“I am the head of pediatric cardiology.” He was a slight man; his hair was thin. His eyelashes were feminine and curling. His desk glimmered with crystal paperweights.
Lenny put his hands on the man’s desk. “What do you need in your wing?”
“Pardon me?”
“Let me tell you how I see the new wing of the hospital,” said Lenny, glancing at the doctor’s nametag. “The Alfred A. Johnson wing. Twenty million dollars. A children’s playroom. Top equipment. A research lab. Endowed chairs.” He listened to the hoarse, meaty sound of his voice. “I am the producer of Anything for Money. Look at me.”
THE HOSPITAL SENT AURORA HOME. SHE WAS WEAK BUT DID NOT know how ill she was, and Lenny did not tell her. He did not allow himself to think about her physical state. Instead, he indulged in feelings of pride at his wealth and its ability to bend the rules. When he received the letter from the hospital a few days later, he almost wanted to frame it, for it seemed to reflect some magnificence in his soul. The letter said: Aurora Weiss is number one on the list for transplants of the heart.
Lenny called the doctor once, twice a day. He awaited the ghoulish harvest reports: a young boy killed in a car accident, a teen stabbed to death in a fight. But none of these hearts had the right antigens that would match Aurora’s; they had to wait for the correct heart.
Waiting was what fools did; he decided to take things into his own hands. He stayed up all night, making calls. He spoke into a phone that did automatic translating to doctors in Germany, Sweden, France. His price soared. Thirty million dollars. New wings. Top equipment. Huge salaries. High-tech playrooms. He shouted these offers into the phone at 2:00 AM, floating on the imagined gratitude of others. They would all talk about how Lenny Weiss had saved his granddaughter by calling every doctor in the world.
AURORA CAME INTO THE ROOM ONE NIGHT WHEN LENNY WAS MAKING his calls. She stood in her pajamas, staring, as he shouted into the phone.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He put down the phone.
He told her that her heart was not well and, in more detail, how he was going to help her. “I’m going to find one,” he said. “People know me and they want to help—”
She saw through this immediately. “I’m sorry!” she cried out. “Sorry, sorry—”
He saw, at once, how his daughter had behaved as a mother.
“Aurora. I’ll save you,” he said; the sound of these words comforted him. “I swear it.”
But she did not let him touch her — she backed away from him with a dim expression. She was already disappearing and believed this was what people had truly wanted from her all along.
HE SKIPPED WORK. HE DID NOT SLEEP. THE RIGHT HEART WAS NOT appearing. He tried to think about who would give up their heart for millions of dollars. Drug addicts, the terminally ill — but their hearts would be in poor shape. He sat behind the dark glass of his limo, grimly watching girls play soccer, wishing one of them would trip. He imagined his Mercedes plowing into a group of teenage boys running on the sidewalk, killing enough of them to give Aurora more of a chance.
He proposed to his staff a special episode: “Who Will Die For Money.” They would audition people willing to give up their hearts for a staggering pot of $5 million. His staff thought it was a PR stunt and called an audition. The holding room filled with an assortment of the homeless, individuals not in the best health, and well-dressed, shifty types who seemed to think there was some way to obtain the money without dying.
They were all busily filling out their names and addresses when he got a call from Rosita.
“A heart has arrived on the doorstep,” she said.
He rushed home.
A man identified himself as a cardiac surgeon and a purveyor of black-market hearts. He was from Ukraine. Dr. Stoly Michavcezek sat in Lenny’s living room, holding a Styrofoam ice chest on his lap.
“Whose heart was this?” asked Lenny.
“A man. Olympic gymnast. Fell on mat and dead. Few hours. Payment up front.”
They transferred the heart, quickly, to Lenny’s enormous Sub-Zero freezer; then Lenny brought in a specialist from Cedars-Sinai to look at the heart.
“This isn’t a human heart,” said the doctor. “This is the heart of a chimp.”
When he returned to the studio, the prospective contestants had all been dismissed, and black-suited men from the legal department were waiting in his office.
“Lenny,” said one. “This has got to stop.”
AURORA WORKED ON HER MOVIE OBSESSIVELY; SHE SPENT MUCH OF her time in her room. When they had a meal together, he did most of the talking; he lied about his closeness to saving her. “There’s a doctor in Mexico,” he’d say, “a small hospital. International laws, they’re all we have to get around. .” She ate very little and watched him like a child who had disbelieved adults her whole life.
One night, she burst out of her room and hurried to her seat at the table. “My plot has changed,” she said. “Listen. There are seventeen aliens from the planet of Eyahoo. They have legs in the shape of wheels and heads like potatoes. Their planet is very slippery, and they move very fast on their wheels. Often they bump into each other. Their heads are getting sore.”
He listened.
“They need a new cousin who can make their planet less slippery. Their cousin is named Yabonda, and she lives on a neighboring planet. She has long legs with huge feet that are very absorbent, like paper towels. They want to learn how to have feet like her. Now. Do you think they should maybe invite her to Eyahoo for dinner or just come and kidnap her?”
She leaned back in her chair, clasped her hands tightly, and watched him.
“What would happen with each?” he asked.
“If they asked her to dinner, she would be transported in a glamorous carriage made of starlight.”
“Uh-huh.”
“If they kidnapped her, it would hurt.” She stretched out her fingers, as though trying to hold everything. “Tell me,” she said, sharply.
WHEN AURORA HAD LEARNED ABOUT HER CONDITION, SHE STOPPED stealing. Lenny began leaving things out for her — his cell phone and toothbrush and car keys — in the hope that she would take them, but in the morning, they remained where he had left them. He missed her midnight rambling through the mansion, waking up to see which objects of his she would find precious.
One night, he heard her footsteps padding down the hall.
Lenny jumped out of bed and followed her. This time, Aurora seemed to have no particular direction, but went around the foyer like a floating, circling bird. Then she saw Lenny. They stared at each other in the dusk of the hallway, and the shocked quiet around them made Lenny feel that they were meeting for the first time.
Aurora began to cry. “I don’t know what to take.”
The girl knelt to the floor and threw up. The child’s distress made Lenny feel as though he himself were dissolving.
“Take me,” said Lenny.
The girl stared at him.
“I’ll go with you,” said Lenny.
“Where?”
“Wherever. I’ll go too.”
“How?”
“I can find a way to do it.”
He did not know how to stop these words, did not know if they were lies or the truth — they simply came out of him.
“I don’t want to be by myself,” said Aurora.
He closed his eyes and said, “I’ll be there, too.”
When the dawn came, he was sleeping on the floor beside Aurora’s bed. He woke up, his promise an inchoate, cold feeling in his body; then he remembered what he had said.