salary that will be augmented by subsistence checks of one thousand one hundred dollars per month for the first year and seven hundred fifty the following two years; a rent subsidy of five hundred dollars per month for two years. A lot for someone offering nothing, nothing for someone offering a lot.
By the end of day five I’m desperate to get my blood moving and ask one of the fiftysomething gals if I could reserve the gym. She tells me it’ll be free after dinner; I take it for an hour.
I’m escorted to the far end of the facility into a gymnasium half the size of a high school basketball court without the bleachers. I’m left alone, my shoes squeaking as I walk across the polished wood floor. I grab a basketball off a rack near the door to a small weight room and start dribbling, each bounce echoing through the room, the ceiling so high it makes me realize just how far underground we are. I take a few shots, begin moving faster, and progress to jump shots, try jamming it in a few times to no avail. As I hold the ball under my arm and catch my breath I look around the empty gym, wish I could borrow someone from the staff for a quick game of one-on-one.
I stare at the basket, put the ball on the ground and sit on it. And the realization arrives: I didn’t just swap places with Melody; I am becoming Melody. This is how it will be, countless months of enduring loneliness and isolation. I’ve been in Witness Protection for four days and I already feel it.
Melody felt it for twenty years.
I pray right now she is in someone’s embrace, despite how badly I wish it were mine.
Day six: Authentication
I don’t fully understand who comprises the authentication team, seems like some hybrid group of psychologists and technologists, but their critical function is to generate and explain the details of who you are becoming, from your name to a pseudo-history to the creation of documents—driver’s licenses, social security cards, college transcripts. Then they take me into a room and apply makeup to cover what remain of the cuts and bruises so recently delivered by Sean’s hand. I have my picture snapped seven times, each with a clothing change and modification to my hair, some with glasses on and some off, two taken at the end of the day with a full five o’clock shadow. The result: a collection of images that appear to have been assembled over the course of many years.
After the last flash lingers in my vision, I change my clothes and wash the makeup from my face and return to the gym again, intensify my workout, get my blood moving as best I can. I walk into the tiny exercise room and assess the equipment—older models that still look brand-new—and wall coverings, framed movie posters of films that could only bring light and carefree thoughts: You’ve Got Mail, Doc Hollywood, half of Jim Carrey’s earliest work. No signed prints of Casino or The Godfather here. I lift weights, beat the side of a dust-laden heavyweight bag, run on the treadmill, and listen to Melody sing to me via a small portable CD player on the floor in the corner: Aimee Mann.
As I get down on a mat and begin doing sit-ups, I recall the night Melody and I shared a bed, how our bodies were wrapped together between the sheets, how we conquered and surrendered to temptation at the same time. I replay the kiss—do so with regularity—that almost crumbled our commitment, would have dismantled her escape. I remember how I felt her giving in, the way she moaned as our lips moved together like it was the first time she had felt the rush of a drug. I remember how she was the stronger of the two of us, how she honored my request, how she held a finger to my mouth, how I felt her breath on my face. I reach for the words she spoke to me.
But then, even with all of the blood moving through my body and my brain, my memory stumbles, falls to the ground, and fractures: I can’t remember what she said. Don’t let me go, Jonathan. No. Save me, Jonathan. No. Rescue me, Jonathan. Nothing. I can’t remember. The words are so distant, almost gone. A sudden panic comes upon me at the notion that someday I will forget her, that