Page 48 of After His Eulogy
“For two years I’ve checked over my shoulder. Every time I leave my apartment. Every time I walk down the street. Every time. A thing I do without thinking. A thing I’ve done without thinking for two years. And in the last two weeks I’ve stopped. I noticed last week. I’ve been walking to your apartment and I haven’t been checking. I didn’t notice I’d stopped until I noticed I’d stopped. That’s the thing.”
“Okay.”
“Griffin. The whole reason I am alive is that I’m someone who checks over his shoulder. The whole reason. The program briefed me on it. The first thing they told me. The first thing. The day you stop being on alert is the day you get killed. That was the sentence. That is the sentence I have been carrying. And in the last two weeks I have stopped, and I have stopped because being with you has been…“
I stop.
“Has been what.”
“Has been the thing that lets me stop.”
“Okay.”
“And the thing that lets me stop is the thing that gets me killed. It’s the thing the program told me would get me killed. And it’s not just me. If I’m someone who has stopped checking, then the people who are looking for me are catching up to me without me knowing it. And if they catch up to me, they catch up to you.”
“Reed.”
“They catch up to you. Griffin. Because you are with me. Because we have been seen together. Because Min has seen us. Because Priya has…“
“Priya has not seen us.”
“Priya knows about you.”
“Priya knows there is a man. Priya does not know the man. Priya…“
“Griffin. The program does not need Priya to know my full name. The program needs Priya to know there is someone. That is enough. The people who are looking for me are not stupid. They are very good. They are better at this than I have been giving them credit for. I have been operating on the assumption that they were not in my new life. The assumption is two years old. Tonight I see that I have been operating on a two-year-old assumption without checking it.”
He looks at me.
“You’re saying I am a vulnerability.”
“I’m saying I’ve made you a vulnerability.”
He hears the difference. He hears it the way I hear his pauses. He doesn’t let me see he heard it.
“By being with me.”
“By being with you and not telling Mendez. By being with you and stopping the things I do to stay alive. By becoming someone who has a person to lose. The program told me. They told me. The hardest thing about this is that you can’t have anyone to lose. Anyone you can lose makes you sloppy. I have someone to lose. I’ve gotten sloppy. I…“
“Stop.”
“What.”
“Stop. Reed.”
He gets up. He walks into the kitchen. He turns off the burner. The smell of garlic stops getting stronger. He stands at the counter with his back to me. He puts his hand on the counter. His hand is white at the knuckles in the way it has been white twice before. Once at his desk in October, once at his desk on the night I told him about the FBI. The hand is white-knuckled the way it gets when he is holding something. He turns around.
“Come here.”
“Griffin.”
“Come here, Reed.”
I get up. I go into the kitchen. I stand on the other side of the counter from him. He looks at me across the counter. He does not move.
“You are not breaking up with me because of Mendez.”
“Griffin.”
