The Exceptions

TWELVE


Just after Herman brings the bill, I start fishing for my cash. I’d love to stiff the weasel, but I can never bring myself to short a server, no matter how incapable or clumsy—was brought up that way, but really gained an appreciation after seeing some of the hardest-working folks in my restaurant get shafted.

As I count my money—I’m finally running low, will have to tap into the wad in my car on our journey home—Melody is trying to explain to me what a Fibonacci number is. I appreciate her effort to highlight a fine mathematician of Italian ancestry (weren’t they all?), but I have absolutely no clue what she’s talking about. Something about how every two preceding numbers become the sum of the following number.

“I see,” I lie.

Only a few days around me and she can read my expressions with accuracy, offers help. “Like, 3, 4, 7, 11, 18, 29.”

“Lotto numbers.”

“Judging by the look on your face, I’m guessing you really weren’t that interested.”

I lean on the table and smile at her. “You couldn’t be more off. You know how cool it is that you understand stuff I could never comprehend? I can barely balance Sylvia’s books. I’m interested in everything about you, in all the pieces I could never grasp by watching you from a distance.” I lean in so I can speak softer. “You’re like a beautiful painting where the colors become richer and deeper and more captivating with every step closer to the canvas.”

She smiles, bites her bottom lip. “That is so not something I would expect to come from the mouth of a Bovaro.” She looks down and away. “But it’s something I will never forget.”

I stand, walk around to pull out her chair for her; she smoothes her dress before standing. I plop the wad of cash on the table and we exit the restaurant, walk out into the cool night air. Her sundress may have been appropriate for the sunlit harbor, but within a few steps she rubs her shoulders with her hands, shivers. In an attempt to offer warmth, I sidle up and put my arms around her from behind.

“We should probably head back to the hotel,” I say.

She nudges me as we walk. “You’re not going to take advantage of me, are you?”

“Actually,” I say, wondering if my body-warming is sending the wrong message, “we should probably get some rest. We have a big day tomorrow.”

She turns around, tries to read my eyes. “You serious?”

I half shrug. “Tomorrow will be a very serious day.”

We walk steadily northward up the harbor, our hotel waiting for us around the bend like Oz at the end of the yellow brick road.

After a long silence, Melody says, “Are you sure you want to do this thing tomorrow? Sure you’ve thought it all the way through?”

I’m finally at the point of assuredness—because no choices remain. The circumstances—everything and everyone coming together at the same time, along with my own twenty-year need to rescue her—could not be more perfectly designed. The only risk is Melody’s safety; I’ll need to be awfully convincing. But the risk of her not coming with me, running about in the fields only to be hunted and mounted on the wall by our crew, is exponentially worse. I consider offering a detailed explanation, but at this point I could only lessen her confidence.

“I have.” She shivers again and I put my hand on her lower back, pull her my way. “C’mon, let’s take a shortcut so we can get you back safe and warm.”

We start walking faster, reach the edge of Harborplace within minutes, jaywalk across the east- and westbound lanes of Pratt Street. I suggest to Melody that we cut through a narrow alley between two skyscrapers to shorten the return walk. We slip down the alley and out of sight, start walk-jogging to the other end, when we hear another set of footsteps behind us. This, in any city, would not be an unusual occurrence. But as the footsteps behind us turn into a pace faster than ours—the attempt to catch up—anxiety rises.

I keep my eyes locked on the light at the end of the alley, but I can tell Melody is looking up at me, waiting for me to take control. “Just ignore it,” I say.

Could be nobody. On the other hand, could be anybody. Maybe Tommy Fingers hung out in Baltimore after all. Maybe her marshal found us and wants to have a word. Maybe a cop wants to nail us for jaywalking across Pratt Street.

“Oh, man,” Melody whispers.

I consider turning around at this point, weigh the usefulness of an early assessment of what may be coming, but I will not take my hand from Melody, will not allow her to be compromised in any way by turning my attention elsewhere, even for a handful of seconds.

As the footsteps get louder and closer, we have slowed and steadied our pace—though you would never guess because Melody’s now breathing so hard she’s on the verge of hyperventilating, the fear on her face as evident as the night I stormed her motel room in Cape Charles.

I run my hand up her back and around her shoulder and she whimpers, looks on the verge of tears. “No one is going to hurt you—not now, not ever. I’d never let it happen.”

The person slides up behind us, and while Melody might be panicking, I’m bathed in relief: I can tell by the person’s smell, a blend of stale alcohol and poor hygiene, that it’s no one from our crew, no one from the Marshals Service.

I feel a giant hand on my neck, brings me to a fast stop. The other hand grabs Melody by the shoulder and shoves her into a set of garbage cans. She goes tumbling over, bashes her arm on the corner of a Dumpster, smacks her shoulder on the pavement. As she tries to right herself, I can see blood on her shoulder and across her wrists from where she tried to brace herself. One of her sandals has come off, and as she twists her body, her dress rides up behind her with her legs apart and bent, leaving her facing us in an immodest position. She tries to shift her body and pull her dress down but it must hurt too much.

A small blade is pressed against my neckline, so thin and incapable I can feel the thing bend as it’s pressed into my flesh. I consider smacking it out of the person’s hand, but I want to gain an understanding of intention, to see where this is going.

Then I become the recipient of a most atrocious blast of breath, an exhale of sewage that carries these words: “Yeah, that’s it, stay just like that. When I’m done taking your man’s money, he’s gonna watch me take you on the ride of your life.”

I see. So it’s going there.

All I can say is this: toddler. So many crumbsnatchers in this city, a giant urban daycare center.

I feel blood running down my neck—nothing to be concerned about yet—but based on his overcompensation, this guy’s judgment is either drug-fueled or he’s off his rocker. In any case, bad timing for the guy. He continues to snap off the disgusting perversions he’s got planned for Melody. How terribly unfortunate for him that I just had to recall and retell the experience of Morrison assaulting my mother. With every word spoken from this scumbag, I picture Morrison’s drooling mouth uttering the same abusive and repulsive things. The images of a loved one being violated in that way are indelible, can never be cut out like a cancer or tumor. I will carry it the rest of my life. And now this: interplay with some bottom-dweller who wants more money for crack or smack or meth and happened upon a couple where he could not only steal cash, but forced sex as well.

Melody’s lips quiver. She has tears forming in the corners of her eyes and her breath is clipped. And now I wonder what it is she’s thinking, what she wants me to do. Does she want me to stand down? Offer up the cash and plead to leave her alone? Give up the tendency toward destruction the way I gave up the cigarettes? The profanity?

Sasquatch starts grabbing my butt looking for a wallet. “Gimme your wallet! Now!”

I glance at Melody, slowly turn my hands out and up, mime a request for permission.

Melody looks at me with confusion. “What,” she whispers.

I mouth these words to her: “Just a mugging?”

As Sasquatch feels my entire body up and down, Melody stares at me, reads my story over and over, seems to finally comprehend the gist. And something in her changes. She wipes the tears away, the breathing slows and calms, her lips cease to tremble and so easily produce her answer: “Do it.”

They never want you to give up the violence.

If Sasquatch knew these would be his final words this evening, I’m guessing he would not have said, “Shut up, you ugly slut.” For these are the last spoken before I plunge my fist into the toddler’s throat. As he falls to the ground, drops the knife to his side, and lunges both hands to his neck, I kick him over with my foot, step down on his hand-covered gullet, and put most of my two hundred pounds on it until he coughs up a little blood.

I turn to Melody and ask, “You okay?”

She rests sideways against a Dumpster, closes her eyes and nods.

Sasquatch’s gag-screaming has become quite distracting; I take an old sneaker from behind a trash can and shove the toe in his mouth.

I turn to Melody and say, “I’m gonna make sure he doesn’t follow us—or consider running. You might want to look the other way.”

She says, “Okay,” but keeps watching, gets to see firsthand my sinister capabilities. This is not a softened story from my past; this is here and now, an image she’ll recall for a lifetime.

Then it hits me: The stories didn’t cut it. My tale of dismantling Morrison was not good enough. She needs to see it happen. She needs to know she could never be with someone filled with such imbalanced rage. She wants to watch. Unfortunately for Sasquatch, I must deliver.

I grab a broken two-by-four from a pile of loose trash, look down each end of the alley to be sure his muted screams won’t draw attention, and swing the board down on his lower leg, over and over, until I’ve removed all functionality from his ankle. While the toddler squirms, I find his knife and kick it into the sewer drain.

I look over at Melody and she’s paying attention; I could never know what she’s thinking, but she’s taking it all in. Though it seems so wrong, I have to continue, to disappoint her with who I am, to provide her the mechanism to break whatever chain has her tethered to me. She does not appear bothered my actions, so I step it up another level.

I face no fight in destroying Sasquatch, no regret in wrecking him for what he would have done to Melody were I passive. He is another Morrison. Another loser destined to sip his food through a straw.

I hold the two-by-four in my hand, walk up to Sasquatch’s fright-filled face, listen to his muffled coughs. I walk behind him, kick the shoe out of his mouth—the begging instantly begins, a random repetition of the words please and no that resemble Morse code—put my foot on his forehead and line up the two-by-four against his chin like a driver against a golf ball. “Now we’ll give our friend something to remember this moment,” I say.

I pull the broken stud back slowly, wind up to swing, when Melody cheers out, “Yeah, give that bastard a souvenir!”

She catches me so off guard, uses a term so unknown to people outside of the tight team of men that comprise our crew, I feel like someone just swung something against my own head. I stumble forward, my foot slipping off of Sasquatch’s skull as Melody rushes to cover her mouth—but the way she’s propped up makes it hard for her to move, and she fumbles around like she didn’t mean to say what she did, tries to pretend the words were never spoken.

I attempt to process the meaning behind what she said, but the confusion has thrown me off course, made me less capable of providing physical destruction. I toss the board back in the trash and watch Sasquatch whimper and grab his throat with one hand and his leg with the other. I hate him. I hate what he would have done to Melody. I hate what he’d probably done to women before, how he’ll continue to victimize society with his alley muggings and petty crimes. He needs to pay.

I reach down, grab him by the shirt, and say, “Look at me, look at me. Remember this face.” Then I pull him up, lift his meaty chest right off the ground, and whisper in his ear so Melody can’t hear. “You stay right here. I’m taking the girl to safety, then I’m gonna come back, and I’m gonna kill you. There’s no way out for you, no escape, do you understand? You’re gonna stay right here and prepare to die. If you’re not here when I come back, I’m gonna find you, and I promise I’m gonna take what would have lasted five minutes and drag it out for an entire weekend. So, I want you to promise me you’re gonna wait right here.”

He chokes, says, “I promise.” Blood trickles out of the corner of his mouth. I dump him back on the ground and he curls into a ball like a frightened armadillo.

“Say it again.”

“I promise.”

“Remember this face.”

“I promise.”

I stand above him, let my shadow cast a layer of darkness over him, watch the guy struggle to make sense of what just happened.

I, of course, have no intention of returning. Sasquatch won’t stay, either—but he’ll consider what I said for maybe an hour. Though those sixty minutes are nothing compared to the lifetime of fear women face after being traumatized by these scumbags, at least it was sixty minutes. My family is in the business of keeping people enslaved to their addictions and under the fearful thumb of our power, and while these people return again and again to repeat the same mistakes, the recidivism rate for those who wrong us is near zero.

I brush off my clothes and return to Melody, help her to her feet. As she stands and stabilizes, I realize she was banged up more than I originally thought, see the bloodstains emerging on her dress. Both straps of her sundress are broken and she has to hold the dress to her chest to keep it from falling. She finds her lost sandal, but the heel has broken off and disappeared. She tries to dignify herself, wipes off her dress and adjusts it over her body with one hand.

“You need me to get you to a hospital?”

She forces a smile. “I’ve been in worse condition.” She tries to take a step forward but her ankle buckles as if hers had been the one I disabled.

“C’mere,” I say, as I bend down and pick her up. She throws her arms around my neck and gets a look on her face like she’s afraid she’s going to fall. I start walking us down the alley and her expression changes. I can sense her staring at me as we reach the well-lit end of the passageway.

We turn back onto the main drag. Cars whiz by as I carry her back to the hotel. We have to endure catcalls and other lewd statements from the occupants of passing vehicles. She doesn’t seem to care.

As we enter the hotel lobby, the commentary ends and the staring begins. Melody waves her hand at the desk staff and visitors checking in, offers up, “We just got married.” Everyone starts clapping and whistling like they’re relieved no weird or criminal activity is occurring in this prestigious facility.

An older couple hold the elevator, stare at us the entire ride to our floor. The man comments to Melody, “You know you’re bleeding?”

“He dropped me on the sidewalk,” she says, then whispers, “a nice guy, but a bit of a weakling.”

As we exit the elevator, I let her body slip a little, then fling her over my shoulder. My hand naturally slides to the crevice between her upper thigh and bottom. I hold her legs tightly, press her against my shoulder to keep her secure and steady.

When I get her to my room—balancing her and opening the door is not easy—I walk in, flip on the light, then toss her on the bed like a suitcase. She bounces across the mattress and giggles loudly, goes flying backward—I forgot about the straps of her sundress, for if I’d remembered I would’ve never chucked her like that; her dress rises to the top of her thighs and drops down from her chest, exposes both of her breasts.

She covers herself. Except, not really.

Then, my thoughts, like rounds from a machine gun: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Her smile fades. Actually, it dissolves—into a look that implies she wants to continue. She covers her chest with only her hand, props up a leg that makes her dress drift way up, her narrow panties exposing her midriff. I can testify that she is consistent—she’s making those look good, too. If I ever return to Norfolk, I’ll have to find Melissa and compliment her on her saleswomanship.

“Come here,” she says.

I take a deep breath and narrow my field of vision to the floor—no one could ever joke of my being a weakling after performing this act. “We should get you cleaned up.”

“I’m too dirty for you?” Though I’m not looking, I can tell she’s dragging a fingertip across her belly button.

“That’s not what I meant.” Eyes to the floor, eyes to the floor.

“Okay.” She slowly rolls over and gets to her feet. Her ankle still seems to be bothering her, but she’s able to walk on it now, takes uneven steps in my direction. I watch her feet as they approach, can’t help but notice the contrast of red nail polish against her cream-colored skin. She stops right in front of me. “I’ll draw a bath,” she says, then slowly raises her arms, and the now strapless dress falls to the ground like a bath towel.

My eyes, still cast downward, study the bloody dress. If I look at her body, I will shed any sense of control I have—I’m only flesh and blood, after all, and mostly flesh, at that. I’ll want to feel her against me with such desire that I’ll undoubtedly make the worst possible decision, cross a line that will cloud and distort the meaning of tomorrow’s big event. I’ve spent so much time trying to free her of me and my family; the last thing she needs is to want to be around me, with me.

I close my eyes and lift my head, wait until they’re aimed at her face. When I open them, I see the hope in her expression, along with the longing for intimacy and the request for not being rejected—which I attempt to assuage.

I step backward to the closet and grab a blanket. “Melody, you do not need to seduce me.” As I enwrap her, I add, “I’m yours already.” Have been since you were six years old. “Let me draw your bath.”

Melody sits down on the edge of the bed and I walk to the bathroom and pull back the curtain of my tub, run the water and take the first gush of cold water and splash it across my face. I wait as the tub fills with hot water, squirt enormous blasts of body wash under the stream to create a thick coverlet of bubbles, sit on the floor as billows of steam rise to the ceiling. Once the tub is near the top, I leave the bathroom, find Melody sprawled back on the bed, staring at the ceiling, running her hand up and down the seam of the bedspread.

“Your bath is ready.”

She props herself on her side. “Will you stay with me?”

“I was gonna tend to your wounds. Just need to get my Dopp kit from my overnight bag. You can go ahead. I’ll be right in.”

I open my suitcase and grab the leather pouch I’ve carried with me on all my journeys, the pouch with contents used to stop the bleeding from so many unexpected events. I hear the water move in small waves, can visualize the immersion of her naked body. I wait an extra minute before returning to my bathroom where she waits.

I tap the door and she says, “You can come in.”

I peek around the corner. On the floor, I notice the piled-up blanket with her panties curled on top as though she’d just melted like Frosty the Snowman or the Wicked Witch of the West. Steam coats me as I take a half step in.

Her body is buried under the water, protected by a shield of bubbles. I open my bag and start retrieving items like a medic on a battlefield. I analyze her wounds, start looking at her arms and hands and shoulders. I soak a cotton ball in antiseptic and gently dab it on an open cut on her forearm. Melody closes her eyes, grimaces. After a few iterations, she gets used to the pain, begins watching me instead of the wounds.

“You’re good at this,” she says softly.

“Well, I’ve got a lot of experience fixing wounds—my own, at least.”

She watches again, the only sound between us the noise of the bathroom fan. Then a few moments later, she says, “Show me one.”

“One what?”

“Wound.”

That’s like trying to select the most significant battle of the Civil War. But if I had to pick, it’s probably the one she’s been able to see all along, the one Ettore imprinted on my temple, the one that speaks every time I look in a mirror, reminds me why I’m doing all of this. But Melody needs to see more, to see what’s behind my curtain of clothes. I’m not sure where to begin, but I’m hot from the steam, so I don’t hesitate to pull my sweater up and expose my stomach, display a six-inch scar that healed into more of a valley than an indentation, the result of a wayward knife when I was ten years younger.

Melody opens her mouth but nothing comes out, leans up and slowly reaches for my abdomen, runs her finger lightly across the scar. “Oh, my…” She swallows. “How terrible.” Honestly, the thing looks far worse than it ever hurt. Alternatively, I have a small puncture wound—can barely see it—right at the center of my left deltoid, a poorly healed perforation that sends a blast of pain all the way to the base of my neck anytime I have to lift something above my head. Melody keeps her fingers moving, leaves the six-inch carving and moves to a smaller question-mark shape near the center of my chest. She raises my sweater as she gazes at the remnants of battles gone by, my own collection of souvenirs. She lifts the sweater even farther as the look on her face turns to queasiness, and I realize I’ve been handed another opportunity to show her how life with me has a discordant translation, that if she has any emotion for me running through her, sustaining it would have to be worth this.

So I pull off my sweater and T-shirt completely, expose my torn and blemished upper body to her like a prize catch pulled from the ocean. She slides back down in the tub as she lets out a sigh, says, “Oh.” She actually turns and looks away, says to herself, “There are just so many.”

Then I quickly put the T-shirt back on as I realize the potential mistake I made: My wounded body may have reinstated the fear of what she could face tomorrow. “Well, all wounds heal, you know? I mean, most of them do, I guess. You can get through pretty much anything. Remind me to get rid of this DNA-soaked sweater, by the way.”

The bubbles are disappearing so I step up my tending to her cuts. I finish her arms and shoulders, ask her how her ankle is feeling.

“Still a little sore.”

I carefully reach into the water, find her knee with my hand, curl my fingers underneath her leg as I run them down the length of her calf. I gently lift up her leg, hold her calf in one hand and drag my fingers to her ankle, rub it softly to check for swelling. I massage her foot—it seems so small and delicate—and ask her how it feels.

She just stares at me, nods quickly, like keep doing that.

The bubbles are gone, her nude body concealed by nothing more than a cloud of soapy water. I walk over to her room to get her terry robe, then open it for her to step into. She backs in, like I’m helping her put on a winter coat, then pulls the sides together and tightens the belt.

I leave her there, walk out to my bed, and sit on the end and drop my head to my hands. She emerges a few minutes later, comes and sits next to me.

“Beating up that guy take it out of you?”

I look at her and smile. “You take it out of me.”

She slides over so our thighs are pressed together, puts her hand on my jeans, slides her hand between my legs. It feels intimate but something’s changed in how she leans my way and touches me, like the surge of passion has dissipated and her interest in me is more thought out, almost preplanned.

“Listen,” she says, “I’m tired, Jonathan. I’m tired of waiting and I’m tired of lying and I’m tired of not living and, I… I’m just going to come out and say it.” I can feel her hand trembling between my legs. “I want you to sleep with me tonight. I mean, I’m not even sure what I’m really asking—as you well know—but I want it to happen.”

While what she’s offering is the greatest gift I might ever receive, her honesty and ability to express her feelings this way are what drag me down harder than any pair of cinder blocks. I clear my throat to rid the obvious lump in it, and say with no hesitation, having lost—surrendered—any further ability to deny my feelings, “I want you, too, Melody.”

She studies me, pulls her hand out and rests it on a less intimate spot near my knee. “But.”

I lick my lips, shake my head. “I can’t take anything more from you.”

“You’re not taking it, Jonathan; I’m giving it. I want you to have it.”

“But I don’t deserve it. More importantly, you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

She smirks. “What?”

“What if, after tomorrow, we have to remain apart?”

Melody passes me a look I don’t recognize, some blend of being hurt and being confounded. Her voice starts off at normal volume but fades so abruptly I barely understand the finish: “Why would we have to remain apart?”

I bite my lip, feel like I’m watching her collapse and die alongside her parents. I might as well have put the bullet in her back then. I hold my breath for a few seconds. “I may be the unpredictable one,” I say, “but I come from a long line of capricious and impulsive people.” I reach over and glide my hand up the back of her neck, gently run my fingers through her hair. “I know what I’m doing. No matter what the feds told you about my family or how they think we operate or what our motivations and responses are, no one understands my family the way I do. I need you to trust me; I’m just preparing for the worst.”

“The worst being…?”

I laugh through my nose. “You haven’t considered the worst?”

She turns to face me more directly, pulls her leg up, and I stroke it with the back of my hand. “I thought I hit rock bottom some time ago,” she says. “Turns out it’s a sliding scale downward.” She reaches over, rests her hand on my shoulder, then slowly slips it around my neck. “But I have a really big reason to want to stay alive now. Do you understand?”

I nod. “Don’t worry, Melody. I’ll never let anything bad happen to you again. I made you that promise and I intend to keep it. I’ll always do what needs to be done to keep you safe. Always.”

Right. That and you’re flawless. My superlatives have to go.

Except something inside her changes this time. Melody stares at me, gives me the same look she gave in the Italian place in Baltimore when she first genuinely considered my words, started feeling the sway. She keeps her hand behind my neck and pulls me to her, rests her forehead against mine and looks down. We stay like this for a long time, paralyzed.

“Will you sleep with me?” she finally whispers. “I mean, literally.”

I know: terrible idea. It’s like pulling our hands from the wheel, careening off into a ditch, left with no more than the remains of a totaled automobile and a lifetime of scars and bad memories. But between us we share a mixture of fear and loneliness and hope, and I can’t ignore the potential pleasure of feeling her warmth throughout the night. I know deep down that if I do not sleep with her, feel her against me for one night, I’ll regret it for every remaining moment on this earth. Where every addict attempting recovery battles the one last time scenario, they followed the path of addiction with this first step: One time can’t hurt.

I slowly nod.

“I’ll be over in a minute,” I say.

She walks back to her room through the adjoining door, pulls it behind her but does not close it. I quickly brush my teeth and run a wet hand through my hair, change into nothing more than pajama bottoms. I wait behind the adjoining door until I hear the sound of her faucet go off and the door to her bathroom open, and I walk in.

Melody stands next to the bed twisting her fingers together over her chest, looks down at herself. She’s wearing nothing but a camisole Melissa convinced me every woman needs in her bag—indeed—and panties. “I hope this is okay,” she says. “It’s how I sleep.” She curls her toes, twists her foot on the floor like a little girl. I nod like it’s fine, then harder, like it’s perfect. She brings a hand to her face, covers a smile, and shakes her head.

She walks up to me, takes me by both hands and leads us to the bed, sits on the edge and pulls me down. She slips under the covers, her eyes on me the entire time. I consider turning around and fleeing to the safety of my room, but her look demands that I remain. I get in next to her and take off my glasses. She turns off the lamp and I’m thankful I don’t have the light to reflect the color and design of her soft and curvy body.

She snuggles up against me and we kiss, what she probably meant to be a peck but somehow transformed into that seemingly practiced intimacy again. The kiss lasts for more than a minute, manages to progress beyond our only other encounter, enhanced by the freedom to explore away from onlookers, the ability to moan and caress in the privacy of our darkened room. And as if she read my mind, she pulls back and throws a finger to my lips, is out of breath, holds her finger firmly against my mouth. I can feel her breath on my face. Finally, she whispers, “Keep me alive, Jonathan.”

I nod, try to pretend I’m not equally winded, attempt a look of certainty despite a heart of cold confidence.

She slowly turns over and slides my direction, pushes her lower back and bottom against me, hard; a layer of heat emerges between us, stays trapped under the sheet. She reaches back like she’s trying to find the blanket, but grabs my arm and pulls it over her instead, takes my hand and places it on her belly, holds it there for a moment, then slides it up under her camisole so it rests just below her chest; I can feel the soft edge of her breasts against the side of my hand. I lean my head forward, get my face so close to her head that I could count the hairs.

In any other situation, I might have found this the perfect way to fall asleep, but I cannot deny it being the most intimate way I’ve ever held a woman; I’ve had many in my arms, but never before wanted one in them so badly, never so greatly regretted how I must eventually release her.

With my hand on her torso I can feel her heart slowing, yet still pumping hard. I think of how my father asked me to make it stop, bring her life to an abrupt ending, slap her shut and toss her aside like an unfinished book. This recurring reality of my life and family drains away the pleasure of the moment. My hand starts to shake and I’m afraid she’ll feel it; I don’t want to move it, either. My emotional stake in her well-being has grown exponentially, my approach to saving her shifting to the more reckless and desperate; my family better make the right choice. With each breath I see how easily Ettore would’ve dropped her in the parking lot of the A&P, how he would’ve simply walked away, returned to his motel room to clean his guns. How he could never know what he destroyed, and how my father could never grasp what he actually requested. Like taking an unseen Monet or Rembrandt and torching it, no one would’ve ever comprehended its magnificence, ever knew it even existed.

I think of the first night I met her in the motel in Cape Charles. As her body now rises and falls with each breath, I remember just how gently she slept then, how peaceful she seemed until I pressed my pen to her neck, began the long journey toward gaining her trust. And then I remember what I witnessed before I even entered her room, an image that had gone missing during these turbulent days but comes upon me now with the weight and worry of a forgotten deadline.

I gently jar her body with my hand. She stirs, turns her head halfway.

“I saw you kiss Sean,” I blurt.

The rising and falling stops.

“What?” she says. “Wait. Who?”

“Your useless fed. And I saw him leave your room the morning I came to get you.”

She turns her head all the way to mine, her back flat against the mattress. She stares at me and thinks for a moment; her inability to recall what I’m talking about declares the memory’s insignificance. I wish I hadn’t brought it up.

“It wasn’t that kind of kiss,” she says. “It wasn’t what you and I just shared.”

I smile a little. “It’s okay.”

She turns all the way so we face each other squarely. “No, it’s not. I was just… I don’t know what I was doing. It was nothing. You have to know that. And I don’t know what you think you saw, but he was not in my room overnight. I did not see him until the next day, he simply checked in on me in the morning.”

“Okay.” She runs her hand up my body, stares at me. “Seriously.”

She smiles a little, turns back to her original position. After a moment, she says, “You were right, by the way. Sean is not married.”

Gardner may be an inconsistent human being, but his data sure is reliable.

Then she adds, “I asked him about it after he stole me away from you in Baltimore, wanted to know why he wore a wedding band. He told me his wife had died years earlier and that he leaves the ring on because ‘there will only ever be one Mrs. Douglas’ and he will never remarry—his words.” She chuckles quietly. “Then he told me it helps to fend off the ladies, too.”

What a pretentious, self-congratulating piece of—

“I liked that about him,” she says.

Oh.

Then, as she yawns, “It was one of his two redeeming qualities.” When I don’t respond, she continues, “The idea of someone knowing when real love has come and gone from this life, how that person can love the memory of someone more than they could ever love again.” She pushes back against me again. “There’s no truer sign of love, nothing more beautiful, than sacrifice.”

She takes a deep breath, holds it the way I used to when inhaling my first hit of nicotine for the day, then lets it slip out as a sigh.

“So,” I say, “what was his other redeeming quality?”

She shifts her body a little. “He seemed to have his finger on the pulse of what was going on even though he appeared aloof, like it was easy for him. Like the way he found me in the parking lot of the Italian restaurant.” She turns a little. “I wasn’t happy about that, as you know—but he always seemed in control, even though he appeared out of it.”

Just what I wanted to hear. To me, he was the distracted bumbler tossing shells in the Chesapeake; Melody’s depiction indicates that my interpretation might’ve been wrong all along.

“He really that different from all the other marshals you’ve known?”

She gently brushes her cheek, thinks. “He was more talkative, but that’s not saying much. Every marshal I’ve known has been incredibly focused, not easily diverted.” I mentally shrug. Then: “I don’t know, maybe it’s because he came from the FBI.”

Now my body stops rising and falling.

“What do you mean?”

“He said he used to be with the FBI, was there for most of his career, moved to the Marshals Service not too long ago.”

My conceptual sketch of Sean, the abstract drawn and colored by my limited observations, turned out to be an impressionistic work. And useless. As I start to hear Melody’s breathing deepen, I know she’s seconds from sleep. Me? Not a frigging wink anywhere in my near future. Her breath stutters like she’s going to say something else, that there’s more to the story, but she either forgot or is too tired to continue. I twist my arm up and over her head, begin lightly stroking her hair, run my fingers back and forth across her hairline at the top of her neck.

Then, barely audible, she asks, “Do you speak Italian?”

I know some, mostly general greetings and small talk, gastronomic terms, and slang no one would ever want translated. “A little.”

Her final words: “Whisper to me.”

I am preoccupied with Sean now, racked with concern that he’s been one room away this entire time, so in control of the operation that he’s grabbing a cup of coffee and a croissant before dropping by. But Melody’s effect on my being, her steady and strong pull on my life like I have my own personal gravity, has me succumbing to her command. I wrap my arm around her body, outside of her clothes, outside of the sheet, and pull her in, move my head to hers, and whisper all the things I would want her to know, that I could never say for fear she would not have the will to leave me. I whisper in broken Italian how she is both a princess and an angel; how I love what she’s done for me, how when I’m with her I want to be a better man; how it does not matter if the world ever views her as imperfect because she’s perfect for me; how these days, these moments we’ve shared are so brilliant it’s been worth living the other thirty years of my life just to get to experience them.

Melody’s body becomes limp and warm, her breathing heavier as she falls into a sound sleep. I keep whispering anyway.