The Exceptions

SIX


The drive was far more enjoyable without my psycho cousin. Being alone with my thoughts outranked being alone with Ettore. The journey was taken in the promised reward from my father for my attempts on the McCartneys: a late-model black Ford Mustang convertible, a car representing something I constantly wanted to forget. It did, however, move. Once I’d escaped New York and suffered through the overburdened New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland highways, entering West Virginia couldn’t have felt more welcome if the state had opened its lonely arms and pulled me to its chest. Interstate 79, which cuts a swath through the center of the state like a giant comma, might be the most abandoned road you can travel, the road cresting and descending countless mountaintops, where the speed limit was seventy miles per hour and where my speed was limited only by what the car felt comfortable delivering. The Mustang never complained.

Even if I’d not seen the WELCOME TO KENTUCKY sign as I crossed the line, I would have known I’d arrived. Traveling west out of Huntington, West Virginia, on Interstate 64, you can sense the change in the environment, as though those who settled Kentucky looked over their shoulders and casually said to the east, “You can keep all of that.” Kentucky fields really are green, smooth and curved like the terrain of a woman’s body, blemished only by horses of random size and color. This land of horse racing and whiskey gave me the sense that people here were healthy and happy—happy supplying the raw materials for the addictions my family kept alive and well in those beneath us. And as I made my way westward, I became increasingly pleased that Melody would be able to reside here for whatever amount of time was allowed.

I’d left New York at six in the morning on that Saturday in late June. By the time I was nearing Lawrenceburg, it was only five-thirty that afternoon. The anticipation of seeing Melody deepened in my chest as each mile drew closer, a sensation I didn’t understand then, like retrieving a long-missed lover from the airport. I knew I could essentially hide in plain sight around her. She would have no idea who I was, what I looked like, what car I might drive, no sense that any threat was present. I had no nagging duty to truly eliminate her—just the pretend one serving as my purpose for being there—and no nagging partner trying to manage the operation.

When I finally arrived in Lawrenceburg, it seemed clear the government had actually figured a way to deposit Melody directly into the Middle of Nowhere. If there was a welcome sign on the edge of town, I’d missed it. Even the courthouse failed to have the word Lawrenceburg on it, merely the county name. What a perfect place to dump her—in a town with no identity of its own. And as I drifted through the maze of humble streets, Justice’s strategy of relocating witnesses came together as though I’d solved a clever mystery before its end: Every town was the same. If you could take a giant iron and flatten the hills of Mineral Point, you would have Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. There was little to distinguish these villages other than the natural topography of the land; their interiors were almost identical.

I unintentionally slowed as I drove closer to Melody’s address, holding the directions in one hand and alternately steering and downshifting with the other. I wound down a side street of fresh gravel that left a cloud of white smoke in my trail, the only cloud drifting toward an empty sky. Then, with a drop of the directions to the floor of the car, there I was, at my final destination.

Randall Gardner was a dead man.

The building residing at the address he gave me—901 New Frankfort Road—was an aged redbrick building with the words GREENFIELD ELEMENTARY etched into a concrete cornice, green mold outlining the shaded letters, and a fungus-stained roof. I parked my car tightly between two enormous pickup trucks, lit a cigarette, filled my lungs, and cracked the window to let the smoke escape. At first glance the building still appeared to be an elementary school, right down to the basketball courts off to its side and the American flag flying in front. It wasn’t until I watched an older lady carry a full laundry basket back toward the double doors of the main entrance that I realized this place was something other than it appeared. I watched a few minutes more as two other people came and went, concluded the school had been converted into apartments or condos. That being the case, what Randall had failed to give me was an apartment number. Still dead. The place was undeniably depressing, though, residents living in a school, as though having been forced to relive childhood embarrassments and shortcomings, serving a life sentence of detention.

So what choice did I have? I sat and waited and hoped I’d know what Melody might look like now. My glimpses of her had always been fleeting, mere seconds or minutes each time. In my mind, I had burned an indelible image, an amalgam of little bits and pieces I managed to capture over my distant views, no more accurate than a rendering drawn by a sketch artist. But it wouldn’t have taken much to throw me—shorter or longer hair, an extra twenty-five pounds, an excessive tan—and she’d walk right by me, nothing more than the strangers we should have been to each other.

The few people who did come and go were all elderly, and I thought perhaps this place was some form of a residence for seniors, a small-town version of a retirement community for the forgotten, the local elders who arrived at the end of their childless lives. You didn’t have to go any farther than the parking lot to sense that this facility was used to tuck people away until they passed on, a building full of temporary compartments for inconvenient people.

I suppose this place was perfect for Melody.

But when the young woman opened the door and slowly walked out, I knew the picture in my mind was more accurate than I could have imagined. Even from my distance of a hundred feet or so, there was no doubt that I had just found Melody Grace McCartney, no matter what name showed on her mail at this address.

I immediately snuffed my smoke and closed my window.

She walked far enough from the doorway to stand in the evening sun, and it illuminated the latest color of her hair—bright blond—which had been styled into a cut much shorter than when I last saw her. She wore a short sundress that could’ve been confused for a camisole, and as she stood in the sun, she tugged down on the edge of the dress, trying to pull it lower, as though the purpose of the outfit was more important than her comfort in wearing it. She looked at her sandals for a second, then sort of glanced up at the sky in a curious way. She straightened her posture and slowly smoothed out her sundress with the palm of her hand and I could see her chest rise with a deep breath. I slithered down in my seat as I watched. And as she let out that breath, it appeared she exhaled all of her intentions along with it; her shoulders deflated just like her lungs. She looked over her shoulder at the front door of the school with an it’s-not-too-late reticence.

Whatever held her back eventually set her free. She made her way to a Honda Civic parked three spots behind me, tugging on the hem of her dress the entire walk. I slid even farther down, as far as possible while still maintaining sight of her car in my side-view mirror.

I let her pull out of her parking place and drive some distance before starting my car and casually catching up, keeping a few cars between us.

We ended up driving for a decent duration. She made her way to Route 62 and started heading east, tracing the journey I’d just completed, in reverse. The last thing I wanted was more time cramped in the cab of my Mustang, but sitting and waiting for her return didn’t really make sense; my need was to make sure she was okay, and watching her walk in and out of her apartment wouldn’t fill the requirement. I needed to see her live.

After twenty minutes or so, I began praying her destination was Versailles, but the town served as nothing more than a place to change directions, shifting from Route 62 to Route 60, pointing us both in the direction of Lexington.

You would think after all the years of casually watching federal agents staked out on our perimeters, I might have picked up some minor techniques for tailing someone, but I proved to be a lousy student. I found it quite a challenge to keep Melody’s car in view while remaining far enough behind that I wasn’t in waving distance every time she looked in her rearview mirror. Worse, I hadn’t planned well: I was down to a single cigarette and not a drop of fluid to quench my burgeoning thirst.

And then came another unexpected turn. On the outskirts of Versailles, Melody pulled into a Chevron station, parked in front of one of the pumps in the middle of three aisles. Once we were on the road, here was something I’d not considered: stopping. I drifted into the parking lot of the neighboring Arby’s and watched her get out of her car and walk into the convenience store of the gas station—except it was more of a nervous jog. Though the air that day was very warm and moist, she moved at a pace more reserved for days with wind chills.

I sat in my car, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel and staring at her Civic. A strange pull came upon me and I felt a gulp in my throat I could not swallow down. Before I could make sense of my actions, I threw the car in gear and slowly made my way to the Chevron, slithered around the lines of gas pumps until I’d positioned myself the perfect angle and distance from Melody’s car. I got out and played with my gas cap a little—the most I could really do since I’d filled my tank outside Lawrenceburg just before finding Melody’s address. I fiddled with the pump for a moment before the knot in my stomach and the lump in my throat returned and the drug of adrenaline began flooding my veins again. I watched the door of the convenience store, and without understanding the implication of my amateurish bravado, I was getting closer to it with every step.

I opened the door, hit sideways by a stench of stale coffee and onions, greeted with a nod from the clerk behind the counter, a scrawny guy who sported a thinning mullet and so many earrings across his face that it looked as though he’d been blasted with buckshot. He and I were alone in the store; Melody had vanished.

I quickly looked over my shoulder to make sure her Civic remained at the pump, then started walking around the store trying to figure out what to do with all the adrenaline, when it crystallized: I looked toward the pumps again, checking for any vehicle that seemed vaguely official, that maybe she had spotted me in her rearview, that she’d been supplied year after year with a cache of photos of our family and crew along with the statement If you see any of these guys then page us, that she called the feds on her cell, that they told her, Keep driving, that this was the reason she drove so far, that they would be waiting at the Chevron in Versailles. When you get to the station, Melody, run inside and we will be waiting for you.

As I assembled these thoughts—and the respective dread—I went to the refrigerated section and pulled out a massive bottle of water and walked around as though the biker mags and lottery tickets were really what had drawn me to this place.

I took my water to the counter and asked Mullet if he’d seen a girl come in.

“Girl?” Mullet’s muted response came with a glance to a small television below the counter where I could hear a crowd cheering. “Reds suck.”

“Not a girl. A young woman.” I nodded to the case behind him. “Four packs of Marlboros, quickly.”

Mullet mumbled as he placed the packs on the counter next to my water. “Woman?”

I started eyeing the store. “Where’s the back door?”

That snapped Mullet to attention. “Come again?”

My first thought was, That was how they got her out. My second thought was, That is how I’m getting out, too.

Mullet continued, “Why do you need to know where the back—”

“Listen, bumpkin, did a girl just come in here and magically disappear? Is it really possible, as the sole operator of this store, that you managed to miss a customer both arriving and departing?”

“I don’t think I saw—I don’t really know—”

“I don’t I don’t I don’t. Listen, you friggin’ hick, I’m only gonna ask you once more: Did you—”

My rant was squelched out by a piercing screech of hinges, then a quick slam of a door from an overly tightened spring. I looked up, and straight over Mullet’s head in the dim reflection of the window behind the counter I watched Melody step out of the restroom.

I stared at her image in the glass, said to Mullet with quiet anger, “How ’bout now. You see her now?”

She paused in front of the Hostess display, picked up a package of orange cupcakes and studied it as though looking for an expiration date. I always wondered who ate those things. My senses sharpened; I became so aware.

I could hear the gentle crinkling of the cellophane as she turned over each package.

I could see the shape of her face change as she licked her teeth.

I could feel the sweat arrive in my palms.

Mullet struggled to glance at the television out of the corner of his eye like a seventh-grader cheating off a neighbor’s test. I snapped my fingers a few times and whispered, “What do I owe you?”

As Mullet punched the keys on the register, Melody meandered toward the counter, glancing at various food products on her way. Mullet tossed a number my direction and I missed it. I couldn’t take my eyes off the reflection in the glass. Melody reached into a plastic barrel filled with ice and sodas and pulled out a Diet Coke, shook a small cube off the top of the can, and ran the cold residue between her fingers until it was dry.

I tried again. “What do I owe you?”

Mullet leaned forward and curled his hook-filled lip. “I’m only gonna tell you once more.”

I think he did tell me again. Who knows; my attention was elsewhere.

Melody slid right behind me and the front of air she shoved my way was laced with sweet flowers. It came and went within two or three seconds.

Then Mullet: “How about a third time, partner. Easier if I write it down?”

I slowly reached behind me and lifted my wallet from my jeans, so near to Melody that I could have opened my hand with the fantasy that she would put hers in mine; it was the closest I’d ever been to her in my life. At that moment, I didn’t try to comprehend why the thought of holding her hand went through my head, but it was distinct and undeniable.

I pulled out some bills and tossed them to Mullet. As he gave me my change, he smiled and said, “Thank you, sir, for your kind patronage of our country convenience store and gas station!”

I walked from the store head down, facing away from Melody, and returned to my car. I tossed the smokes and water on the passenger seat and slid down on the driver’s side as I spied her through the window of the store, handing over her orange cupcakes, watching her smile as she had casual conversation with Mullet. I made sure, too, that Mullet wasn’t pointing in my direction, with a that guy was looking for you demeanor. I watched her walk out and the urgency in her pace was gone. She drifted lightly, the hem of her dress bouncing in time with each step.

When Melody returned to the pumps, she swiped her card into the reader and began filling her tank. Remember the threshold, the next step? It came upon me here:

I took a huge swig of water and exited my car and began to top off my already full tank. I stood at the end of the Mustang, this time in clear view of Melody, making sure I did not stare at her directly. Once she set the lock on the pump handle, she crossed her arms and closed her eyes as a warm breeze blew over her. After she let out a sigh, her eyes began to drift around the station. She glanced at the couple arguing over a map in a late-model Lincoln. She stared a moment at the farmer boy standing beside his father’s muddy pickup. She watched the door of the convenience store, as if expecting a close friend or relative to emerge at any second.

Then, with a slow turn, she faced me. Her eyes landed directly on my face, and no amount of strength, courage, or common sense could prevent the magnetic pull that forced me to twist my face and body so that we were staring directly at each other. Eye to eye. I could feel the corners of my mouth twist into a weak smile as we looked at each other.

And then: nothing.

Melody did not respond to my smile. She didn’t even respond to the fact that there was some stimulus in her field of view. Her eyes drifted on to the next person, an overweight businessman struggling to keep his tie from getting dirty as he filled his front tire with air. I meant nothing to her, just a patron of a gas station. There was no outward opinion of my appearance or who I might be, no implication that I was any more worth talking to than the farmer boy or the overweight businessman. There was definitely no love at first sight. I was nothing. Nobody. A stranger.

If only she knew.



Stocked with nicotine and water, I tailed her twenty-five minutes to what was thankfully her final destination: the city center of Lexington. We settled in a parking garage in the downtown area adjacent to the convention center, a part of town that appeared renovated and expanded over the last two decades, based on the designs of the buildings. It looked like any city’s financial center—like all the ones I’d passed on the way from New York, really—but with its integrated parks and walkways, the design came across as part of a grander plan as opposed to a reaction to growth and sprawl.

If I’d found tracking Melody in my car a challenge (I’d nearly lost her at two different lights), it was almost impossible to stay concealed once we were on foot. She parked on the third floor of the garage, and I halfway up the fourth. I slipped a pack of smokes in my jeans, put on my sunglasses and a stained Yankees cap unearthed from under the passenger seat, closed the door of my car by pushing my weight against it to soften the sound. As she walked down the eastern glass-encased stairwell, I raced to the western and watched her from a distance of a few hundred feet, mirrored her pace as she went down each flight. We arrived on the sidewalk of Broadway Road at the exact same time.

She immediately turned and walked toward the town center with apparent intent. My hope was that she was meeting a friend, a date, a lover—anything to indicate that a glimmer of happiness might be on her horizon. The point of my entire journey, of the tailing and tracking and watching, was to see if the damage I had created in her life was on the wane, somehow being replaced with joy or contentment, that healthy relationships had developed in her life. What I witnessed once I starting walking in the shadow of her paces that day was not only the opposite of my hope for her, but it might have been the worst-case scenario.

Melody had not gone to Lexington to shop. She did not navigate the office buildings to meet with her accountant or lawyer or dentist. She did not visit a bar or restaurant or coffeehouse, go to see her favorite band or watch a movie. Yet she walked the streets with a specific destination in mind, a target I did not first understand even while making the journey alongside her. Her pace did not slow until we reached Lexington Park in the center of town, a triangle defined by Main, Vine, and Broadway, a scale version of Central Park, trees and trails watched over by skyscrapers. At one far edge, an enormous fountain in the style of water running down bleachers curved around the perimeter for more than a hundred feet, a work of urban art that would’ve been equally as admired in Manhattan. Adolescent kids played in the fountain behind signs that read PLEASE DO NOT PLAY IN THE FOUNTAIN. Couples held hands and walked slowly, joggers zipped around walkers, bikers zipped around joggers. University of Kentucky students paraded through with clothing indicating their respective fraternities and sororities. And it was here, at this large gathering place, that Melody came to a stop.

She looked around in a manner that less suggested she was looking for someone than that she was looking for the right spot. I sheltered myself a safe distance off and to the side, away from the fountain and under the shade of three towering maples. As I lit a cigarette, Melody moved closer to the fountain, approached a bench built directly in the path of the park.

Here’s where things went awry: Melody sat down carefully, crossed her legs tightly, then gently pulled up on the edge of her sundress. She sort of studied herself, ran her hand down the length of her leg, then leaned forward a little, allowing the front of her dress to lower and open slightly. She’d become the opposite of the woman standing on the steps of her apartment building. I considered this might be an attempt to look sexy for someone specific, except the look on her face was clearly one of not looking for anyone at all, of trying too hard to appear casual and disinterested. When I’m waiting for someone, my eyes are either constantly searching the landscape or checking my cell; Melody, with sunglasses on, simply tipped her head back and let the late-day sun bake her face as countless men and women passed her by.

In my continued effort to understand what was happening, I began to drift. The way she sat captured me, the way she’d crossed her legs, how her high-heeled sandals fit the curves of her feet, how she would run her finger in small circles around her knee—I lost a cigarette’s worth of time. The thin straps of her dress barely held it to her body, making it easy to imagine her in a piece of lingerie; her sundress was little more.

I lit another cigarette with the smoldering end of the near-dead one in my mouth, snuffed the stub with the heel of my shoe. Melody sat in the hot sun for fifteen minutes, never looking for anyone, never checking a cell, never even looking down other than to readjust her dress to a more suggestive manner.

Not long after that, though, her demeanor changed and, in the process, exposed her purpose. As the people of Lexington continued to pass her by, she started watching them pass her by. I sat in my safety zone, unable to take my eyes off of her—for a multitude of reasons now—and this is when it struck me: I was the only one looking.

She would make note of a guy or group of guys coming her way and act nonchalant, but as they passed her without even a single glance, she’d watch them fade out of her view. After a half hour of being invisible to these collegiate and urban Kentuckians, she began to slouch her shoulders with each missed opportunity. Every day of my life I walk by people and never notice a single thing about them; New York is an abyss of anonymity and we’re trained to ignore. How many people have I passed whose only hope is that someone, anyone, would fill this simple yearning: Please notice me. For Melody it had slowly built into a scream, so loud I couldn’t understand why no one would come to her rescue.

I’d always been a moderate smoker, but by that time I was on my fifth successive cigarette; no amount of nicotine could alleviate my rising anxiety. I cursed as each passing guy would walk right by, or glance weakly and not return his eyes to her, as though she wasn’t worth a second look. Because she was. What were they missing? Every yuppie doofus, every frat bastard who ignored her brought a deeper drag to my smoke. Watching her became so painful that I could barely contain myself, finally acknowledging why my eyes were moist: Melody was breaking my heart.

No matter what the government had turned her into, whoever they wanted her to be, she was still just a girl longing for attention. I could see it as plain as the sun on her skin. Based on my age, I did a quick calculation and realized she was probably just shy of twenty-one, and with that realization, I saw a glimpse of her future: In a matter of months, the parks would turn into bars, where she would surely catch the eye of some loser looking to fulfill his fleeting need, and where, for a few moments in an evening, Melody, too, would feel wanted, and the feeling would last until she returned home alone to a house with only one place setting, one bath towel, one toothbrush. The sadness would seep into her lonely life and she would find a desperate longing to connect again, alcohol softening her sadness and allowing her to open up to a lower level of loser. I was not going to let it happen.

I was going to save her before it was too late.

I was going to end it all, blow my cover. What was the point of all my worrying about her happiness and safety if I could not ensure its existence? Someone was going to notice her the way she deserved to be, and it would be me. Regardless of what she might think of me as a man, whether I was her type or not, I would send her home that day with the notion that someone found beauty in her. And as I rose to my feet and snuffed my cigarette, my services were no longer required, for this is when they arrived.

Three white guys who’d been smoking and laughing near the fountain’s edge wandered in Melody’s direction and eventually passed her. From my distance they appeared nondescript and average, neither yuppies nor frat boys, just a trio of unshaven twentysomethings with lanky bodies and baggy clothes, their only oddity how overdressed they were on that hot Kentucky day, the tallest one wearing a sweat jacket with the hood up; had they continued on their way, I would have categorized them as nothing more than locals.

But the one in the sweat jacket finally gave Melody what she so longed for: a double take. Then she gave him what he was looking for: a response. He slowed and bobbed on his feet a little, then casually walked backward. I watched as he said something to her and she smiled a little. As his friends continued walking away, the guy said something else and Melody nodded and said something back. They chatted for no more than fifteen seconds before Melody sent up an involuntary red flag: She reached down to the top of her sundress and pulled it back up to cover the gap that exposed her chest, then a quick pull down on the bottom of her dress to cover her legs. The guy continued talking, smiling a little more as he spoke, then Melody looked down at the ground and uncrossed her legs, pressed her knees together tightly.

I closed my eyes, shook my head. Not this guy, I thought. Why’d it have to be this guy?

I reached for my cigarettes and started to pull one out when the most nightmarish scene began to unfold: The other two guys turned around to find their friend lingering with the girl, then started heading back in his direction.

As Melody stood, Sweat Jacket slid in front of her, blocking my view of her face, and as I ran into the grass to reposition my angle, the other two guys were now at their buddy’s side and the four of them were in a circle. The noises of the park—the flow of water from the enormous fountain, kids playing and shrilling, booming music coming from some distant point—masked what was unfolding before the public. Even from my distance they just looked like friends chatting. But when Sweat Jacket started nudging his friends, and his friends responded with inflated laughter, and Melody reacted by bowing her head and shaking it slowly, I knew things were progressing. I grew up around people who could smell vulnerability and preyed upon it for nothing more than entertainment. That’s what these guys were, future wards of the state.

I flicked my unlit cigarette into the grass, mumbled every profane word I’d ever learned as I slid closer to the scene, still out of range of their conversation. But watching their interaction, there could be no doubt as to what was happening. And as parents walked by with their kids, they stepped up their pace and pulled their children to their sides, a few frat boys looked over until one of Sweat Jacket’s buddies stared at them, stepped once in their direction to indicate they should mind their own business, and compliance was delivered in the form of indifference. Turns out no matter where you go in this world everyone is the same.

I didn’t see a thing.

I didn’t hear a thing.

I don’t know nothin’.

Then Sweat Jacket reached out and touched Melody’s shoulder and she jerked away like the tips of his fingers were aflame. She stepped to the left and one of the other guys leaned in, forcing her back toward their apparent leader, and for a few seconds she nervously bounced between the three of them like a human hacky sack.

When Sweat Jacket grabbed her elbow, she yanked it away and managed to slip out and abandon them at a good clip. I walked in parallel with her a hundred or more feet away and kept my eyes on the guys. Let her go, I thought. Do not follow her. With Melody now twenty or so feet in front of them, Sweat Jacket cracked a joke for his buddies that I could not hear, grabbed his crotch in an exaggerated manner, and then the three of them were right on her tail.

I followed Melody, and as we made our way back to Broadway, I knew exactly where Melody was heading: the parking garage. She would look over her shoulder every five seconds to see if they were still close behind, and having grown up in a neighborhood with a class order determined by bullies, I knew this manner of showing her fear would keep them interested. And then the final turning point: Melody slipped across a six-lane intersection next to the garage before the light changed; the guys didn’t make it in time, had no choice but to let the traffic pass. This is where I would have expected them to move on, to yell some lewd comments in her direction, wave her off, and return to their wasted world.

But they waited the light out.

As I ran across the street a half block away, dodging cars in every lane, I voiced vulgarities I had no idea were in my vocabulary. I knew Melody’s exact destination, almost right to the specific parking space; all I had to do was break our triangle apart and cut off the hoodlums before they could get to her.

I reached the western stairwell and ran up the steps so fast that I fell into the door and the sound as it flew open reverberated throughout the garage like a gunshot. Melody emerged from the eastern stairwell, moving as quickly as she could in her sandals, aimed right for her car. I let her get out of sight, then sprinted for the stairwell she’d just exited. I opened the door, slid to the left and closed the door gently, watched Melody through a small square window, catching my breath as quietly as possible. I was certain she was going to make it, that the timing of all of this would work, until the heel of her left sandal gave way; she lost her footing but not her momentum, and tumbled across the concrete floor like she was sliding into home.

And there she stayed for too many seconds, an uncomfortable gap in time before she slowly turned to her side and grabbed her ankle. My instinct, as foolish as it would have been, was to run out and help her, but even in the frenzy of that moment I knew the help she really needed had to be applied elsewhere.

Below I could hear the trio ascending the stairs.

Had she not taken the spill, she would have slipped away; her lead was simply running out.

The losers were one flight below, laughing and verbally offering their crude intentions for this innocent girl.

I took off my sunglasses and crammed them in the pocket of my jeans, turned my baseball cap backward.

Melody, now crying, pulled herself to her feet, tried to resume running, but nearly fell to the ground again.

The losers came into view at the landing one half flight below. Sweat Jacket had his hood pulled tightly around his head, adjusted himself through his jeans.

Melody could barely walk, bracing herself on the trunks and hoods of the cars she passed. She did not have her keys out, and she was too far from her car. Melody was not going to make it.

And as the three hoodlums stepped up to the top of the flight, stood a mere two feet behind me, Sweat Jacket put his hand on my shoulder, gave me a weak shove, and said, “Look out.”

I sighed, turned from the door to face the men, knocked Sweat Jacket’s hand from my shoulder and simply stated, “I’m afraid this is where your journey ends.”



I spent my life assessing tough guys, who could be beaten and who couldn’t. Respectively, the three guys facing me in the garage stairwell were amateurs, juvenile delinquents in the bodies of adults. My ultimate reaction to the hoodlums was driven partly by adrenaline, but not at all by bravado. Imagine three toddlers coming your way in an attempt to wreak havoc. How concerned would you really be?

Sweat Jacket, clearly the leader, as demonstrated by his constant position at the front and center of the other two, stood about three inches taller than me and six taller than his buddies, morons who giggled and laughed at anything Sweat Jacket said or did. Each of them appeared to be emaciated, thinner versions of their once healthier selves, their skin hanging on them like garments from a heavier season of their lives. They hesitated in front of me only to catch their collective breath.

So, if bravado played no role in my reaction and adrenaline a minimal one, what drove my response to these men? The answer is embedded in the snapshots that flooded my mind, the images of what might have happened if I were not there that day, what Sweat Jacket would have done to Melody, and what his hangers-on would have emulated shortly thereafter, the way they would’ve torn her apart in a vile and violent way, how she would learn the lesson that nothing and no one in this life can be trusted and how there is not much worth living for, how they would have reinforced the notion that she was nobody, echoing what the federal government had already imprinted in her young mind: She was nothing more than an object to be used and discarded. Regardless of how I managed to be there at the right time, how I managed to eliminate this destructive and potentially deadly event from Melody’s life, understand that I am not a hero. I am not a guardian angel, for no angel could do what I am capable of, for what I ended up doing in that stairwell. The simple answer to that question is this: My reaction to those three men was based on a torrent of unabated hatred and rage.



Sweat Jacket tried—failed—to shove me to the side, decided yelling at me might get the reaction he desired. “Fugoutamaway!”

“No,” I said, “and I’m telling you now this is probably going to turn out badly for the three of you.”

“Dude, don’t mess with me!”

One of Sweat Jacket’s buddies—can’t remember which one—added a warning inside a chuckle: “Serious, dude, you don’t wanna mess with Willie.”

“Oh, the mess is unavoidable. The challenge for me will be beating you to the point where I don’t actually kill you.”

Willie smirked, tried to move me to the side again with no success. Remember: toddler. He bobbed his head a few times like a prizefighter, looked more like a chicken. “Let me help you figure something out,” he said. “It’s three-on-one.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s one-on-one. You think these idiots are gonna help you? They only hang out with you to continue their access to meth and get your assistance writing bad checks at Wal-Mart. I’m gonna put you down, Willie, and they’re going to stand here and watch. Maybe cry a little.”

Willie squinted as though genuinely confused as to what was happening, then leaned in. “Dude, I don’t know where you think you are, but—”

“What the—why is everyone calling me dude? Am I wearing a frigging cowboy hat? Listen, you redneck mother—” The door behind us swung open and into the stairwell walked a young father carrying a little girl in his arms. He slid by nervously, eyeing each of us as he maintained a two-foot buffer, had to scrape the wall to get around. “And that’s why the Reds don’t have a prayer, man. I could have called that in spring training. Seriously, their entire roster is full of guys batting in the high two hundreds. I’m telling you, the Cubs are who you should be watching. They got a few surprises coming this year, and I’m not the only one saying that.”

Willie seemed to pick up on what I was doing, though not bright enough to contribute. His buddies looked completely bewildered.

From the corner of my eye, I glanced out the little square window, could see Melody fumbling with her keys. She pressed the button to unlock her car, the taillights flashed in response.

Right as the door at the bottom of the stairwell closed with a bang, I balled up a fistful of Willie’s jacket and smashed him into the concrete wall next to the windows overlooking the street. He started pawing my forearms.

“Dude!” he yelled.

I got in his face and whispered, “I promise I will try not to kill you. Try not to kill you.”

“What’s your problem, man?”

I tightened the ball of material, shoved it up under his chin. The idiots stood back a little, rocked in circular patterns like Weebles. “Where were you heading? Where were you going with that open fly, stud?”

Willie considered my question, moved his scrunched-up chin and lips without a word, hesitant to form a true answer. We stared into each other’s eyes and I could not find a shred of humanity in the void of his expression. The frigging malocchio! Ultimately, the answer drifted from his lips, an answer of full disclosure but laced with not a hint of confession.

“Bitch was mine.”

And so it went.

I pressed my forearm against his neck and punched his gut with my left hand. As Willie bent over breathless, I yanked back the hood of his sweat jacket, revealing a long ponytail that I wound around my fist, used it to twist his entire body around, then smashed his head against the wall over and over and over until a pasty bloodstain stuck to the painted cinder blocks.

I could hear the engine of Melody’s little Civic race as she overaccelerated, the screech of her car as she took the corner near our stairwell at an unsafe speed, the tires making a noise that might have been their attempt at asking for mercy. I glanced out the square window again just as Melody’s car drifted from my view, descending the garage, heading directly for the safe streets of Lexington.

I turned to the idiots, Willie’s ponytail still in my fist, his head hanging from my hand like a briefcase, his body writhing in my grip as though I were holding a cat by its tail. “What do you say, guys—three-on-one?” One of them stood dumbfounded, the other hopped from foot to foot like he needed to take a leak. “Your fearless leader needs your help.”

Willie tried to grab my leg, lame swipes through the open air like a drunk trying to grip a lamppost for support, kept mumbling something that sounded like double cheeseburger.

The idiot who couldn’t stop moving said, “C’mon, Willie, fight back!”

I laughed so hard my left knee buckled a little, could barely keep from bending over in hysteria. I tightened Willie’s ponytail in my hand and twisted his bloodied, cross-eyed face to mine. “What do you say, Willie, want to go another round?” Then I slammed his head into the glass wall overlooking the streets of the city from three floors high. “C’mon, Willie, fight!” I said. Slam again. “You can do it, Willie!” Slam. “Go, Willie, go!” Slam. Slam. Slam.

I released him and his body fell limp and crooked to the cement floor; the only thing missing was a chalk outline.

I stared at the idiots for a few seconds before saying, “So, what did we learn today?”

All I can say is this: dust cloud.

And as Willie’s troops abandoned him on the battlefield, I yelled, “Hey, take your trash with you!” I grabbed Willie by his jacket and jeans and tossed his body down the half flight of steps toward the second floor. I considered leaving him with a souvenir, but really didn’t care enough about him to make the point.

I could hear the two of them running and tumbling down the steps, then the crash of the door at the bottom of the stairwell. I looked out the window and watched them fly out to the street, scatter in different directions like a pair of roaches.

I opened the door to the garage and gently pulled it closed behind me, no loud bang this time. I casually headed toward my car like I was nothing more than a visitor to the city’s center, could still smell the rubber from Melody’s frenzied departure, eyed the fresh tire marks she left on the cement, walked them like a tightrope.

By the time I reached the Mustang, pain arrived in all the places that would later require some form of attention, the worst of the bunch a near ripped-off fingernail from the middle finger of my right hand, no doubt still twisted in the fibers of Willie’s jacket, along with some of my blood and all of my DNA. I had long since become immune to worrying about the outcome of these violent outbursts, for the Bovaros only acted out on the bottom-dwellers, the drug addicts and criminals—certainly Willie fit the bill; he’d never surrender any truths about that day, especially his attempted rape. Throughout my childhood I had watched guys stumble to their feet, beaten and bruised, only to resist assistance from police, oppressed by some parole violation or outstanding warrant. Willie was going nowhere. Not that day, not ever.

I cascaded down the ramps of the parking garage and drove out to Broadway, headed directly for Melody’s apartment. I pulled into the lot for her building and spotted her Civic parked on the edge. I crept up alongside it and turned my engine off, rolled down my windows. I could hear the engine of her car still ticking as it cooled.

The only thing I could be sure of was that she made it home. I had no assurance that she made it home safe. I watched the door of her building, then her car, then the door again. I reclined my seat a little, lit a cigarette, and took a drag that lasted five seconds, closed my eyes and held the smoke in my lungs even longer, felt the rush of the nicotine as the warmth drifted from my chest out to my limbs and my head, into my blood. I blew the smoke out my window and waited.

And waited.



I left three times that evening—once to get a bag of burgers from McDonald’s and twice to use the restroom—and each time I returned I parked in a more secluded location, always staying within a clear view of her car and the front door of her apartment, utilizing my recently learned method of triangulation.

I’d venture a guess that during the period of time I surveilled the scene from that distant corner of the parking lot, every single resident of her apartment building came and went—everyone but Melody. I was determined to stay until I saw her again, until she came out from her shelter, until I could be sure she was even marginally okay, that whatever fear or trauma caused by Willie and his cafoni had disintegrated or passed. I rolled back my moonroof and a gust of crisp Kentucky air swirled around the interior, a mixture of cut grass and smoldering Kingston charcoal. I stared up at the heavens, dotted with a number of stars never seen in a New York sky. As the clock ticked forward and fewer and fewer people came and went from her building, I waited.

And waited.



The morning came through my windows damp and loud; nests of birds in the branches of the white oaks overhead shrieked with chicks begging for food, a thin layer of dew covered everything: my dash, my windows, the knob of my stick. I flipped my wrist over and glanced at my watch: 7:23. Once I’d finished wiping my eyes, I surveyed the lot and all the cars remained, including Melody’s, which had not budged since she returned from Lexington, the front wheels still turned outward and away from the curb as though she had pulled into the spot with great haste.

As noon approached, the air dried and the sun shone through a cloudless sky. That type of easy summer day comes only a few times a year, the kind that instills a certain guilt if you don’t find a way to enjoy it, yet there was no sign that Melody might surface, that she might enter the world again in her little sundress, show the only way more beauty could be added to such a perfect day. I hoped for that. But by the time 12:30 arrived, only four cars remained across the entire parking lot; one was Melody’s, one was mine, and the other two were unlikely to move: a relic of a pickup that had special license plates designating it as a farm truck, and a banged-up minivan with a flat rear tire.

Almost everyone had returned home by seven that night. The sun had faded away slowly, as did the residents of Melody’s apartment building.

I’d spent the day making myself sick on fast food, nicotine, and caffeine, getting cramped and sore in the cab of my Mustang. Unshowered and unshaven for a few days, I was having a hard time being near myself. I’d begun longing for my humble apartment, where I could sprawl across the width of my king-size bed, take a shower so hot it would sting my skin, whip up a plate of peppers and eggs before I launched into my day. Though despite the discomforts of this journey, the aching in my trapezoids from lifting Willie off the ground, the scab around the torn nail of my middle finger that looked to be heading for an infection, the constant return to public restrooms that caused glances of increasing concern to be cast my way, I had no choice but to wait for Melody to surface, to know she was somehow surviving.

That night turned cold, draped itself over me like a wet washcloth on the head of a fevered child. The fluctuation in temperatures drove me crazy, had me balancing the windows and the heat and the air-conditioning throughout my residency in the car. You might think the boredom, though, was what really did me in. I diluted it with the likes of regional newspapers and magazines acquired as an excuse to use the restrooms of local convenience stores, with half of the library of music CDs in my glove compartment, with no less than six baseball games delivered via AM radio, with slowly eaten meals and lengthy prayers. The dullness and tedium did exist, overruled by the anxiety of what was happening behind the door of Melody’s apartment. Boredom performs terrible acts upon the imagination: It expands the realm of possibility to its furthest limits, the best- and worst-case scenarios. And I ran through them all with Melody, from casual disinterest about what had happened in Lexington to a resulting case of severe depression to a downright panic toward any future interaction with humanity. I imagined too many times her hiding under the covers, blinds drawn, shaking.

I could never be sure until I saw her.



If I’d brought trouble to Lexington two days earlier, by Monday morning I officially looked like trouble. I’d been living out of my car for just over forty-eight hours, and in that parking lot for thirty-six of it. My bathroom existed at an Exxon, my comb was my right hand, my toothbrush my finger. A five o’clock shadow was well on its way to becoming a beard, and my stomach, when not hurting, was audible.

The sun crested at five-thirty that morning and I crept out of my car to stretch and move my body in the motions of my childhood: the swing of a bat, the shot of a basketball, the sweep of a hockey stick. Once I’d finished my limbering, I slipped back in my car to procure more coffee, doughnuts, cigarettes, and a local newspaper, returned and parked a distance from Melody’s Civic just as the apartment dwellers with work schedules started to materialize and face the day.

One resident, an attractive woman I would have pegged in her late fifties, came out in a short business dress, wearing makeup and heels that suggested she resented the unstoppable progression of her age—though what stuck with me was that I’d seen her twice already prior to that morning, that I’d been in residency at this apartment building for so long that I was beginning to assemble an accurate catalog of its inhabitants.

In the gap between the emergence of the workers and retirees, I flipped through the Lexington Herald-Leader, central Kentucky’s local news source. I turned to the crime section, surprised at the level of wrongdoing that occurs in Lexington; Willie and his buddies would eventually find a place they could call home. In the prior twenty-four hours, there’d been two murders in Bourbon County, two arsons in the city of Lexington that suggested they were serial acts, and in Whitley County over fifty guns were stolen from an evidence room at the courthouse. The Bovaro crew had, as an organization, a presence in many cities across the United States, though nothing in Kentucky as far as I knew. I made a mental note to suggest it to my father; we’d fit in better than I might have guessed. The remainder of the crime appeared petty; where I grew up much of it would not be worth investigating, never mind mentioning. I read each and every crime report, and as my eyes zigzagged from article to article, there was one story missing.

Willie’s.

I’m certain that whoever found him in that stairwell called the police, and he was quickly transported to a nearby hospital, where the nurses pulled back his hood and removed his jacket to reveal bruises and dried blood that suggested a drug deal gone bad.

DOCTOR: “Can you tell me what happened?”

WILLIE: “I fell.”

With that, their collective interest in his story would dissipate, they would clean him up, mend the cuts and emerging bruises, send him off with a prescription for a drug that would turn into a profitable venture and allow him to return to his drug of choice.

And when the police officer started his way to ask a few questions, Willie would slip out of the room, out to the street, and back to his crappy life.

The Lexington Herald-Leader got it right: This story was not newsworthy.

As I closed the paper to refold it and open a new section, Melody appeared in the doorway of her building. I quickly unfolded it again, used it as my cloaking device, only my eyes and forehead exposed to the scene. At the sight of her, my heart pounded not faster but harder. I could feel my pulse in my stomach and throat, tried to swallow it back down more than once, the increase in the depth of my breathing causing the paper to undulate before me. The powerful onset of emotion pushed out the sense of reason I’d seemed to have built up over the prior two days.

She walked to her car at a healthy pace, a purse over one shoulder and a large leather bag over the other, slowing only when the leather bag would slip off and she’d have to pause to hoist it back up. She wore slacks of a forgettable color and a white tank top with a light blue sweater covering all but the straps of her top, and each time the leather bag dropped, it would tug both the sweater and the straps down to expose her bare shoulder. I memorized her rhythm of reassembling: the strap, the sweater, the bag. If you put Willie or Mullet in a lineup, I’d be hard pressed to pick them out, but if you asked me to recreate her motions from that morning, I’d do so with near-perfect accuracy. As I watched her pace, her movements, I remained baffled. The way she looked—recovered—was the one look I was not expecting. In fact, I’d convinced myself she wouldn’t surface at all. Her back-to-my-regular-schedule demeanor suggested she’d been through related disappointments before and become desensitized to them, though her eyes had a redness that implied tears had been wiped away not much earlier, and the bags beneath them suggested lousy sleep.

She balanced her purse and bag, reached in the pocket of her slacks, and pulled out her keys. Her headlights flickered, then she walked around to the back door on the driver’s side and put both items in the backseat. As the back door closed, she paused at the window. At first I thought she was staring at something in her car, until she brushed her cheek lightly and I realized she was looking at her reflection in the glass.

I viewed her from my car, my head turned oddly, newspaper drifting lower and lower as I became absorbed. Melody stood up straight and did something that, in a most unexpected way, modified my personality. As she looked at her reflection, even though her hair was very short, she tucked her hair behind her ears. Her movement was slow and gentle, an act performed with the tips of the middle fingers of both hands, the motions occurring simultaneously, and from my distance it looked as though she were trying to trace the delicate shape of her ears. I immediately replayed it in my head two or three times. I wanted to watch her do it again, live. How odd it is the way a man’s mind is randomly shaped toward preference; it’s impossible to predict the triggers. My brother Jimmy, for example, would never admit it but he’s a people-watcher with a real preference for young women. His obsession manifests itself in the movement of a girl’s legs as she crosses them, in the sound as the skin of one leg rubs against the other, and the slower and more seductively it occurs, the more likely he will turn to me and say, “Man, I love it when a woman does that.” But his statement is hardly true; he really means that some woman he knew at some time in his life did that thing, it flipped some irreversible switch in his head, and he spent the rest of his days trying to find another woman who could replicate the motion that left this permanent predilection in his mind and desire in his heart. Every guy has them buried somewhere, things that had little business entering the realm of sensuality—the crossing of your legs, the chewing on the end of a pen while you think, the way your hand rushes to your chest with a hearty laugh, how you close your eyes when you whisper in a friend’s ear, the motions that compose the act of putting your hair in a ponytail or the way your hair gently falls to your face when you pull the band back out—somewhere a man is mad for it. As for me, for many years to follow, when I would see a girl tuck her hair behind her ears in nothing more than a vaguely similar manner, that delicate trace of the ears, I would think, She’s really cute, and never understand exactly why.

The paper had dropped all the way to my lap.

Melody started her car and after a few seconds she pulled out of her space, made her way down the gravel road. Her car became enveloped in a white burst of limestone dust, the loud crunching as she drove over the rocks overpowering the birds and distant machinery, and as the powdery air disappeared, so had Melody.

I turned the ignition of the Mustang; that was as far as I got.



For all the hours I had spent idle in the parking lot outside Melody’s apartment building, you’d think I would’ve found any excuse to move on, but I remained in that spot for too long, paper dropped in my lap, newsprint-stained fingers on the steering wheel at ten and two, head-cocked and blurry-eyed and openmouthed like a catatonic fool.

I had some sense that I should follow her, but common sense trumped it, helped me to realize that there was little point in further visiting and staking out various parking lots of rural Kentucky. The only windows of her existence that I could see through, the insignificant glimpses of her life between starting points and destinations, offered nothing but a rising tide of questions that always remained unanswered, with the ultimate question, the point of it all, never being heard: Is she okay?

Yet I could not surrender the obsession. I would never be at peace until I knew.



I called home, spoke briefly with Peter, even briefer with my father. I never found her, I said. Sat outside her place for two days, I said. Never surfaced, I said.

I’d try again soon, I said.

And as I made my way to the east, following the now familiar path toward Lexington, I began the reconciliation of the past two days.



Around the time I’d driven deep into the eastern Kentucky countryside, I finally conceded that this journey had done nothing for my paranoia except elevate it, that Melody was not okay, that she was always at risk. If I’d come out to bring rest to my conscience, to somehow convince myself that despite all her years of misery she was turning out all right, I was heading home more jammed up than when I left. Who would be watching out for her? The feds would not be in the dirty stairwells of the parking garages, they would not be in the parks, the bars, the impending dark corners of her life.

That trip only made things worse. Before, I was worried Melody was not safe, not happy; now I was certain of it.



As the Mustang renavigated the mountains of West Virginia, I spliced together the scene at the gas station where I nearly bumped into Melody and the scene in the park where she so obviously longed for a lingering eye. How it bothered me the way she wanted someone to notice her.

And as I merged those two scenes, a realization came across my mind with such power that I inadvertently pulled my foot from the accelerator and the jerking forward of the car startled me: I noticed her.

She made eye contact with me at the gas pumps, and I smiled at her. I gave her what she seemed so desperate for at the park. The truth is I would have noticed her anyway, that she would have stood out from any other woman. I would have given her what she wanted. She was that special.

But she had looked beyond me, like a glass of wine held to the light, trying to make sense of characteristics within the object, not the object itself. Her eyes had landed on mine—connected, without a connection—but after assessing me, she decided to move on to the next stimulus in her field of vision.

She wanted attention that day, just not from me.



Through the hills and valleys of southeastern Pennsylvania, I tried to resolve myself to the life I was destined to lead, the one waiting for me at the end of that journey, waiting with anger and forgiveness like an abandoned spouse, to embrace the life I was dealt, to perform the good and bad things that seemed to come so naturally.

I rationalized that Melody had no idea who I was, even with my imprudent approach in the convenience store and my passing smile at the gas pumps. In the credits of the movie of her life, I would have been listed as Guy at Gas Station. Frigging Mullet would have had a higher billing.



As I broke the line into the Garden State, I realized I could not equally be in her life and remain anonymous.

The question was: Which way to go?



The answer came to me in the center of the Holland Tunnel: I could do more good in her life—far more—if I remained anonymous. My selfish desires would be, as Tommy Fingers would say, no good for nobody.

Winding through the lamplit streets of my neighborhood, down the dark alley that led to the reserved parking pad below my apartment, I dropped the mask I’d presented to myself, the one suggesting it was all over, that the curiosity was quelled and that Melody was alive if not well, that she was a big girl and could figure it out on her own—I dropped the mask that suggested I’d never be back to check on her again.

Of course I’d be back, where I would take my experience as Guy at Gas Station and parlay it into more important roles like Man in Produce Section and Stranger on Cell Phone and Jogger in Park, though always being miscast, never getting credited for the part for which I was so aptly prepared, so commonly playing: Stalker. Though that term, that role, was one I did not consider then, for if I had it might have brought my protective compulsions to an end, and the twisted remainder of what actually happened to Melody, what happened to me, would have never come to fruition. Certainly all of the signs were there: large unaccounted-for gaps in time, sudden disappearances lacking instigation, the lies to my family for what my reasons for finding her were. But I argued them away, as my true intentions for Melody were to protect her—protect her from the people I was lying to—and to make sure she was okay. I wasn’t following her with some fuel of obsession; I was guarding her life.

Spoken like a true stalker.

And as I turned off my car and pulled the keys from the ignition, I knew the next visit Randall Gardner received from a Bovaro would probably be from me.