The Exceptions

by David Cristofano

  “Who was that guy at Mulleno’s?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”

  I squint, look at him in the rearview mirror. “Ask?”

  “Just some guy.” He opens a straw, submerges it in his soda. I can hear the ice rattle in pulses as he gulps it down.

  I lean forward again. “What crew was he with?”

  “No crew, possibly a bowling league.” He laughs, then repeats, “Just some guy.”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “Saw him come out of a pub down the block, looked like maybe he was one and a half sheets to the wind. I offered him twenty bucks to play a practical joke on you.” Sean takes a bite of burger equal to one-fifth of the sandwich. Then, muffled: “Wouldn’t even take the twenty. People are friendly down here.”

  “I don’t—wait, why?”

  “You know, get your name out there, expose who you really are. It was something fake that I knew you’d make real by panicking, by doing what you’re doing right now: running.”

  I put my hand on the front seat to steady myself. “Confusing new protection technique Justice is using.”

  “Not Justice. Me.”

  “Even worse. Why? Seriously, man, what the—”

  “I did it so you could never go back. So that your life in the Villages was wiped out.”

  “What is this, some sort of punishment? You want me to understand what Melody went through, is that it?” I punch the back of his seat. “I had a life there!”

  Sean lurches forward a little, ignores my anger, takes another mouthful of burger. After a few seconds, he says, “That was no life. An existence, maybe. Not much more.”

  “This doesn’t make any—”

  “We’re moving on to bigger and better things, Johnny.”

  I sit back and begin my tirade. “I want to know right now what’s going on. I still have my cell, you know. Maybe I should just—”

  “You still keeping up the writing?”

  I shake my head, slow my breathing while I decipher what he means. It hits me: my journals.

  He was the one who read them, who left them out of order.

  Sean holds the steering wheel steady with his knee, grabs more fries with his right hand and puts up the divider between us with his left hand. I reach forward to try to hold it down but it reaches the top before I can leverage my weight, closing the space between us.

  “Why are you doing this?” I yell, then punch the divider with the side of my fist, crack the knuckles of my pinky and forefinger. I shake off the pain as he picks up speed.

  We drive through the darkest hours of night, see no light other than passing streetlamps that drift by us like shooting stars. Through the smoky glass of my window I can barely make out the well-lit sign that reads WELCOME TO GEORGIA as we cruise by it at close to seventy miles per hour, realize we passed I-10, the connector to Jacksonville that would have returned us back to I-95, back to the Washington, DC, area. As bungling as Sean has appeared, I’ve been fooled every time, realize he always has some other plan in mind, acting the part of the marplot to fulfill an ulterior motive. And what else could I assume now: He’s gone rogue. His rage-filled partial confession in the conference room in Baltimore echoes in my head. “You will never take them down unless you break the rules,” he said. “You’ve got to do whatever it takes to make it stop,” he said. The only thing I don’t understand is the angle. I rest in knowing—trusting—that Sean’s tale of the old man playing a practical joke on me means Melody is still free, still safe. I’m just not sure what all of this means for me. One-in-five chance he’s driving me far away to make good on another of his comments from the conference room gathering: “How about we just take you out to a field and put a bullet in you.” But three years is a long time to hold that kind of anger, not to mention that even Sean would see the Everglades as the obvious choice for dumping someone—which would’ve been in the opposite direction.

  I spend an hour trying to determine how many pages Sean could’ve read while I was in the shower my final morning at Safesite, what he might have determined by reading nothing but my handwritten adoration for the woman described in the text, the woman who can so easily be identified even though she is never mentioned by name, how the details and words she spoke just before her escape had seemingly replaced the dark ending I claimed to have dealt her.

  Worse yet, the journals are now gone forever. My past and all of its documentation will never again be within reach.

  FOUR

  I wake up when Sean takes an exit ramp too fast and I tip over and my head smacks the window of my door. The morning sun barely illuminates the dark glass that encircles me. I slowly sit up, attempt to get my bearings, can smell the sour remainders of his fast food, even with the divider still closed between us.

  I try to catch a glimpse of my surroundings through the window. Over my shoulder I see a sign for the highway we just exited: I-85. Even with all my cross-country travels, I can’t remember where this interstate is on the map, have no idea where we are or where we’re going.

  As I rub my eyes and try to make out anything that gives me an idea of my locale, I finally glimpse a sign for the road we’re on: South Carolina Route 187. Another two-lane road lined with more farms. More middle of nowhere. With a half stretch and a yawn, my conclusion is drawn: Sean is taking me directly to my next home; he’s relocating me, bypassing Safesite and all of its comprehensiveness. This is what rural America has come to mean to me, its only possible purpose.

  As we merge onto a wider road, we wind around the edge of a small town marked as Pendleton, South Carolina, which looks like a first cousin to all the other country towns I’ve come to know over the course of my life, barely different from those in Kentucky and Virginia, right down to the clusters of small churches, the Dollar General, the Dairy Queen. I bend and twist my body as best I can, attempt to loosen the muscles and joints that have tightened from a long night’s ride in a vehicle.

  We continue for a few miles before I make my first request. I tap on the divider between us, yell, “Gotta hit the head.” Not true, actually, but I want him to stop anyway, want to get out and move my legs and get a cup of coffee—and corner him, get answers no matter how I have to force them to the surface.

  My body pulls forward as Sean drops his speed. We enter the next town at a slower pace, and the town mirrors us; the few people who are milling about walk with purpose but without haste. I tap on the glass again after Sean passes by two opportunities for public restrooms. In the distance I can see he has a few more chances before we ride right out of the other end of this village, but instead of stopping at the Citgo to our right or the 7-Eleven on the opposite side of the road, Sean pulls to the left and down another road. And just as I think he’s about to hang a U-turn in the middle of the street, he turns ninety degrees and drives straight: right through the main entrance for Clemson University.

  The campus appears quiet in these morning hours, the only movement coming from those few ambitious students who registered for the earliest sessions or the freshmen who had no choice but to take what slots remained. Giant Georgian buildings perched atop modest hills cast shadows upon students racing to meet the start of their eight o’clock classes.

  Sean parks in the first lot with an open space, a lot for which we clearly do not have a parking permit. He gets out, opens my door, and finally speaks: “Let’s do this.” He reaches in the side compartment at the bottom of his door and rummages through a stack of hang tags until he finds one that has some seal at the center, the words official government use printed at an angle across the emblem. He slips it over the bar for the rearview mirror, then closes his door and mine at the same time.

  “The Citgo would’ve been fine,” I say as I arch my back. It cracks, loud.

  Sean turns and walks away. I follow him, literally—he makes no attempt to walk with me; I remain three paces behind, struggle to keep up. We stroll along a curved path that takes us into the pedestrian-only portion of the
campus, not a parking lot in sight. We look like a couple of unshaven, burnt-out collegians arriving a dozen or so years late from an all-nighter. Sean takes us around as though he’s been here a hundred times before, as though this might be his alma mater.

  “C’mon, we’ve passed two buildings already,” I say. The sooner I can feign my use of the restroom, the sooner I can get answers.

  We arrive at our apparent destination, Martin Hall, one of the more contemporary structures on the university grounds, looks like it was likely designed around the time I was born and does not match the Georgian style of the majority of the buildings, stands above an amphitheater and a large reflection pond with a dozen fountains spraying skyward. A young girl with an overstuffed backpack holds the door for us. Sean goes to the stairwell, takes us up two flights, down the hallway, past sequential classrooms—past the restrooms—and stops just before the far end.

  “Wait here,” he says.

  My annoyance at his nondisclosure is cast aside from trying to decode his strange behavior. Sean slides against the wall and peeks through a window no more than one square foot in size, embedded inside a giant oak door. He becomes motionless, watches whatever is occurring within the room. He keeps his eyes to the glass, waves me over without turning my way. As I walk up behind him, he steps to the side and into the center of the hall without saying a word, without indicating what requires my attention.

  I gaze through the window, the image crosscut by the grid of old shatterproof glass, blurred by a swirl of dust and fingerprints. I see: twenty or so wooden chairs with pull-up desks, a dozen of which are occupied by nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, their backs to our door. At the far end of the classroom are green chalkboards lightened by smears of erased chalk and an old wooden desk near the window with a lady sitting on the corner of it watching a young guy try to write some formula on the chalkboard. The kids are silent; I can hear the chalk tapping against the board as he attempts to complete the problem. The lady on the edge of the desk has her back to me, is wearing a short blue dress, a long braid of auburn hair hanging past her neckline. Propped on the edge, she swings her leg a little while the student hesitates, stares at the problem he’s trying to solve. He stops and drops his hand to his side, and after a few seconds the lady says something and the class erupts into laughter; the boy laughs, too, and returns to his seat. The lady goes to the board and steps partly out of view. She finishes the problem—three lines and she’s done—then tosses the chalk on the ledge of the board, claps her hands free of dust, and spins around to face the classroom.

  I inhale so hard and fast I might have robbed Sean of anything to breathe.

  It’s Melody.

  I pull back from the window as though someone punched me in the face, cling to the wall like I’m trying to avoid a surveillance camera. I peek from a farther distance. Three years have passed since I last saw her, yet she seems to have grown younger, looks like she’s twenty-five instead of approaching thirty. I feel like Scrooge, except I’m seeing the past, present, and future all at once. I’m spying the version of Melody she was always meant to be, almost unrecognizable, the beaten woman who finally escaped her abusive environment and has completed a comprehensive restoration. Her face is full and tanned, every word that escapes from her lips makes its way past a peaceful smile. She crosses her feet as she stands in front of the students, tucks a few hairs that have broken free of the braid behind her ears—the move pulls a sigh from my lungs with such force that my shoulders slouch as the air escapes. She says something else and the class laughs again. As she smiles at the students, I drop down on my knees, make it look to Sean like my movement is intentional instead of the truth: I’m on the verge of collapsing.

  Sean stands across the hall, back to the wall, one knee bent and foot propped up. I can barely move, barely look up at him; he frowns in my direction. This has hit me harder than I’ve ever been hit in my life. I stare up at Sean the way the guy in the alley in Baltimore looked up at me, with the knowledge that destruction is moments away.

  I slowly pull myself to my feet. I glide along the wall until I can once again look in the classroom. I watch Melody speak, still cannot make out any words, cannot hear the true sound of her voice. She motions with her hands as she explains something, large round earrings swing next to her face with each movement. Half the class raise their hands at the same time and she points toward a girl, listens as she rubs her lips with the back of a finger, then nods her head and comments on the girl’s answer.

  Her skin is darker then I ever remember, from any year or age, still showing the remnants of a summer tan, and her hair holds the color of amber ale, so rich and red you couldn’t help but stare to the point of discourtesy. She pulls the braid over her shoulder and plays with the end of it as she listens to a student speak.

  I could spend the day here, might never look away. Melody’s face brims with contentment, her smile so pure and perpetual; I could’ve never made her this happy.

  But then a thought occurs to me and I correct myself: What I did made her this happy.

  I say, “It worked. Everything she and I went through, all of the risks and things we surrendered, it all worked. I saved her.”

  Sean smirks. “Saved her? You wrecked her.” He walks up behind me, looks at Melody over my shoulder. “Look at her left hand.”

  As she slides it up and down her braid, the unmistakable shimmer catches my eye: a diamond-studded wedding band.

  Second only to the notion of never seeing her again, this is the darkest moment of my life. All those days of wishing she would find someone to love again were false; I’d be a fool to deny I wanted anything other than for her to find me, to love me. Though for all the darkness, I am awash in relief, in knowing the safest route was taken: Now I know she’s happy and full of hope, embarking on the best moments of her life, with a man I hope and pray will protect her and please her and allow her to open up, to survive.

  Sean should understand this, too; his comment makes no sense. “Wrecked?” I say.

  Sean backs up, walks down the hall, and peeks through the classroom windows until he finds an empty room, then waves me down. I follow him inside and he closes the door behind me.

  “Guess who she’s married to?” Sean asks.

  That I could possibly know the answer is troubling. She’s supposed to be dead, meaning everyone I’ve ever known would think the same thing—except…

  I can barely speak it: “You?”

  He chuckles. I stare at him for a few seconds before I sit down in one of the classroom chairs. Sean leans back against the instructor’s desk, narrows his eyes, and says, “I knew you didn’t kill her. I knew you couldn’t. Even before I read your sappy journals. Mr. Sensiteevo.” I rest back and fold my arms, comprehend the magnitude of Sean knowing she’s alive. “You’re a lying sack, Bovaro. You lied about killing Melody and you lied about that list.” He lowers his voice. “I would’ve rolled the dice and called your bluff.”

  “Yeah, keep that dream alive, Sean.” I wave him off with the back of my hand. “How did I wreck her? She looks happy to me.”

  He sighs and rubs the stubble on his chin. “I found her eventually, some time after reading your journals.”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. It feels like I’ve spent years climbing to the top of Mount Everest only to have someone tell me I’ve topped the wrong mountain. I keep my eyes shut as I say, “So Justice knows where she is? That she’s alive?”

  “Not Justice. Just me. Locating her was more of a pastime than a mission.” I look up just as he brings his hands to his hips. “I… reluctantly agree she’s better off outside the program, and the program is better off with her not in it. As much as I hate to admit it, you did give her her freedom, no matter how risky and poorly thought out it was. But it really didn’t take that long to find her. I didn’t even have to use any resources at Justice. I left no trace that I ever looked for her, found her the old-fashioned way. She could’ve been located by any half-wit detec
tive. I caught sight of her shortly after she purchased that wedding ring at a jeweler just outside of UCLA.”

  “She purchased it?”

  Sean nods. “Jeweler said he thought it was quite unusual as well, but she’d told him such a story of sentiment about why she was buying it that it stuck with him; he’d already retold the story a half dozen times before I got to him.”

  “Which was what?”

  Sean takes a long look at me. “She’s not married to me,” he says, then points his finger at me like a gun. “She’s married to you.”

  I open my mouth, try three times to form a question; I’m not sure what to ask.

  Sean shakes his head and sneers at me, struggles to utter the truth, hates having to speak it at all. “She told the jeweler that she ‘can’t be with the one she really loves, but wants to remember him forever, be faithful to him forever’… and partly to send the message to other men that she’s not available.”

  Sean looks away and bites his cheek. I try to twist down a smile; he likely doesn’t know that Melody told me how he once confessed to her that this is the exact reason he still wears his wedding band, and that she was impressed by this side of him—apparently impressed enough to emulate his actions.

  “Now,” I say, “where would she get an asinine concept like that?”

  “Screw you, Bovaro. My wife and I were married for eight and a half years, she succumbed to cancer and suffered miserably for two of them, died in my arms. I’ve earned the right to live out this little peculiarity.” He turns back my way. “But you two? C’mon, how many days—how many hours—did you spend together?”

  “Twenty-three years,” I quickly answer. “She’s been the focus of my life for twenty-three years, Sean. She’s my first thought every morning and my last thought before I fall asleep, the main character in a quarter of my dreams. Still, to this very day.”