A Changed Man

by Francine Prose

  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 i
n 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.

  He wishes Bonnie weren’t surprised. He doesn’t know how he knows. He just does. He knew it when it was a Jeopardy clue, when he was staying at Raymond’s. The thought of Raymond settles around him like a poisonous fog rising from the pharaoh’s tomb. As always, he expects to see Raymond around the next corner. Which proves that Vincent’s insane. It’s unlikely that Raymond would have forked over hundreds of bucks to attend the World Brotherhood Watch benefit dinner. And yet there’s a precedent for it. John Wilkes Booth—who, ARM claims, was a Jew—bought a theater ticket.

  The roar of the party, coming out to meet them, reminds Vincent of the archers yelling in samurai films as the arrows wing out of the fortress. But this isn’t a battle. They’re letting down the drawbridge, pulling back the golden rope and cheering him into their castle. He’s the VIP guest with a seat at the head table, the white knight who gets to stand up and toast the king.

  Bonnie takes his arm as they wade into the crowd. Her grip registers halfway between a friendly squeeze and a headlock. Following Bonnie around the room is like some schizo square dance, kiss kiss, chat chat, say a few words, spin off to the next group. Bonnie knows everyone, or almost everyone. Not the peasants who read the Times and called up and bought one ticket, but the ones who sprung for whole tables, the ones who might give serious money. She has to, it’s her job. It puts food not only in her kids’ mouths but in the mouths of innocent children tortured by evil dictators.

  Vincent moves when Bonnie does, then pauses, nods, smiles. Mumbles hello. No one can hear a word. There’s a band, four guys in dashikis singing and hopping up and down as if the floor is a hot griddle. No one’s listening to them, they’re just jacking up the noise. It doesn’t matter what you do in this room full of people pretending to be laughing and talking. Once Vincent figures that out, he can relax and check out his surroundings.

  The party is being held on the vast stone patio of an Egyptian temple. It’s like being outdoors, but better. No weather, perfect lighting. One side of the room is a glass wall through which the sparkly illuminated trees in the park outside seem no more real than the clay ones in those dollhouses for the dead. In front of him is a reflecting pool, its floor thickly sprinkled with coins, perhaps a hint to the guests that money is about to be dislodged from their pockets.

  Watching Bonnie is like watching a slalom champ who knows exactly when to turn, when to coast, when to switch direction. A special hug for everyone with a purse or checkbook. Bonnie guides Vincent up onto the platform near the temple itself, where—thank you, Jesus!—the drinks and the food are set out on tables. Vincent helps himself to a postage stamp of rare roast beef on a cracker, and then, with a longing look at the vodka, picks up a glass of white wine. For support he fingers the Vicodin in the fold of his pocket.

  He braces himself for the disapproving glance from Bonnie, who begged him not to drink until after his speech. But a glass of wine isn’t drinking, and anyway, Bonnie seems to have forgotten him as she crosses the room to whisper into the ear of some important old fart. Sorry. Vincent can’t follow her there. Let’s take a peek at the sculpture.

  Presiding over this end of the pool is a row of giant cat women carved from polished black granite. Vincent remembers a scene from the original Cat People: the shadow of a maddened feline stalks a woman in a deserted swimming pool. But despite her sternness, her grim unfocused stare, this cat goddess seems so kindly that Vincent wants to crawl into her lap. What is it about these statues that keeps making him want to curl up inside them?

  Pressing his back against the wall, Vincent watches the crowd, waiting to feel uncomfortable because he doesn’t know anyone. But in fact it’s strangely soothing, like being at the beach, as if the sea of people were an actual sea. He tries to hear the crowd noise as the roar of the ocean, to feel it rushing over him like a salt wind on his face.

  But wait. He knows that woman. Long black curls, short black dress. Cute body. He’d know if she worked in the office. Could she be a temp? Or someone from his old life? Now she spots him too, and smiles, and heads straight for him, which gives him a minute, two minutes at most, to shake out his memory banks.

  The woman puts out her hand and says, “I’m Colette Martinez. From the New York Times. I interviewed you. Remember?”

  “Right,” says Vincent. “Lois Lane.” It was Bonnie who called her that.

  “What does that make you?” Lois has had a couple of drinks, a couple up on Vincent. “Superman?”

  “You come here often?” Vincent says.

  Colette laughs. “I get in free.” The fact that, in this crowd of thousand-dollar-a-platers, neither of them have laid out a penny sets off a small electric charge between them.

  “I saw what you wrote about us,” Vincent says.

  “Sorry,” Colette says. “I fought for five hundred words. I had to cut it. Something else was happening that day—”

  “Don’t be sorry,” says Vincent. “Something worked. Look around. The place is packed. Anyway, I wasn’t that crazy about having my picture in the paper.”

  “Why not? Everyone always wants to be in the Times.”

  “Shy, I guess.” Vincent’s not in the mood to explain about Raymond wanting him dead.

  Colette snags two glasses of wine off a waiter’s tray, and, surprised to find his own glass empty, Vincent takes one from her. She’s not going anywhere. She’s given up mingling f
or Vincent. It’s sexy, their leaning against the wall, side by side, as if they’re watching a movie.

  “Are you nervous?” Colette says.

  “About what?”

  “About giving a speech tonight.”

  Vincent does a body check: brain, heart, stomach. At the moment, not a flutter. Why isn’t he more nervous? For one thing, he and Bonnie have figured out approximately what he’s going to say. They agreed it might be better to delete the part about the rave, though he’ll end with the feeling he had on the Ex, of loving everyone and everything, wanting to embrace all God’s children. Naturally, he won’t mention the Ex. And he’ll explain that the light shone on him slowly, a little more each day, like a beam of winter sunlight crossing the floor. He can’t recall if he or Bonnie came up with that beam of winter sun.

  Working with Bonnie has certainly made him more confident than he’d felt walking into Brotherhood Watch that first day and spitting out that ridiculous tongue twister: I want to help you guys save guys like me from becoming guys like me. He’s glad Bonnie doesn’t seem to remember, glad she didn’t ask him to say something like that tonight.

  Another waiter swoops down on them, this time with a tray of food. Eggy mush in pie-crust cups. He and Colette each pop one.

  “Micro-quiche,” Colette says. “It’s amazing you’re not nervous. I mean, I don’t imagine you get up and talk in front of crowds like this every night.”

  “And your point is?” Fuck her. Is she trying to make him nervous?

  “Plus I wouldn’t imagine that these are exactly your people,” says Colette.

  Double fuck her. “Actually, I wouldn’t imagine they’re your people either.”

  Colette smiles sweetly up at him. “My father is the former governor of Puerto Rico.”