A Changed Man (33 page)

Which absolutely takes guts. Unlike Vincent, who’s got his tattoos higher up on his arms so he can hide them, this guy wants it in your face. There’s no going back for this dude without laser surgery. Vincent was always hedging his bets. Danny sees that now.

The guy is here for Vincent. Anything else is too coincidental. Adopt a skinhead, and surprise! Another one comes along. Danny knew this would happen. His mom mentioned it the very first night Vincent came home with her. And then somehow Danny forgot.

Isn’t Danny supposed to talk first? Say something weak like, Excuse me. Can I help you?

The guy looks Danny in the eye for a long time, very dramatic and stagey.

Finally he says, “Hey, kid. Tell me something. You live here?”

Danny would laugh if his legs didn’t feel like rubber. Once again he wishes he’d never smoked that joint. Should he admit he lives here? In case the guy is planning to come back and rob and kill him and Mom and Max? Or maybe he means to do it right now. Is there some way to communicate that his parents are home, or better yet, the high school football team just happens to be here right now? But why would the football team hang out at Danny’s?

“Yeah.” A simple statement of fact.

“Who else lives here?” says the guy.

They might as well bump chests, lock horns. There’s no point to this conversation. The guy knows Vincent lives with them. Danny’s hands are shaking.

“Why do you want to know?” Danny says. All right! This is more like it. This beats telling Graber and Armstrong to take their suspension and shove it.

“Census,” says the guy.

“Yeah? Census my ass.” Danny’s heart starts to pound.

The guy reaches for the door handle.

“Watch your language,” he says. “Who lives here is all I asked.”

“My mom, my brother, and me.” Danny regrets it instantly. Couldn’t he have invented a father? Oh, and my dad, the professional wrestler. The head of the FBI.

“And who else?” repeats the guy.

“Nobody.” Who is Danny kidding? This psycho’s not cruising the neighborhood for a house to rob.

“Nobody,” he repeats. He smiles and shakes his head. What a joke. Then he says, “You little shit, you’re lucky I’ve got kids myself. Otherwise you could get hurt.”

Danny’s relieved. It sounds like the guy isn’t going to kill him. At the same time, he’s vaguely insulted. He reminds this guy of his
kids?
Imagine being this guy’s kid. Would you have your own tiny swastika tats? Do they make stick-on tattoos for babies? Danny’s had a bitch of a day. First they threaten him at school, and then he goes home and gets threatened by a guy parked in his own driveway. First he takes shit for writing about Hitler, and then Hitler’s number one fan shows up at his house.

“All right,” says the guy. “Let’s cut the crap. Tell Nolan I know where he’s at.”

“Who should I tell him stopped by?” Danny asks.

The guy gives him another stagey look and does a phony double take. He’s pretending to decide whether to break Danny’s jaw or just answer his question. He decides not to punch him out. He’d already decided. He considers his answer.

“Who should you tell him stopped by? The Big Bad Wolf,” he says.

S
O FAR
V
INCENT’S DAY OFF
has been everything he’d hoped
for. Seven-point-five on a scale of ten. The situation with Bonnie’s van couldn’t have worked out better. He was genuinely sorry that he hadn’t been there for her when it died. But at least it wasn’t some hairy breakdown that left Bonnie stranded. She got the vehicle to the garage. And her needing him to pick it up is the icing on the cake. He gets another day off to recover. Already he’s so rested that he feels capable of going into the office tomorrow and dealing with Roberta and having the same conversation with a dozen different boring reporters. Except that tomorrow’s Saturday. He’s still got the weekend.

He even feels up for going on
Chandler,
which he’d been edgy about. It’s got to be easier than the benefit dinner, since presumably he won’t be dying of allergic shock on a major network. Though Chandler’s people would probably think it was great TV. Don’t eat
anything
they give you in the studio. It wouldn’t be beyond the bastards to slip him a wad of peanut butter. And if his being on
Chandler
helps Raymond track him down…There’s no way he can control that. Let the chips fall where they may.

Meanwhile a day of R and R is just the thing, especially a day on which Vincent’s doing it right: deciding against the Vicodin first thing in the morning just to show himself that he can, one skinny joint from the kid’s stash, then a stroll through the neighborhood, which has never looked so good, climaxing with a tuna fish sandwich at the Clairmont Creamery, a place that would have put him uptight not so long ago. Now he can simply occupy a booth and pass for your average Joe. Not that he
is
your average Joe. No, sir. Not by a long shot.

His outing takes an hour or so. More than enough fresh air. He walks home—sun shining, air warm, neighborhood in bloom—and lets himself into the silent house, then lies down for a nap. When he wakes up, he decides—as a present to himself, a reward for being so good—that he’ll borrow one more bud from Danny. In a way, it’s humiliating, stealing weed from a child. And it shoves Vincent’s nose in the fact that this isn’t his home. He’s been here almost three months, and he still hasn’t made a lousy pot connection. Probably the guys at the mailroom at work would know where he could get some, but that wouldn’t be smart. His brotherhood honeymoon would dead-end after the first tiny drug bust. Quick! Get me the Iranian! We’re cutting the Nazi loose.

It took Vincent about a minute to find the kid’s pot. On the bookshelf, in a coffee can, behind the
Abridged Oxford English Dictionary,
probably a bar mitzvah present. Danny thinks it will be safe there because no one would dream that he would ever look at a book like that. Kids forget that everyone used to be a kid. Everyone grew up hiding their stash at the back of the shelves or the bottom of the closet.

The Warrior never steals more than one joint’s worth at a time. It’s a new rule Vincent’s made up, and it seems to work. No getting greedy. The kid doesn’t suspect. He assumes he could have smoked that much. God knows how he’s paying for it. Vincent hopes he isn’t dealing.

Vincent’s got the bud in his hand and is replacing the can when he hears the door open and wheels around to see Danny watching him. Which puts Vincent in an awkward position: standing on the bed holding a marijuana bud, balancing the coffee can and the abridged
OED.
The kid looks pale and shaken. But somehow Vincent senses that whatever is bothering Danny has nothing to do with him. It’s something he brought into the room.

“Sor-ree,” Vincent says.

Then he doesn’t know why, he can’t help it, he bursts out laughing. And Danny, who looks poised on the edge between pure what-are-you-doing-messing-with-my-shit? territorial rage and just as pure surprise, opts for the third choice: laughter. The strain melts from his face, and his color pinks up from chalk to something approaching normal.

For a while they’re both cracking up. They can’t even look at each other. Then they exchange quick glances, shrug, and start laughing again. Vincent’s laugh is one part surprise, one part relief, one part embarrassment, one part what-the-hell. This could so easily have gone another way. The kid could have decided to make Vincent’s life difficult. But what could he do? Report him to the cops? Tell Mom he caught Vincent helping himself to his drugs? He’ll have to bite the bullet.

Vincent says, “You want me to put this bud back? Just say the word.”

Danny says, “Nah, keep it. Now that you’ve gone to the trouble.”

Vincent replaces the can and the book. This should not be happening. Bonnie trusts him to be a role model. How does it look for a cultural hero to be stealing drugs from a kid? How would it look to the charity donors, to Laura and Larry Ticknor? To the readers of
People
?

Vincent owes it to the kid to act like an adult, since there are so few around him. From Danny and Max’s point of view, the dad is a total zero. Thanks to the doc’s middle-class, midlife, walking nervous breakdown, he’s more immature than they are.

“Hey, man, I’m glad it’s you,” Danny says. “I heard the noise in here and—”

Once again, the kid looks freaked. Like he did when he walked in the room. And Vincent feels even more certain that it’s not about catching him with his hand in the cookie jar. Vincent decides to play it cool. The kid will tell him when he’s ready.

“Who did you think it was?” Vincent’s been getting along with the kid. And now the situation they’re in—Vincent and Danny busting each other—is what you might call a bonding experience.

“No one. I don’t know.” Danny leaves the room to avoid watching Vincent hop down from the bed.

Vincent finds him in the kitchen, grimly working his way through a bag of potato chips.

“Aren’t you home early?”

“How come you’re home?” Danny says. “How come you’re home at all?”

“Didn’t your mom tell you not to answer a question with a question? I needed a day to catch up. I have to pick up the van from the garage.”

“She’s letting you drive the van?”

“As I understand it,” Vincent says, “the lady had no choice.”

“Whatever. Want some chips?”

Vincent doesn’t. A heap of them came with his tuna fish sandwich. But he takes a big handful, which seems only sociable, the friendly thing to do with a kid who’s just found you dipping into his stash.

Vincent and Danny eat their chips, until, at the same moment, they notice how loudly they’re crunching, and laugh again.

“Crispy,” says Danny.

“Right.” Vincent wonders if the kid’s high. “Want to come with me to pick up your mom’s car?”

“I still can’t believe she’s letting you drive the van.”

“Why wouldn’t she?” says Vincent. Once, Bonnie might have hesitated to turn over the car keys to the Nazi houseguest. But that’s not what Vincent is anymore. He’s Brotherhood Watch’s new hero. To say nothing of the fact that he’s a guy who, not long ago, Bonnie seemed ready to have sex with. Would you want to sleep with a guy you wouldn’t let drive your car? Actually, lots of women would. Women are insane.

“Maybe your mom trusts me. Maybe she’s figured out I’m a better driver than she is. Maybe I’ve been driving since I was fifteen, and I’ve never had an accident except hitting a couple deer.”

“Fine,” says Danny. “Just don’t tell her you drove
me
anywhere.”

“I got that,” Vincent says. “Believe me. Without your having to tell me.”

“We’d never hear the end of it,” Danny says. “She doesn’t want me getting in a car with anyone but her. But she won’t admit that. She talks about our family situation not working unless we all know where everybody is every minute of the day. It’s like Soviet Russia around here—”

“Give your mom some slack, okay?” Poor Bonnie. Not a minute goes by when she’s not worrying about her kids, and they think that makes her Stalin.

Danny says, “Actually…you know what? Earlier, I was thinking I’m glad she’s my mom. Because I’m pretty sure she’s going to be on my side about this nightmare at school.”

“What nightmare at school?”

“They hated my Hitler paper.” Is that why Danny is so upset? He must take this school stuff seriously. He seems more fried than you’d expect just because a teacher didn’t like his paper.

“What happened? Wait, don’t tell me. They don’t want you
thinking
about Hitler.”

“They don’t want me thinking about gay people,” said Danny. “They think saying Hitler might have been gay is an insult to gay people.”

“The fact that he was human is an insult to the human race,” Vincent says.

“That was sort of my point,” Danny says.

“Tell it to the judge,” Vincent says. “Hey, I know. I’ve been there. I put in some hard time in various principals’ offices. Well, there’s nothing you can do. We better go get the car. The garage guy’s closing early so he can take his kid to a dirt-bike meet.”

Danny and Vincent hit the street like a pair of TV detectives tearing out of the station house after a break in the case. Vincent wonders about the people—moms with strollers, nannies, senior citizens—they pass on the way to the garage. Do they assume he’s a regular guy and Danny is his son? Unless everyone in town knows everything. Vincent has no way of telling. They might know Danny’s whole history, and everything about Vincent. No reason to get paranoid. Just earlier, he was on this same block with zero paranoia. It’s the kid who seems paranoid. He keeps looking back over his shoulder.

They pass the church where the billboard says:
HONOR YOUR MOTHER
.

“Honor
your
mother,” Vincent says to no one in particular.

“They mean Mother Earth,” says Danny.

“When did they change it from the last message? The Tomb Is Empty. Maybe they should combine it. Your Mother’s Tomb Is Empty.”

“This town sucks,” Danny says. “It’s a dump. Some days it
looks
pretty, like today. But underneath—”

“Enjoy it while you can,” says Vincent. “It might take you twenty years to be able to afford a house in a dump like this.” It might take the kid his whole life, but Vincent decides not to mention downward mobility. No reason to depress them both on this lovely afternoon. Not that the kid would listen to him or know what he’s talking about. Whatever’s going on at school is all the future he can imagine.

Neither speaks again till they get to JZ’s. Vincent sees Bonnie’s car on the lot, looking fixed and ready to go. He feels a rush of tender emotions for the van, as if it’s a toddler he’s picking up from nursery school.

Vincent likes JZ right away. He’s a good-natured, hardworking stiff just trying to get along and keep his garage afloat. He hasn’t got time to wonder why Vincent’s picking up the car for Bonnie, if he’s some kind of servant or assistant or gigolo, or what.

“I’m here to get Bonnie Kalen’s car.”

“Right. So she said.” JZ believes Vincent. No ID check, no searches, no long looks. Vincent would prefer to think that this is about clear communication rather than about this guy being so eager to leave on the trip with his kid that he’ll hand over Bonnie’s van to the first deadbeat who claims to know her.

Anyway, Danny’s presence gives Vincent credibility. Having him along makes things more familial. Vincent’s a friend of the family, a friend helping out a friend. That’s partly why he asked the kid to come along in the first place.

JZ gives Vincent the keys. The van starts up right away. Minus the warning light on the dashboard and the noise from under the hood.

“Beautiful,” Vincent calls to JZ, who nods. He knows what he’s doing.

“She’ll call you. She’ll bring in the check,” Vincent says.

“Whenever,” says JZ.

“I hope your kid wins the race,” says Danny.

“Thanks. I’ll tell him. Catch you later.” JZ goes back toward the office.

“What do you say we try it out?” Vincent asks Danny. “Take it for a spin. A test run. See how she’s driving. We wouldn’t want your mom breaking down again in traffic.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Danny agrees. “Just like we wouldn’t want her knowing we did this.”

“No reason for her to know,” Vincent says. “It’ll just make her nervous for nothing. Hey, are you okay? You look a little spooked.”

“No, I’m fine,” says Danny.

Vincent eases the minivan out onto the streets of Clairmont. The bliss of being behind the wheel is almost hallucinatory. It’s freedom. It’s like the day he got his license. That was when his mom was making salad at the Zen monastery. The dishwasher, Ronnie, taught Vincent to drive in the monastery van. He took him for the road test both times. He even let him kidnap the van after he passed on his second try. Vincent was raised to steal cars! It’s not his fault he stole Raymond’s. That’s the way he should be thinking in preparation for
Chandler.
Nothing was ever his fault. He’s been through a lot. He suffered. Some pervert at those meditation camps was always grabbing his ass. But Vincent got over his problems. He was able to move on and change.

Vincent’s enjoying the chance to imagine that this is
his
van,
his
life,
his
laid-back drive with
his
kid on the spring afternoon he’s taken off early from work, kicking back for a few hours before he heads home, where the missus is cooking dinner. Vincent can go two ways with this. He can wallow in self-pity because his real life isn’t like this. Or he can enjoy this moment of dropping into that life and not having to deal with the tedious parts, the mortgage, the taxes, the homework. He’s already doing the homework. He might as well have fun.

Vincent rolls down his window. So does the kid. The air streaming in feels terrific. They’re silent, but Vincent senses that the kid has something to say.

Finally, Danny says, “Did you hear about the Bulgarian baby?”

“Is that the first line of a joke? Is that what you guys are telling now? Bulgarian baby jokes?”

“Right. A joke. I wish. Did you hear that Dad and Lorraine are adopting a Bulgarian baby?”