The Exceptions

TWO


Today ends the same as any other day, can be differentiated from two days ago or four days ago or six months ago only by the clothes beneath my apron, by the specials fading on the board in front of Mulleno’s. The kitchen is still hot on this Thursday evening at just past ten-thirty, steam rising from sauces and boiling water. Though the kitchen is technically closed, I plan to spend the night experimenting with a potential new offering: braciole. I finish wrapping thin slices of boneless beef round in plastic wrap, then pick up a rubber mallet and gently pound the meat as close as possible to one-eighth-inch thickness. The art to braciole, a traditional Sicilian dish that my mother had perfected by the time she was a teenager, is getting it to roll up evenly and stay together while being browned. Braciole is like a big Hostess Ho Ho, except the chocolate is beef and the creamy filling is a mixture of Pecorino Romano and parsley and garlic. My goal is to test it out this evening, and if a success, order the ingredients next week and have it on the menu one week after that. Once I’ve finished the browning, the meat has to cook in a sauce of tomato and basil for some time—enough time for Maggie and me to go over the day’s numbers.

I cover the beef rolls with a sheath of prosciutto and tie them with kitchen twine, heat a long turn of oil in a large pot, and just before the oil begins to smoke I start browning the first set. I wipe my hands on my apron and quickly walk out to the bar to find Maggie and see if she knows where the order sheet for our produce distributor disappeared to; I need to determine if we’ll get enough artichokes for stuffing for one of tomorrow’s specials.

The bar is quiet, holds three couples in golfing attire throwing back a few after what must have been a late afternoon tee time, which became a late dinner and nightcaps. Three men sit at the bar, evenly spaced like birds on a wire, heads cocked up and to the side, staring at the highlights of a golf match on a widescreen television in the corner.

“Hey, Mag,” I say, touching her lightly on the back, “you seen Atlantic’s order sheet?”

She reaches up to a top cabinet and struggles to slide a pair of whiskey bottles beyond the edge of the frame. “Next to the printer in the office,” she says as she grunts. “I put it over where—”

“Johnny?” says a voice from the bar.

“—the other statements are from last month. We need to talk to Atlantic because there’s a discrepancy on the last—”

“Little Johnny, that you?” I flinch, struggle so desperately not to turn. I clear my throat and lick my lips, pretend the name means nothing to me, that the term Little Johnny is as inconsequential to me as it is to Maggie.

“—invoice. We were being charged the same price per pound for asparagus as we were for Vidalias.”

“Johnny, that’s gotta be you,” the man at the bar says.

Maggie doesn’t even glance toward the bar. I stay locked in her direction, my face now coated in sweat though I’m so far from the heat of the kitchen. I swallow, twice. “By the fax, you said?”

She closes the cabinet, drops back to steady feet, stares at me, and smirks. “I said the printer.”

“Sorry,” I say, wiping my brow. “Um, which one?”

She folds her arms, narrows her eyes. “We have more than one printer?”

“Right, okay.” I slowly turn in a semicircle in the opposite direction of the bar and begin walking out with all of the natural movement of a robot.

“Johnny Bovaro, I can’t believe my eyes.”

I freeze; the Bovaro is a showstopper. I turn my head toward the bar, but from the corner of my eye: Maggie’s attention goes to the man, then to me.

I look at this gentleman in his early seventies, a small-framed fellow with an unusually large bald head adorned with oversized spectacles. He lifts his beer glass to his mouth, condensation rolls down the side and drips on his shirt as he polishes off the remainder. I’ve never seen this guy before, not even around my old neighborhood. Someone as oddly and memorably proportioned would have quickly acquired a nickname: Nicky Toothpick, Sal “Spider” Salzone. Ted the Head.

“I’m sorry,” I say, fingering my own chest, “were you talking to me?”

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, opens his wallet, and drops a five on the bar. “Wait’ll I tell the boys who I saw today.”

My mind floods, and through the water I search for a single fish. Though I’d never be concerned with being taken out by someone in my own family, this guy might be from a different crew, might pass along the information to others and topple the apple cart I have so carefully arranged, throw my name into the news, news that Melody would eventually see, indicating that nothing is what she thought it was—again—that she is not forever safe, that she will again have to run. His utterance of my last name unlocked and opened a box filled with secrets, poisoned the air to the point I can no longer breathe here, and I will have to move on.

I will have to disappear.

I glance over at Maggie and realize this will be the last glimpse I’ll have of her, of this place: the final memory.

I wish I could stop the sweat. I give it one last shot. “I’m afraid I’m not—”

“Do me a favor,” the man says as he turns to leave, “give your babbo my best.”

I watch him walk away, grab a stack of cocktail napkins and run them over my forehead and neck. When I twist and look at Maggie, her gaze is one of bewilderment and disappointment, her face pale, her mouth ajar and asking no questions. She knows that I have, best case, lied to her about who I am; worst case, lied to her about who I am and potentially put her in danger, put her father in danger.

I back out of the bar as I eloquently offer, “Um.”

I walk into the kitchen and pace around it, confused and disoriented. I try to recall the procedures, the secure and unstored number to dial should I ever get spotted, the name of my handler. I haven’t contacted anyone in the longest time.

I stare at the pan and turn the braciole as though I can somehow work my way through this. The meat sizzles and the oil spits and burns my wrist as I try to make some sense of what is happening. The adrenaline rushing through my veins now feels as if it’s of some other variety from what propelled my hunting down of Melody all those years; this is an imposter.

I know I’ve got to go.

I’ve got to run.

I undo my apron and toss it on the prep area as I bolt for the back door of the restaurant.

I try to recall the number for paging my handler: 904-568—No.

I cannot comprehend the wake I’m leaving behind, cannot yet fathom the people here I will miss as well: Chuck and Maggie and the kitchen staff and the regulars who always wanted to visit with me when I had the time. I’ve betrayed them all. Could I have remained Michael Martin, I would have been just a man starting over. Now that I’m Jonathan Bovaro again, I’m nothing more than a liar, a phony.

904-856—No.

When I left New York, it was by my own hand; I knew what was being surrendered. This time it’s unexpected, feels as unsure and disturbing as being woken up in the middle of the night and told the house is on fire. How could Melody have done this so many times? How did she survive?

As I open the back door and step out to the loading area, I glimpse the future: Chuck returning early from his recovery, Maggie telling him the story of how I was a man they never really knew, how a stranger called me a different name and I ran from them without saying goodbye, how I vanished. And we never heard from him again.

904-658—No.

Through the dark and humid night air, I plunge my hands into the pockets of my pants, dig for my keys and my cell phone at the same time. And just as I reach my car, I hear a familiar voice—but instead of nails on a chalkboard, it’s like nails digging into my skin.

The voice says this: “Who you calling, Johnny?”

I stop, shoot a look back at the rear door of the restaurant, then back at the man. “Agent Douglas,” I say, trying to understand exactly how his timing could be so right. Or so wrong. I wouldn’t say the last three years have been good to him, but they’ve changed him. His hair is very short now, and he somehow managed to move ten or so pounds from his gut to his chest. I might have doubted his identity at first, but his voice is permanently recorded in my memory.

He opens the back door of an SUV. “In.”

I jog up, get in and slide across the seat, steal a glimpse of the back entrance of the restaurant again. Sean closes the door and gets in the driver’s side. The only signs that this is some official event are the black color of the vehicle and the weaponry and gauges in the interior. Other than that, little else gels. There are no marshals, no one else with us at all. Sean is unshaven, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans like he just finished weeding his garden. He drives away slowly, waves other cars in front of him as we limp out to the quiet town center.

I look over my shoulder, out the rear window of the car. Though it’s hard to see through the heavily tinted windows, I see Maggie finally emerge from the back door of Mulleno’s and stare at my abandoned Hyundai, then around the area for me.

Just before we turn and drift away, she drops her head and goes back inside.

Right about now the braciole is setting off the smoke alarm.