A Changed Man by Francine Prose Read Free Book Online Page B

tell Meyer until after lunch, when he was often sleepy and consequently more mellow.
    When Bonnie mentioned the calls, Meyer seemed annoyed, then saddened. She hoped he wasn’t connecting this to the modest sales of his new book, One Heart at a Time. Though he never mentioned it, she knew that it upset him. But finally Meyer shrugged, his personal shorthand for: It is all in God’s hands. Compared to what he’d lived through, what were book sales, what was a budget, what were tickets to a dinner?
    “Anyway,” Meyer told Bonnie, “I have a…funny feeling. The faintest blip on my radar. Someone is coming. Something’s going to happen. How many times have I told you, no problem is too large or small for God to fix. The important thing is to stay open to the miracle when it occurs.”
    It’s not Bonnie’s favorite side of Meyer, the part that can make him sound like some cheeseball New Age guru. Meyer insists on having it all at once: history, God, and expensive clothes. He demands his right to wear Armani while using a mystical tale from Rabbi Nachman to make a point about former Soviet bloc politics or hunger in Rwanda. Bonnie knows the contradictions make some people uneasy. But Bonnie respects him for that. Meyer’s a complex person, and after all this time, there’s still something mysterious and unpredictable about him that keeps her slightly off balance, guessing, impressed.
    What’s bothering her is the growing suspicion that he might be slipping. Not losing it so much as phoning it in, going on automatic: the Meyer Maslow Show. She’s concerned about his fondness for repeating his trademark phrases: Forgive, not forget. One heart at a time. Lately, he’s got a new one: the moral bungee jump. Bonnie suspects he’s trying it out for his speech at the gala.
    But whenever Bonnie has doubts, something amazing happens. Meyer not only talks about miracles, he actually seems to create them, or at least to be around when miracles occur. Foreign dissidents get sprung from jail, whole populations are allowed to emigrate to freedom. Meyer is, after all, a man plucked five times from the clutches of death. What was he supposed to do? Outgrow it after the war? Just today, for example, he’d begun to tell her one of those stories about the poor couple who welcome the beggar who knocks on the door and who turns out to be God’s messenger and—
    Meyer got a phone call and left the story unfinished. And before he was off the phone, the beggar messenger arrived, disguised as Vincent Nolan.
    Ask for something, God sends it. A typical day with Meyer. Was it chance or God’s will that the receptionist, Anita Shu, couldn’t reach building security? How lucky it was that Anita didn’t call Roberta Dwyer, their chief publicist. Had Roberta seen Meyer do that thing with the tattoos, she would have tried to commodify it and turn it into a photo op they could repeat on demand for the press. Bonnie wants attention for Brotherhood Watch. But she’d rather avoid the tabloid centerfold of the two men’s arms. Not that Meyer would have allowed it.
    Thank God it was Bonnie who answered, Bonnie and Meyer who recognized that Vincent could pump new energy into the foundation. When Vincent referred to how much the media might go for the story of his leaving the white power movement and coming to work for Brotherhood Watch, something clicked for Bonnie. She’d turned to Meyer and seen that, as always, he was light-years ahead.
    So once more Bonnie finds herself responsible for the small stuff. So what if Meyer isn’t offering Vincent his apartment? Everyone has room. Meyer has more room, plus a whole domestic staff and a powerhouse wife, Irene, who could handle all this with one hand tied behind her back, a thousand times better than Bonnie, who has a tiny guest room crammed with junk. Just enough space for Vincent and a duffel bag stuffed with guns and ammo.
    The traffic starts, then stops again. “Jesus Christ,” Bonnie