plan, she stares at me like she’s trying to decipher the words of a foreigner, shakes her head as if to suggest, This is the basket I put all my eggs in?
“Please tell me you live in Pennsylvania.”
I laugh, throw my arms in the air. “New York City, baby. The Big Apple.”
How could I know I was riding beside a loaded gun? I couldn’t have, until my words pulled her trigger. As if I’d spoken some code word, she fires: Melody yanks up on the parking brake and grabs the steering wheel, spirals us across two lanes of traffic, narrowly making it in front of a FedEx truck and a Mini Cooper, drops us off on the shoulder of the interstate like a bag of trash crashing at the bottom of a landfill. We’ve stopped moving and I grip the steering wheel in my white-knuckled fists like the security bar of a roller coaster. As I breathe in dust from the cloud we’ve created, Melody quickly reaches over, turns off the car, and pulls the key from the ignition. The air fills with a chorus of screeching tires, shrilling horns, and yelling drivers.
This event serves as a teachable moment, helps me to learn my very own lesson: When violence arrives, it rarely knocks. It did not tap me on the shoulder, suggest I get ready. It sought to create change by way of confusion.
I never saw it coming.
I’m so panicked, my breath is nowhere close to catchable. I get out what I can. “Are you. Out. Of your mind?”
I’m confused by her level of calmness. “Why are you taking me to New York?” I stare at her, my eyes drooping like a dog aware of forthcoming punishment. I almost start explaining, but this is not the right time, definitely not the right place.
Cars slow as they pass, most trying to figure out what happened, others yell for us to go back to New York and wave fists or middle fingers.
“What’s the matter,” she says, “can’t handle the wet work yourself? Need an uncle or a big brother to do the—” Big breath and scowl. “Oh, that is it!” She laughs and shakes her head. “Oh, you were so clever with all your ‘I’m not going to hurt you. I promise I won’t hurt you.’ Yeah, but see that psychotic maladjusted freak over there? Yeah, he might hurt you. He’s more of a damage-oriented kind of guy. I’d watch yourself around him.”
I really wish I could compose myself. I try to look her in the eye, but fail. “You got me all wrong, Melody.”
Her disposition shifts like I’d spoken another code word. Of the six I’d said, the only one that could have packed any value was Melody. Her true name is my secret weapon, her kryptonite. She sits with her back against the passenger door, slumps a little, holds the keys in the palm of both hands like a cup of tea.
I finally connect my eyes with hers. “Hear me out, okay?”
She stares me down, lifts the sweater back to her torso, fingers the weave. She gives it a strange look, like she can’t make sense of it, can’t determine its place and purpose, can’t clarify the reason behind my buying clothes for someone facing certain death. Originally an unscripted part of my plan, making those purchases might have saved me, though more importantly, saved her. Right now I may be a blackbird in her eyes, but she’s having a hard time explaining that single, bright blue feather.
I wipe my face clean of perspiration and dust. “Look,” I say, ready to get out of here before a cop comes inquiring, “you want to grab a bite? Let’s get a table and talk. There’s a great place nearby.”
“You know this area?”
“The ground is very soft and moist, buried a few people here years ago.” Neither of us laughs.
She ignores my joke, says, “My nerves are shot… but I guess I should try to eat something.”
I put out my hand for the keys. She waits a second before delivering them, but when she does I grab both the keys and her hand at the same time, squeeze them both firmly. I tug her arm a little, pull her in my direction like I’m going to give her a kiss: “You’re safe with me, Melody, okay? As long as I am with you, you are safe.”
She looks in my eyes like she’s trying to read something, anything, that might indicate where this is