Page 47 of After His Eulogy
“And I said no.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“I said no, and I sat at my desk for an hour. I’ve been lying to him for a month. Lying to the program for a month. The program is what is keeping me alive, and I’ve been lying to it, and I can’t keep doing it.”
“Then tell him.”
“Griffin.”
“Tell him. Tell him there is someone. Tell him my name. Tell him whatever he needs.”
“If I tell him, he is going to consider whether to move me. He is going to put you in a file. He is going to start looking at whether you are a risk. I do not know what he is going to do. I have not been in the program long enough to know how that conversation goes. I know it does not go well. I know it does not go well for the person I tell him about.”
“Then don’t tell him.”
“I cannot keep lying.”
“Then we figure out a third thing.”
“There is no third thing.”
“Reed. There is always a third thing.”
“There is not always a third thing. There is the program, and there is being outside the program, and the inside of the program does not have a category for what we are doing. There is no third thing the program offers. The program offers you are alone and you are not in the program. There is not a you are with someone and the someone gets briefed. That is not how it works.”
“How do you know how it works.”
“Because Mendez has told me how it works for two years.”
“Has he told you how it works in this exact case.”
“No.”
“Then you do not know.”
“Griffin. I know.”
“You think you know.”
I look at him. I look at him and his face is the fighting version, which is not a version his face has been with me in a month. His face has been the soft version for a month, the version that woke up next to me on Saturday morning and said I want this generally, both ways, sometimes. The soft version is gone. The fighting version is back. It is the version that stood on the second-floor landing of Carrigan in October and said what did you decide would happen. The version I broke when I told him the truth in his apartment and he sat with it for three days and decided to want me anyway. It is back because I am breaking the deal we made in the kitchen on Saturday morning, and he knows I am breaking it.
“That’s not the only reason,” I say.
“What.”
“That’s not the only reason. The Mendez thing is true. But it’s not the only reason.”
“Tell me the other reason.”
“I…“
“Reed. Tell me.”
I look at him.
“I have stopped checking over my shoulder.”
He waits.
