The Exceptions

by David Cristofano

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

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

  “I see,” I lie.

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

  “Lotto numbers.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Oh, man,” Melody whispers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I see. So it’s going there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  They never want you to give up the violence.

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

  I turn to Melody and ask, “You okay?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Say it again.”

  “I promise.”

  “Remember this face.”

  “I promise.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  She covers herself. Except, not really.

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

  Her smile fades. Actually, it dissolves—into a look that implies she wants to continue. She covers her chest with only her hand, props up a leg that makes her dress drift way up, her narrow panties exposing her midriff. I can testify that she is consistent—she’s making those look good, too. If I ever return to No
rfolk, I’ll have to find Melissa and compliment her on her saleswomanship.

  “Come here,” she says.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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