Chapter 64 Dante
Sunday, they fly him out. I’ve known since Wednesday.
Levi texted me a few hours after Freddie left him.
Levi: Flying out Sunday morning. Car’s coming at some godawful hour. Back to Nashville. Studio Monday. Songs are already picked. I’ve got demos to learn on the plane. Man likes a full calendar.
Trying to joke about it.
The rental on the house runs through Tuesday. I know its calendar better than my own. They’re pulling him out two days before his own lease is up. I always knew he’d leave. I’d just let myself pretend it was far off in the distance.
I answered the only way I could without putting my hand on the scale, tipping it in my favor.
Dante: My place will be here. If you ever get a gap. A long weekend, an off week, whatever the schedule coughs up. Door’s open.
It was as close as I’ll come to asking.
His response still didn’t answer me.
Levi: Yeah. Maybe when it slows down.
It never slows down for him. He told me that himself. The job doesn’t idle. Maybe when it slows down is either the kindest ‘no’ I’ve ever been handed or a real maybe from a man who can’t see his own calendar past Sunday.
I’ve been holding that text since Wednesday and I still can’t tell which.
Not that I sat in the Panhandle holding it. Wednesday night I was on a plane to Miami. The lawyer who read Levi’s stack had one gap in her week, Thursday. A follow-up like mine doesn’t go in an email. Not with his name at the bottom of every page.
We spent most of Thursday over her conference table, her red pen against my two columns, and I flew back with a folder I haven’t put in front of him yet.
I won’t dress the trip up as noble. It was the only move I’m allowed.
I can’t ask where I fit. But nothing stops me from working the other question, the one about who owns him.
Whatever I turn out to be — the good few weeks, or the place he comes back to — he should get to decide it as a free man, with his own name in his own hands.
And if he decides to fly to Nashville and out of my life anyway, that’s what the folder bought. I’ll have to learn to call it enough.
Thursday took him away from the other end anyway. The run-through, the fitting, Freddie on him twice as hard since the night at Tex’s with the crew. Texts in the gaps and nothing else. Between my flight and his fittings, Wednesday and Thursday never stood a chance for us to meet.
Which left Friday. Friday night was supposed to be ours. The one special night before the plane. No festival, no phones, nowhere we had to be. I’d cleared the evening days ago, the way I clear a closing I’ve waited months for.
Then my phone buzzed a little after five. Levi again, on the burner. I can almost see him. Phone in one fist, pacing whatever backstage hallway they’ve got him in, hat pushed back, Tennessee drawl in every dropped comma.
Levi: I’m so sorry. They’ve got me up at the grounds till who knows when. Soundcheck’s a disaster. Tomorrow night’s finale is supposed to be a huge crowd.
Levi: I sent a stack of passes to Tex’s for you. VIP access. Grab Benji, grab Stormy, Sheila, anybody who wants to come.
Levi: Just promise me you’ll be down front tomorrow night. Front and center. I want to be able to find your face from up there.
I read all three twice, sitting on the edge of the bed, working out why the warm tone felt worse than cold.
Cold I’d know what to do with. But this was him reaching for me.
Pulling me in close for his last night in town, wanting my face down front where he could find it from the stage.
And not one word about what comes after.
Dante: Wouldn’t miss it.
I didn’t ask what I wanted to ask. I can’t lay that question on him the night before he closes out a festival. He flies out Sunday no matter what I say. The only open term left in the deal is whether he’s flying back to visit me after or just flying back.
Now it’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m pushing through the door at Tex’s to collect Benji.
The place is already loud. Barely four, and the festival’s last night has the county thinking about one long blowout.
Every stool is taken. Sheila’s got both hands going behind the bar.
Out back I can smell Tex working the smoker like he’s feeding an army. By tonight he will be.
Benji’s not ready yet. Benji is historically never ready. I wait up in the loft while he finishes whatever he’s doing to his face. Mickey’s parked by the window with the ballgame on.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” I ask.
He doesn’t look away from the screen. “Five hours, Dante.”
“Here we go again,” Benji calls out from the bathroom doorway.
“Five hours in the back of that medical transport to Jacksonville.” He turns his head now.
“Nothing on the radio the entire drive but country music. One man crying about his truck. Then a second man crying about the first man’s truck.
Then, I swear to God, a woman singing about how her truck understood her better than any man ever had.
” He shakes his head. “I served my sentence and vowed never again would I willingly listen to another country music song. You two go enjoy yourselves. Leave me at home. Please, go on without me.”
“It’s the closing night,” I tell him. “Levi’s headlining. We would put you right up front.”
“Do you think I don’t know who’s headlining?” Mickey asks. “I’ve heard about nothing else for days. Dante, please, I’m begging you. Take him. You’re doing me a favor. Benji had a blast the last one you went to. You two go have fun while I sit here in peace with my ballgame.”
Mickey is exactly where he wants to be. If I thought for a second, he wanted to go, we would get him there.
Benji finally sweeps out of the bathroom in a cloud of cologne with glitter catching at the corners of his eyes. He’s wearing a sparkly emerald jacket that holds every light in the room.
Mickey looks him up and down and goes soft all over. “Oh wow,” he says. “Gorgeous as always. Come here and turn around so I can get a good look.”
“Will you be waiting up for me?” Benji teases.
“You bet, I will. And I’ll want to hear everything when you get back. Now go have fun. I love you.”
“Love you too.” Benji bends down to kiss him, and I look away.
Benji straightens up, turns the full beam on me and frowns.
“No,” he says, waving a hand at me. “Absolutely not. What is this? Is this what you’re wearing to Levi’s last night?”
“It’s one of my favorite shirts,” I say.
“It’s a gray shirt, Dante. You’re going to be at the rail of a lit stage in a dark field, front and center, and he’s going to look for you.
Gray reads the same as gravel from ninety feet.
I’m telling you stage wash loves white. You own twenty-one white shirts.
I’ve counted them. And here you are in drab gray. What are you? An undertaker?”
“What do you want me to do, Benji? We’re at Tex’s. My closet is in the other direction. I don’t have time to go back.”
“Which is why I handled it three days ago, the same night I planned my outfit. Garment bag, back of the bathroom door. White shirt, your size, a collar you can live with. I wasn’t leaving you to chance tonight. Go.”
I change into the white shirt that fits me perfectly, and he rolls the sleeves himself, two turns each. Mickey watches the operation from the window, shaking his head silently.
Downstairs I offer Stormy the spare pass to come with us. He laughs at me with a keg on his shoulder. The place is already slammed, and he’s not leaving Tex and Sheila to drown on a busy night.
“Ask me again in January,” he says, grinning.
Benji barely gets the door shut before he starts talking and doesn’t stop.
“Okay. Do not say one word about my emerald jacket. I can feel you forming an opinion. The jacket is doing exactly the job I hired it to do, so we move on. It’s Levi’s last night, the coast is coming, and I’m not meeting that occasion in leather this time.”
“I didn’t say anything about the jacket.”
“Your face said plenty.” He flips the visor down, checks his eyeliner, flips it back up. “Anyway, about you and Levi.”
“Benji.”
“I need to hear the plan. Are we doing long distance? Because I looked it up. Nashville is seven and a half hours by car. That’s a good playlist and one barbecue stop.
People drive farther than that for a mattress sale.
When do you see him next? Do you have plans?
Or you can fly. No different than flying back and forth to Miami.
You’d be a man with a cute little overnight bag forever ‘running to the airport.’ I would adore that for you. ”
Every question is a small clean cut he would never dream he’s making. He lays it all out. Visits, flights, next-times, a fun calendar of more time with Levi like it’s a done deal.
There is no plan. I can’t tell Benji. It would ruin his night. The future Benji’s been rooting for might be over when Levi’s plane leaves the ground.
I drive and make the interested noises that keep him going. And then the chatter cuts out.
“Hey. Dante. Where’d you just go?”
“Nowhere. I’m driving.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s been a long week.” I keep my eyes on the road, and hand him the smile that ends a conversation. “Where are you at with the wedding cake? Did Mickey agree to the second cake for photographs?”
He doesn’t believe me. But he’s kind enough, or maybe scared enough of the answer himself, to let it go.
“Oh, of course he agreed,” he says, the sparkle climbing right back in. “Mickey never refuses me anything.”
The grounds are a roar of light and bodies. The VIP passes tonight work better than the one I used before. A kid in a headset walks us past every line, through a gap in the barricade, down to the rail, front row and center, close enough to feel the bass come up through the dirt into my chest.
Benji grabs my arm with both hands and yells in my ear, most of it lost to the noise. He’s excited and happy for me.
I stand where Levi asked me to stand. The lanyards around our necks. Best spot in the field.
In a little while he walks out under those lights, and I get to watch him do it knowing exactly what the stage clothes are covering. It’s a sold-out crowd. Ten thousand people bought a ticket.
The house lights start to go down. The roar climbs up to meet them. Beside me Benji’s almost vibrating with energy, both hands locked on my arm. He reaches up and squares my collar, like I’m a groom getting ready to walk down an aisle, and turns to face the stage.
I put on the face I want Levi to see if he spots me.
And I brace myself for the morning he leaves.