I seize the opportunity to abet the surgeon’s good spirits with a measured amount of flattery.

“You are a young man to be in such a position of responsibility.”

“Only look young, perhaps!”

“Oh ho ho,” I say. “At the top of your game. And you have traveled the world, I see from the photos.”

“Oh, yes. I have been to your country six time. Conferences in Boston, Chicago, D.C., New York, Miami -”

“ Miami,” Larry says.

“My daughter goes to school in Miami,” Dr. X says.

Larry’s knuckle-cracking goes into double time.

“You know, of course,” I say, “that your patient, Larry, is a professor who lives just outside the Miami city limits. He is in a position to provide help for your daughter.”

“Oh, sank you,” Dr. X says, crushing out his cigarette eagerly in the soil of a plastic geranium.

“Whatever she needs,” Larry adds. “Jobs, references, apartments. I used to own a building not far from the water. Four apartments. They told me I needed to abide by rent control. I gutted the first three floors, made one jumbo apartment. Guess what? Bye-bye rent control!”

I glare at Larry. “But of course there will be rent control for your daughter,” I say.

“Goes without saying,” Larry says, glaring back at me. “This building wasn’t even in Miami, it was in Boston.”

“Whatever she needs,” I repeat. “And I myself live only a plane ride away!”

“Only a plane ride!” Dr. X is delighted by this.

“So we must host you the next time you come to visit your daughter. Larry can show you the best spots for food.”

“Oh, sank you very much.”

“You like sea cucumber?” I ask the surgeon. “Larry is something of an aficionado when it comes to sea cucumber. He knows the best restaurants for sea cucumber in all of Miami!”

“Oh ho ho,” Dr. X says cheerily. He actually rubs his hands together.

Larry’s not one to be outdone, unless it’s in his strategic interest to be so. “And of course you know that Miami is one of the major sea-cruise capitals of the world,” he adds.

“Yes?” Dr. X asks, anticipating happy tidings so acutely that he raises his eyebrows with pleasure. Handsome, handsome man, I decide.

“Yes. To look at my corn-fed appearance, you might think I’ve never ventured beyond the Bible Belt. Maybe just to Montreal to buy knockoff meds. But how wrong you’d be. I don’t think even Dan knows this about me, but I have taken numerous deep-discounted, spare-no-luxury cruises out of Miami, courtesy of one of my ex-students from Puerto Rico who now functions as a flack for one of the major liners.”

“I like cruise very much,” Dr. X says, wide-eyed. “To where they go?”

“They’re so cheap I don’t even ask where,” Larry replies. “She gets me special deals to the tune of two hundred and forty-five dollars per person including port charges for a week in a penthouse suite, outside balcony, marble tub with Jacuzzi, freebie shrimp cocktail at any hour, all the chocolate strawberries you can eat. Good for your head, all this luxury? Put it this way. For two forty-five, that’s the cost of a single psychiatric appointment, and which do you think will make you feel better about yourself? Bottom line: Anyone I say, she can set up with identical privileges.”

“Ooohhh,” Dr. X says, nearly speechless. “You are fortunate man in your connection, I see.”

“Not really,” Larry replies flatly. “She wasn’t anyone I even cared for, particularly. (By this I mean I never felt moved to Privately Tutor her. Very light-skinned, but still not my type. All I did was give her a ten-day extension, and she considers herself forever in my debt.)”

“But I share your zest for foreign experience,” Dr. X says.

“Oh, I see what you’re driving at,” Larry corrects himself. “No, no zest, not for me, not really. Travel makes me depressionistic. Matter fact, after I get home from this trip, if I ever step more than ten yards from my condo again, please shoot me.”

Tick-tick…tock. Jade’s eyes are as dark as marbles.

“Hold everything,” Larry suddenly says. “I may have misspoken. There actually may be a twelve-dollar port charge I didn’t report in the Bahamas.”

“Twelve dollar I can manage!” Dr. X chortles, coming around the desk to clap Larry on the shoulder. “I like the way you operate, Larry. Good head on you shoulder!”

“The appreciation is mutual,” Larry replies without emotion, discreetly shrugging out from under Dr. X’s hand. “And meantime we will keep your secret very silent,” he says.

“Yes, first thing is silence…”

“If asked, Dan here will find a way to disguise all the pertinent facts,” Larry says.

“Disguise very important,” Dr. X says. “Sometime matter of life and death.”

“Dan’s very strong in that department,” Larry says, opening up a second line of assault while I adopt an expression of deep modesty. “Every manner of persuasion. You should have seen the masterful way he talked his way out of things when we were kids.”

“Yes, me, too,” Dr. X says, chortling at the memory. “In Cultural Revolution, I pretend my family all a bunch of poor peasant!”

“That truly is amusing,” Larry says with an unamused expression.

“Just a bunch of hilly-billy dirt farmer!” Dr. X says. He is doubling over with laughter. “Rural weed pokers, even with advance degree!”

“Dan, too,” Larry continues, killing two birds with one stone-making points with Dr. X while taking potshots at me. “During his hitchhiking days, he used to convince his drivers they wanted to go where he was going, not where they were going, even if it was miles out of their way. Did you know he was voted Con Man Who Will Sell the Brooklyn Bridge by his senior class in high school?”

“Well, I was also voted Best Actor, because I wanted to channel my abilities into something artistically acceptable,” I say, firing Larry a cautionary look.

“Didn’t I tell you? My cousin!” Larry says, beaming at me proudly but also with more than a little malice.

Dr. X stops his wheezing to look me over admiringly: my ratty sandals, my filthy white hat. “Yes, that truly impressive,” he says.

“A total bunco artist!” Larry brags.

I cross my legs and clear my throat and do everything but kick Larry under the table to let him know it’s time to start wrapping up.

Larry ignores me.

“All the best writers are like that,” Larry expands. “Faulkner was considered a total goldbricker by his townsfolk. Frank McCourt, the review of ’Tis in his hometown Limerick paper was headlined ‘’Tisn’t.’”

Now I do kick Larry while Dr. X rocks with hilarity at this new information. Down below, where I meet Larry while pretending to adjust my Velcro sandal, I mutter, “How the fuck are you in possession of these facts?”

“Hey, I read the funny pages like everyone else,” he mutters back, before bobbing above the table again. When I ascend, Dr. X is scribbling his personal cell-phone number on a business card, just in time to present it to me with both hands and the slightest of bows.

“Sank you,” I say, giving him mine, not quite so impressively. But he seems to enjoy the splotches on my well-traveled card, perhaps figuring that an organic business card goes with my getup.

“Perhaps at our next meeting, I will tell you details about my latest breakthrough,” Larry tells Dr. X. “A UFO hotline so people who think they’ve seen a flying saucer won’t feel so alone. They get a friendly voice on the other end of the line taking down their information with the respect they may or may not deserve.”

“UFO! I am UFO buff, big time! Tell me details now!” Dr. X begs.

Larry sadly shakes his head no. “1-800-I SAW UFO, is all for now,” he says.

Dr. X is jittering with so much excitement I half expect him to haul out a violin and start playing “Danny Boy.” Instead he comes around from behind his desk and urgently starts rubbing both of Larry’s shoulders. “I love UFO! UFO give me chance to sharpen party-host abilities, entertain my friends at soirees with many creepy tales!”