A Changed Man (20 page)

V
INCENT YANKS AT HIS BOWTIE,
calculating the odds that
in one night, a collar could chafe through your neck and make your head fall off. Unlikely, but possible. Anything is possible. If only this didn’t feel so much like the senior prom. Waiting for Bonnie to get dressed is a lot like sitting in Nadine Wozniak’s living room, trying to convince her father that Vincent’s plans for the evening didn’t include getting Daddy’s little precious pregnant.

Though actually, it’s not the same. Vincent’s older and wiser. And Bonnie’s not going to pull the same stunt as his prom date, Nadine, who broke up with him in her dad’s car on the way to the dance, choosing that moment to inform him that she’d only agreed to go with him to make her boyfriend, Tommy Hernandez, jealous. She’d already patched things up with Tommy, but still she and Vincent—they’d already rented and paid for the clothes—had to get through the hours ahead. Vincent eased the pain with megadoses of beer and Southern Comfort. Why has he not mentioned this all these weeks he’s been telling Bonnie why a guy might join ARM? Why? Because the prom queen ditched him for a greaseball named Tommy Hernandez.

What’s bringing all the good memories back is the rented tuxedo. But this baby is Hugo Boss, threads from another galaxy than the powder-blue piece of wide-lapeled shit that nearly bankrupted his mom. Last week, Bonnie accompanied him to the rental place to make sure they pulled out all the stops and got Mr. Nolan the very best. Luckily, Vincent thought ahead and refused to take off his long-sleeved shirt. It would have put a damper on the process if the old Jewish guy helping Vincent knew he was outfitting Mr. Waffen-SS.

Coming out of the dressing room, Vincent didn’t need to look in the mirror. He could see his reflection in Bonnie’s eyes. Our man is looking
good!

Now he hears Bonnie’s footsteps on the stairs—not Bonnie’s normal footsteps, but the wobbly click-click of a woman on ridiculous high heels. He’s going to have to monitor Bonnie’s alcohol consumption if he doesn’t want a replay of what happened at Maslow’s. Vincent needs to watch it himself, at least until after he gets up and tells Mr. and Mrs. Deep Pockets why they need to empty their bank accounts all over World Brotherhood Watch.

Why
isn’t
Vincent nervous? It’s not like he does this every night, stands up and bullshits five hundred princes and princesses of the city. He has the strangest feeling, as if he’s been waiting for this all his life. He hates to admit it, but the truth is, if he’d been one of those guys who ranted and raved onstage at the Homeland Encampment, he never would have gotten involved with ARM in the first place.

In her heels, Bonnie feels so tall she thinks she has to bow her head to clear the bottom stairs. She’s wearing a silvery, tubelike thing with short sleeves and a high neck. Is Bonnie unaware that the whole point of an evening dress is to show a little skin? And why did Maslow spring for Vincent’s tuxedo and not the fashion upgrade for Brotherhood Cinderella? Even if Meyer had insisted, Bonnie would never have gone shopping on the foundation’s nickel, even though she probably knows the budget covers Maslow’s Armani. Though actually, Vincent bets that Maslow pays for his clothes himself.

Even in her unsexy gown, Bonnie looks radiant and excited. Her blue eyes glitter prettily under the coke-bottle glasses. Bonnie is a major improvement over Nadine Wozniak mincing down the stairs of her parents’ dump in Warwick, calculating the best way to tell Nolan the bad news about the boyfriend.

Vincent whistles as loud as he can. Bonnie blushes and bursts out laughing.

“Fox!” says Vincent.

“Right,” says Bonnie. “I’ve had this dress forever—”

“Come on. You look great. Don’t spoil it. Champagne?”

Bonnie looks confused.

“Joke,” he says.

“Glad to hear it,” Bonnie says. “We’ve both got to be
really
careful.”

Vincent holds up his palm, swearing in. “Sobriety Central,” he says.

Everything seems different tonight. Starting with Bonnie’s face. Considering that it’s the make-it-or-break-it, do-or-die night of the year, she seems unusually relaxed. The only thing Vincent can figure is: the kids aren’t here. They’re spending the night with their dad. Not that Bonnie especially likes them being at their father’s. She keeps forgetting that she’s already told Vincent how Joel and Lorraine always manage to upset the kids and hurt their feelings. The boys would never tell her that, but she
knows.
She keeps saying, “My ex-husband and his girlfriend give narcissism a bad name,” and each time Vincent has to smile as if he’s never heard it before.

But tonight Bonnie has no choice, she needs to concentrate, and knowing the boys are with their dad will be less distracting. In Vincent’s humble opinion, she should leave them alone more often. Some adult responsibility might slow Danny’s development into a slacker stoner, an obvious danger that Bonnie ignores while she fixates on the most unlikely disasters. How little she knows about them—about, say, how the older kid is scared of his own shadow. He’d probably feel braver if he laid off the weed for five minutes.

One weekend, when Bonnie and the kids were off at the Nanuet Mall, Vincent found Danny’s stash—behind some books on his shelf—and rolled himself a thin joint and got so wasted he had to lie down. Where do today’s kids get this stuff? Danny’s dope was a million times stronger than anything Vincent knew about at his age.

“Are you all right?” asks Bonnie.

“Completely,” answers Vincent to all the things Bonnie might mean.

In their fancy clothes, Bonnie and Vincent could be strangers. They look at each other, then fall silent.

Not a moment too soon, the doorbell rings.

“Great! The car,” says Bonnie. “He’s early. That’s terrific.”

Vincent opens the front door to find a plump, middle-aged Indian waiting on the steps. Bonnie comes up behind Vincent, but the guy’s only got eyes for him. It’s probably some Paki thing about not walking into a stranger’s house and eyeballing his harem.

The driver says, “Good evening, Mr. Kalen.”

What the hell’s
wrong
with this camel jockey? Is this his first day on the job? Did he skip the introductory session of Elementary Town Car? Never assume two people have the same last name. Vincent and Bonnie exchange smiles and shrugs, so intimate and comfy that they
could
be a married couple.

Vincent counts to ten and runs through the anger management tips. There’s no reason to revert back to all that racist ARM shit, just because his driver made a social mistake. So what if the guy thinks that Vincent and Bonnie are married and this is Vincent’s house? It’s a compliment, not an insult.

Maybe Vincent
is
nervous. That could be part of it, too. For one crazy moment, he’d considered telling tonight’s crowd how he dunked Mrs. Browner in the pool, and how sorry he felt afterward. If they want to judge how much he’s changed, that would give them a hint. But they would never understand. And the last thing he wants is that lawyer, Elliot what’s-his-name, finding out that Vincent’s got a record. Except that he doesn’t have a record. The charges were dropped. Is there some way Elliot could find that out? Elliot has been looking for a way to bring Vincent down ever since that dinner at Meyer’s when it was so plain that the old man’s wife preferred Vincent. God knows what this benefit crowd thinks he did in ARM. It thrills them to imagine the worst. And Vincent’s afraid they’ll find out that he baptized a little old lady?

As they set off for the city, Vincent settles back and, despite the dirty look Ali Baba flashes him in the rearview mirror, rolls down the window. Lounging back in the cushiony seat, in his good tuxedo, wisps of semi-clean suburban air kissing his face, the long necklace of the Tappan Zee coming up in the windshield, Vincent feels like a king. He must be doing something right if he’s progressed from Nadine Wozniak’s father’s car to his own rusted Ford truck to Margaret’s UPS van to Raymond’s Chevy pickup to this chauffeured town car.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” asks Bonnie.

“I’m fine,” says Vincent. “Honestly. You don’t have to keep asking.”

“I didn’t ask,” says Bonnie. “I mean, this is the first time I’m asking.”

It isn’t, but Vincent lets it pass. The calmer Bonnie is, the better the evening will go.

They speed across the Hudson and head south along the parkway, traveling against the stream of late-working commuters. No traffic in
their
direction. You children are
free.
In no time, they’re in the city, sailing down the West Side Highway. How beautiful New York is at night. Vincent never sees it. Not counting that evening he rode back from Maslow’s, afraid the whole time that Bonnie was going to get sick all over the car-service Lincoln. Right now there’s nothing to worry about, nothing to look at besides the lights and the trees. How could Vincent not have noticed that the city is in blossom?

Because he’s never driven—
been
driven—through Central Park on a warm spring evening in the back of a chauffeured car while all around him were flowering shrubs and trees and the twinkly fairy lights of some fairy restaurant. No one
he
knows would know this route or know that you
could
go in one end of the park and come out on the other side, exactly where you wanted. So how does this guy know, this driver who’s probably been in the country all of ten minutes? Because it’s his job. He had to learn. There is no conspiracy behind it.

It’s funny how his improved circumstances have helped Vincent understand those poor bozos in ARM. Vincent’s begun to realize that whenever those guys got anxious or noticed that life was unfair, they immediately started looking around for an ethnic group to blame. Well, Vincent isn’t anxious just now, and for once the unfairness is working for him. He’s doing
better
than his Paki friend at the wheel.

The ARM guys loved to read about themselves on the Internet. One night Raymond found a site that called the white-power movement “the last resort of the disenfranchised.” For weeks afterward, you could count on getting a laugh if you said something like, Keep on doing that, buddy, and I’m gonna disenfranchise your ass. But those guys
are
disenfranchised, and for the moment Vincent isn’t. He’s the one being driven, the one in the tuxedo, the one who’s been chosen to tell the richest, most important people in this beautiful city why they need to support an organization that’s picked Vincent, out of all the world, to speak to them this evening.

Vincent rolls his windows up. No need to make the guy’s job harder. He can afford to be charitable.

At last the car glides up to the curb in front of the Metropolitan Museum, in front of the monumental staircase over which someone has rolled an actual red carpet. Does the driver
get
it? The carpet is there for Vincent, who gallantly gives Bonnie his arm so they can play movie stars arriving for the Oscars. Who was that singer he just read about who turned down a chance to be an Oscar presenter because she was newly out of rehab and her agent said, Sorry, she’d love to, but right now she doesn’t do stairs well? Just thinking about it is like getting a hate letter from the parallel universe of ODing on downers and taking dives in public. Earlier this evening, Vincent spent a good fifteen minutes staring at a Vicodin tab, that familiar white bullet of safety and positivity, cradled in his palm. Then he curled his fingers around it and put it back into the bottle, then took it out again and slipped it into his pocket, from which he will not remove it except in an emergency situation.

Tightening his hold on Bonnie’s arm, Vincent feels her shaky high heels vibrating up through her bones. It seems important not to let Bonnie know that he’s never been to the museum. The folks in charge make it easy for him. Strategically stationed guards point them in the right direction and keep them from wandering around and helping themselves to the priceless art treasures. Vincent and Bonnie head for a stone wall that turns out to be an Egyptian tomb. They pass cases filled with sculpture, jewelry, fragments of broken pots.

“Have you been here before?” Bonnie says.

“Yes,” lies Vincent. It annoys him that she assumes he hasn’t.

Everyone else has been here a million times. The penguin couples streaming in have seen this stuff so often that not one person pauses to check out the hippos, lions, and jackals, the pharaohs and their queens striding into the afterlife with metal poles rammed up their butts, the bizarre dollhouses, the slave boat and garden scenes, the creepy altars for worshipping what look like giant Q-tips, the massive sarcophagi that suddenly seem like inviting places in which to curl up and take a snooze. Everyone hurries through, rushing to get to the party. For all the looking at art they’re doing, they could be changing trains in the subway.

“Comfy, huh?” Vincent points to a painted sarcophagus. “Naptime, right?”

Bonnie stops and faces Vincent and puts one hand on each of his shoulders. It’s not something she would ordinarily do, but this is a special evening. A lot is riding on how generous these merrymakers feel by the end of the night. Passing guests glance at them, but Bonnie doesn’t seem to care.

“Time out,” she tells him. “Relax.”

“Come on,” says Vincent. “I’m totally together. I just have to do one thing tonight. You’ll be doing a million things. Like you always do.”

Bonnie’s face just melts for him, as Vincent knew it would. Otis Redding was only partly right about trying a little tenderness. Vincent knows from all those years of dealing with his mom that what women really want is for you to notice how hard they’re working.

They continue into the next room, where everything’s supersized: mega-pharaohs, giant body parts, monumental sphinxes.

Bonnie says, “Do you know the sphinx’s riddle?”

“What’s that?”

“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening?”

“A man,” says Vincent.