A Changed Man (16 page)

Nolan notes that Maslow’s glass has emptied as quickly as his.

“Would you like another Scotch?” The Jew believes all goyim are drunks.

“No, thanks,” Nolan says. There will be wine at dinner. Nolan’s got to pace himself.

Maslow says, “There’ll be wine with dinner.”

So why don’t they
go
to dinner? Let Nolan have another shot at picking a drink off a tray. But Maslow has something he wants to say. Nolan finds it amusing to have been plucked out of the party, singled out, and spirited off to Mr. Big’s inner sanctum.

Maslow says, “I noticed that when you talked to the reporter, you didn’t tell that story about the vision you had at the outdoor dance.”

“Well, I’ve been realizing that story was just one thing among many things that happened. Part of a longer process.”

“It’s probably good you didn’t tell it. I don’t know why, just a feeling…” What is Maslow getting at? Is he trying to find out if deleting the part about the rave was Nolan’s idea or Bonnie’s? And why
didn’t
Nolan tell it, seeing that it was the truth? It makes more sense than what he
did
say. There’s no way that Al Green would have made
anyone
quit ARM. But the Spanish chick went for it. And somehow Nolan knew not to mention the rave.
Somehow?
Every time the rave comes up, Bonnie gets a pinched look. Hell, if you shock a lab rat enough, it learns which alley not to take.

“And yet…,” Maslow says. “When it comes time for you to speak to our friends at the gala, I almost wish there were
one
incident you could recall. One moment that stuck in your memory, when you changed, or knew you had changed. Let me put it this way. The Holocaust lasted for years. But when I wrote my books, I picked specific events. Particular moments. I edited. Understand?”

Nolan nods uncertainly. He’d planned to say just a few words. I’d like to thank World Brotherhood Watch for helping me change my life. Thank you. Smile. Applause. On and off. So what is Meyer telling him? What kind of public-speaking advice is he offering? Get up there and tell
stories?
Meyer tells enough stories for both of them put together. But Vincent can do it, if he has to. It’s just a matter of finding the right story for the occasion. The rave’s out. And the benefit crowd is not going to go for the Al Green moment. That’s more of a woman thing, for a more intimate setting. Even though both of those stories are true, he needs another anecdote for his speech at the dinner.

“I’ll think about it,” says Nolan.

“Talk it over with Bonnie.”

They go back to staring at the barge with such fascination, you’d think they were watching a car chase instead of a floating garbage dump that’s made no visible progress since they started looking.

Maslow says, “Where did you grow up? After your father died. I can’t remember if Bonnie said.”

Nolan says, “We moved around a lot.”

“I knew you would say that,” says Maslow. “It’s so American. Whenever Americans have trouble, that’s what they say. We moved around a lot. As if a rootless childhood is the all-purpose excuse. Well, every Jew could say that. We’ve been moving around for two thousand years. And we accomplished plenty.”

Hang on! Nolan doesn’t appreciate Maslow using the word
American
as a negative. Nor does he like him holding up what the Jews
accomplished
compared to lazy American blamers and slackers—like Nolan—bitching about their childhoods.

“I wasn’t saying it was an excuse. I said we moved around a lot.”

“Sorry,” says Maslow. “I didn’t mean—”

“Two years was maximum for my mom and me. Right after my dad left, we pretty much hit the road. My mom got into all this spiritual stuff, which was okay, except that we had no money, and all the other seeker types at these places were rich, so she’d get these weird jobs in return for room and board. For a while she was making salad for three hundred monks at a Zen retreat—”

“Three meals a day?” says Maslow.

“Two,” Nolan says. “No lunch.”

“Is your mother still religious?”

“She’s a chanting Buddhist. She chants. For winning lottery numbers.”

“Does she win?” says Maslow.

“No, not really,” Nolan laughs. “Sometimes twenty bucks.”

“Marvelous,” says Maslow.

Nolan wonders if he knows what a chanting Buddhist is.

“It’s why we can work together,” Maslow says. “I recognized that in you right away. The religious impulse.”

“You mean I’m a fanatic,” Nolan says.

“Not exactly. I don’t think you’re a fanatic. I don’t think you ever were. You’re too realistic for that. Too down-to-earth. Survival-oriented. Mostly, these days, people say
fanatic
when what they really mean is
idealist.
Though frankly, I’ll take a fanatic over your average person. You know where you stand with fanatics. They don’t say one thing and do another. Actually, very few people wind up working for us unless they
are
some kind of fanatic. Idealists, I should say.”

“Including Bonnie?”

“Definitely Bonnie. Bonnie’s on a mission. To be a good person and do the right thing. The foundation has been a godsend for her. I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed. Almost everyone who works with us was raised in
some
religion. Roberta used to be a serious Catholic before she married an Egyptian.”

“Roberta’s married?”

“Divorced. Anita Shu grew up in one of those Korean Christian churches. Faith is a habit, developed young. It’s not something you come to late. Once a person has a faith, he can change his religion, but you need to have that capacity—”

“Like fat cells,” Vincent says.

“Fat cells?”

“I read that’s why fat kids grow up into fat adults. They develop the cells for it.”

“Faith cells,” says Maslow. “Something like that. I like the concept. Fat cells. Faith cells. Listen, I’ll bet if you went back and polled your friends in ARM, you’d probably find that most of them had some kind of religious training.”

Sure. Let Maslow take that poll. ARM members don’t think they’re fanatics. They consider themselves the reasonable products of a coolheaded, logical analysis of American history and government.

“I’ll think about it,” Nolan says. “For the outreach program.” Unlike Bonnie and Roberta, who seem focused on Vincent’s speech at the dinner, Maslow has been talking in larger terms, about some kind of program aimed at guys like Nolan. I want to help you guys save guys like me from becoming guys like me. Nolan likes Maslow’s thinking on that. It’s a reason for keeping Nolan around after the benefit dinner.

“My thoughts exactly,” says Maslow. “The outreach program. Meanwhile let me tell you something. That Iranian guy we’re trying to save, he has a wife and kids. And they’ve started to torture him. Yesterday we heard that they might hang him as an example. And why?”

“Why?” asks Nolan, obediently.

“Because he refused to write a confession denouncing his wife, who had been arrested for not wearing a veil in the doorway of their own house. How wonderful it would be if God helps us free him in time to get here and also say a few words at the benefit dinner.”

Nolan feels the stirrings of a sibling situation. Well, sure. Who’s going to get more applause? A former neo-Nazi? Or some purpledick hero who went to the Iranian slammer for defending his wife? Having the guy here would be
wonderful.
Over Nolan’s dead body.

“If we save his life,” Maslow says, “it will represent just a small part of our mission. Small, compared to feeding and clothing refugee populations. But we’re always enlarging our scope. Which is why God sent you to us, to help us do something new. How great it would be if together we
could
find a way to reach young men like you, to redirect the energy that’s gone into anger and hate, to set them working for the cause of brotherhood and freedom.”

One reason Nolan picked up on Maslow’s ideas so fast was that they were weirdly similar to the stuff you heard at the Homeland Encampment if you listened to the speakers ranting in the background while you were getting plastered and trying to get some white-supremacist nooky. That’s what they’re always saying: Bring our cause to the world. Reach out and show the way to one white man at a time.

Maslow must be dreaming if he thinks that ARM is a religion. It’s a way that guys have found to explain to themselves why they’re unemployed and broke, or working crappy jobs they hate. And broke. Pay them like you’re paying Nolan for doing what Nolan’s doing, and that’s the end of ARM. Because, really, how good a gig is
this?
A salary, room, and board for talking to Bonnie and Meyer and the occasional reporter. Having fun with the computer. Writing some stuff about ARM. Surfing for porn sites. Putting in an appearance at the occasional dinner party. Drinking Scotch. Wearing cashmere. For the first time ever, Nolan feels that his luck might be improving.

All right! The codeine’s checking back in. And the Scotch isn’t half bad. No wonder it’s the beverage of choice of your basic fat old bastard. Nolan feels terrific. A mysterious sense of well-being.

Hang on. What’s Maslow talking about? Nolan’s missed a link.

“—that is, if you
do
think we can change. That redemption and progress are possible. Or do you think it’s hopeless? That we’re born one way, and that’s that. What do they say? Hardwired.”

“I hate that expression,” Nolan says. “Everyone changes. Look at me. Look at how I’ve changed.”

“How you’re
changing,
” Maslow corrects him. “How far along you’ve come.”

How would the old man know how far Nolan is? Far along on his way to what?

Maslow’s smile smoothes over everything. “Peace through change. One heart at a time. That’s why we’re in business. I would have gone mad if I didn’t believe that there was a reason I was saved when millions of others weren’t. I would be a very unhappy man if I didn’t believe that there was a plan.”

Funny, that’s what Nolan’s been thinking ever since he left Raymond’s. Everything has an order and a plan. Has Maslow been reading his mind again? Through the faint haze of drugs and alcohol, Nolan can see what Bonnie means when she talks about Maslow kicking things up to a higher level.

Maslow says, “I think we understand one another. Good. Now let’s go enjoy a good dinner.”

If Meyer stays in his study a minute longer, Irene will go in there and shoot him, unless his skinhead friend has already done it for her. Which would make Meyer a martyr, and Irene a martyr’s widow, her reward for all these years of being the wife of a saint.

“Prince of Peace Whacked by Wife.” Let Roberta and Bonnie spin that! Lucky Meyer, surrounded by women who will take a bullet for him. Whereas here on the home front, the buck stops at Irene, the only person in the house who can make a decision. Babu may be a fabulous cook, but the poor guy’s Untouchable origins surface at inconvenient times, like this morning, when the gravlax arrived with a fluorescent green patina. It was Irene who phoned Zabar’s, Irene who complained to the florist about the arrangement that cost the earth and looked like a bouquet of toilet brushes.

That’s partly why Meyer married her. Irene can manage a home with all the amenities of a five-star hotel, can see to details of physical survival so that her husband can concentrate on higher things—in Meyer’s case, saving the world. That’s partly what attracted him to Irene, the savvy Viennese who combines her grandparents’ peasant shrewdness with her mother’s knack for living as if she’d always had money, plus the foresight and common sense that enabled her father to get the family out of Vienna in time. What else did Meyer see in her? Sex. Beauty, which has mostly vanished, though Meyer claims not to think so. And the flattering appeal of Irene having left her millionaire husband for Meyer. Well, that’s ancient history now. No one but Irene remembers.

So much work, this dinner for eight, for which she will get no credit. And how much should she get, really, for telling Babu what to cook, what plates to put on the table? It’s not the same as saving an Iranian who’s about to be tortured to death. Irene believes in Meyer’s work. Her husband is a hero. She’s proud to give her time, glad to surrender whole evenings to those benefits at which she sits next to some old geezer who thinks he’s bought the great man’s wife for the evening, purchased the right to tell her, in excruciating detail, every step along his road to success and fortune.

Social events have gotten harder since middle age stole the last consolation: the chance that the evening might at least provide the low-level hum of attraction. She understood when she married Meyer, twenty years ago, that a part of her life was ending. She would never have another lover. There was not a man in the world who could be trusted to keep quiet about having fucked the wife of an iconic world leader. Flirting, however, was harmless fun. It made the time go faster. Not that she fully appreciated it until one evening when she went out—who remembers exactly when, she was fifty, fifty-one—and it was gone. Vanished forever. Except in Europe, where men are less like teenage boys, and Irene is still in the running. Now an evening without that faint possibility seems endless. Unbearable.

The official reason for this dinner party, which Meyer, Roberta, and Bonnie dreamed up, is to see if this feral adult they dragged in from the woods can sit down and eat with human beings. And what if he can’t? The lucky guy will probably get his own table at the gala. While, across the room, Irene will be pushing around her dried-out salmon and limp mesclun, shouting over the band and grinning at whatever deep-pockets Bonnie has sat her beside.

Who’s here tonight? No one worth getting nervous about. Or excited, for that matter. Guinea pigs they can afford to offend if the Nazi runs amok. Sol and Minna, just out of the hospital. Roberta Dwyer, whose job is on the line, though she doesn’t know it, ever since the
Times
ran that insultingly tiny item. It was Roberta’s responsibility to make sure that the paper
got
the story. But no one’s replacing Roberta till the gala is over, and meanwhile she has to be here for Wolf Boy’s shakeout cruise.