Chapter 20 Dante
By two o’clock the crew is scrubbing Levi out of the house.
The cleaning crew moves through it in pairs, and behind them the place loses Levi one surface at a time.
The chip bags go into a trash bag. The torn cookie sleeve, the warm soda, the deli paper.
Gone. A woman wipes down the island where he ate standing up every day this week.
The marble comes back to the cold blank shine it had the night I first walked in, before anyone had set a glass on it without a coaster.
I do the sectional myself after telling the lead to skip it, which earns me a look and no argument.
The phone’s down in the cushions, screen-down, cracked, almost dead.
It’s the one piece of him the house is allowed to keep.
It has to stay, pinging this address. I push it deeper into the seam, where a cleaner’s hand won’t find it in the morning, and square the cushion over it.
Every other trace of him leaves the house today. This one I bury on purpose.
I don’t take time to think about why that sits wrong. There’s a house to stage.
Benji works behind the crew, rebuilding the listing off the photographs in his head. Hydrangeas back on the table, purple, fussed to look unfussed. The runner squared. The bread and the lemons and the cookbook propped open to the pappardelle again.
The tableau that says someone with taste lives the easy life here. Re-staged for a woman from Atlanta who walks through at noon tomorrow. Benji moves a stem and steps back to the foyer angle to check it, same as the first night, before any of this started.
It’s good work. A few more hours and I’ll need to pick up Levi to take him to the Roadhouse. I mentally talk myself down while my hands fold a new throw. He’ll only be there a few hours. Three drinks, and Sheila holds the cap. She calls me at a fourth.
All I need to do is drop him there, come back, finish here, collect him after.
Benji glances at me from across the room. “So,” he says, not looking up from the eucalyptus. “Sheila says you called her about a drink cap on Levi.”
Sheila told him. There’s no chance of a secret surviving the Roadhouse.
“Three drinks,” I say. “It’s a reasonable cap, not a big deal.”
“Oh, it’s a big deal. She had you on speaker by the time you said ‘whatever he wants to eat, put it on my tab.’” He snips a stem. “You set up an evening of personal service for Levi and you didn’t think I’d hear about it?”
“It’s nothing,” I say. “He wanted a night out as his condition for clearing the house by noon. I traded for it.”
“This is beginning to sound like a pattern with you two. Walk me through it. You cover his tab. You cap his drinks so he doesn’t get wasted and hurt himself.
You called ahead so the bar knows to watch him and feed him.
Dante, listen to the deal you just described.
You’re taking care of him and calling it a contract so you don’t have to be honest about it. ”
“Benji, it’s three drinks and a plate of shrimp.”
“It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet and supervised drinking.” He sets the eucalyptus down. “But fine. That part I already know from three separate sources. Here’s the part Sheila couldn’t tell me. Where’s he sleeping tonight?”
I move a pillow that doesn’t need moving. “The apartment.”
“Your apartment? Well, isn’t that interesting? On the couch?”
“No, but it’s handled.”
His eyebrows go up a half inch and stay there.
“‘Handled’ isn’t ‘the couch,’ Dante. Those are different words, and you’re a man who chooses his words.
” He frowns at me. “If he’s not on the couch, is he in your bed?
Is that the reason you keep folding the same throw over and over, so you don’t have to say out loud, to me, there’s a stranger sleeping in your bed tonight? ”
“No. Of course not.” It comes out fast. “He’s got the spare room. I said it’s handled, okay?”
He goes rigid, watching me, and then he catches it and his eyes light up.
“Oh, there goes your mouth,” he says, grinning.
“That little thing you do with your mouth right before you change the subject so I’ll drop it.
Seven years, Dante. I have a doctorate in that mouth, and it has never once worked on me.
” He pushes the hydrangeas aside and plants both elbows on the counter.
“I know his drink cap, I know his dinner order, I know his pickup time. I know everything about tonight except the one thing you’re actually hiding, and it’s in that apartment.
Spill it. I’m dying here. What are you hiding about Levi? ”
“He’s a tenant with a bad situation. I sell the house around him until his month’s up. That’s the story.”
“Why do you keep referring to him as a tenant? It’s weird and you should’ve dropped it days ago.
His name is Levi. A tenant doesn’t get the bar briefed on him by name.
” He goes back to the hydrangeas, because Benji never holds the knife in long.
“You swore he was never going near Tex’s again.
You didn’t want him near your people — that’s a quote.
You made a big deal about it. Now you’ve called ahead, arranged his meal, and you’re driving him there yourself.
You know I love you dearly, but you’re an idiot if you think I wouldn’t notice what’s happening. ”
“It’s three drinks and a sunset. I’ll pick him up before he has a chance to get into trouble.”
“You know what’s gonna happen, right? Tex is going to adopt him by the second drink.
Stormy will feed him till he can’t stand.
Sheila already likes him, she told me. By nine o’clock he’s one of ours, and you’re the one who drove him in.
” He nods at my hands. “You’ve refolded that throw four times.
Want to hand it to me before you put a hole in it? ”
I put the throw down and head off to work in another room.
“Running away from me doesn’t change the truth,” he yells out to me.
At six-forty, I leave Benji and drive to the apartment.
Levi’s down the stairs before I’ve parked, which he’s never done.
I was expecting to find him on the floor as usual.
He’s showered. Hair damp and pushed back, the stubble knocked down a bit, a different shirt out of the duffel that looks better on him, now that he’s slept.
He gets in and brings the smell of my own soap with him.
My soap. On his skin. Filling my car. It’s the most intimate thing that’s ever happened in this vehicle, and he did it by taking a shower.
“You look better,” I say, because it’s true and it’s safe.
“I sleep good at your place,” he says while looking out the window. He doesn’t explain why, and I don’t ask.
The Roadhouse is ten minutes out. The strip malls thin, the road bends toward the water, and Tex’s sign comes up on the right, neon already going in the last of the day.
The lot’s filling. Bikes, trucks, a couple of tourist rentals.
Through the open doors there’s music and the smell of the smoker.
Every person I care about on this coast belongs here, and I’m about to walk a man whose story I don’t know into the middle of them.
I pull up to the door and put it in park.
“What’s wrong?” Levi asks. “You’re quieter than your usual, and your usual’s already a lot of silence.”
“I’m working out my night. What’s left to do yet.”
“It’s not your night you’re worried about.
” He’s turned in the seat, watching the side of my face.
“You’ve been wound up since the word Roadhouse left my mouth this morning.
Loosened up for about a minute when we got to arguing about shrimp.
Then I said the name again and you went right back to holding your jaw tight. ”
“It’s just a bar,” I say. “That’s it.”
“Right.” He settles back, already decided to enjoy his evening. “But relax. I gave you my word. Whatever’s in there you’d rather I didn’t notice or find out about, I’ll walk right past it and go find my three drinks and a shrimp.”
“Sheila’s behind the bar. She knows the deal.” I should unlock the door and let him out of the car. “Eat anything you want. Three drinks. I’ll take care of the tab.”
He’s already getting out. He stops, half-turned, and looks at me, because he negotiated every one of those words himself hours ago and we both know it.
Then he grins. Slow and full, aimed right at me.
“Yes, sir,” he says with a wink. “I’ll be a model citizen.”
He shuts the door and walks into Tex’s. Broad back, clean shirt, jeans sitting right. The confident roll of him walking straight into my family. I watch him clear the threshold, and the doors take him.