the memories of her will be altered, incorrect. That I might one day look back and think, She was just a girl I was trying to protect, I guess I didn’t really know her the way I thought I did, instead of the truth: that no greater thing will ever come and go from my life, that the moments between us were the exact minutes and hours and days that define me, that my life is worth living if for no other reason than to recall what we shared.
I get to my feet, grab a towel, and run it over my face and hair and neck as I quickly make my way back down the hall to one of the coordinators. As I ask for a pad and a pen, she studies my look of alarm. I wave her off. “Don’t worry, nothing to do with the program.”
I enter my room and kneel before my bed and start writing everything I can remember from that night in Baltimore, narrate everything that occurred. Never mentioning her by name, I document every detail from the moment we returned to our rooms: her falling back on the bed and the smooth form of her body, her reluctance to cover herself and my desperate desire to cave in to her suggestive pose, helping tend to her wounds in the bath and how I caught indistinct glimpses of her naked body after the bubbles had popped, how we agreed to sleep in the same bed. Three pages later I’m still writing, approaching the sentence that is slipping my mind. I record the kiss to paper, take nearly an entire page to describe it, the way it made me feel, the sensation of the first kiss with the only woman I truly loved, even before I realized it. I write down how she pulled back, put a finger to my lips, looked me in the eye, breathed against my face, and said to me… said… whispered…
Keep me alive, Jonathan.
I write the first three of those four words on the pad and collapse on the floor in relief.
Day seven and part of eight: Procedural Consultations
The procedural team explains who to contact and what to do in case you’re ever spotted, and to offer general behaviors and lifestyle choices to avoid the public eye.
The combination of having to watch too many videos about counteraction and veiled survival and the fact that I’ve not seen sunlight in a week is starting to take a toll. I’ve been living underground in a facility that could be confused for a hotel, but all of the high ceilings and wide walkways can’t prevent it from feeling like what it is: a big tunnel.
I spend each remaining evening alone, exercising, then journaling. Now on my second notepad, I’ve documented each event from the few days that Melody and I spent together, written down every conversation, every experience, every observation we shared. The way her body looked when it moved, how she would purse her lips to suppress a smile, how the hue of her irises would change when her eyes filled with tears. And in the pursuit of writing down all of these memories, I can’t believe how much I actually noticed.
I’ve been here for well over a week, completed the mandatory steps and ingested the indoctrination to the point where the knowledge of how to handle myself will be second nature—though it hardly matters. Who exactly would be coming after me?
In the dead period where they’re finalizing the details of a job, a car, a residence and furnishings, I am restless. Now that the amazement of what’s achieved here has faded, I realize that this place, this entire operation and division of the Department of Justice, was born out of protecting people from the likes of my father, of Peter and Tommy Fingers, of me. When I was a kid and I’d help unload the back of an eighteen-wheeler my brothers had broken into, it was presented as a crime where no one got hurt. But people were getting hurt every day—financially and physically—and once I was old enough to understand what my family really did, a different kind of indoctrination had occurred, one built on acceptance and apathy, along with a sharper focus on retaliating against those who wronged us or had it coming. But here, in this sanctuary built to safeguard the innocent and brave defectors, you see what is required for true protection. The government had to do this