodding hopefully.
“Never mind, dear, go back to work if that’s what you want, or better yet come in here and rub my neck…”
Mary gears up to run toward us while I gird myself for a bear hug.
“Mary, you are in for a treat when I take you home to America,” he says. “You may think you’ve seen good basketball in this country with the Dalai Lama’s team, but just wait till you see the Miami Heat. You’re gonna meet my friend Shaquille O’Neal. I’ve had lunch with him half a dozen times, on account of my cousin on the other side of the family is his accountant. We’ll get center court seats for all of us together, Dan in the middle ’cause how many people could I ask to delve into his life savings like this, not a peep of complaint-”
Mary is at full gallop. I brace myself just in time for an onslaught of bosom.
“Cuzn Dan!” she cries.