I switch tactics. “So the old man turns out to be the uncle.”

“Yes, and some sort of godfather in the government, I gather. He arranged this clinic. He arranged the taxi. Any case, I suggest we go back to my hotel. I need a pillow very critically.”

I turn to Yuh-vonne. “You want to go back to their hotel with them?” I ask her.

“I am at your service night and day,” Yuh-vonne confirms.

“Can we squeeze in your taxi?” I ask Larry.

“Why not? Save a few bucks.”

This taxi is not like the Red Flag limo with leather seats. It’s more like a circus car trying to accommodate a serious number of misfits. We say good-bye to the uncle and the translator, and soon Larry and I are pressed up together in the ratty backseat, thigh length to thigh length. In all the years we’ve known each other, this is the closest we’ve ever been. He radiates an inordinate amount of body heat.

“I like the uncle, he’s connected,” Larry says. “I’m going to send him a Cross pen-and-pencil set. Something to show honor. If I can work with him, I think we can make a mint together. I can set him up in Vegas, I know croupiers, I know the sheriff, I know the head of the Chamber. Or forget Vegas, I can fix him up with Sheldon Adelson, who’s only doing the biggest casino in the world in Macau as we speak. My mutha went to grade school with him back in Roxbury-Dorchester. All we need is one percent of his casino. Is one percent too much to ask? With Mary at my side and the uncle in my pocket, we can score big time.”

Yuh-vonne exchanges a few sentences with Mary in the front seat, then clears her throat to get our attention. “Yes, but you see, just now Mary tells me she will leave Laurie,” she says.

I’m shocked. “What? You mean for good?” I ask.

“Sorry to inform,” Yuh-vonne says. “She do not like fiasco at clinic.”

Larry’s self-defense mechanisms are more practiced than mine are. “So she leaves,” is what he says, cracking his knuckles.

“But…but,” I sputter. I’m taking this hard. I’m protective of my cousin and don’t want to see him left high and dry. But I’m also a cheap-skate. “What about the mink coat?” is the first thing I can formulate.

“I’m good for it,” Larry says. “I gave it to her with no conditions. It’s her property.”

“But-”

“She’s free to go if she wishes,” Larry says. “I make no claim on anyone.”

I’m so stunned on his behalf that I feel a little carsick. I look at Yuh-vonne, who looks back at me. We’re sad together on either side of Larry, and a little guilty. While she and I were checking out Mary, Mary was checking us out and deciding it wasn’t worth it.

We ride in silence for a kilometer or two, bumping. The taxi has no shock absorbers or muffler, and we rattle around noisily. After a while I reach in front and squeeze Mary’s right shoulder. This seems to relieve the tension, reminding her that we’re not enemies. She inhales and pats my hand. Yuh-vonne says something to her that sounds to my overeager ears like, “Watch ’em, guam show.” Is it okay for me to hear English in the sounds she makes? The last thing I want to do is dis these people who’re going to such lengths for us. Finally I decide it’s just my brain doing the best it can, and I let it be. “Saudi sandwich way too low,” Mary responds, shuddering with a couple of small sobs and dabbing at her eyes. I can’t tell if I see tears or not. Maybe the way her skin is constructed, it soaks them up before they have a chance to roll down?

“What’re you thinking?” I ask Larry.

He shoots me one of his Mona Lisa smiles. “I could clean up in this country with a coupla Midas shops.”

When we get to Larry’s hotel, Mary’s still dabbing at her eyes, but she seems fine. Larry’s unhappy but taking the blow in stride.

“Where are we?” Larry asks, standing in front of the lobby. “Oh, I didn’t recognize it for a minute. I apologize, everybody.”

We clamber upstairs, each according to his or her capabilities. Various people help various people. As we walk down the corridor-Mary who is not Mary, Yuh-vonne who is not Yuh-vonne, my brother Laurie who is actually my cousin Larry, and the taxi driver who for some reason has come with us-I lag behind to examine a trapdoor in the wall that has captured my attention. When I get it open, it reveals a primitive fire extinguisher inside.

“Curious man,” Yuh-vonne whispers to me with a lewd wink, “always curious man.”

Mary busily fidgets at the room key, an oversize woman always fidgeting with undersize things. Once inside the room, she marches into the bathroom and huffily plucks frilly panties off the shower-curtain rod like Richard Dreyfuss in The Goodbye Girl. The taxi driver makes himself at home on Larry’s bed, sitting cross-legged on the pillow to work the remote for the TV across the room. Larry plops himself down on the foot of the bed and removes his Businessman’s Running Shoes from his swollen feet. I don’t want him to remove his Businessman’s Running Shoes. Even less do I want him to remove his Freakishly Thin Business Socks, but that’s what he does. Wearing a sphinxlike expression, he rubs his bare toes with both hands. They must be soggy and odoriferous, I think. At this moment I should kick-start a negotiation between the estranged parties, but I’m too busy trying to cover my nose and take tiny surreptitious inhalations, yoga-like.

With me in this handicapped state, Yuh-vonne initiates the conversation. “Mary, do you want to say something to Laurie?” she begins.

Yes, she does. Mary plucks and plucks, Larry rubs and rubs, I cover and cover. With Yuh-vonne interpreting, here’s what it is:

“Mary say she feel very sorry, but to be honest she did everything according to her mind. It all just a mistake.”

“So she’s really leaving?” I blurt, ruining my yoga breath. “Just like that, after corresponding on e-mail for two years?”

My plaintive tone seems to mobilize Larry.

“Did I ever hit her?” he asks, dropping his sphinxlike expression. “I know I was angry today, but I never came close to hitting her. Surely she has to realize that.”

“Larry, do you want her to stay?” I say.

“I don’t want her to leave,” he says, as if making a great concession. His pride’s at stake, and he didn’t get where he is in life by begging.

“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere!” I say optimistically. I surrender to the situation, uncovering my nose. “Hear that, Mary? Larry doesn’t want you to leave.”

Mary comes out of the bathroom and wipes her eyes against the black lacy bra in her hands. She turns to Yuh-vonne, snuffling. What should I do? is the question she obviously puts to her in Chinese.

Everything’s in Yuh-vonne’s court for a minute. She launches into heartfelt negotiations with Mary while Larry continues to rub his feet and look indifferent. On the muted TV, a Chinese shopping channel is hawking a lime green Barcalounger knockoff that’s the spitting image of the one I’m sitting on. I’m not sure whether I should feel vaguely famous because of this.

“I don’t like her,” Larry says, rubbing his feet.

“Who? Mary?”

“Mary I like again. And Yuh-vonne I have great respect for.”

“Then who don’t you like?” I ask.

“The taxi driver,” Larry says. “Why does she have to be in on this?”

“The taxi driver’s a woman?” I ask.

“That is my judgment, yes,” Larry says. “And a very expensive one, too. She charged me eight hundred RMB for the use of her cab today. That’s more than a hundred bucks.”

“I thought the uncle was picking up the tab,” I say.

“As did I.”

I look at the cabbie with new respect. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any black-market connections for a kidney, would you?” I ask her.

“King tizzy, shoe can go,” the cabbie says, waving no.

On TV they’re now pitching some kind of bird poison that makes unwanted birds keel over almost immediately. You can rid the whole neighborhood of pesky, noisy birds! At last Yuh-vonne comes out of her huddle with Mary.