The Girl She Used to Be

by David Cristofano

  I close my eyes and drop my head. “Just like that, huh?”

  Jonathan puts down his fork and takes my hand, as gently as he had a moment ago, though this time my fingers are lifeless. Jonathan whispers, “I will protect you, Melody. Trust me.”

  I open my eyes and realize there is no way to turn this around. Before, there was one good guy and one bad guy; now I’m lost in a world of distrust and corruption and the odds of my survival have slipped to about one in a thousand. The only person left I can trust is myself—and I have no idea who I am.

  Eventually, I stop playing with my fork and begin using it. My stomach is a knot of stress but the quality and flavor of the food ensures that it will be consumed. In silence, we finish our meals and slurp down espresso, both without room for even the smallest cannoli. My stomach has not been this full and my palate this content in, well, ever.

  And, as Jonathan predicted, the waiter never brings the check.

  I allowed myself the luxury of this fine food, but as it’s clear it’s time to leave, I return to my original dilemma.

  “What are you planning to do with me once we get to New York?”

  Jonathan starts playing with the spring-operated ignition key for the Audi. “I, uh… I want to take you back to my family and introduce you to them.”

  I fall back in my seat. “You’ve got to be kidding. This is your plan?”

  “Hear me out, okay?”

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

  “Hear me out.”

  “Spare me some misery and just tie me to the bumper of your car.”

  “Melody, just wa—”

  “Talk about a death sentence!”

  “Melody!” He waves his arms wildly, as though he’s trying to get my attention from across a crowded room. “Nobody is killing anybody, okay? If you are with me, you are safe.”

  “That’s the same thing the feds say.”

  “Yeah, well, you just made my point.”

  I shake my head in half-disgust / half-amazement and give him the floor. “Let’s hear your brilliant scheme.”

  He clears his throat. “I’m going to show my family what a nice woman you are, how you are no threat to them, and—how you are a person. Not some file of incriminating evidence they’re trying to erase or a rat spilling his guts to the cops, but a real human being with feelings and emotions and something worth—”

  “Are you stupid?”

  “What? No, I—”

  “You take drugs?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you suffer from any mental disease or deficiency?”

  He pauses. “Uh… no?”

  “Then I cannot figure out what could possibly make you think I stand a chance of living if you bring me to your home. It’s like bringing a deer to the front door of a hunting lodge.”

  He looks at me and sighs, stands and motions for me to do the same. He offers his hand to help me out of my seat and I take it.

  We plod to the door, walk outside, and stand in the bright sunshine.

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

  Jonathan looks at me for a minute, like I might give him an answer on the spot, but I merely nod.

  He walks inside the restaurant and as the door closes, I do not ponder his offer but instead get stuck on the fact that he left his keys on the table. For a guy who has been so deft at repeatedly finding me and remaining in control of these various situations, it’s an odd slip. Frankly, it seems more like something Sean would have done.

  I move close to the door and nudge it open a little to peek inside, and sure enough Jonathan’s lied to me again. He is swinging his keys around his middle finger as he walks back to our table. When he gets to it, he looks over his shoulder and waves the waiter to the table, says a few words to him, and the waiter smiles. The waiter walks away and Jonathan looks around—seemingly to make sure no one is watching—then pulls a wad of bills from his pocket and drops them on the table.

  I smile and close the door.

  And when he comes outside he gets his answer; I am waiting for him.

  He looks relieved. “Thank you,” he says.

  Jonathan gently puts his hand on the small of my back and I shiver. He guides me around the side of the restaurant to where the Audi is parked and we find two kids hovering over the car with their backs to us. They are both laughing quietly.

  Jonathan stops, assesses the situation, takes his hand from my back, and whispers to me, “Stay here.”

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

  Jonathan moves closer and from my distance it appears these two kids, both young teenagers, are spitting on the seats of his car. That’s sort of what he gets for leaving the top down in the middle of Baltimore. I do not voice my opinion.

  Jonathan pulls up his sleeves as he sneaks up behind the kids and says, “What do you fu”—he looks back at me and winces—“funny guys think you’re doing?”

  The kids try to run but he snags one around the neck with his arm, as with a cane in a burlesque show. Jonathan grabs him by the hair, and just as he is about to slam the kid’s head down on the side of the car, he looks at me—but I cannot look at him. I turn away, because all of the good he just did at the restaurant is about to be unraveled.

  The other kid comes back, I guess out of loyalty to his friend, and bobs nervously from foot to foot.

  No one says a word, and when I finally look at Jonathan, he swallows.

  I shrug and say, “It’s just saliva.”

  Jonathan withers a little and he and I both realize that his lifestyle and family heritage is more a part of him than either of us would like to admit. He loosens his grip on the kid and pushes him to the ground. “Go home and hug your mother,” he says to him. “And say a prayer of thanks tonight, kid.” He glances at me. “An angel was looking out for you today.”

  “Yes, sir,” the kid says, stumbling to his feet.

  Both boys stand and look at Jonathan like soldiers waiting for instructions from a commanding officer.

  Jonathan frowns at them. “Run! Run, you little sh—shysters.”

  And they do.

  I walk up to Jonathan and watch the kids quickly fade from view. They actually left a cloud of dust.

  He gazes at the gobs of spit on his leather upholstery and grunts. “Let me go back in the restaurant and get a paper towel or something.”

  I nod. I grab my new green sweater, ensure that it is free of spit, and slip it on. As Jonathan walks away, I stand in the light breeze with my eyes closed. The warmth of the sun tranquilizes me and nearly brings me to my knees. Something is changing inside of me; though I have never been certain of who I am, I feel I am changing anyway.

  I am replete.

  I am sanguine.

  I am being shoved into the back of a large SUV with seats composed of stiff vinyl.

  The vehicle shakes and, after fumbling around for a few seconds, I garner the strength to look out the window and I see we have created a dust cloud of our own.

  “Keep your head down,” Sean says. He pulls onto the road and the SUV is swaying in every direction, fishtailing from one lane to another, and the wheels are squealing like they’re begging for mercy.

  The Germans had nothing to do with this vehicle whatsoever.

  I pop my head up to say something and Sean smashes it back down like he’s playing Whac-A-Mole. “I said stay down!”

  I’m not sure what bothers me more: that Jonathan, for better or for worse, is going to get the wrong impression about why I am not there when he returns to the Audi, or that I’m lying on the dirty floor of a Ford Explorer with my head resting on a pillow of empty Big Gulp containers.

  After a few minutes—and once the Explorer has stabil
ized—I pull myself up from the floor and sprawl across the backseat.

  “Are you okay?” Sean asks. He does not bother to look at me in the rearview mirror.

  “This is getting pretty freaking old.”

  “Look, I’m sorry for what happened back at the motel, but we’ve been following your trail since you left. The motel manager saw you get into a car with someone who was not me. We had people looking for a red convertible Audi in multiple states and we got a tip when your car spun out on I-95. Another marshal, Deputy Cooper, is two cars behind us and we’re going to take you to—”

  “Are you married?”

  Now he looks in the rearview. “What?”

  “Are you married, Sean?” If Jonathan lied to me again, he’ll be the one who needs a guardian angel.

  He looks down, then back at the road. He says, weakly, “I… was married.”

  I yawn. “Divorce?”

  “No. My wife, she… she died of breast cancer at a very young age.”

  Don’t I feel like a jerk.

  I try to change the subject. Sort of. “But you’re wearing a wedding band.”

  “Well, I’m still married to her.” He catches my eye in the rearview for a few seconds. “There will only ever be one Mrs. Douglas, if you know what I mean. My heart is hers, will always be hers, and I wear the ring to… well, partly to remember her and partly to send the message to other women that I’m not available.”

  I raise an eyebrow. I’m not sure whether to be moved by his sentimentality or annoyed at his arrogance.

  I go with the arrogance. “Need to beat ’em off with a club, Seanster?”

  “We’re going to rendezvous up here in a few minutes with the other deputy.”

  Sean is all business, but I’ll tell you I do not feel like an appreciated customer. Fifteen minutes earlier I was finishing four-star Italian food, drinking good wine and fresh-ground espresso. Now that I’m back in the government’s care, I am relegated to a plastic backseat and taking orders from a guy making fifty-three grand per annum.

  Thanks to Jonathan, salary has now become a hot-button issue for me.

  “I need to know everything that happened,” he says.

  “He had veal chops and I had the beef carpaccio.”

  Sean does not laugh.

  “You and who?”

  Now I’m confused. “What do you mean? You don’t know who I was with?”

  Sean mutters under his breath about cars in his way, drives like we’re leaving the scene of our own crime. “The car is registered to an Anthony J. Bovaro, which tells me plenty. What I want to know is who was driving and where they were taking you. Are you hurt?”

  Sean swerves around a U-Haul and skates back into the fast lane. “Not yet.” I sit up. Even though Sean thinks there’s a threat, I know the reality. “And there was no they. It was just one guy driving.”

  “Did he tell you his name?”

  I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview, and if I didn’t know better I’d think someone had supplanted the real me with an abused, punked-out, and less-seductive Keira Knightley. “His name, uh… I don’t think he told me his name. I mean, if he did, I don’t remember.”

  “How did he apprehend you? Did he have a weapon?”

  I smile a little but do not let Sean see. I rub my hand over my sweater and realize how surprisingly powerful textiles can be. “No, he didn’t have a weapon.”

  “Did you know he was part of the Bovaro family?”

  “Um, sort of.”

  “Did he try to hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “Did he threaten you in any way?”

  I start to daydream and my answers are less responsive. “No, he didn’t.”

  Sean stares at me in the mirror for a few seconds and the car suddenly tugs backward; Sean moved his foot off the gas.

  “Wait a minute,” he says, “did you go willingly?”

  I blink a few times and let his question hang in the air. His tone is understood; the feds are not going to allow me to stay in the program if I’m screwing around with security. I’m probably already on some watch list for scamming them, for letting my underlying fears and daily languor push me over the edge and in search of a new locale and a new persona.

  But if I start to dabble with the folks from whom the feds are protecting me? Things will not be pretty.

  I tug at my sweater, hoping it will fall apart and give me a living metaphor to use as a basis for decision, but just like the man who purchased it, the weave is die-hard.

  The choice might seem obvious, but the vague truth quickly surfaces: Jonathan is one single man—one single man who wants to deliver me to the door of his murderous family—and Sean is a law enforcement officer with the physical backing—and budget—of the Justice Department. No matter how I feel in Jonathan’s presence, no matter how strong and intense his mysterious pull is, he could never outweigh the power of the feds.

  I take a deep breath and whisper my lie: “I don’t know, I just… I’m very confused right now. I’m very tired.” The tired thing almost always shuts them down.

  Sean guns it again. Deputy Cooper pulls up next to us as we move into the right lane in order to exit. I watch him for a moment. He puts a cheeseburger to his mouth and, as he bites, a big glob of ketchup and mustard falls to his chest. He doesn’t notice.

  I’m not sure what bothers me more: that it took them this long to catch up or that Deputy Cooper managed to find time to hit the Golden Arches before heading into pursuit.

  I pinch the bridge of my nose and repeat, “I’m very tired.”

  “I understand,” Sean says. “Well, just relax. You’re safe now.”

  That’s what they all say.

  WE PULL INTO THE PARKING LOT OF THE MARYLAND STATE POLICE Barracks on the northeast side of Baltimore. I can tell we’re on the northeast side by the smell. I once drove through this area, the little twist of land connecting the Back River to the Middle River, and I was never able to rid my clothes of the smog-tinged pungency. Sean and Deputy Cooper park side by side, then they both get out, leaving me in the back like a little kid in a car seat.

  They talk for a moment, hands in motion as they speak, then they lean on their vehicles and start laughing.

  I’m not sure I see the humor.

  They both return to their respective SUVs and start the engines. It appears they had no intention of getting the state police involved; I guess they figured no criminal would knowingly enter a police station parking lot. Aren’t they clever.

  Sean pulls out and Deputy Cooper goes in a different direction.

  “It’s just going to be you and me?” I ask.

  “For now.”

  “Isn’t that against policy? Shouldn’t there always be two deputies transporting me?”

  “Afraid I’m going to take advantage of you?”

  I smirk. “Not as long as that inch-width wedding band is on your finger.”

  He points down the road. “We’re going to head west and get you out in the country.”

  “Ingenious.” I’m already bored.

  The wheels spin and the signs and trees fly by, and now that we’re on I-70, the subdivisions are spaced farther and farther apart, and then—nothing. Nothing but farmland and cows and old brick or clapboard farmhouses.

  I take off my sweater and carefully fold it. I try to open my window but, as usual, it’s locked. “Can I get a little fresh air, Sean?” He glances at me in the rearview. “It’s a warm afternoon. I just want to take in some of this great country atmosphere.”

  Sean checks all around the car and reluctantly unlocks the windows. I press the button and balmy, clean air swirls about the cabin. I close my eyes and breathe it in, but it’s not enough. I slide over in the seat and rest my head on the edge of the door and let the wind rush through my short hair. I pretend I am still with Jonathan and the top is down and he is taking me somewhere safe.

  As much as I want the daydream to last the evening, the sound of Sean’s bee
ping phone and whatever else is making noise on the dashboard reminds me that I am not safe and not about to experience pleasure of any sort. Hours earlier I’d felt like I was living—no matter how close to dying I actually was—for the first time. Jonathan gave me a glimpse of the sweetness of being free and I realize now that I may need to harbor that memory for the rest of my life.

  Though I have been on this earth for twenty-six years, the last twenty have been one long string of boredom knotted by a few moments of unimaginable terror. I have never traveled overseas. I have never stayed up late partying with my friends. I have never been able to study at a university because of the risk that I would be whisked off at a moment’s notice and lose all the years of education I’d worked so diligently to achieve. I have not worked my way up the corporate ladder just to have it pulled from beneath me on my way to another small town where a job as a shop clerk was waiting for me. I have never, for one moment, understood what it was like to create or design or build something long lasting.

  But today I got to eat fine food with a good-looking, strong man, and for the first time the boredom and fear made way for a new emotion, delight, to enter the picture. As much as I want to experience it again, I know I can’t.

  I open my eyes and glance out the window and I see a sign that reads MIDDLETOWN EXIT ONLY.

  I don’t know where we’re going next, but I already hate it there.

  Before I realize it, we’re in the parking lot of yet another convenience store, some local-yokel variety with half the sign’s lights burned out so the name is a jumble of consonants; the quality of quick-mart seems to be paralleling my life. Sean spins his head around and asks me if I need to hit the rest room. I don’t, but I know I should try because I’ve learned from my past mistakes.

  Sean escorts me to the bathroom, makes sure it is empty and safe and window free. He waits outside as I force myself to pee. I wish I could count on one hand how many deputy marshals have stood by a rest room door and listened to me urinate, but I’m sad to say it’s in the dozens.

  “You want anything?” Sean mumbles through the door. I hear him picking up cellophane-wrapped objects.