“May I make a suggestion?”

“As you wish.”

“Yoo-hoo, you’re doing another heroic thing, by finding your way to this hospital room. Maybe that ought to do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the American medical establishment in its wisdom counseled you to be a good little Do Bee for ten years and make no fuss-”

“That’s the U.S. policy for how to help its citizens-”

“And instead, you took charge of your destiny and joined the army of half a million Americans last year who got off their asses and are doing something! Whether you succeed in saving your own life or not, that ought to convince you of your self-worth.”

Down came the rain and washed the spider out…

“Think about it, will you, Larry?”

“I do, Dan. I always think about what you say.”

From nine floors below, a fleet of police cars sounds like an armada of rowboats with outboard motors. The fridge makes a ghastly noise as it shudders to a stop. Larry flinches.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I saw the apparition?” he asks out of nowhere.

“What operation?”

“Not operation: apparition. Remind me to tell you that saga sometime.”

“We’ve got time now.”

He points to his ear and shakes his head no.

“No one’s gonna overhear. Or understand.”

Still he shakes his head no. “I lived through the Nixon years. I make a policy of not trusting.”

I close the door. And lock it. Now he’s ready.

“Dan, you know me well enough to know I’m not exactly touchy-feely. But when I was ten one summer day, I was helping my neighbor Frankie DelSesto on his newspaper route. Nice kid, grew up to tour with Aerosmith, in charge of selling their souvenirs. Any case, we were just turning back from the beach when I saw a ten-foot-tall Jesus Christ on a rooftop. He had an intricately carved staff, a full beard, and a long deep brown luxurious robe. Instantly I knew it was Jesus. I have no idea how I knew it was Jesus and not Moses, given my heritage, but there wasn’t even a question. It was Jesus. He knew my name though he didn’t speak; it was thought transference. What I got was a wonderful feeling of absolute peace-nonverbal absolute peace. ‘What’s the message?’ I wanted to know. ‘Everything’s A-OK,’ he said, without words. It wasn’t a question of him trying to convert me or anything, he just wanted to reassure me. There was an awareness of me and what I needed. I loved it at first, but the next day, when I tried to make sense of it, I didn’t like it one bit. I was a reality-based kid. It was too scary. I never spoke about it for years. Finally I asked a psychology major, did that make me insane? He said, ‘No, you are not insane.’ I thought that was a pretty strong statement.”

“Jesus said, ‘Everything’s going to be A-OK’?” I ask.

“No. ‘Everything’s A-OK.’ Like it’s A-OK right now and always will be. Eternally.”

“For the record,” I say, “I don’t think you’re insane either. So where do you want to go with this?”

“It’s just to say,” Larry says, struggling, “sometimes I have feelings. Premonitions, call it what you will. And I have a very bad feeling about this surgery.”

“Larry, you need to rest. Post-dialysis is no time to make sweeping statements.”

“No, Dan, I’m in my right mind. I know it’s bad luck or whatever to speak ill of it, but I think something bad is going to happen. I am not going to be all right. Even if a kidney comes through and they put it in, the surgeon’s going to botch something and I’m not going to make it.”

“Larry-”

“I’m just informing you, Dan. Please take it seriously. Contrary to what Jesus, or whoever he was, was telling me when I was ten, I do not have the feeling that everything is A-OK. Never has been and certainly isn’t now.”

I don’t know what to say. I feel like my brain has been scrambled by dialysis, too. But it’s vital to keep up an optimistic façade in front of him. Two nurses walk past in the hallway, conversing. “Quizzical gums he has!

Major social craze!”

“Ow, the light hurts my eyes,” he tells me. Even with everything turned off in the room, too much light seeps in through the gauze curtains from the floodlights outside for his sensitive, post-dialysis eyes. I help him put on his box-turtle shades, glad to be distracted from thoughts of his demise. But still the floodlights bother him. I remove the sheets from the spare twin bed and rig two squishy chairs by balancing one on top of the other and-another thing I never thought I’d be doing for my cousin-climb up to tie a series of knots in the sheets around the curtain rod. Being on my tiptoes on such an unstable surface against a thin picture window nine floors above the ground serves to keep me from dwelling on his premonition.

“Better?” I ask, panting, when I come back down.

“Thank you, Dan.”

“Does that closet light bother you as well?” I ask, because one of the Freakishly Thin Business Socks lovingly laundered by Mary is keeping the closet door ajar a crack.

“I use it so I don’t get nervous in the dark.”

“But isn’t it too bright? The light slants right into your eyes. I can turn on the bulb in the other room instead, if you like, and let the light peep under the door.”

“I don’t want to trouble you.”

I show him how little trouble it is.

“That’s good,” he says.

“You should be snug as a bug in a rug,” I say, tucking him in.

“Why are you doing this, Dan?”

“It’s going to be too bright otherwise.”

“No, I mean…all this.”

I look over this relic of a man, trying to grasp that he’s the same person as the chunky little boy who used to run up the down escalators. How much of that boy is left to save? The nurses pass by again, on their way back to their station. “Sheer drizzle spice, steak on top!”

“Y’know, I don’t know why, exactly, but I’ll tell you something,” I say. “Every now and then, I get your mother’s face in the back of my mind, saying, ‘Thank you, Danny. Thank you for taking care of my little boy.’”

“That’s nice,” Larry says.

“But as for the other reasons, can I get back to you? Honestly, I’m still working on it.”

WHY I’M MORE AND MORE FREAKED BY CHINA

Now that I’ve left Larry’s room, I can admit that his premonition rattled me. He’s right about so many things. Will he be right about the surgery, too?

The lights are out in the stairwell, and as I blindly feel my way down eight pitch-black flights of stairs, I wonder if Larry’s not the only one with brain damage.

When I reach the street, the city’s inflamed in a firestorm of neon. Swirling dragons. Flaming serpents. It looks as if a demon magician has touched it with an evil wand.

The darkness here’s more diabolical than the darkness at home. As I walk alone down a spooky alleyway, bike riders fly out of the murk like bats on wheels, squealing “Go back to quack-a-doe!”

The air, when all is said and done, is no laughing matter. It’s totalitarian pollution, a one-party blanket of smog so supersaturated that it can’t absorb the smoke from the sidewalk barbecues, much less the blue plumes from firecrackers that erupt out of nowhere, veiling all.

I’m lost. Even though the arms of the hospital are more or less visible through the haze, tonight they spread like the wings of a malevolent owl, leading me nowhere I want to follow.

I’m wet, or about to be. In a spot not far from the hospital, a promenade functions as a nighttime amusement area for adults, between fake volcanic rocks and a patio for old-timers to do their tai chi. But as I’m venturing closer, a fountain of colored water erupts from the rocks, drenching me head to toe.

Wet and lost as I am, I understand that these old-timers were my first enemies. Delicately doing tai chi between the fountains, these are the infamous Red Chinese of my childhood, the ones we were told were sadistically brainwashing American POWs in secret North Korean camps. And here I’ve put myself at their mercy, surrounded by them on all sides…