The Exceptions

FIVE


By the time I reached my twenty-fourth birthday, it was undisputed: I became the family member no Bovaro really understood. Most families have one member who bucks the norm.

I became the rebel.

As my brothers contributed more and more to my family’s burgeoning organization, I managed to keep myself involved at an arm’s length. Though I might not have always been part of the decision making, I certainly remained a participant in the conversations. In our crew, we didn’t exactly find a conference room and follow an agenda; conclusions are drawn and plans derived over a plate of veal or eggplant. And I certainly continued to do my share of the household chores; as the months came and went, so did the extortive measures, the cleansing of ill-gotten gains.

Unfortunately, my criminal mind was elsewhere.

I had one regret from that fateful event in Mineral Point, and that was not having gone back to look for Melody, to find out what happened to her. An impossibility, for sure—only the most foolish criminals let curiosity prod them to return to the scene of their crime—but the films my brain played of what happened after Ettore and I raced from that little town became worse and worse over time.

You can only fantasize about something for so long before you begin devising the plan to make it real, regardless of the audacity, regardless of the consequence. Wondering what happened to Melody nearly consumed me. I left her worse off, you see, parentless and with only one way to struggle through her remaining days on earth: the government, an organization apparently ill-equipped to keep its addicted employees from being leveraged into providing sensitive data to people like… me. I imagined her everywhere—the Northwest, southern Texas, rusting Ohio and Michigan villages—and the fact that I could not verify even the most insignificant detail wore me down. Though worst of all, I became obsessed with wondering what became of her, wanting to know she was okay. I could have gone directly to Randall Gardner and demand he hand over whatever he could find on where Melody had been transported, but what would’ve been the point? At that time everyone wanted me to find Melody, to finish what Ettore and I had started.

I’d begun taking an active role in some of my father’s restaurants, the end of our business that left the least bitter flavor in my mouth. While these establishments were being used to launder almost all of the money running through the organization, everything else about them was legit. I loved the chefs and the kitchen camaraderie; the way the entire operation ran like a well-timed engine—the bar, the hostesses, the cooks, the servers—everything coming together like a tornado forming out of turbulent air; the way my clothes smelled of garlic and basil and fry oil at the end of each day. Unlike my brothers, who were more involved in the other operations—say, carting or gambling efforts. They suffered through the onslaught of liars, threats, beatings. And trash.

And so I attended a second-rate cooking school in lower Manhattan, a now defunct institution later converted into a pair of bars and an art gallery. My goal was twofold: (1) to enhance my ability to provide new culinary offerings; and (2) to occupy every available resource in my brain, to squelch the rising compulsion to locate Melody.

Not much came of the culinary aspect. Nearly all of my classmates were there escaping some other oppressive thing: pressure from the do-something-with-your-life parent, drug addiction, unbearable loneliness. The result was a class of underperformers and distracted twenty- and thirtysomethings. As it turned out, I knew more about some cooking techniques than my instructors, and couldn’t help correcting them, including a fifteen-minute debate on the proper way to sauté garlic and onions. In the end, it gave me the opportunity to experiment out of my depth (learning how to make a brick roux) and to learn a few new things (the patience required to make a brick roux). A few months into class, a flirtation came my way, a sweet auburn-headed girl with a face of freckles set in celestial patterns and a voice as rich and soothing as Karen Carpenter’s. Coming in from Staten Island, she showed no visible response when I told her my full name, and that alone allowed me to open up to her. We inadvertently became class partners, worked our labs together, and developed an unspoken language of how to best work the kitchen, understanding what each other needed next, when to get out of each other’s way, when either of us needed coaching or help starting over; we became in sync in ways some married couples are never blessed to know. We began a casual intimate relationship that lasted a while. A season, maybe. The girl was stunning, a source of envy to any man I introduced her to, particularly my brothers, who noted the aspects of her face and body and recorded them to mental scorecards.

Having partnered in class, we shortly partnered in everything else after that. We shared the laughter and the personal interest and the physical intimacy that typically serve as requirements for moving toward a greater commitment. But the never-discussed distance between us was exactly as wide as my failures. And as our bodies would be wrapped together in my loft above one of my father’s restaurants, I would almost always drift, my eyes turning unfocused and hazy. She would gently rub her fingers over the scars on my body, never asking for the stories that would explain them.

And then the last night: Our bodies had just relaxed, a thin layer of cooling sweat between us, and her soft fingers gently traced the scar on my forehead, the one provided by Ettore. I stared out the window into the blur of streetlights. She stopped stroking my temple, froze for a few seconds before her body went completely limp.

I could sense her staring at me. “Where are you?” she said.

How could I explain? I was in the Northwest, southern Texas, rusting Ohio and Michigan villages.

Then: “Is there someone else?”

I let out a quiet sigh before eventually answering. “Not the way you’re thinking.”



The end of the semester meant my less occupied mind had no excuse to remain in New York; the fantasy would be actualized.

The mere suggestion of locating Melody—under the guise of her elimination—was welcomed by all. At this point, my father wanted everything finished on the McCartney docket, and he was becoming impatient with my insistence on doing it myself. The trip to see Randall was imminent. He’d just become a senior database administrator with Justice, which meant he could access almost any records he chose without a trace—on the back end, as he called it—one of a very few trusted technologists who could see data without officially entering into the system as a general user. Randall knew the value of his currency had improved, and he tried once—once—to raise the stakes with us, to suggest he and anyone from our crew might be peers, that our relationship should be valued mutually. This notion was quickly corrected by way of a visit to Randall’s home by me and Peter, during which Peter slammed Randall’s face down onto his computer keyboard so many times that once Randall fell back into his office chair, the Y, G, and M keys were stuck to his forehead. Our relationship, going forward, was fully understood.

And regardless of the level of his current debt, even if he had been paid in full he would have done as we asked. We owned him at that point. We had become bullies who treated him with a neutral spirit as long as he always forked over his lunch money without dispute.

The lunch money he gave us that early summer day: Shelly Jones, Lawrenceburg, Kentucky.