A Changed Man by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online

matter how you’re counting. So what if Meyer might, in his secret heart, like to be a cult leader? He’s not programming Bonnie to stab Hollywood starlets or to be raptured up into outer space.
    Still, Bonnie can’t help wishing that she wasn’t always the one who gets to deal with the trivia that makes Meyer’s dreams come true. During last summer’s Pride and Prejudice (“Keep our pride! Lose our prejudice! Celebrate diversity!”) camp in Maine, it was Bonnie who called the lawyer when the kids got busted for smoking pot. It was Bonnie who tracked down the surgeon when the Bosnian peace activist’s appendix ruptured on Thanksgiving morning. Bonnie who found the backup caterers for the Copenhagen Conference after that BSE scare, the pharmaceutical company wanting to brighten its tarnished image by shipping penicillin to aid workers in Somalia. Why is Bonnie the chosen one? Obviously. She’s female. But that can’t be the whole reason. Other women in the office aren’t singled out. Is it that Bonnie can’t say no? She’d rather think that Meyer sees her as someone from whom heroic things can be asked.
    How rare it is to have a boss who’s a better person than you are. Bonnie’s become a more savvy and trusting human being just from being around him. She’s learned a lot by watching him take one look at someone and figure out who that person is. He’s said it’s a skill he had to learn fast, on the run from the Germans. He didn’t have the luxury of misreading people’s intentions. So if Meyer says that Vincent is a person who wants to change and not a serial rapist, Bonnie is willing to believe that Vincent is a person who wants to change and not a serial rapist. It means being braver than she really is. But that’s a good thing, too.
    Anyway, Vincent doesn’t seem like a serial rapist. In fact, if he weren’t a neo-Nazi, okay, a former neo-Nazi, and if Bonnie weren’t your basic single-mother-of-two foundation fund-raiser nun, she might almost think that Vincent was…sort of attractive. A little on the rough-trade side, but some women like that. Or she might think that if the divorce hadn’t left her convinced that you were better off not noticing if a man was attractive or not.
    After Meyer had talked her into taking in Vincent as a houseguest, the first thing that crossed Bonnie’s mind was that Vincent had made it clear: his life might be in danger. How interesting that her first response wasn’t fear of Vincent but fear of Vincent’s friends, the ones who’d tracked that poor guy down—that defector in Wyoming. They’d put him in the… hot seat. Cut off three of his toes. Maybe Bonnie has instincts, too. That would be reassuring. Reassuring about what? About his buddies not hunting him down and spraying the house with bullets? A stab of grief warns her away from imagining her sons asleep in their beds when the white-power drive-by erupts. How could Bonnie do this to them? For Meyer? It’s not about Meyer. It’s about saving and changing a life.
    The boys are probably home by now. Bonnie would give anything to be there with them, kicking off her shoes, putting on her sweatshirt and jeans, and fooling around in the kitchen, instead of here in gridlock hell in a freak spring heat wave, stalled in traffic that hasn’t moved in fifteen, twenty minutes, and just for added interest, a human time bomb in the passenger seat and, wait a minute, what’s this? A blinking light on her dashboard.
    The blinking light says, “Maintenance required.” When did that come on? And does it mean required right now? Or required when you get to it?
    Either the steering wheel’s vibrating strangely, or Bonnie has some…neurological tremor that also wasn’t there this morning. Calm down. She knows what Meyer would say: Look for the hidden blessing. Meyer’s books are filled with stories in which he asked what God wanted, and the answer helped him escape one mortal danger after another. Let Meyer find the