A Changed Man (22 page)

For a moment, Bonnie forgets about Meyer and stops cold, struck by the conspiratorial intimacy of what Vincent has just said, by her certainty that he’s lying about what was happening between him and Colette, and by a sudden dread that he’ll use a word like
Rican
in his speech. Only Bonnie hears those words now. It’s because he trusts her.

“Let’s find Meyer,” says Bonnie.

Meyer is hidden deep in the crowd. Bonnie feels like a soldier hacking her way through enemy jungle. Last week, straightening Max’s room—a rare occurrence, but the mess had gotten so bad she couldn’t open Max’s door—she’d found a waterlogged copy of
Soldier of Fortune.
How had it gotten into the house? Did Max borrow it from Vincent? Or had he gone out and bought it because she’d invited a Nazi home?

“There he is.” Vincent rarely uses Meyer’s name. He still doesn’t know what to call him.

How typical of Meyer that, in this mob of important people, he’s managed to steal a moment with Sol and Minna. It’s wonderful that he’s so real, so unimpressed by status. On the other hand, he could be doing more to help Bonnie shake loose some donations. Bonnie makes a point of having Vincent in tow, as a signal that she’s come to collect Meyer as well.

No one’s going for it. Minna shifts over to make room for Vincent and to exclude Bonnie. “Vincent, how lovely to see you. We can’t wait to hear what you have to say this evening.”

“Me, too,” says Vincent. “I mean, I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to say.” He’s swaggering, thinks Bonnie. Or at least she hopes so. Why didn’t Bonnie insist that Vincent go over his speech, word by word? What possessed her to trust him when he said he didn’t want to ruin it by overpreparing? Vincent said he could do it, and she’d believed him because the two of them have persuaded themselves and each other that he can just get up and
be
his reconstructed, authentic, decent self.

Even Meyer asked her to look over some notes. It was pretty much what she’d expected. The kindness of strangers. Forgive but not forget. Plus some new experiments: the moral bungee jump, and something about…faith cells? Bonnie’s often wanted to warn him against repeating himself. Almost everyone in the room has heard his act before. Maybe that’s why ticket sales were slow at first. But Meyer knows what he’s doing. These are his people, his crowd. Vincent may seduce
New York Times
reporters, but Meyer makes miracles happen.

Sol asks Meyer, “Did you watch the evening news?”

“I was getting dressed,” Meyer says. “What fresh horror did I miss?”

“The McVeigh execution,” Minna pipes up.

“Was that today?” Meyer slaps his forehead so hard, Bonnie winces. “My God, how could I have missed it? What was I doing? Fastening my cufflinks? Bonnie, why didn’t you tell me?”

Bonnie, why didn’t you tell me?
Bonnie’s spent weeks trying to second-guess the dietary and social needs of five hundred people, and at the same time grooming Vincent, coaching him to appeal to the guests. Even now she’s struggling to help Meyer and Vincent to their table…and Meyer’s criticizing her for not making sure he watched the McVeigh execution?

How much can you ask from one person? But once again, Meyer’s right. Bonnie should have set up a TV for the office staff, the way she sometimes does for broadcasts of critical government hearings.

“Man, how did I miss that?” There’s grief in Vincent’s voice.

“How
could
we?” Meyer asks Vincent.

How could Bonnie have been so shortsighted, concentrating on this dinner, which is only about money, donations, a budget, while a human being was being put to death today, in their very own country? But why was it up to Bonnie—out of everyone in the office—to remember that today was the day on which McVeigh was slated to die?

“I’m ashamed of us all.” Meyer voices Bonnie’s thoughts.

“Please. You were busy,” says Sol.

“What did they say on the news?” Meyer asks.

“It was filthy,” Sol says. “They spliced together interviews with all these journalists who’d watched it. One sound bite per talking head, one face flashing after another. One reporter said: He stopped breathing. Another said: His pulse quit. Another said: The end was peaceful. How the hell did
they
know how peaceful the end was?”

Minna says, “Sol, sweetheart, you’ve got to relax. The guy was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent people. I’m not saying I support—”

“All right, enough,” Meyer says. “Excuse me, Minna, Sol. Bonnie will never speak to me again if I don’t go quietly.”

“Go ahead,” says Sol.

“Good luck,” says Minna. “There’ll be a brunch on the first Sunday after we get back from the Cape.”

“Before that, I hope,” says Meyer. And he and Bonnie and Vincent are gone.

“Do you have my notes?” asks Meyer.

“
You
do.” Bonnie’s sure she gave them to him, after she photocopied them, enlarged so he won’t have to wear his glasses. Steering the two men through the crowd feels like taking her boys to the dentist. Bonnie finds Meyer and Vincent’s place cards and gets them seated before she takes her seat beside the empty chair in which Larry Ticknor—the real estate magnate whose wife, Laura, is one of Brotherhood Watch’s most generous supporters—will sit between Bonnie and Irene.

Roberta is the first to show up. She kisses Bonnie and Meyer, then does an awkward dodge in front of Vincent and winds up shaking his hand. Relations between them, always cool, got chillier when the
Times
piece ran small. Did Roberta blame
him?

Roberta asks Bonnie, “Did the
Times
send anyone? I can’t figure out who’s here.”

“Colette Martinez,” says Bonnie.

“Too bad,” says Roberta. “But what can you do? I guess it’s become her story.” It cheers Bonnie to be discussing Colette as a public relations issue instead of as a pretty girl who monopolized Vincent’s attention.

Irene has found Laura and Larry Ticknor and is steering them over. The Ticknors are an attractive couple, approximately Bonnie’s age, but so much richer that it’s as if they’re much older. Irene, Laura, and Larry are all wearing expensive, severe black suits. The three of them are fashion holograms, sculpturally snipped by the A-team of hairstylists and designers. Bonnie feels like a bag lady. But what she’s wearing is not the point. The point is for Larry and Laura to fund more food drops and phone calls to Iran, and buy less Calvin Klein.

“Oh, Irene!” says Roberta. “You look fabulous!”

“Hello, Roberta,” says Irene.

Roberta extends her hand halfway between Larry and Laura Ticknor. “I’m Roberta Dwyer. Publicity.”

Larry shakes Roberta’s hand. His wife blows off Roberta and looks around in the panic that Bonnie has often seen in the eyes of celebrities when they find themselves stranded in a crowd of unknowns and are suddenly terrified that some ordinary citizen is about to waste their precious time. How relieved they are to spot someone equally famous, or, failing that, someone who knows how famous they are and will treat them accordingly. For now, Laura will settle for Bonnie’s relatively familiar face.

“Laura,” says Bonnie. “Welcome.”

Bonnie guides Laura around the table. First Meyer rises, then Vincent. Laura likes being placed between the two stars of the evening. Brotherhood Watch is her charity, and her annual donation is sort of a love-gift-slash-reparations-payment from the compulsively unfaithful Larry. Bonnie hopes that Laura will bring a lot of her philanthropic friends on board for this worthy cause that she was the first to “discover.” Across the table, Larry sits down next to Irene with as much wriggly pleasure as if he were snuggling between her breasts, which—bared tonight by her low-cut suit—are remarkably firm and unblemished for a woman Irene’s age.

The seating plan is a huge success. Everyone jumps right into the evening. Irene’s chatting up Larry Ticknor with an expertise distilled from generations of Viennese flirtatiousness. Vincent’s focused on Laura, using whatever magic he seems to have always had, or to have developed in the last few weeks, the charm that worked such wonders on Irene and Colette. Roberta Dwyer has no one to talk to, Bonnie notices with guilty satisfaction. Meyer is staring into the middle distance, probably—or so Bonnie hopes—going over his speech, which Vincent should also be doing, an even better use of his time right now than talking to Laura Ticknor.

Bonnie glances at Meyer, who flashes her his warmest smile. Meyer understands how hard she works, how much more she wishes she could do. That’s why he has chosen her from this crowd of beautiful people, selected her to fix with that steady beam of gratitude and friendship. So much of this—the guests, the room, the food, all the countless details that will make the evening a failure or a success—is Bonnie’s doing. And Meyer understands that. Getting paid to feel this way is more than Bonnie could ask for.

She almost wishes that Joel were here to see what she has accomplished. But he would find a way to spoil it. How she used to hate those summer fund-raisers for the Clairmont Museum, on the sweeping riverfront lawn of somebody’s gorgeous mansion, attended by her rich neighbors who had come to show off their picture hats and filmy garden dresses—and without the slightest intention of donating money. Afterward, Joel would point out how she’d spent the afternoon futilely kissing morons’ asses to get them to finance the purchase of bad nineteenth-century prints. The meanest part was that Joel knew he was saying what Bonnie thought. Joel was a cardiologist. What
he
did was important.

But no one, not even Joel, could say that the foundation’s work doesn’t matter. Bonnie helps make it possible. And Meyer Maslow knows that.

Her private communion with Meyer ends. His gaze returns to the ozone, but Bonnie knows that he is fully present, simultaneously lost in thought and exquisitely attentive. He will know when it’s right for him to stand and walk to the podium and start speaking, without fanfare or introduction. Having no introduction was Meyer’s idea. This crowd knows who he is. What could anyone say about him that they haven’t heard? It was also Meyer’s idea to end his speech by introducing Vincent. How humble of Meyer to volunteer to be the opening act instead of the main attraction.

Bonnie surrenders to the pleasure of the moment, which feels almost like that oddly relaxed interlude that comes when you’re early for a lunch date and are waiting for a friend. Let the crowd produce those rising swells of anticipation, of false or real excitement punctuated by laughter. Let the others decide which person, on which side, to talk to and try to hear, and when to address the problem of the mesclun salad. Bonnie hopes they eat their salad. She knows how much it costs. She has the figures, broken down, on her desk at the office.

At the edge of her peripheral vision, Bonnie sees Irene watching Meyer.

Finally Meyer rises, and the room goes still. It’s as if everyone who has been pretending to converse and eat their greens has really been focused on him. He walks up onstage and takes his place at the podium between the stone pillars guarding the entrance to the temple. In his elegant black tuxedo, he looks like a temple priest, like a chiseled gleaming knife blade of purity and moral courage. Electricity seems to pulse in shimmering circles around him.

The hush deepens as Meyer leans toward the mike.

“Thank you,” says Meyer. “Thank you all for taking time from your impossibly busy lives to vote with your presence, your body and soul, for what Brotherhood Watch is doing.

“My friends, what can I tell you about us that you don’t know? Probably I should talk about the Iranian journalist, the crusading cartoonist and the loving husband and father who just today—
today!
—was freed from the jail in which he was imprisoned and tortured.”

Meyer pauses for a round of applause.

“Freed, my friends, because of what Brotherhood Watch was able to do on his behalf! In honor of this great event, we have decided to award our Iranian brother Cambiz Khosthami—in absentia—the brand-new annual Laura Ticknor Prize for Courage in Journalism, which we are giving tonight for the very first time.”

Meyer is a genius. The crowd is up on its feet. Meyer points out Laura Ticknor. The crowd turns toward her and claps harder. Laura puts her hand to her heart. Getting Laura to increase her support will be like taking candy from a baby.

Meyer waits for the applause to die down. “Tonight I make you a promise. Next year at this time, Cambiz Khosthami will be here with us to accept his award in person.”

The room cheers this vision of a handsome Iranian with his beautiful wife and children, the whole family gratefully acknowledging the gift of nothing less than a man’s life, which he owes the men and women applauding themselves and him. Bonnie stands and claps, too, but now she is fending off a faint pinprick of unease. Whose idea was the Laura Ticknor Prize? Did Meyer come up with it himself? Shouldn’t Bonnie have been the first to know, or was she left out of the loop?

“Should I describe the shipments of medicines, the rivers of vaccines and antibiotics, that Brotherhood Watch has sent streaming around the world? The children’s lives saved, the victims of genocide resettled? Or perhaps I should update you on our successful conferences, the important and moving dialogues between Palestinians and Israelis, Chechens and Russians, Bosnian Muslims and Serbs, the atmosphere of love and trust that we have been able to establish, and that has allowed representatives of these embattled groups to speak from their hearts and even to become friends?”

Meyer pauses and the crowd cheers for…what? A dream that almost seems possible over mesclun salad and good white wine. World peace and understanding. Who doesn’t want that? And it’s Bonnie who gets to spend her life to try and make it happen.

“Or maybe I should mention the summer programs for high school kids—”

Bonnie wishes he wouldn’t mention that. Somebody in the crowd must know about last summer’s pot bust.

“—programs that bring young people together with their first foreigner or even, in some cases, their first hyphenated American.” The first hyphenated American? The crowd gasps. Where have these kids been living? On Mars? Somewhere in the…Midwest?