years of misery she was turning out all right, I was heading home more jammed up than when I left. Who would be watching out for her? The feds would not be in the dirty stairwells of the parking garages, they would not be in the parks, the bars, the impending dark corners of her life.
That trip only made things worse. Before, I was worried Melody was not safe, not happy; now I was certain of it.
As the Mustang renavigated the mountains of West Virginia, I spliced together the scene at the gas station where I nearly bumped into Melody and the scene in the park where she so obviously longed for a lingering eye. How it bothered me the way she wanted someone to notice her.
And as I merged those two scenes, a realization came across my mind with such power that I inadvertently pulled my foot from the accelerator and the jerking forward of the car startled me: I noticed her.
She made eye contact with me at the gas pumps, and I smiled at her. I gave her what she seemed so desperate for at the park. The truth is I would have noticed her anyway, that she would have stood out from any other woman. I would have given her what she wanted. She was that special.
But she had looked beyond me, like a glass of wine held to the light, trying to make sense of characteristics within the object, not the object itself. Her eyes had landed on mine—connected, without a connection—but after assessing me, she decided to move on to the next stimulus in her field of vision.
She wanted attention that day, just not from me.
Through the hills and valleys of southeastern Pennsylvania, I tried to resolve myself to the life I was destined to lead, the one waiting for me at the end of that journey, waiting with anger and forgiveness like an abandoned spouse, to embrace the life I was dealt, to perform the good and bad things that seemed to come so naturally.
I rationalized that Melody had no idea who I was, even with my imprudent approach in the convenience store and my passing smile at the gas pumps. In the credits of the movie of her life, I would have been listed as Guy at Gas Station. Frigging Mullet would have had a higher billing.
As I broke the line into the Garden State, I realized I could not equally be in her life and remain anonymous.
The question was: Which way to go?
The answer came to me in the center of the Holland Tunnel: I could do more good in her life—far more—if I remained anonymous. My selfish desires would be, as Tommy Fingers would say, no good for nobody.
Winding through the lamplit streets of my neighborhood, down the dark alley that led to the reserved parking pad below my apartment, I dropped the mask I’d presented to myself, the one suggesting it was all over, that the curiosity was quelled and that Melody was alive if not well, that she was a big girl and could figure it out on her own—I dropped the mask that suggested I’d never be back to check on her again.
Of course I’d be back, where I would take my experience as Guy at Gas Station and parlay it into more important roles like Man in Produce Section and Stranger on Cell Phone and Jogger in Park, though always being miscast, never getting credited for the part for which I was so aptly prepared, so commonly playing: Stalker. Though that term, that role, was one I did not consider then, for if I had it might have brought my protective compulsions to an end, and the twisted remainder of what actually happened to Melody, what happened to me, would have never come to fruition. Certainly all of the signs were there: large unaccounted-for gaps in time, sudden disappearances lacking instigation, the lies to my family for what my reasons for finding her were. But I argued them away, as my true intentions for Melody were to protect her—protect her from the people I was lying to—and to make sure she was okay. I wasn’t following her with some fuel of obsession; I was guarding her life.
Spoken like a true stalker.
And as I turned off my car and pulled the keys from the ignition, I knew the next visit Randall Gardner received from a Bovaro would probably be from me.