The Exceptions

FOUR


I’m pleased with our progress, having crossed the Bay Bridge in Maryland and wound over the highways that bring us back to I-95. As I pull off of the exit ramp from Route 32 to merge onto the interstate, my foot slips off the clutch and I accidentally grind the gear as I put it into fifth. The car jerks a little and the noise is loud, especially with the top down.

Melody wakes, rubs her eyes, clears her throat. She sits up a little, lets the sun beat down on her and pulls the sweater from her chest, and as she recognizes her surroundings she comes to attention.

“Why are we going back to Columbia?”

“We’re not,” I say over the road noise. “We’re going home.” She looks at me like she just swallowed a mouthful of sour milk. “To my home.”

“What do you mean?”

“My home. Where I live.”

Though I’m sure of my plan, she stares at me like she’s trying to decipher the words of a foreigner, shakes her head as if to suggest, This is the basket I put all my eggs in?

“Please tell me you live in Pennsylvania.”

I laugh, throw my arms in the air. “New York City, baby. The Big Apple.”

How could I know I was riding beside a loaded gun? I couldn’t have, until my words pulled her trigger. As if I’d spoken some code word, she fires: Melody yanks up on the parking brake and grabs the steering wheel, spirals us across two lanes of traffic, narrowly making it in front of a FedEx truck and a Mini Cooper, drops us off on the shoulder of the interstate like a bag of trash crashing at the bottom of a landfill. We’ve stopped moving and I grip the steering wheel in my white-knuckled fists like the security bar of a roller coaster. As I breathe in dust from the cloud we’ve created, Melody quickly reaches over, turns off the car, and pulls the key from the ignition. The air fills with a chorus of screeching tires, shrilling horns, and yelling drivers.

This event serves as a teachable moment, helps me to learn my very own lesson: When violence arrives, it rarely knocks. It did not tap me on the shoulder, suggest I get ready. It sought to create change by way of confusion.

I never saw it coming.

I’m so panicked, my breath is nowhere close to catchable. I get out what I can. “Are you. Out. Of your mind?”

I’m confused by her level of calmness. “Why are you taking me to New York?” I stare at her, my eyes drooping like a dog aware of forthcoming punishment. I almost start explaining, but this is not the right time, definitely not the right place.

Cars slow as they pass, most trying to figure out what happened, others yell for us to go back to New York and wave fists or middle fingers.

“What’s the matter,” she says, “can’t handle the wet work yourself? Need an uncle or a big brother to do the—” Big breath and scowl. “Oh, that is it!” She laughs and shakes her head. “Oh, you were so clever with all your ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I promise I won’t hurt you.’ Yeah, but see that psychotic maladjusted freak over there? Yeah, he might hurt you. He’s more of a damage-oriented kind of guy. I’d watch yourself around him.”

I really wish I could compose myself. I try to look her in the eye, but fail. “You got me all wrong, Melody.”

Her disposition shifts like I’d spoken another code word. Of the six I’d said, the only one that could have packed any value was Melody. Her true name is my secret weapon, her kryptonite. She sits with her back against the passenger door, slumps a little, holds the keys in the palm of both hands like a cup of tea.

I finally connect my eyes with hers. “Hear me out, okay?”

She stares me down, lifts the sweater back to her torso, fingers the weave. She gives it a strange look, like she can’t make sense of it, can’t determine its place and purpose, can’t clarify the reason behind my buying clothes for someone facing certain death. Originally an unscripted part of my plan, making those purchases might have saved me, though more importantly, saved her. Right now I may be a blackbird in her eyes, but she’s having a hard time explaining that single, bright blue feather.

I wipe my face clean of perspiration and dust. “Look,” I say, ready to get out of here before a cop comes inquiring, “you want to grab a bite? Let’s get a table and talk. There’s a great place nearby.”

“You know this area?”

“The ground is very soft and moist, buried a few people here years ago.” Neither of us laughs.

She ignores my joke, says, “My nerves are shot… but I guess I should try to eat something.”

I put out my hand for the keys. She waits a second before delivering them, but when she does I grab both the keys and her hand at the same time, squeeze them both firmly. I tug her arm a little, pull her in my direction like I’m going to give her a kiss: “You’re safe with me, Melody, okay? As long as I am with you, you are safe.”

She looks in my eyes like she’s trying to read something, anything, that might indicate where this is all going. She licks her lips, shakes her head no but silently mouths the word, “Okay.”



We continue driving northward, avoid Little Italy and head toward the geographic center of Baltimore, through an iffy section of midtown, to a signless restaurant owned but not run by the Bovaros. The unassuming place was the collateral of an unpaid debt to my father some fifteen years earlier, a debt whose makers have long since perished. My folks brought us to Baltimore a few times when we were kids, usually for a baseball game, lots of food and late nights with distant family. On more than one occasion we went to the downtown portion of the city that rests right on the water, would stroll and shop together, almost a normal family. And when we were done we would get in the car and drive to this little hole-in-the-wall. Except this hole had sensational food, could whip up an osso buco that even a finicky child would devour. I do not recall my father ever paying a single bill. We would walk in, eat, and leave without dropping a penny on the table. And as we were escorted to the door by the manager, we’d be thanked for merely dining there, as though Pop were a sitting senator or a food critic for the Baltimore Sun. They knew us then. And when Melody and I arrive, they will know of me still. Melody and I will be temporarily safe there, a desolate world belonging to my father’s galaxy.

We leave the highway and drive down a street covered in enough rock dust that you can see tire tracks. I make our way to the restaurant and park on pavement that has cracked and crumbled, disintegrated into disrepair so long ago that it feels like we’re parking on gravel. I leave the top down and rush to open the door for Melody, but she’s out before I get to the other side. She looks at the door, then at me, and says, “Oh.” She appears bewildered, and appears tired of fighting it.

The building, an old stone house that somehow survived the blue-collar influx that eventually encircled it, has nothing to indicate it’s a restaurant other than the powerful scent as you draw near, an aroma of simmering sauces that makes you want to draw nearer. A dirty faux grass runner welcomes us, a path we follow until we’re standing under a crippled awning in front of the glass entrance. I get the door for Melody. She half looks at me as though a second blue feather has appeared, whispers, “Thanks.”

We’re so early they’re not yet ready for the lunch crowd. The place is just starting to wake up; a server in the back is folding napkins and a busboy is still positioning chairs in front of the tables. I can see an annoyance in the server’s eyes as we’ve arrived before they’re technically open—as a restaurateur, I empathize fully—but then his eyes focus on me. He throws a quick wave in the air, a signal to stay put, then opens the kitchen door, yells something I couldn’t decipher over the speakers streaming Julius La Rosa’s “Eh, Cumpari!”

The server rushes to the front and greets us with a smile, and as he walks us to a quiet and cozy table in a far corner of the place, he puts his hand on my shoulder and we exchange a brief conversation of pleasantries spoken entirely in Italian, a stretch for my limited vocabulary. I can almost remember his name from years back—Antonio? Antonino?—so I overcompensate by continuing the conversation longer than I might have considering our circumstances. ’Tone pulls the chair out for what he perceives is my date. As we sit, I push the menus aside.

“Allow me to order for you, Melody.” I plan on using my acquired knowledge of her life to provide a segue into how I understand who she is, in every capacity.

She winces a little, like I’m some greaser trying to work my magic on her.

“I don’t mean to offend,” I say softly, “but I believe I know what you would like.”

Melody turns to ’Tone and says, “We’ve been dating for a few hours.” She crosses her fingers and smirks. “We’re tight.”

“She will have the rabbit in red wine. Three orders again, darling? And make sure Thumper is nice and rare.” She rolls her eyes, then looks to the ground, then around the room. I wait until the span of silence grows so wide she has no choice but to look at me. Then I stare at her and say to our server, “She will have the carpaccio of beef with watercress and garlic aioli and eggplant croquettes, and I will have the veal chops with lemon sage sauce and the risotto with arugula and goat’s cheese.” I quickly glance at ’Tone from the corner of my eye to see if he makes a face; he merely scribbles and nods. A few years ago I ate the veal here, a dish so memorable that recalling it now required no effort. The beef, on the other hand—don’t remember anything even close to it on the menu. Not that it matters; they’ll be making it today.

Melody turns the corners of her mouth down like she’s trying to hold back a smile, but as she speaks, it escapes. “Raw beef was a risk, Jonathan. So was eggplant, especially for lunch.”

A calculated risk; I saw her eat—and enjoy—the same dish at an Italian eatery two relocations earlier.

“Did I fail?”

She studies me with a look like she’s sizing me up for the first time, fights putting the smile away. “Not yet.”

I order a bottle of wine and ’Tone leaves us. We’re the only people in the entire room.

She takes a deep breath, sits up straight. “You wanted to talk.”

Not as much as I feel that I have to. All those words, all the scripting I tried to memorize in the car while she slept, have vanished now that she faces me, her feminine voice misguiding every remark and thought that attempts to surface, her eyes sparkling with a hope or need for something real and life-sustaining.

Here goes nothing. Here goes everything.

I nod as I put my elbows on the table and lean toward her, speak at a low volume as if someone is seated at the table next to us. “Do you wonder,” I say, “how it is that I knew what was on this menu without even taking a glance?”

She shrugs. “Photographic memory?”

I lean even closer, speak even softer. “We’re the only customers in this restaurant because they’re not open yet, and will not be open for probably another hour. We were given the best table in the place because they would not give me anything less. We will sit and eat a delicious meal, the finest they will prepare today, and we will drink a bottle of wine, and when we’re done with our dessert and cannot finish another bite, we’ll get up and walk out of here without paying a cent.”

More sour milk. “Should I be impressed?”

“You should be concerned, Melody.”

She leans toward me, shows no sign of intimidation. “I’ve been concerned my entire life, Johnny-boy. Every time I start my car, enter my apartment, see some guy standing near me in a coffee shop who looks even vaguely Mediterranean. This is why we’re here? For you to explain why I’ve spent my life in Witness Protection? I know more about it than you ever could.”

“No, what I’m showing you is the depth of my family’s influence, okay? Are we in New York right now? Nowhere close, yet the folks here will do whatever I ask of them. People think you can run away to Tennessee or Ohio, but the truth is we have a presence in those places, too. I mean, really, you think there are all these Italian families vying for the same chunk of business in the five boroughs? Get real. Forget the Mafia, what about the damn Russians or the Chinese or the Dominicans? Even the fu—lousy street gangs are tapping into what used to be our exclusive interests.”

“Nice. So you move to the suburbs like everyone else, bringing all your crime and misery with you.”

We’ve gotten off track and I’ve only been working this issue for one minute. I take off my glasses and rub my eyes. “You’re missing the central issue here. You can’t hide, Melody. The marshals they assign to you cannot move you far enough away. You can’t outrun a sunset.” Then, as I unfold my napkin and place it in my lap, I add, “We could have snatched you long ago.”

Another server emerges from the kitchen, puts a basket of warm bread on our table, and displays the label of a bottle of Medici Ermete Concerto Reggiano Lambrusco to me. I put my glasses back on, nod in approval, tell him I’ll do the pouring. He rips off a few lines in Italian that mean nothing to me; I smile and nod like I get it, then he leaves us.

I take Melody’s glass and pour as slowly as possible, prevent even a single gulp of air from shooting back in the bottle and disturbing the sediment at the bottom. Melody looks at me like I don’t know what I’m doing.

“I’m leaving the sediment in the bottle,” I say. “Keep you from denying the greatness of this wine.”

She peeks at the label as I fill her glass. “It’s just a Lambrusco.”

“Aye, Yankee,” I say, my eye still on the red pour. “Trust me.”

She takes a breath as though she’s about to extend our dialogue on the wine, but instead: “What did you mean when you said you could’ve snatched me long ago?”

I look up, catch her eye, twist the bottle to avoid dripping, and lift.

Here we go: “I’ve been keeping an eye on you for years.”

I let my comment settle along with the wine.

Melody sits back against her seat, her breath now audible. I can see her chest undulate. “What… what do you mean?”

I’ve seen Melody in some dire moments, seen her weep by the hand of man, by the hand of fate. But this is the first time it will be from my very words, from me. I feel the air escaping from my power; I sink in my seat as I deflate. I grab the wine and fill my glass, let it burble and splash down, sediment and bubbles and all. I chug a third of it.

I’d love to win her, but I have to save her. And just like I took Ettore down in that muddy field, when I showed him no mercy, blasted him a second time to fortify a point he would never forget, I must do it here.

“Jane Watkins,” I say. “Shelly Jones,” I say. “Linda Simms, Sandra Clarke,” I say. “You want me to tell you the kinds of jobs you’ve had? The places you used to get coffee in the morning? Your favorite restaurants? The cars you’ve driven? Places you’ve worked?”

It was far easier collapsing Ettore; watching her reaction is more painful than any blow my body has ever received. Melody’s eyes glisten. Having held her breath through my explanation, she lets it out in a rapid sigh and single tears fall from both eyes.

“That’s how you knew my size,” she says. I can see in the way her eyes are moving that the remaining pieces of the puzzle nearly assemble themselves. “And my eye color, and the kinds of food I like.” She shakes her head a little and more tears drift down. “And what you meant when you came into my motel room and said, ‘I like your hair this way.’ ” She looks me in the eye as she wipes her cheeks dry. “You knew me. You’ve known me all along.”



By the time the food arrives, Melody and I have been silent for a while. She’s resisted making any more eye contact, failed to even look in my general direction. As the plates are set before us, Melody composes herself and stares at her dish; it seems like she might actually consider eating.

I nod toward the table. “Please.” She reaches for her fork, plays with the tines before she grabs her knife and begins slicing the beef. I wait until she has a mouthful before I ask, “Aren’t you curious as to why I’ve been watching you all these years?”

She continues to ignore me, takes another slice of beef and brings it to her mouth.

I go ahead and answer the question. “I was there.”

She slows her chewing, head still down, finally responds to me as she scoops up a forkful of watercress. “Where?”

“At Vincent’s.”

There’s that eye contact I was looking for.

“You should try the risotto,” I say, sliding my plate in her direction.

She slides it back. “When were you there?”

Considering how desperate I’d been for her to look me in the eye, I cannot maintain it. “That Sunday morning when my dad was gutting Jimmy ‘the Rat’ Fratello.”

There is not as much a silence between us as there is a vacancy. I might as well have just told her she was the princess of some faraway kingdom. Either way it will cause a complete remapping of her life, of the actions taken and the interpretation of events.

I try to fill the hole. A little. “Turns out Jimmy really was a rat. Which is why he got, uh… you know. He earned his demise, if that helps.”

Keeping her eyes on me, she grabs the Lambrusco and fills her glass, fast. Some of it splashes out.

She says, “You’re about to tell me some tragic news.”

I prop myself up, put down my fork, clean my mouth with a large drink of water. “I was there with my dad,” I say, confirming her thought. “The kids in the family were always kind of around. I mean, where could we go, really?” I take a deep breath that stutters, that shows my anxiety, shows I care about her more than I’d ever admit to myself. I begin the story:

“I was supposed to stay upstairs at Vincent’s, play with my cousins in a big billiards room on the third floor. It was a rule of thumb that us little guys weren’t allowed to touch the pool tables for fear we’d rip the felt or chip the balls or whatever, so it was supposed to be a big deal for us to hang out upstairs while my father and Jimmy did a little business. Of course, we were all old enough to understand that whenever all the kids were sequestered, something bigger and better was going on elsewhere.

“Well, like any kid, I thought my dad was the greatest, you know? I wanted to see what he did for a living. I always assumed he was in the restaurant business. I mean, we were always eating in the best places, could always pick whatever table we wanted, order whatever food we wanted—and we never paid and stuff.”

I glance around the room, realize I just described our current situation. Even though I truly am in the restaurant business, there’s no denying I have become too much like my father.

“Well,” I continue, “I snuck down when no one was looking and tried to catch a glimpse of his high-business dealings.” I get lost for a moment in recalling this event, haven’t replayed this tape in a long time. Should I confess that I thought I might see him tasting sample foods or going over an accounting error with Jimmy? Is there any value in showing her I was innocent then, too? That we were, that same day, dragged away from everything that brought us security and an understanding of happiness?

Melody nods in agitation, moves her fork in a circular motion for me to continue, tries to accelerate my story by finishing this particular scene. “You saw him slicing up Jimmy Fratello?”

I take a bite of risotto and shrug. “No… actually, I saw my dad and Jimmy just talking. It was pretty boring, really. I watched them for a little while but lost interest, eventually walked down the hallway and went outside.” I gently plunge my knife in and out of my veal, seems the wrong thing to be eating right now. I drop my utensils on the table. “I remember that day: It was cold and overcast outside. I was kicking stones into the sewer near Vincent’s, kept staring at the gray sky.” I look at Melody; I’ve got her full attention. “Until I stopped to watch this guy try to parallel park his Oldsmobile. Would’ve bet twenty bucks it was his first time.”

She releases a sigh and it comes out sounding like Ohhh. “Daddy,” she says, “he couldn’t parallel park to save his life.” She starts nodding as though she’s just figured out the twist at the end of a film. “You saw my dad.”

“And your mom and…” I lick my lips. “And you, Melody. I saw you.” I get lost in the indelible image of her twirling on the sidewalk, a tape played too many times, an image that morphed from a simple memory to a recollection of invalid perfection. “You had the sweetest smile and the cutest blond curls.” She reaches up and touches the back of her head as though I’ve brought up a sensitive subject, tries to pretend she needed to rub her neck. “Anyway, a few seconds later you all come screaming down the alley, hop in your car, and zoom off.”

Melody slides her dish to the left, her wineglass to the right, leans on the table where her food once was. She takes a series of microscopic breaths, small undulations that indicate we’re going awfully fast. She has just become aware that a part of her history exists in someone’s memory. Melody Grace McCartney is becoming real again.

“Sean told me,” she says, “that the police got there long after the crime, and that nothing in my file indicated how the feds found my parents—or how they even knew we were witnesses in the first place.” She points her finger at me like she’s picking me out of a lineup. “It was you.”

I blink instead of nod. “What can I say? I wasn’t the thirty-year-old guy sitting before you, Melody. I was just a kid, who wanted to be a grown-up and big and important like my father. I had no idea it was my dad that killed Jimmy. I didn’t even really understand what killing was yet.” I frown at my ultimate decision. “When the cops were asking everyone on the street if anyone saw anything, I told them I saw a family run out of the restaurant.”

“And you just magically knew our address?”

“No. But I did notice your car had Jersey tags, and I remembered two numbers and a letter.” Fig Newton. Florence Nightingale. “Apparently, it was enough.”

She puts a fist to her mouth, stares me down. “So,” she says, “you are the one who brought all of this pain and misery and destruction into my life. You are the one responsible for my parents’ deaths!” She rises up, like she’s standing to leave. I lift off my chair to match her, let her know leaving is not an option, running is not a possibility. Yet.

“The most I would have had to deal with,” she yells, “was some… some post-traumatic stress disorder, maybe some therapy. I still would have had parents and proms and friends and birthday parties and a heritage and something to look forward to!” She pops like a bubble, gushes this tirade as though she’d been waiting her entire life to unload.

“Melody, I was ten years old—just a few years older than you were. Do you have any idea what this did to my family?”

“I do not care.”

“I turned my own father in—not intentionally, of course—but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m the one who did it!”

“Your father is a sick bastard! Who wants a dad who eviscerates people?” She drops down into her chair.

As I slowly ease down as well, I say, “My dad wasn’t Jeffrey Dahmer. It wasn’t all weird.” I finally lower my voice a notch, hope she’ll do the same. “I mean, he was still my dad, the guy who took me to Yankee games and taught me how to throw a football, how to appreciate things like this wine.” Taught me how to clock my twelve-year-old nemesis and beat him to submission, how to hotwire almost any car. “He wasn’t your stereotypical mafioso, with his Friday-night wife and his Saturday-night girlfriend. He taught me to respect women.” Unfortunately, also the guy who coined the street term for a woman he deemed to be half-skank/half-bimbo: skimbo. “We attended a Catholic church and he cried when I made my first Communion.” And only took the Lord’s name in vain three times during that service. “He cheered me on when I hit a homer in Little League and consoled me when I blew a critical double play.” And had an interaction with the umpire that involved more than kicking dirt on the guy’s feet. “He was a real dad. To me, at least.”

“You don’t get it, Jonathan. I didn’t have a chance to play Little League or dance ballet or anything else. We were always trying to stay out of sight. My dad might have taught me how to toss a ball if he hadn’t been so worried about one of us getting plucked off in the process. I mean, getting mail from our mailbox was a stressful daily event.”

“Look, I’m not comparing my parents to yours. My point is that my family—and the business we’re in—makes people do bad things. But the bottom line is it’s business.”

“My family never did anything to the Bovaro clan.”

“Your parents testified.”

“And if they hadn’t?”

I consider the question, do not consider answering it. I want to illuminate this scene, and her potential future, but it would be easily recognized as artificial light. I simply cannot lie to Melody, the way I cannot be profane in front of her, the way I struggle to light a smoke in front of her. My mother once gave me a piece of knowledge that rang with such truth, even as a child, that I might never forget it: A man finally understands the greatest sense of devotion, knows he has fallen to love’s greatest depth, when he voluntarily surrenders all his vices and addictions for a woman. Based on the way my father lived his life, I’m not sure what my mother derived from it. But the concept now scares me, that I possibly have some secondary motivation and interest in Melody’s welfare, for if I do it will surely mean her demise. Besides, the toughest vice remains; I may never be able to surrender the violence.

No one wants you to surrender the violence.

I start eating again. It gives me a place to look and an action to complete while I try to think of how to explain my game plan. Despite the tension in our bodies, in the air, we’ve been finding the food both necessary and enjoyable. Melody returns to her plate after watching me for a minute, and over a five-minute period we each consume half of our meals.

She finally breaks the silence, hits me with an off-the-wall question, one for which I am ill-prepared.

“Where do you rank in your family?”

I take another bite, wish I had a positive answer. Here the reality can’t be avoided. “Not high.”

“Why?”

I lick my teeth. “The fact that I indirectly turned my father in to the cops embarrassed my family greatly.”

She frowns. “How sad.”

“You can make fun, but it turned into a real mess. We’ve been trying to clean it up for years. The truth is the only way I could earn back the trust and honor of my family, of my peers, was to correct the… mistake.”

She squints a little and taps the bottom of her wineglass. “Correct it how?”

“In order for me to regain my honor, I needed to kill you and your parents.” We stare at each other. “Most kids are worried about getting their driver’s license at sixteen; I was worried about rubbing out three people.”

Melody slowly reaches for her knife, grips it like a hammer. “You killed my parents?”

“No… but I tried.” It’s official: I’ve lost any ability to deceive her. And as my honesty enwraps her, it loosens her fingers from the knife. “I was supposed to do the killings, but I didn’t have the stones. I had your folks in my sight, but I could’ve never pulled the trigger.”

She exhales so hard and long that it flows over my face. Her next question is predictable, would have been mine as well. “So who did?”

“My older cousin. He was with me for backup—and sort of a witness, to tell everyone back home. He could see how incapable I was, just… pushed me out of the way and snapped off the bullets that killed your parents. Then he took me back to the car and beat the crap out of me.” I point to the mark on my temple.

“Why’d he do that?”

“Because I failed. I failed my family once again. It was like there was no way to honor them.”

In comes a brief gap in the conversation that Melody ends with a probable deduction, the very reason—indirect as it is—that I am running toward her. “Except… by killing me.”

We’re stuck looking at each other, which I eventually break by nodding. “I kept going to wherever you’d moved and… waited.” I lean in. “I would have never done it. Never. I mean, sure, I used to rough guys up at home when it was necessary. It’s the way things are handled in our business, but please believe me: I could never—will never—hurt you.”

Who knows why, but this particular iteration of my promise of safety seems to stick; she visibly relaxes: Her fingers bend at the knuckles, shoulders droop, a sigh escapes.

“What did you tell your family every time you came back empty-handed?”

“That I couldn’t find you.”

“But… what made you keep coming back? Why didn’t you just say you had no idea where I was in the first place unless you really had some intention of killing me?”

I lean even farther forward, as close as I can get to her without getting up and moving to her side of the table. I slowly move my hand toward hers, curve my fingers around the palm of her hand; she makes no attempt to move it away. I gently tighten my grip, and she squeezes back, closes her eyes a little as though a drug is just starting to kick in. I hope she can’t feel my hand trembling.

Then I say, “To make sure you were okay, Melody.”

She opens her eyes, but they look sleepy. “I was never okay, Jonathan.”

I grasp her hand a little tighter. “You are now.”

She breathes slow and full and nods a little. As she analyzes my words, our situation, the nodding gets slower and slower until it stops.

Then, like she’s thinking out loud: “But now you’re here. No longer hiding.” She drags and slurs this word like the little bit of wine she’s consumed has suddenly kicked in: “Why?”

I hate to do it, but I tighten my grip on her hand; the implied affection all but vanishes.

“Because they finally found you.”

She looks down. “Your family?”

“Someone within the organization. Let’s just say the urgency’s changed, and someone had to take you out. I volunteered.” She looks at her hand in mine like she wonders how it got there, how to pull it back.

So I let it go.

“You’re safer with me than the feds, Melody.”

She pinches her bottom lip, studies me for a reaction, for a sign that my aim is true.

“My family didn’t have to try hard to find you,” I say. “The information was pretty easily handed over.”

“What do you mean? By who?”

I turn away; I know I can’t tell her. If she equates her lack of safety to the hole in security at Justice—a wholly valid notion, mind you—she might think one last run back to the Marshals Service would be worth attempting, that she might be able to correct the problem by informing Justice of their leak, that she might really be safe if the leak were fixed. But an even greater consequence exists: If I lose Gardner, I lose her. I lose it all.

“Just trust me that the information is and always will be completely accurate. And if you can try to believe it’s possible for a good guy to be in organized crime, you must also believe that it’s possible for a bad guy to be in the Justice Department, so the converse is true.”

She turns and stares out the front window and the sun hits her eyes directly, tightens her pupils and exposes a layer of color in her irises I had not yet been given the pleasure of noticing. “Actually, it’s not a converse, or an inverse, or a contrapositive, or any other geometric derivative. Your statement was just a mess of attempted logic. But I get the point.”

I laugh, having not the slightest idea what she’s talking about. I love her intelligence and understanding of things beyond my reach, her ability to see things invisible to me, her talent for not just stepping around me, but dancing.

I can’t pull my eyes from hers. I get distracted by her knowledge of math and ask her what is was like to be a teacher—a question serving little value at this point in our time together, but nothing could have prevented it. I find myself wanting to learn whatever I can about her, the details I could never acquire from afar.

The delay in her answering is long enough that I assumed she either didn’t hear me or was simply ignoring me, but finally the answer comes, her eyes still fixed on whatever is beyond the window, like a sick child watching other kids play. She tells me she requested that the feds get her any job that dealt with math, that the discipline had become an obsession for her as a child, that with all of the moving and changing of locations and names, as all of the uncertainty unfolded year after year, there was one thing she could count on as an absolute truth: math. I’ve stopped putting my fork to my food, stopped eating, stopped being aware of anything but the woman before me. I listen to every word, sink down in depression like quicksand.

She has me forgetting who I am, where I am.

Melody tells me how she used math as a protective device, that when things were scary and tentative, she would solve increasingly difficult equations—find the proverbial answer—and know she could be certain of something. Her introspection is honest and accurate, but she does not appear to understand the dark, final destination to which her insecurity has taken her. She tells me how on her own she learned it all, that while her classmates in algebra struggled she’d go home and finish off books on calculus, that she’d self-taught herself differential equations and was about to embark on the next level of advanced coursework. But even I, rough hood that I am, can see she will eventually run out of material, that eventually there will be no next class, that she will never find the ultimate truth by way of mathematics.

And then my own final destination is lit like a concert hall, all lights aimed at me. She is with me for one reason only: I can give her the ultimate truth of her life.

I take a few bites of my risotto, which has cooled and coagulated and lost its intensity. Then, like she’s checking to make sure she got the better deal, Melody asks, “Why am I safer with you?”

I gulp down the risotto and answer, “My family will kill you if they find you alone. My family will not kill you if they find you with me. And if you’re with a fed or anyone else?” I shrug.

“But why? Why do they want me dead? You know how many times I sat in my bedroom and imagined that all my running was for nothing, that you guys had forgotten who I even was? I mean, what damage could I possibly do to your family? The government lost all the cases that involved my parents’ testimony.”

I take a drink of wine. “Yes, but therein lies the problem. Your parents testified—not you. It’s a long story, but there’s a big storm brewing, and—I don’t mean this to sound casual—my family doesn’t want any loose ends. Your testimony could end up being useful, even critical. It’s just easier if you’re gone.”

She closes her eyes and drops her head. “Just like that, huh?”

I put my fork on my plate and take her hand again, but this time it’s limp and cold like the palm of the corpse I’m trying to prevent her from becoming.

“I will protect you, Melody. Trust me.”

She looks up, glances in my general direction like I’m the one invisible thing she can’t see. And as she glares right through me, I realize I’ve become one of them; I just made her the same promise the feds have been making her whole life, and I’m no more certain I can keep it than they were. And Melody’s too experienced to assume otherwise.



We finish our meal with a pair of espressos, sit in a silence that does not feel awkward, a quiet space more common to couples who have lived a full life together, where just being next to each other is its own form of companionship.

And as I predicted, ’Tone never brings us a check, just stops by to see if we need anything else and wishes us well in our day. It shames me.

As I start playing with the key to the Audi, Melody asks, “What’re you planning to do with me once we get to New York?”

“I, uh… I want to take you back to my family and introduce you to them.”

She flops back in her chair, waits for me to laugh at my own joke. “You’re kidding, right? This is your plan?”

“Hear me out, okay?”

“I might as well jam this knife in my gut right now.”

“Hear me out.”

“Know what might be less painful? Tie me to the bumper of your car and drag me around the beltway.”

“Melody, just wa—”

“Oh, better, can you do that thing where you wrap the wire around my neck and strangulate me?”

“A garrote. And no, no one is—”

“This trip is a death sentence!”

I wave my hands in front of her. “Melody! Nobody is killing anybody, okay? Like I’ve explained, if you are with me, you’re safe.”

She wipes her eyes, then her entire face. “Let’s hear this brilliant scheme.”

I clear my throat like I’m preparing to step up to the microphone for a presentation. “I’m going to show my family what a nice woman you are”—Melody smirks, wipes her nose—“how you’re no threat to them, how you’re a person.”

“I’m no threat to them if I’m a dead person.”

“I’m going to show them you are not some file of incriminating evidence they’re trying to erase or a rat spilling his guts to the cops, but a real human being with feelings and emotions and something worth—”

“Are you stupid?”

“What?”

“Take drugs or something?”

“Of course not.”

“Suffer from any mental disease or deficiency?”

Debatable.

“Because,” she says, “I can’t figure out what could possibly be running through your mind, what might make you think I stand the slightest chance of survival if you bring me to your home. It’s like introducing a deer to the patrons of a hunting lodge.”

I stand, motion for her to get up as well. I offer my hand to help her out of her chair. She stares at it, but eventually takes it. We lumber to the front of the restaurant and exit, meander down the nylon green walkway and pause when we arrive at the end. In the bright sunshine, we inhale the lingering dust of ash and stone, gaze at a thirty-foot-high man-made hill of gray and silver rock lining the other side of the road. Trucks drive by and gravel spills to the road as they pass over potholes.

“I’ll tell you what,” I say. “I left my keys on the table in the restaurant. I’m gonna go back in and get them. If you think you’ll be safer with the feds than with me, feel free to leave. If you think you’ll be safer with me—and I hope you will—then be here when I come back out.”

I look at her, hoping she does not answer me on the spot—either way. I really want her to consider it, be part of the plan for real, to make a commitment. She studies me for a second, just nods. I turn and walk back toward the restaurant.

Of course, I did not forget my keys, fabricated the entire excuse to give her a minute to consider the dump of information under which she’s now buried, a pile more weighty than those stones across the street.

’Tone spots me and I wave him over. We share more Italian, loses me near the end so I cut him off, tell him how outstanding the meal and service was, how my father wishes them all well. A quick handshake/hug combo and he walks back into the kitchen. After he’s completely out of sight, I reach into my pocket and pull out my wad of bills and toss two hundred in twenties on the table.

And when I return to the front—hesitate while I take a breath and hold it—and exit the restaurant a final time, Melody is waiting for me with a smile. Actually, I think her mouth is turned up from extreme squinting, the harsh sun blasting her face. Either way.

“Thank you,” I say.

As we stroll to my car, I put my hand on the small of her back and I’m almost certain she’s letting some of her weight fall against my palm. I notice her stealing short glances of me again, like when we were riding up the highway from Cape Charles. I find myself trying to hold her glances, to see the look in her eye and understand the way she’s starting to view me. Something has changed within her and I want to figure out what it is, what produced it, how to sustain it. When I finally catch her eye, she slows her pace a little and grins at me, seems like she has something to say, but quickly turns and drops her smile as she looks at the Audi.

I follow the path of her eyes and spot two teenage boys with their backs to us, staring and pointing inside my car. And laughing.

We stop moving. I regretfully pull my hand from Melody’s back, yank up my sleeves, and whisper, “Stay here.”

“Do it again,” I hear one of the kids say.

As I quietly approach them, one of them leans over the door and spits all over the upholstery on the passenger side. I wait for another truck full of rock to roll down the street, use it to mask the sound of the broken pavement and gravel under my feet. I sneak up behind them, say, “What do you little fu”—I glimpse Melody and she’s looking down, her interest and hope in me long vanished—“funny guys think you’re doing?”

Both kids try to bolt, but I grab the slower one as he passes, my fist full of hair and collar. His knees buckle like he’s a marionette and I’m annoyed by his weakness, that this bug is causing a disruption in all I’m trying to do, that I have to spend even a second swatting him away. The product of my emotions has become distilled, and the only essential element remains: rage.

I swing him around, shove his face inside my car, bend his body over so far he nearly falls in the cab. “Funny now? Still funny? C’mon, laugh. I wanna hear the laugh.”

His friend stops in mid-escape and returns, does nothing more than watch. I pull back on the kid’s collar and wind up for a slam onto the frame of the car door, and as I do I shoot a look at Melody. I’m not sure I’ve ever so easily read disappointment in someone’s face.

She slowly shakes her head, shrugs, and says, “It’s just saliva.”

Her disapproval sucks the anger from me, hamstrings my ability to take these varmints out. I shove the kid to the ground and say, “Go home and hug your mother.”

“Yes, sir,” he mumbles, as his buddy helps him to his feet. They both look at me for further instructions.

“Run, you little sh—shysters.” Boy, am I longing for some profanity. I start my way back to Melody, turn my head out of her view, and whisper, “You’ve got three seconds, you little faccia di merda.”

They both depart so quickly that they slip and fall in the gravel, stumble into one another. As the kids run down the street, Melody and I analyze the car. They must have been at it for a while, because not only are there several gobs of spit on the seats, but some have already dried.

I groan under my breath. “Let me go back in the restaurant and see if I can get some paper towels,” I say.

Melody doesn’t respond. She stares at the seats but I can sense her eyes are out of focus, her thoughts elsewhere. I’ve lost her. The weak accrual of convincing and nominal amount of trust I might’ve secured throughout our meal have been crushed to rubble by disillusionment. I start toward the restaurant but keep my eyes on her with every step. She reaches in the car and pulls out the green sweater, checks it over, starts to put it on. I decelerate as she bunches it up at the collar and pulls it over her head, her arms up and her shirt pressed tight against her frame, the sun detailing the shape of her body as she slowly brings it down and covers and hides her body again. She turns away so that her back faces me, gently shifts her hips so that she’s leaning against the body of the car, and slips her hands in the pockets of her jeans.

As I reach the door of the restaurant, I stop. I look at her and want to correct every instance of how I’ve failed her, from twenty years ago to twenty seconds ago. I fantasize about moving up behind her, gently wrapping my arms around her belly, and whispering in her ear, “It’s all right. Everything’s gonna be all right.” And then she would close her eyes and push her head against my neck and then, for once, we’d both feel a brief wave of contentment, a peek of what it might be like to be at peace, to be safe.

I open the door and walk to the kitchen, explain my situation to ’Tone. He mumbles something about how the neighborhood has gone south, hands me two worn cotton towels, one wet and one dry. Then he shoves a paper plate in my hand and drops two cannoli on it. I nod in appreciation and make my way back to the front. I tuck the towels under my arm as I open the door and half jog into the sun-filled parking lot.

Melody is missing.

Each step closer to the car brings a drop in my pace. Within seconds I am standing in the center of the parking lot, towels in hand, head and body twisting in every direction for any sign of her. I run to the corners of the building, look around both sides of the restaurant: nothing. Then up to the street, look east and west, find not a single person anywhere in my field of vision. I couldn’t have been in the restaurant for more than sixty seconds; it’s like she truly vanished, no trace of her having been here or having shared a meal and moments with me. My mind races at not only why she left, but how she departed so successfully. Dust from the parking lot does not hang in the air. No racing car engines can be heard, no squealing tires. No voices, no whispers or screams for help. There now exists a void, and I am standing in the center of the vacuum.

Melody is not just gone—she’s long gone.