A Changed Man (13 page)

Vincent’s saying, “I got into the anger
some.
And maybe because I wasn’t raised that way, it felt kind of good, letting out all that rage. Having someone to blame always helps. Everybody knows that.”

After a silence, Colette says, “So what made you change your mind?”

“His
heart,
” says Meyer.

“Pardon me?” Colette has forgotten Meyer.

“The mind is easy to change. The heart is much more tricky. And our friend here has had a change of heart.”

“Heart, then.” Colette’s feathers seem ruffled. Does she think Meyer’s correcting her? He was just trying to take things to a higher level. And, to be honest, he has to admit he wants her attention. It’s one thing to see Wiesel swarmed by paparazzi. Vincent Nolan grabbing the limelight is something else entirely.

“A change of heart,” says Vincent. “It happened over time.”

That’s not what Vincent said last week. Did Bonnie persuade him to edit his story? That would be unlike her. More likely, she made him understand that the conversion started before the rave. It took longer than he realized.

“I never totally bought it,” he says. “Not that I totally
didn’t
buy it. But there were always lots of little things helping me keep my head straight. Books I read. The Internet. Stuff I saw on TV. I never liked the music, which should have told me something. Luftwaffe marches played at top volume are not what you’d call swinging, and those hate bands like Iron Fist…who could listen to that?”

“What kind of music
do
you like?” says Colette.

“Al Green,” says Vincent.

“I
love
Al Green,” says Colette.

“Al Green changed my life,” says Vincent. “One night, I was at my cousin’s, everyone had gone to bed, I was listening to my Disc-man, playing this Al Green CD.
Love and Happiness.
That part where he says, ‘Three o’clock in the morning’—”

“I love that part,” says Colette.

“And Al Green, excuse me, is…?” asks Meyer. Who is this man with the power to turn a
New York Times
reporter to jelly? Meyer quizzes Bonnie, then Roberta. The others are also gazing at Vincent with puppylike affection.

Bonnie comes to Meyer’s rescue. “Al Green. I guess you’d have to hear him. He sang all these really sweet love songs, and now he’s doing gospel….” Bonnie’s hands fall open. Explaining would take forever. And Meyer still wouldn’t have a clue unless he heard Al Green, and probably not then. Meyer likes Beethoven and Stravinsky.

Well, the hell with all of them, sitting here on their fat protected American behinds, while his mother and father were being murdered, while he was sleeping in the woods and pleading with drunken peasants to let him live one more day. Meyer knows he’s being unfair. Bonnie, Roberta, Vincent, Colette—they weren’t born until after the war.

Still, why is Meyer wasting what little is left of his life watching children talk to children, listening to some punk kid hold forth on what music he likes? He thinks of Minna, in her hospital bed. He’ll be there before long. Meanwhile, Meyer needs to remind himself why he’s here: so he can afford to give the help that he himself had to plead for. There’s an innocent man in jail in Iran. Meyer’s got a foundation to run, bills to pay, work to do. He sighs. And Bonnie, bless her heart, leans across the table and fills Meyer’s water glass as if all her love is pouring out to him from that sweating pitcher.

“Al Green—” prompts the reporter.

“So I was listening to Al Green. And I finally understood. That the stuff ARM says can’t be true, because Al Green is, you know…African-American—”

Vincent’s never used that term before. But he does now. Smoothly. He’s practiced.

“Obviously.” Colette rolls her eyes.

“Some of the guys in ARM used to say that after God created the white races, he had some dirt left over, so he made the mud people. It was late in the week. God was tired. He wasn’t concentrating. But before he could catch his mistake, the mud races were up and running. And then other guys would say—and it would always start this huge argument—that God made blacks on the fifth day, when He made the beasts of the field, and not on the sixth day, when He created humans. There’s also a school of thought that says the mud races were created by humans mating with animals….”

Vincent’s been doing well so far, but now he seems to have wandered off on some horrifying tangent. Next he’ll be telling the reporter that the white men are the true Israelites whom God has commanded to save the world from Satan’s Jewish children. Meyer shoots a quick look at Bonnie, who also seems concerned. Clearly, there’s some more work to be done, a few more…experiments to be run, before they let this guy loose in a room with everyone who might ever give a nickel to Brotherhood Watch.

“But the bottom line,” Vincent is saying, “is that when you hear a guy like Al Green, you know that can’t be true. A guy like that, he has such a beautiful voice, you hear him, and you
know
he’s been hand-picked by God.”

“Do you believe in God?” Colette asks. Is all this going into those three hundred words on page two of the Metro section? That question could pin them here for hours while Vincent rambles on about his spiritual development.

Vincent turns to Meyer. “If this guy believes,
I
believe,” he says. “Because to me, he’s like a…samurai hero. The other thing that turned me around was reading Dr. Maslow’s books.”

Colette writes this down, then turns to Meyer for comment. What is Meyer supposed to say? He’s glad he saved the guy’s life. If that’s what they want to believe.

“It gives us hope,” Meyer says. “All our work is based on our faith that humans can change. But sometimes even
we
have doubts. So it’s encouraging to meet someone who has passed from dark into light and who wants to work for justice and freedom.”

Just then, there’s a knock at the door.

It’s Colette who says, “Come in.” She knows the knock is for her: a bearded guy with a chest full of cameras.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Are you almost finished?”

“We’re finished,” says Colette.

“I’m Jim Mason,” says the photographer, giving the group a professional once-over. Who’s someone, who’s not, who’s photogenic. Elie Wiesel isn’t around at the moment. The guy will settle for whoever’s here. He asks Meyer and Vincent, “Can I get a couple of shots of you guys together?”

“Uh…about the benefit dinner,” Bonnie prompts Colette.

“Hold on,” says Colette. “One last question. Mr. Nolan, I understand you plan to speak at the annual Brotherhood Watch Rights benefit gala.”

“I am?” Vincent looks at Bonnie. He seems genuinely surprised. It’s been several days since Meyer and Bonnie made the final decision. Could Vincent really not know? Meyer’s used to being able to tell if someone is telling the truth. Not knowing gives him an unsettled feeling about the whole situation.

“I guess I am.” Vincent grins shyly.

“We guess he is,” says Meyer.

“And the dinner is where? And when?” Colette is just checking. Roberta has made sure she knows.

“The Temple of Dendur,” Bonnie says. “The Metropolitan Museum of Art.”

“June 11,” says Roberta.

Colette notes this, then looks up.

“Timothy McVeigh’s execution,” she says. “That can’t have been accidental.”

Meyer thought the date sounded familiar. Some night for a party! Meyer glares at Roberta, who evades his gaze, then Bonnie, whose expression is so pained that Meyer can’t allow himself the consolation of anger. It isn’t anyone’s fault. They changed the date of the execution. Meyer’s got a lot on his mind. This is what he depends on his staff for.

Meyer says, “It wasn’t an accident. There
are
no accidents. And what could be more appropriate?”

It’s a bluff, but Meyer risks it. He must still be quick on his feet, or anyway, quick enough, because Colette is balancing on the edge of not knowing what he means and thinking she
should
know what he means. The balance tips toward
should
know.

“Nothing. I guess,” Colette says. “Thank you all for your time.”

A
NY SECOND NOW,
Bonnie will calm down and get on with
her work, but it’s been two hours since the press conference, and not a minute has passed without Bonnie thinking about it or, alternately, trying not to think about it. And not knowing what to think about it.

Evidently, Vincent’s a natural. He had that
Times
reporter eating out of his hand. He’s nearly as good as Meyer, even though he’s just a beginner. And really, it’s a miracle considering who the guy is and where he’s come from. Given the right breaks, he could have been an ARM leader. But maybe if he had been, he wouldn’t have come to them. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone to that rave. Maybe he would have been home collecting the proceeds from the drugs being sold by foot soldiers like Cousin Raymond.

Since she’s come to work for Meyer, Bonnie’s become a student of—an expert on—personal charisma. And it’s always impressive, even if you don’t trust it. The impressive part is how well it works. What she doesn’t trust is the part that can seem calculated and phony.

Once, on a family vacation, when the boys were small, they took a tour boat around Boston Harbor. Max found a bunch of worshipful teenage girls and had them enthralled with some tall story about his dad’s experiences on a lion-hunting safari. Practically in tears, Danny kept saying to Bonnie and Joel, “But he’s lying. He’s
lying.
” When Meyer—and now Vincent—go to work on reporters, Bonnie understands how Danny must have felt.

Bonnie has heard Meyer repeat the same anecdotes so often that she can tell them herself, exactly like Meyer, word for word, pause for pause. But with Vincent, what’s disturbed her is the story she’d never heard him tell. The one about his father’s death. Why hadn’t he told Bonnie? She’d given him plenty of room. Early in their acquaintance, she’d mentioned that she was an orphan. She’d told him about the death of her father in a freak auto accident on the FDR, almost eight years ago. And about how her mother had died, of a stroke, two years before that. Slumped forward on the kitchen table, at dinner with Bonnie’s father.

Vincent had said that his father was dead and that his mother was remarried and living upstate. But he’d never mentioned suicide. And today he told a reporter, a
stranger.
Bonnie had caught herself wringing her hands when that little item slipped out. Is Bonnie feeling
competitive?
How bizarre is
that?

It shouldn’t bother her, really. Vincent’s tragedy wowed Brenda Starr. And maybe it wouldn’t have worked so well if he was repeating himself, telling a story that someone in the room already knew. Still, he couldn’t have been saving it for an occasion like this. The guy may be good with reporters, but he’s not a publicity genius. Or maybe he is. Some of the other stuff he said was not merely convincing, but beautiful. That part about Al Green being handpicked by God. You couldn’t just make that up.

Bonnie cannot imagine knowing Vincent well enough to ask him how he could tell a reporter an important fact about his life that he never told her. It would seem as if she were complaining in a way that she wouldn’t dare, not unless they were lovers, family members, dear friends, closer than what they are: coworkers and temporary roommates.

She leaves her office and strolls over to the cubicle where Vincent has been set up with his own computer. Most of the office computers feed into a bank of high-volume printers. But Vincent has his own cheap printer. It’s like quarantine. Maybe the tech-support guys picked up on something about him and had a techie reflex: Keep him out of the system.

Vincent’s job, such as it is, is to type everything he knows about ARM into a file on hate groups that the foundation is compiling. That was Meyer’s idea. It never occurred to Meyer to ask if Vincent could type. Luckily, Bonnie discovered, he’d learned in junior high. And if he’d found the foundation on the Internet, he must know his way around a computer.

Now he’s leaning over the keyboard, way too close to the screen. He could hurt his eyes. Could he need glasses?

“What are you writing?” Bonnie says.

Vincent jumps. His instinct is to cover the screen. After a beat he relaxes.

“Check it out,” he says, vaulting out of his chair so Bonnie can get near the monitor.

Bonnie sits down and reads to herself:

“One hot-button topic in ARM is the Jewish monopoly of the media. There are guys who can recite long lists of names of the Jews who run TV stations and Hollywood studios and all the major newspapers. And the hard core not only knows the big Jews’ names but also their home addresses.”

“Interesting,” Bonnie says. Big Jews?
All
the major newspapers? She looks at Vincent, longing to ask: How much of that did you—do you—believe? But it doesn’t seem fair to make him explain himself anymore today after he’s already spent so much time and energy explaining himself to a reporter. He doesn’t have to work overtime just because Bonnie’s curious. It’s something Bonnie feels strongly about, respecting others’ labor. It’s why she’s a generous tipper and would never leave her hotel room a mess for the maid to straighten up and—

“It was so boring,” Vincent says.

“What was?” says Bonnie.

“They’d just sit there and repeat the list. Michael Eisner. Steven Spielberg. Brandon Tartikoff. Half those Hollywood guys were probably dead, and I’ll bet another third weren’t even Jewish.”

Bonnie shivers. Those were somebody’s
names.
Somebody’s home addresses. Thank God she isn’t one of those guys, on some maniac’s hit list. Thank God she isn’t married to one, living at that address. It’s bad enough she’s got an ARM renegade staying at her house, a human time bomb waiting for his former comrades to track him down and detonate his life. And hers.

After a silence she says, “You did a great job. Back there. With Lois Lane.”

“I think she’ll want to write about us,” he says. “I mean, about the foundation.” Bonnie stares into Vincent’s eyes: two pools of perfect sincerity, as deep as she can see. Strangely, she feels as she sometimes does when she’s working with Meyer, as if there’s a gust of wind at their backs and they’re sailing toward the horizon.

“Are your…eyes okay?” she says.

“Twenty-twenty,” says Vincent. “Why?”

“I think you’ve been sitting too close to the screen.”

“I’ll sit farther back,” Vincent says. “All right?”

Another silence, then Bonnie says, “It
is
okay about the benefit dinner, isn’t it? I mean, about you giving a little speech? Three, four minutes. Nothing. I’m sorry you found out that way. We put you on the spot. I should have mentioned it sooner. I was getting around to it. For some reason, I wasn’t aware Roberta had told the reporter.”

Vincent says, “No problaymo. I can manage. Simple. I can stand up and thank the foundation for helping turn my life around. It’s the least I can do.”

“I’m sorry about your father,” Bonnie says. “I don’t think I knew that.”

“I thought I told you,” Vincent says. “Well, thanks. I was three. I didn’t know him that well. What bothers me is that he did it in my aunt’s garage. He knew my uncle would make her clean up. Why couldn’t he have gone and done it in the woods somewhere?”

Bonnie takes a deep breath. What a thoughtful guy he is, under all that swagger. A smaller person would be fixated on what the death had done to
him.
“The poor guy probably wasn’t thinking about that,” she says.

“He should have been,” says Vincent. “It was the last thing he had to think about. He could have had a plan.”

Something about this gives Bonnie chills. Does Vincent have a plan? And where does she fit in? Meyer would say it’s all God’s plan. Bonnie wishes she believed in a plan. She sees it more like a wrestling match, with evil and chaos often winning. Against the forces of…what? Order and good. Bonnie and Meyer’s side. And maybe Vincent’s, too.

Bonnie says, “Is there anything else? Something important you haven’t told me?”

Vincent knits his brow and pantomimes thinking, then smiles. “Nothing I can remember,” he says. “I’ll let you know if something comes to mind. It’s a promise. Okay?”