Nolan pulls into the parking garage, braced for the Rican attendant with
the cojones big enough to make a point of wondering what this rusted hunk
of Chevy pickup junk is doing in Jag-u-ar City. But the ticket-spitting
machine doesn’t much care what Nolan’s driving. It lifts its arm, like a
benediction, like the hand of God dividing the Red Sea. Nolan passes a
dozen empty spots and drives up to the top level, where he turns in beside
a dusty van that hasn’t been anywhere lately. He grabs his duffel bag,
jumps out, inhales, filling his lungs with damp cement-y air. So far, so
good, he likes the garage. He wishes he could stay here. He finds the
stairwell where he would hide were he planning a mugging, corkscrews down
five flights of stairs, and plunges into the honking inferno of
midafternoon Times Square.
He’s never seen it this bad. A giant mosh pit with cars. Just walking
demands concentration, like driving in heavy traffic. He remembers the old
Times Square on those righteous long-ago weekends when he and his high
school friends took the bus into the city to get hammered and eyeball the
hookers. He’s read about the new Disneyfied theme park Times Squareland,
but that’s way more complicated than what he needs to deal with right now,
which is navigating without plowing into some little old lady. A fuzzball
of pure pressure expands inside his chest, stoked by patches of soggy
shirt, clinging to his rib cage.
It’s eighty, maybe eighty-five, and he’s the only guy in New York wearing
a long-sleeved jersey. All the white men seem to be running personal air
conditioners inside their fancy Italian suits, unlike the blacks and
Latinos, who have already soaked through their T-shirts. What does that
make Nolan? The only white guy sweating. The only human of any kind
gagging from exhaust fumes. While Nolan’s been off in the boondocks with
his friends and their Aryan Homeland wet dream, an alien life-form has
evolved in the nation’s cities, a hybrid species bred to survive on dog
piss and carbon monoxide. Nolan needs to stop thinking that way. Attitude
is crucial.
Last night, at his cousin Raymond’s, he’d watched the TV weatherchipmunk
chirping about the heat wave, so unseasonable for April, reassuring
local viewers with his records and statistics lest anyone think: Look out,
global warming, the world is ending right now. Why is everyone so
surprised that the planet’s cutting them loose? Ecological Armageddon was
just what the doctor ordered to take Nolan’s mind off his own problems as
he’d faced the dark hours ahead until it was time to get up and borrow
Cousin Raymond’s truck, his money and pills, and vanish into the ozone.
Nolan’s hardly slept for two weeks, ever since he decided to turn. Two
Xanax did nothing to stop his lab-rat brain from racing from one
micro-detail to another.
Like, for example, sleeve length. Should he hide the tattoos? Or just wear
a T-shirt and let them do the talking? If one picture’s worth a thousand
words, that’s the first two thousand right there, two thousand minus the
hi howareya nicetameetcha. Which was one reason to get the tats: cut
through a load of hot air. On the other hand, strolling into the office of
World Brotherhood Watch with Waffen-SS bolts on one bicep and a
death’s-head on the other might make it harder for Nolan to get his point
across – let’s say, if the people he’s talking to are hiding under their
desks. Nolan wouldn’t blame them. It hasn’t been all that long since that
lone-wolf lunatic in L.A. shot up the Jewish temple preschool.
In any case, it’s going to be tough, explaining what he’s doing at
Brotherhood Watch, especially since Nolan himself isn’t exactly sure.
There are some … practical issues involved with stealing Raymond’s
truck plus the fifteen hundred bucks that, if you want to be literal,
belongs to the Aryan Resistance Movement. But there’s more to it than
that. If it were just a question of disappearing and starting over, Nolan
could have some fun. Sell SUVs in Palm Springs, deal blackjack in Las
Vegas. Go to Disney World, put on a Goofy suit, let toddlers fuck with his
head.
What he’d really like to do is give every man, woman, and child in the
world the exact same hit of Ecstasy, the same tiny candy, pink as a
kitten’s tongue, that managed to turn his head around, or more precisely,
to give his head a little – well, a fairly big – push in the direction
it was already headed. But that’s not going to happen, free Ex for the
human race, so maybe the next best thing is to help other people find a
more gradual route to the place where the Ex took Nolan.
Meanwhile, he knows that thinking like this will only get in his way.
He’ll stay cooler if he convinces himself that he’s just interviewing for
a job.
Has it only been two weeks since Nolan finally made up his mind? A long
two weeks of trying to figure it out, even – especially – after he knew
how he was going to do it.
No one promised it would be easy. But Nolan has prepared. He’s read up,
starting with two books by Meyer Maslow, the founder and current head of
the World Brotherhood Watch Foundation. He actually went out and ordered
them through the bookstore in the mall. The first book, The Kindness of
Strangers – Maslow’s tribute to the people who saved his life when he was
on the run from the Nazis – was what made Nolan begin to think that maybe
his plan could work.
For balance, Nolan has also been reading The Way of the Warrior, a
paperback he took from the tire shop, borrowed from the backseat of a Ford
Expedition some yuppie brought in for the Firestone recall.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from A Changed Man
by Francine Prose Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0-06-019674-2
