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moment to raise the subject of giving.
    “Might as well relax,” she tells Vincent. “Go with the flow.” She’s said plenty of stupid things, but not, as it happens, that. Vincent looks frightened to death. What’s he got to be scared of? Plenty, Bonnie thinks.
    Leaving the office, they’d had to discuss how to get to Bonnie’s house. It was like a blind date from hell, matchmade by Meyer Maslow. Vincent asked where Clairmont was, as if it made a difference. He said his truck was broken. He’d taken the bus into the city. Which means that Bonnie gets to drive him home, and back and forth to work every day now that Meyer has decided to give Vincent a desk and pay him a minimal salary to do…what? They’ll figure that out later. At least he won’t be parking a pickup truck plastered with racist bumper stickers in her driveway overnight. Clairmont’s a small town. People talk. Her kids go to public school.
    Meyer told her to think of Vincent as a person newly escaped from a cult. These first few days would be critical. He could take off at any minute. Did Meyer miss the part where Vincent said he couldn’t go back? It comforts Bonnie that Meyer said, “these first few days.” After that they can help Vincent find his own place. What could be simpler than renting a Manhattan apartment for a homeless, tattooed neo-Nazi with nothing to his name but a duffel bag? And probably a storage unit by the side of the road crammed with explosives and canned baked beans, his emergency survival cache for the coming race war.
    To break the silence, she says, “It’s getting worse every day. The traffic, the pollution—”
    “That’s a statistical fact,” Vincent says. “I read where some scientists said we’ve only got enough oxygen left in the atmosphere to last us thirty more years.”
    Where did he read that? The National Enquirer ? Don’t be a snob, Bonnie thinks. Working with Meyer has made her acutely aware of her middle-class prejudices. Could it be true about the oxygen supply? Bonnie doesn’t care. It’s the longest sentence Vincent has spoken since they got in the van, back in Midtown.
    “That’s what you get for chopping down the rain forest.” This seems safe enough, unless it inspires a rant about the Indians bringing it on themselves, burning their habitat for firewood, or some other such proven fact.
    “For Big Mac containers,” says Vincent. So Bonnie and her Nazi pal share similar views on the environment.
    Earlier that afternoon, while Vincent waited in Meyer’s secretary’s office, Meyer sat on the edge of his desk and ticked off the essential questions on his elegant fingers: What is their obligation to someone who needs their help? Why would a guy like Vincent decide to become a skinhead? Why would he change? And can some magic formula be extracted from his reversal, some miracle vaccine with which to inoculate thousands like him? Meyer went on to talk about how the species was being programmed—by overpopulation, crowding, the media, big business—to suppress its instinctive impulse to shelter the homeless, and to take in the stray.
    “Who’s got the room?” said Bonnie, lamely.
    “Everyone,” Meyer said.
    That’s why Bonnie admires Meyer. And it’s also why Danny calls him Meyer Manson. So, Mom, what did Charlie—I mean Meyer—say today? Don’t call him that, says Bonnie, even though she’s weirdly pleased that her son knows who Charlie Manson is. By now that counts as history. Plus, she understands what he means. When Meyer gets his big ideas, his visionary plans, other people—mainly Bonnie—wind up handling the details.
    Work with anyone long enough, you learn that the person is human. Bonnie has seen the great man’s whole day ruined by a gravy spot on his tie. But he’s a true believer, and what he believes in—saving lives, getting people out of prison and fed and taken care of, education, health care, basic human rights—is pretty high on the scale of things, no