Chapter 3 Levi
Before I stood up, I crammed my phone deep down in the couch cushions. If my phone stays at the beach house coordinates, Freddie’s tracking dashboard shows him exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Obedient, and staying put.
I’ve been managed for eight years. I know how the leash works better than the man holding it.
Freddie doesn’t know about the double-booking or the real estate agent with the showing, and I’m not going to tell him.
If I call Freddie, he fixes it in five minutes.
New rental house, new cage. The crack in his system closes and I go back to being contained.
But if I keep my mouth shut, the crack is mine.
As of this moment, I have leverage over somebody else for the first time in probably my whole damn life. Plus, a roomful of brokers coming here means a roomful of phones. There’s no way at least one of them won’t recognize me.
The real estate guy is standing there, keys in his hand, waiting for me to move faster than I’m capable of moving.
I walk past him and take a good look. He’s tall, maybe an inch on me, and built lean under an expensive shirt.
His skin is tanned in a way that isn’t from a beach but from family, from somewhere warm a long way south of here.
His jaw is clean-shaved and his hands on the car keys are long-fingered, the nails manicured.
His hair is dark, pushed back, every strand perfect.
And his voice has a rhythm to it that I can’t quite place.
A Spanish accent that lives in the vowels.
He’s the most handsome man I’ve seen in forever and that’s the last thing I need to be noticing today. I get in the car and try not to stare at him.
Though I could, for hours, and not get tired of the view.
The SUV is white, spotless inside, and it smells faintly of his cologne.
Little Blondie comes running out of the house in his flip-flops, struggling with my heavy duffel bag.
The real estate guy takes the bag from him and throws it into the back of the SUV, Blondie runs back inside yelling about flowers, and then we’re off to this guy’s apartment.
He drives fast but controlled, hands placed at ten and two like somebody taught him properly. His jaw is set and his focus is straight ahead, fixed on the road. At first, I think he’s angry, then realize I’m wrong. This isn’t anger. He’s one hundred percent focused on handling the situation.
Specifically, me.
“So,” I say, because the dead silence is getting to me. “How long have you been selling houses in a cult compound?”
He throws me a quick glance. “Alys Beach is not a cult compound,” he says. “It’s the highest-valued planned community on the Gulf Coast.”
“Could’ve fooled me. It looks like somebody tried to build a rich man’s version of heaven and ran out of budget for people. Where are all the people?”
“It’s an architectural community designed around—”
“White.”
“Bermudian and Central American design principles,” he continues.
“Nah, it’s a cult,” I say again. “A cult needs three things, and I’m keeping score. One, a compound with walls. This place is bleached to the sidewalks and empty as a Sunday morning. Check.”
“It’s a planned community.”
“Two, a uniform.” I look him over, slow, not hiding that I’m doing it. “Small sample so far, but the one member I’ve met is head to toe in white linen with his nails done. Check.”
“It’s linen because it’s a hundred degrees out.”
“Three, a leader, a man at the top nobody’s allowed to look at straight on.
Haven’t met him. But two out of three keeps a fella curious.
” I look back at the last of the white sliding past. “And half the landscaping looked plastic. Fake plants, empty sidewalks, the place staged like nobody’s supposed to actually live there.
Where does anybody buy a gallon of milk out here?
Is there a store, or does it just turn up when they pray on it? ”
“There’s a Publix.”
“A cult with a Publix.” I nod. “That’s the part that’ll slip you up. Nobody suspects the Publix.”
“And there’s no man at the top,” he says.
“Is it you?” I ask. “You look the part.”
“No.”
“Good to know. What is the house selling for?”
“It’s currently listed for twenty million,” he says.
I smile out the window at that piece of information. Damn. This is getting more interesting by the minute. This good-smelling fella needs me to cooperate with him for the next thirty days or he might lose a shit-ton of money.
“Twenty million, huh? Bet that would make you a mighty fine commission, right? If you sell it?”
His fingers tighten on the wheel and he doesn’t answer me.
Oh yeah, he knows.
And he knows now that I know too.
We cross a highway, four lanes of fast traffic, and the landscape changes in the space of a block.
All of the fancy things disappear, replaced by little strip malls, and gas stations.
This is the real Florida, the version I’ve played shows for, the people who live here year-round, not the ones who fly in to watch the Gulf from behind twenty-million-dollar glass windows.
He pulls into a parking lot in front of a beige apartment building with exterior corridors and a dumpster positioned near the entrance.
“What the hell are you doing?” I ask. “Is this a joke?”
He throws me a quick glance without taking his hands off the wheel. “What do you mean?”
“This place doesn’t match up. Are you screwing with me?”
“What doesn’t match?”
“You.” I wave a hand at him, and the interior of the car.
“And this apartment building. Look at you. Shirt’s pressed, nails are done, the car’s so clean I could eat off the dash, and you smell like the expensive floor of a department store.
You sell mansions for a living.” I tip my head at the building.
“And you sleep in a beige box next to a dumpster. One of those two things is a lie, and it’s not the dumpster. ”
“My life in Miami matches me,” he says. “This is where I sleep when I’m working the Panhandle market.
It’s easier than trying to rent an Airbnb every time I have a showing.
Especially in the summer.” He kills the engine and holds out a key.
“Second floor. Last door on the right. I don’t have time to give you a grand tour.
Make yourself at home. Take a shower, eat whatever’s in the kitchen. Don’t trash the place or smoke inside.”
“That’s a lot of hospitality from somebody who wanted me gone an hour ago,” I say.
He shifts in his seat and turns to look at me. “I wanted you out of my listing. I don’t have a problem with you personally.” His eyes are dark brown and very direct. I force myself to look away. “I’ll be back in a few hours when the showing’s over.”
“Alright. Ground floor, first door on the left. Make myself a stranger. Smoke inside, trash the place, skip the shower, leave the food where it is. Sounds like my kind of place.”
“Second floor. Last door on the right.” He doesn’t bother with the rest of it.
“Hang on a minute. Don’t you dare drive off until I get inside. Don’t even start the car.”
I’m not sure if he’s legit or if he’s dumping me off like a stray dog at a trailer park. I grab my duffel from the back. The guitar is back at the house, shoved under the bed in its case. Hopefully, he won’t be checking there.
He starts the engine anyway as soon as I step out and waits until I turn the lock before leaving. A few hours ago, I was walking into a luxury mansion. Now, I’m standing in a dumpy apartment in a town where I know exactly one person. And that person just drove away.
I don’t even know his name. The thought comes to me and I smile again, for the second time today.
The amazing miracle of this mess is that he obviously doesn’t know my name either. He didn’t recognize me. Neither did Little Blondie.
I push the door all the way open and step inside. The apartment is small. Two bedrooms visible from the entryway. A living room with an old couch. A small TV on a stand. The kitchen has four feet of counter, an unusual kind of coffee maker I don’t recognize, and a refrigerator that hums loudly.
It takes me eleven seconds to walk through the entire apartment.
I open the bathroom door and push it against the wall.
In his bedroom, the bed is made with a quilt, blinds half-open.
That door goes flat against the wall. The second bedroom doesn’t have a bed.
Only stacks of boxes of listing flyers and real estate signs.
In the living room, there’s a small step-out balcony with a metal railing.
The sliding glass door is locked but I manage to get it open and slide it wide.
The screen door behind it goes open too.
I grab a kitchen chair and use it to prop the front door open. Through the opening, I can see the exterior corridor, the metal railing, the empty parking lot below, and nobody on the stairs. Every room is visible from the hallway. Every wall is accounted for.
He told me to make myself at home. I should shower.
I haven’t been clean since Nashville, and the hot water might help the hangover that’s operating behind my eyes.
But the second bedroom is pulling at me.
The space between the boxes and the wall is about the width of a body.
The carpet is ugly industrial, the cheap grade apartment complexes install because it survives everything tenants do to it.
I lie down between the boxes and the wall.
The carpet is thin over the concrete and I don’t care.
My shoulders fit in the gap, the boxes solid against my left side, the wall solid against my right.
The ceiling is eight feet. I can see through the open doorway, down the hallway, through the living room, all the way to the propped front entrance with the parking lot beyond it.
I’m good.
Nothing behind me. Nothing above me. Nothing I can’t account for.
I wish I had a place like this of my own. Not the big mansion in Nashville I currently live in, full of staff I never chose. A small place where I could be alone and nobody would bother me.
I close my eyes and wait for the noise to start. It runs on a loop, the same circuit every time, and it only plays when I’m sober enough to hear it. Today, I’m sober enough to hear a pin drop in the next county.
I wait, and nothing plays. I’m lying on a stranger’s floor between boxes of real estate flyers with his pretty face on them and I’m sober for the first time in days. Sure, I’m hungover as hell, and my head is splitting, but the chemicals are gone.
In minutes, I fall asleep. Not the kind where the body quits but the brain keeps running underneath, where you surface fast and wrong when somebody touches you.
A safe place where the dark is just the dark and nothing follows me into it.