This is not going well. I look at Jade but get nothing back. Do I see a chastened look on Larry’s face? But he’s impossible to read as well. There are plastic potted plants in all four corners of the room, looking rather proud of being plastic. A slight smell of toilet lingers in the air.

“ China is not so bad,” Dr. X continues in a scolding tone. “I am not a member of the Party, but I believe that for Chinese our system is the best. Not absolute freedom like you have, but little by little. We have over two-thousand-year history. Give China time. Maybe fifty, one hundred years we be like you. But not now. You want us implode like Soviet Union? No, slowly, slowly is the ticket, also quietly, quietly.” He takes off his orange-tinted Bono glasses and tosses them on his desk.” You understand?”

I understand. I cannot tell whether Larry understands. As for Jade-I’ve never seen her so unreadable. Her eyes trap the light to reveal zero.

“And don’t take picture of me with cell-phone camera when you pretend you text-messaging! No tricks like those, I not born yesterday…”

“No, certainly not,” I say.

“Last year simple,” Dr. X continues, putting his glasses back on. “I do more than hundred and fifty kidneys, important people all over world. When I do them, they become lifelong friends. They help me. One hand wash other. You understand?”

In case I didn’t, there’s a photo of Dr. X shaking hands and exchanging toothy grins with a famous sixties American radical I almost recognize. I can’t quite remember: What did the radical do to get on Nixon’s enemy list? And where’ve I seen those ceramic parrots before?

“This year very difficult. That is why number-one importance is silence. I do not tell government I work on Westerner. I perform in secret. If government know I need kidney for Westerner, they take knife to my program, shut down hospital. So number one is silence. You must protect my program.”

“I will tell the truth,” I say.

This is a tactical error for which I’m immediately taken to task.

“No truth, no lies. Just silence. Otherwise I not able to get permit to help foreigners, not just your cousin, everyone.”

“No, of course not, I understand.”

“Only silence…”

As though in response, the room falls into a hush. Just as the doctor ordered. I can make out the ticking from an antique grandfather clock in the corner, doubtless the gift of a grateful tycoon somewhere. Tick-tick…tock…

Am I not dressed properly? It’s well and good that I took out my earring, but the rest of my business attire is hardly up to snuff. Untucked shirt, goatee that hasn’t been groomed since I arrived in China, hat that isn’t quite as white as it was before encountering this air… No wonder Dr. X is directing all his comments to Larry and his Albanian threads. Every time the doctor is forced to swing his head in my direction, he keeps his eyes closed. At least we’re both two-fisted in the fake-power-prop department…

Tick-tick…tock…

There’s a sound to my left, a bullfrog warming up, tones so low I almost don’t recognize them for a minute. Then I realize they’re emanating from Larry’s throat.

“I couldn’t help noticing there’s no security on your office door,” he says.

“Why need security?” Dr. X says irritably. “We have guards at front door, many guards strolling grounds-”

“Why is because anyone already inside the hospital can access your sanctum with impunity,” Larry informs him expressionlessly. “What you need…”

To my horror, Larry regales Dr. X with a description of his “mock security system,” an ornate wall plate studded with plastic buttons: black, yellow, red. “But no wires, no fuse, no circuitry,” Larry informs him. “Besides being a plain wall plate, ninety-nine cents at most hardware stores, with about sixteen cents of added decoration, it’s nuffing.”

Dr. X contemplates the notion for a long minute. “It’s nuffing?” he echoes.

“That’s the beauty part,” Larry says. “It doesn’t send out a silent alarm to notify the police. Doesn’t set off a siren to scare the neighbors. It does nuffing but let the perp imagine the worst.”

I shoot Larry a warning look meant to signify, What happened to Scout’shonor? He shoots one back that signifies, What do Scouts know about building rapport?…and resumes maintaining his deadpan gaze.

Dr. X pushes out his chair an inch. “I hook up how?”

“Self-sticking adhesive on the back.”

Dr. X loosens the muscles of his face, and for the first time I can see that it would be a pleasant face-that is, if we were on the same team as those well-nourished CEOs. “How many I can buy?”

“No need,” Larry says. “Once you give the word, I can have four dozen speeding their way to you, free of charge.”

Larry allows a small smile to squat on his lips. Dr. X does the same, filling the smile with the filter end of a Benson & Hedges cigarette that Larry leans to light, after which he leaves the Cosmos Club matchbook on the desk facing himself, so Dr. X has to strain a little to read it.

“I like the way this man think,” Dr. X says to no one in particular, exhaling yellow smoke, perusing the matchbook, exhaling smoke that’s even yellower a second time. “So to matter at hand. I need best kidney for this situation, suitable and young. I have already potential donor being check for disease, AIDS and so forth.”

“So wait,” I say cautiously. “Does this mean we’re moving forward?”

“I help you because you are friend of friend, but you keep secret top priority. I like Americans, but please, no more Americans! You getting last kidney in China.”

I mask my excitement by skimming my eyes over the medical tomes lined up impressively in the bookcase behind Dr. X’s head. A video titled Carnivore Babes is in among the tomes, making no effort to disguise itself. Jade maintains her blankness while her pupils make tiny flickering motions as though observing a Ping-Pong match under a microscope.

“We are peppering very many documents for permission to go through,” Dr. X continues. “Need strict order from high court. Paperwork in process for donor to sign, also his family, everyone be on same page, no coercion.”

I look over at Jade, who betrays not so much as a blink. I don’t need to look at Larry. I can hear the knuckles being cracked beneath his poker face.

I can hardly contain myself. “You pepper all the documents you need,” I say. “So do you mind if I ask who the donor is?”

“Bad-bad criminal,” Dr. X says. “Thirty-one years of age and already kill many people. Break in woman’s house, kill woman’s father, then decide he want no witness so come back and kill woman and woman’s baby. Very bad man!” he says with surprising vehemence. “I would kill him hundred times!”

Tick-tick…tock…

After a heated pause during which the toilet smell grows a little sharper, Larry and I choose the same second to both blurt out questions. I let him go first.

“Any way I can try out the kidney for a few weeks and get my money back if it doesn’t work?” Larry asks.

“Ho ho,” Dr. X says. “Like take for test drive!” Dr. X seems to enjoy the question. I’m the only one in the room, besides Larry, who knows that Larry isn’t joking.

My turn. “Any way I can see the operation?”

“See, how you mean?”

I mime adjusting the focus on a pair of binoculars. “See? Be in operating room to watch.”

Dr. X reacts as if I’ve uttered an ageless witticism. “Oh ho, equally funny. Not even in your country. Not anywhere in world. Surgeon get nervous, slash by mistake, bloody mess everywhere! Oh ho ho!” Dr. X says, leaning back to put his polished loafers on the desk. His eyes are more or less open when he swings his head in my direction. “You not such lousy fellows, you two!”

Even the grandfather clock seems to be enjoying our presence now. The glaze on the ceramic eagles, also the grins of the sheiks, seems to glint along with the bottles of show-off scotch. Besides me, Larry’s the only one in the room who knows I’m not joking.