“Why do you love me?” I ask.
She turns my way, studies me. “What do you mean? There’s no reason, I—”
“No.” I stare at the speedometer, watch the arm of the dial move counterclockwise as we slow. “You love me because I gave you freedom, Melody.” I look in her direction, wipe my nose with the back of my hand. “I freed you from the chains and locks that have held you down your whole life. That’s the only reason, because I gave you freedom.” The dial steadies. “And it’s okay.”
She touches my leg. “That’s not true. I love you because of who you are, the man you—I mean, look, because of what you’re doing right now. You don’t think I see what you’re all about? You’re risking everything for me.” She squeezes my thigh, casually trumps me: “I will never doubt your love for me.”
I have to get her to safety, have to throw together a plan—fast. I can’t just return her to the Witness Protection Program, to the nationwide waiting room of death. “Oh… what are we gonna do?” I accidentally say loud enough for her to hear.
As our speed holds at sixty, she calms, leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “If we got married I couldn’t testify against you.”
I laugh. “That’s cute in a naïve way. The feds would be watching us twenty-four hours a day—welcome to my world. And you’d still be able to testify against my family, which would guarantee a bullet.”
I’m jammed up trying to understand how to sustain her newfound freedom. Everything’s gone wrong. I don’t see any more options left. The party’s over. And we’re the last to leave.
I quickly pull into the slow lane and exit the turnpike, wind us onto a side street and up against a curb. I take the car out of gear and pull up the emergency brake, turn to Melody. Her eyes are so full of hope, she wants me to deliver the next play to the offensive coach, pull us up from a fourteen-point deficit. Unfortunately, the clock has only five seconds remaining, and this is our last time-out.
I take in a slow breath, and in the exhale I say, “We just played the only hand we had, Melody. It’s over.”
She shakes her head. “What do you mean? What’s over?”
“This. Us. It’s over.”
Her lips quiver; she purses them to keep me from seeing. “Over? It just started. I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you see? You had two days of freedom and you became a new woman—the woman you should’ve been all along. Don’t forget I’ve been watching you your whole life, Melody, and I saw the change, I know it was there. You’re about to lose it all again.”
She wipes tears away before they have a chance to run down her cheek. “We could get married,” she offers again.
“You know we can’t. No one will ever leave us alone. The feds. My family. Everyone will be hunting us down. There won’t be a single day that passes where you won’t wonder if your car’s gonna blow or I’ve been murdered.”
She reaches for my hand, lets the tears fall now, says more earnestly, “Then let’s just run away together. Trust me, we can run. No one will ever find us. I feel safer with you than the feds.”
I reach over and caress the back of her head and neck with my hand. “Melody, you’ve been running for over two decades, and you had professionals helping you. How long before they find you—us—again?”
“Then we can both go into Witness Protection together. You can testify against your family and—”
“Melody,” I say, pulling her to my chest, “it’s over.” I hold her tight, rock slightly as she cries. I stop praying for her and I to have a life together, begin praying I can simply find a way to rescue her, get her out of here and set her free. “Don’t you see? If I go into Witness Protection with you it’ll be even worse than before, with more lies, with an even bigger threat of getting killed. Double the risk. It’ll never end, Melody. You’ll never be free.”
And what of testifying against my family? Where and how would it begin? That type of ordeal could never be contrived. I know the price for betrayal in my family, have helped force people to pay it; survival is not included in the fee.
Yet how one-sided it truly is. My family betrayed me, asked me to surrender a woman I not only wanted to protect, but claimed to have loved. Except business always comes first—over love, over family, over anything; sacrifice, remember, is poorly practiced within the Bovaro family circle. Were I to testify, where would the line be drawn? Behind me, with an arrow at the end pointing to a chalk outline.
As I hold Melody I get grainy glimpses of myself in Witness Protection, imagine the joy Gardner would get knowing where I was, how I’d fallen prostrate to the very program I spent years undermining. How Randall would so easily hand over my whereabouts to my family, exchange my address for a credit against losses incurred at the hands of the Vikings or the Lakers or the Red Sox. How he’d routinely check for any updated information on Melody and put that on the offering plate as well. Now she is forever doomed. My inside source just became the assurance she’d never be safe in the program again. I can’t shake the image of Gardner having the most satisfying revenge against me, how quickly he’d return to pornographically capturing and selling his wife, gambling his salary right into my family’s communal fist while I rot in a program with walls nowhere near high enough to protect me. My imagination takes me to the farthest edge of survival, how if I had to spend one second in the program, the first thing I’d have to do is out Gardner, serve him up to Justice on a platter with a frigging apple in his mouth. Oh, the repercussions of doing such a thing.
Of course: the repercussions.
This time God didn’t make me wait, laid relief upon me like the hot sun upon Noah’s saturated face.
I get the answer—and I get the answer.
I’m a chess player, envision the path of moves that will lead me directly to checkmate; my opponent could never see it coming.
Melody says something, her words muffled as she speaks them against my chest.
“Wait,” I say, “hold on.” Everything comes together, like a lifetime of research culminating into great discovery, a cure for the hopelessly diseased.
As the concept gets launched skyward like a firework, I follow it in my mind until it explodes, watch each sparking strand of potential outcome until every instance fizzles out completely, make sure not a single piece of hot ash hits the ground and causes a fire. I replay it again.
“What can we do,” I think she says.
“Hold on.”
Then again: The play unfolds. Like standing at home plate, I see every face from the opposing team watching my stance, trying to determine where and how I’m going to swing. But we’ve got men on base already. As much as I’d love to smack one out into the parking lot, I know the right thing to do is get my teammates home safe, to get them over the plate and raise the score. What choice do I really have? I’m going to have to sacrifice myself. I’m never going to make it to first base. Here comes the squeeze play.
I am going to rescue everyone—except Jonathan Bovaro.
TWO
Now that the reality of my only choice clarifies and crystallizes, I know I have mere minutes left with Melody. And once they expire, I will never see her again.
I fill the cab of our car with the fumes of false influence, do what I must to convince her that being with me is the worst thing she could ever want. “My family was gonna make me kill the woman I loved. Peter wasn’t just following us to make sure I got the job done.” I reach over and wipe her tears away with my thumb. “You see? We’re running already.”
She sits up, looks at me, then down. I put the car in gear and get us moving; she watches the landscape as we return to the interstate. “What’re you going to do?”
I look over my shoulder as I merge into traffic, smear the moisture from my face on my shoulder in the process. “I’m gonna do what I promised you, Melody. I’m gonna do what needs to be done. I’m gonna keep you safe and free forever.”
She holds on to her door with one hand and the center arm rest wit
h the other, clutches them like she’s in a dentist’s chair, preparing for the drill. “Why are you driving so fast?”
“Because Peter and others from our crew are probably heading for my house and my restaurant to see if they can find me—and I need to beat them to my restaurant.”
My desperate driving displays how I have not a single care left except getting Melody to safety, my own well-being safe-harbored in what will be my final act. I glance at my speedometer as I slip between two cars; we’re going nearly a hundred. I slow only for tollbooths.
I fly over the empty roads, thankful for how easily we’re traveling on this Sunday morning. Melody clenches her hands and teeth, winces as we fly by everyone and everything, holds on for dear life, her tears dried by fright. We cross the George Washington Bridge, quickly make our way to the BQE. By the time we wind down into Brooklyn, I begin slowing to a safer pace, and as we enter the Williamsburg section I’ve switched my preoccupation from speed to checking for familiar cars.
I turn down Grand Street, park in front of Sylvia and block a fire hydrant. I check every mirror, look up and down the street, keep the car running.
Melody stares out the window toward my restaurant, looks at nothing else, studies it like she’s trying to memorize it. “This is your—”
“Stay here. Keep your head down. If I’m not back in sixty seconds, you drive away. Understand?”
She says nothing, swallows, nods.
“If I’m not back in sixty seconds.”
Nods harder. “Okay.”
I iterate through the mirrors and street views again, then bolt for Sylvia’s front door. I whip it open, run by the tables where a dozen couples and families are dining, the smell of lasagne Bolognese growing in strength with every step closer to the kitchen; had I no knowledge of what day it was, I could tell you by the Bolognese, served only post-Mass on Sundays. This unedited masterpiece recipe was passed down from my mother, developed who knows how many generations ago, involves handmade noodles and layers of sauces and cheeses (the key is using a béchamel instead of ricotta). This creation, perfectly suited to a lazy Sunday and requiring the entire morning to craft and assemble, usually sells out by three in the afternoon. I will miss Ryan’s perfect rendition of this dish.
I blast through the door to the kitchen, hurry through the bustling prep area, get a mix of distracted Hey, Jonathans as I run to the very back where we accept deliveries, look out the door for Peter—or anyone else. Nothing.
I rush to my office, open up the safe and stare at the stacks of thousands of dollars waiting to be laundered, grab the small stack in the front, the clean, laundered batch waiting for Paulie’s pickup. I go to the closet in the corner, pry open the disabled door and pull out an old dusty leather bag, shake it empty of the dried-up deodorant and toothpaste I used while the restaurant was under construction, fill it with the laundered stash. As I slam the door to the safe shut, reset the digital PIN and spin the tumbler, Ryan comes up behind me, says, “John, can I get sixty seconds?”
Problem is: I only have twenty left.
I brush by him, wave for him to follow. “Listen, I’m not coming back. It’s all yours, Ryan. You’re the talent here, turn this into whatever you want.”
He stops in his tracks, shakes his head, and sighs like the disaster he always knew would befall the restaurant has finally arrived. “Wait—”
“You’re already doing the hard part, Ry. Just pay the bills, keep the staff happy. I want to read about this place in the Times.” Though, no doubt, he’ll see me in it first.
“But, wait, don’t—”
I put my arm around him, slap his back a few times. “You have not seen me at all today, capice?”
I look out the back door as I pass it on my way through the kitchen, see Peter getting out of his car, Tommy Fingers pulling up the alley.
I run out the front of the restaurant, hop in the car and toss the bag behind me, pop the clutch and have all four wheels squealing. Melody looks at me with uncertain relief. “They were coming in the back,” I tell her. She slinks down in her seat, turns and watches the door of Sylvia as we speed away.
I push the Audi to its limit, speed around cars waiting at lights, cascade from side to side like a speed skater. I take the well-memorized maze of streets that will liberate us, liberate her. Berry. Metropolitan. Meeker. The BQE.
Melody seems certain I’m taking us to LaGuardia, her head twisting to watch the planes approach and depart in the far distance. But confusion shows on her face as she realizes we’ve turned in the opposite direction, intensifies as I pull off the highway and eventually wind us onto Livingston Street, and when I stop the car in front of the Greyhound bus terminal, Melody turns and squints.
“What’s going on? What are we doing?”
I turn the car off and throw the flashers on. I get out, reach in the back and grab the bag with the money, walk to her side and pull her out of the car as I scan the area, watch every position, every angle.
Melody stumbles a little as I lead her inside the terminal. “Wait, are we—”
“You wouldn’t get anywhere on a plane without identification. This is your only route of escape. Not to mention my family would never think to come here.” Then, quieter, “Though I bet they sent people to LaGuardia, Kennedy, and Newark.”
I hand her the bag. Melody looks inside, closes her eyes and slouches. The money implies the end as much as a suicide note.
“Should be about nine grand,” I say. “That’s all the money I had laundered; it’s totally clean, untraceable. Not a lot, but it’ll get you started.”
She drops her hand to her side, holds on to the bag, and stares at me, waits for me to deliver the final blow, knock her out.
I can barely get the words out, swallow a lump so large I nearly choke. I look away and stare at the ticket counter, but I know I have to look her in the eye when I say this. I turn back and say, “Just go away, Melody. Just leave.”
She shakes her head and cries, drops the bag and balls her fist up in my clothing. “No, Jonathan. I can’t.”
“Go somewhere you’ve never been before. Move to a town where I’d never guess you’d go, in case I weaken and try to find you.”
She keeps her fists twisted up in my sweater, bangs me in the chest three times before falling into my arms and weeping. “Please, Jonathan, I’m begging you. I’m beg…”
As I feel my eyes fill, the burn in my nose, the thick paste in my throat, I have no idea how I manage to utter these words into her ear: “Never call me or my family again. Never call the feds or the marshals again. Never use any of your aliases again. Do you understand?” She weeps so hard I can feel the vibration of her jerky breathing against my chest. “Do you understand?”
Melody stops fighting, buries her wet face in my sweater. She goes limp, slips down as if she’d just died in my arms, her weight supported entirely by me. I feel her nod her head a little. Then, finally, “Yes.”
I kiss the top of her head and whisper, “This is the last time you’ll ever have to run, Melody. I promise.” I sigh with relief, feel composure returning as it seems she comprehends—and plans to comply with—what must happen.
All of a sudden, she regains her footing, pulls back, and stares me down. Her eyelashes are wet and clumped together, her eyes red, her cheeks pink from rubbing against the weave of my sweater.
“You knew, didn’t you,” she says. “You knew I might not be free to make the decision to leave if we’d made love.”
And in that second all my composure vanishes. Can’t explain why, but her understanding of this notion brings a wave of tears to me; one falls from each of my eyes at the same time. I swallow, step back a little. “I didn’t want it to cloud your judgment. I just wanted what was best for you in case the worst happened.” I shrug, smile a little as I wipe the tears away. “And the worst happened.” She closes the gap between us and hugs me with whatever strength has yet to be sapped from her.
“You’ll never be ripped fro
m a lover’s arms again,” I say. “This will be the last time.”
Melody looks at me, studies every detail of my face, of my expression, like she’s trying to record an elaborate likeness, planning to repeatedly recall this detailed memory. Then she kisses me and I cannot draw back. It’s not the aggressive, passion-fueled kiss of lovers leaving, but gentle and measured. She presses her lips against mine so softly I might’ve otherwise mistaken it for her first kiss, but then she presses slightly harder and I can feel the pressure of her tongue against mine, she runs her hands up under my sweater and shirt and slides her fingers up my back.
Then she stands on her toes, moves her mouth to my ear and whispers, “You were my first, Jonathan. You will always be my first.” She looks at me and smiles, shows me who the tough one is right now, gives to me what I could not accept on my own.
And there it is: the image of Melody I will never be able to shake, the ineffaceable stamp in my brain, a memory that will never be erased or replaced. The image that every other woman over the remainder of my life will be compared to, the one to which they will suffer in comparison. The image of what could have been. The everlasting image, for I will no longer be able to watch her mature and age; she will remain twenty-six and beautiful and strong. The image that will run through my mind as I stare blankly out the window when the girl beside me asks, “Where are you?” and when I do not respond, she will further ask, “Is there someone else?” and I will let out a quiet sigh before eventually offering my answer: “Not the way you’re thinking.”
I hold Melody’s hands in mine and begin to step backward toward the door, our arms lifting as the bridge between us lengthens. I smile and stare at her but she’s so blurry now, the tears fogging my eyes and drifting down the sides of my face, that I can barely keep myself under control.
“No matter what’s about to happen,” I say, “this was all worth it.” And as the tips of her fingers break free of mine, as I keep walking backward, she puts a hand to her mouth as she begins to cry again. “It was all worth it.”
The Exceptions Page 32
