A black girl stands, bouncing on the souls of her feet and jabbing the air in Vincent’s direction. “So what made you join in the first place? I mean, why would a person want to wallow in all that hate?”
Vincent fixes her with his baby blues. It’s like he’s practicing to be Chandler.
“I guess I was an angry guy,” he says. “And I blamed the wrong people for my problems.”
Raymond hears a roaring in his ears so massive and oceanic that for a minute he forgets where he is, forgets to duck when Vincent looks straight at him. Damn right someone would be angry. The white race is getting shafted. And white working men like Raymond and Vincent are being forced to bend over. Though not Vincent, not anymore. Vincent has gone over to their side, and left Raymond out in the cold.
Vincent sees Raymond. Raymond sees Vincent. Vincent can’t take his eyes off him. Raymond loves how the sight of him is scrambling Vincent’s brain. This is why it’s better to be the surpriser than the surprisee.
Finally, Vincent loses it. He goes rigid and stares into space. His concentration’s shot. He can’t handle the rest of the questions, can’t deliver the neat, prepackaged turd he’s learned to drop on command.
“Angry,” he says. “Yeah. I was angry and blamed the wrong people….” He’s turning his head in increments, trying to locate Raymond, but Raymond slumps and hides behind Aunt Brenda and baby Dineesha.
Chandler senses something wrong, but he doesn’t know what’s happened. Even the rabbi picks up on the negative buzz. He’s looking at Vincent, probably worried that the loser got a hold of some cocktail nuts backstage, that now he’s doing his near-death thing every time he appears in public. Why not? It worked for him before.
Vincent’s sudden psychic absence leaves a hole in the show, which Raymond decides to step through. He might as well go for the gold now. He’s already blown his cover.
Raymond catches the eye of the girl with the microphone, and she brings it over. Only when he grabs the mike does she see his tattoos. He watches her deciding if, by letting him talk, she’s doing something very right or very wrong. Raymond takes a deep breath, then asks the question he’s repeated to himself until he’s got it perfect:
“What I’d like to know is how honest Vincent Nolan has been with you guys about what he did before. I mean, how much has he told you?”
All right! Raymond got it out. It’s not the kind of question you hear much on Chandler. Mostly it’s some homey asking why the guests ain’t got the common sense God gave them. But you never hear anything that makes you think that the person knows the real story about the guests.
Vincent is dumbstruck. Light is beginning to dawn on the rabbi. Chandler is already there. But he’s still guarded and cagey as he says, “Hey, brother, why do you ask?”
That they haven’t called security and hustled Raymond out of the studio is encouraging. Chandler could make that happen by moving one little pinkie, the one with the Iceberg Slim diamond ring. But he’s taking a wait-and-see attitude until he figures out where Raymond is going with this.
“I’m Vincent’s cousin. Raymond Gillette. His first cousin. We grew up together.”
Raymond can’t read Chandler’s face. Maybe shock, maybe annoyance. Why didn’t his staff have this in their sights? That’s what he’s paying them for. Someone’s head is going to roll. Without a doubt, some white man’s.
“Man!” says Chandler, treading water. “Can you believe that? How about that? Vincent’s family.” He wants the long applause to give everybody a few seconds to regroup.
Looking into Chandler’s eyes is like watching a slot machine spin. Lemons apples cherries. Raymond can peer right into his skull and see that Chandler has no idea if Raymond is the good cousin or the bad cousin. Judging from surface impressions, Chandler’s betting on the bad. Now what? Does he find some way to shut Raymond down long enough to go to break and remove him from the studio? Or does he go for the chance that this might really be major TV and see what comes out when he mixes the new Vincent Nolan, the reconstructed cooled-out brotherhood model, with a few drops of his volatile past? The Changed with the Unreformed. A chemistry experiment.
Chandler knows what happened on the old Geraldo. They must teach you that in Talk Show for Beginners. Raymond himself has watched it many times on a tape he ordered by mail from an ad on TV. Television’s Wildest Moments. Chandler doesn’t want that happening on his watch. Still, the bottom line is that he knows about Geraldo’s wild moment. Everybody knows about it. Which means it must have been greater TV than all the forgettable, sharing-and-caring snoozes Chandler has hosted.
Chandler weighs his dilemma. He decides to bring it on. He hasn’t become the superstar talk-show Brother of the Moment for nothing!
“Family!” says Chandler. “What a terrific surprise. How long since you guys have seen each other? Sir, please…why don’t you come down here?”
Vincent’s doing all he can short of waving his arms in an SOS signal to Chandler. Disaster! Meyer catches Vincent’s vibe, and soon he too is shooting daggers at Chandler. They’ve worked hard to get this slot. It’s supposed to be about them and the rabbi’s book. They don’t want their big opportunity jacked by some trailer-trash cousin of Vincent’s.
Screw them. Raymond’s got something to say. Facts instead of bullshit. He stands and heads down toward the stage. He’s taking it slow. Let them watch, let them wait, let Vincent enjoy the cameras following Raymond for a change. Maybe they haven’t seen the old Geraldo. Or maybe the producers always secretly wanted to go the Jerry Springer route. Because they let Raymond get right up next to him, right up in Vincent’s face. Raymond’s so close to Vincent, he can count the drops of sweat breaking out on his forehead. Five, six, seven. Good.
He hugs his long-lost cousin. Not some Hollywood-Jew air kiss but a white man’s bear hug. All right, maybe a little hard. Give the man something he can feel. Meanwhile Raymond grabs Vincent’s right hand and gives him the ARM handclasp down between their chests where no one can see it. Vincent’s palm gets wet in the time it takes him to wrestle it back from Raymond.
Chandler twitches his sparkling pinkie, and another Chandler Chair appears. Raymond falls back into the chair, strongly vibing Chandler not to come over with his hand out.
Chandler gets it. Chandler’s good to go. Everything’s clear to Chandler.
But he’s a little stumped. He can’t ask, How did you guys meet, or Tell us about the first time you met, like he did with Maslow and Vincent. And Chandler’s not going to ask Raymond to show off his tattoo. He already sees it. Probably the cameras are being told not to look. The last thing they want the American people to see is a man who believes in something so strongly he’ll have its ancient but currently unfashionable symbol engraved on his tender white skin.
“Vincent, were you aware that your cousin would be here today?” Chandler knows the answer. Silence. More silence. “I take it that you didn’t—”
“It’s a surprise,” Vincent says.
Raymond’s just figured out how to tell, from the monitors, where the camera is pointed. And right now it’s pointed at him, so he gives it a big toothy grin. Let Mr. and Mrs. America watch the surprise he’s arranged.
Chandler’s teleprompter has gone blank. Has his staff fled for their lives? Chandler is flying solo.
“So you belong, or you did belong, to the organization Vincent left to join Brotherhood Watch.”
“Do belong,” clarifies Raymond. “I’m still a proud member of the American Rights Movement—”
“The Aryan Resistance Movement. A well-known hate group,” the Jewish expert interrupts. “Brotherhood Watch has been monitoring their activities for years. Vincent has been extremely helpful—”
“A patriotic organization,” Raymond corrects. But that’s enough. He hasn’t come here to debate the Jew on the subject of what ARM stands for. As much as Raymond would like to tell the truth about ARM, that approach is a guaranteed loser. He’s got something better planned.
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“Holocaust deniers and Nazi sympathizers.” The old man is not going to get off Raymond’s case. But Raymond will not engage. At least not until he’s had a chance to bounce a couple of facts off Chandler.
“Cousin Vincent wasn’t expecting me. I don’t think he would have invited me, either. Because I know something about him that he’d rather no one knew.”
“What’s that?” Chandler can’t help asking. Is this how you treat your guests? Invite them on the show and then invite the family to air their dirty laundry?
The audience has gone silent.
“First of all, the guy lived with me and my wife and kids for years. My wife fed him. I got him a job. He stayed on my living room couch. He was there when my kids ate breakfast. We gave him a leg up, took care of him. And then he splits. He steals my truck. He steals fifteen hundred dollars I’d saved up working two jobs. He even stole the pain medication prescribed for a serious on-the-job injury.”
Just talking about a work-related injury—even if it’s made up—makes Raymond feel like some trailer troll bitching about his aches and pains. But fine, let them see what it looks like. The hardworking, underpaid white man. Plenty could have happened to Raymond in fifteen years at the tire shop. Plenty did. And what kind of work injury will Chandler ever get? Back strain from kissing guests’ asses? Some bad Botox reaction?
Raymond checks the audience to see how this is going over. What’s the desired reaction? Sympathy. Raymond’s a working man. He’s been hurt. Vincent hurt him. He would like the crowd to turn on Vincent, for lying, and on Maslow, for helping Vincent lie. The crowd should be shocked, disgusted, enraged at the self-righteous bastards who have been playing the audience for fools, and the cherry on top will be their anger at themselves for having been taken, for having applauded a lying thief who steals from his own flesh and blood. They are going to be pissed at themselves for having seen this guy as a hero. And then, if things go Raymond’s way, he can use this golden opportunity to make them start seeing how this is typical of the mind-control media twisting their brains into pretzels.
But somehow it’s not working. The studio audience looks puzzled. Maybe Raymond set it up wrong. Maybe he led them to believe he had something worse on Vincent. Something worse than stealing. That he killed someone, even. That’s what they were expecting. Just boosting a truck and some pills is a letdown. But wait, he did fuck over Raymond. And Lucy. And Raymond’s kids.
They took him in, they trusted him. The guy was flesh and blood. It was tough on Raymond and Lucy and the kids when he stayed forever and then split with his truck! These poor brainwashed white people are so used to being lied to, they can’t recognize the truth when they hear it. They still want to believe that Vincent is the new prince of peace.
“Is this true?” Chandler asks Vincent.
The cameras zoom in on Vincent.
“Is it true?” Chandler repeats.
Vincent stonewalls him. He won’t let Chandler make eye contact. Raymond’s got to hand it to Vincent for being a stand-up guy, for displaying qualities you’d want on your side. Well, toughness isn’t everything. Integrity counts, too.
Finally, Chandler gives up on Vincent and—let’s keep everything rolling here—focuses on the rabbi.
“Did Vincent mention this to you?” he asks. “Did he say he stole from his cousin?”
“How do we know it’s true?” Maslow says. “Because this gentleman says so?”
This gentleman. The Jew is mocking him. The Jew in the hand-tailored suit and the four-hundred-dollar shoes, the Jew whose haircut cost fifty times as much as the lousy copy of People that a hardworking white man can’t afford to buy his own wife, the Jew—specifically, this Jew—is accusing him of lying.
“It’s true,” says Raymond.
“Let our other guest speak, please,” says Chandler.
“Anyway,” says Meyer Maslow, “what Vincent did before doesn’t matter.”
“Meaning what?” says Chandler.
“What matters is what he’s doing now and how much he’s changed. We assumed he must have done some unfortunate things while he was with ARM, but I never asked—”
Look how the Jew has turned this around in a couple of seconds!
“You never asked what he did in this hate group?” says Chandler.
Wait a second. This is not about ARM and what they do. This is not about the Jew being such a saint that he accepts Vincent, warts and all, wiping out the past. This is about what Vincent did. Vincent stole from Raymond.
“We went on faith,” says Maslow. “We took him in. We believed him—”
“Help me out, here, Dr. Maslow,” Chandler says. The black man and the Jew are in this together. They have plenty to discuss. And the two white men, Vincent and Raymond, are just bystanders, looking on.
“How does this square with your forgiving but not forgetting?” Chandler—the former lawyer—is interrogating Maslow. Chandler doesn’t forget. Chandler’s making the old man eat it for having corrected him earlier. “Because it seems to me as if you’re trying to forget the past. And to encourage Vincent to forget his past—”
Raymond could be furniture here! One of the Chandler chairs. He’s the one who made this happen, and now it’s moved beyond him. He’ll be damned if they edge him out of their gay lovers’ quarrel.
“Plus,” Raymond says so loudly that the cameras find him on instinct, bypassing the director. “Plus this guy, my cousin, didn’t have any spiritual conversion. He was taking drugs. Ecstasy. And if he’s stolen all those pills from me, you can bet the dude is still getting high. He’s probably on something now. So don’t tell me he’s changed—”
Chandler can’t believe it! Why can’t every show be like this?
“Is that true?” Chandler says. “Vincent, is that true?” He’s tried this line of questioning. Has he forgotten it didn’t work?
“And there’s more,” says Raymond. “There’s lots the dude didn’t tell you. I’ll bet he never mentioned the fact that he had to take twenty hours of anger management class for throwing some little old Jewish lady in her swimming pool. In the deep end. With all her clothes on.”
Chandler waits, Maslow waits, the studio audience waits, the crew waits, the home audience waits. Raymond’s willing to wait. See how Vincent explains that away.
“That isn’t true,” says Vincent. At last. The dead man speaks. “It was the shallow end. And I fished her right out. She didn’t even swallow water. She wasn’t hurt. She’s fine.”
Raymond’s going to have to shut Vincent up. He simply cannot stand the fact that Vincent’s getting away with it. Raymond has got to do whatever it takes.
Just then the Jew says, “I think it’s wonderful that this gentleman has volunteered to come up here and let us see exactly what Vincent left behind. What he decided against. The kind of person he turned his back on. And now I’m wondering if we can’t get back to the heart of our show, the real reason why we’re here.”
Meaning the rabbi’s foundation, his book. The Jew is telling Chandler how to run his show. Will Chandler go for it? Chandler lifts his hand. A crew member checks out Raymond. As soon as they go to break, he’ll be escorted out.
“We’ve got a few seconds before break,” Chandler says.
Raymond knows that’s his cue.
Raymond gets up and crosses the stage. It feels good to be moving. It’s the Jew he wants to deal with. The Jew who has insulted him most, out front and in public. Vincent is just a liar and a thief, but the Jew is a danger to the entire white race. The Jew who called him “this gentleman.” The Jew who said he was lying.
He takes another step toward the Jew. Raymond hasn’t yet decided what, if anything, he’s going to do to him. So how could he seem threatening? Still, just as he expected, he feels two heavy hands on his shoulders. He turns.
In fact, it’s not what he thought: the beefy security bouncers.
It’s Vincent, pulling him back, dragging him away from the rabbi. Raymond sees the
kid from the driveway running down to get a piece of the action, then stopping behind Maslow. Will everybody just calm down here, and step back a minute, and think?
But there’s no thinking, no stepping back. Vincent’s face is twisted with rage. His cheeks are scarlet, his forehead furrowed, spit’s flying out of his mouth.
Vincent hauls off and socks Raymond. Why doesn’t Raymond deck him? It’s as if his arms don’t work, as if some gear has ground to a halt and needs a squirt of lubricant. Vincent keeps hitting Raymond, calling him names. Slamming his fist into Raymond.
Vincent has changed, all right. This is a million times worse than dunking some old lady in the pool. And that’s what helps Raymond get through it, what lets him keep his cool until the pain takes over and eases him out of the situation.
The only thing that comforts Raymond is the proof that he was right all along. Vincent is the violent one. It’s Vincent who’s trashing Raymond.
DANNY FEELS AS IF HE’S LOOKING through the wrong end of a telescope, watching water bugs skitter around, blowing whistles and trying to control the chaos that’s erupted in the studio. Slowly, slowly, brothers and sisters, let’s please not rush or panic. Then poof! The audience is gone, and two burly attendants in green scrub suits are calmly rolling Raymond out on a gurney, as if hauling bloody unconscious skinheads off the Chandler set is an everyday occurrence. It occurs to Danny that it might be cool to be an EMT worker someday.
Somewhere a voice asks how Vincent is. Someone else asks where Vincent is. Someone’s sent to check on him and then comes back and says, “Mr. Nolan’s not anywhere. We seem to have misplaced our guest.”
Dreamily, Danny looks around. He doesn’t see Vincent, either. Is all this taking a very long time, or no time at all? And where is Mom? You’d think the minute things got ugly, she’d be all over Danny and Max, shielding their bodies with hers. No sooner does Danny wonder why Mom isn’t all over them than she is. Mom grabs Danny and Max, and drags them through a door marked “Green Room.”
A Changed Man Page 37