Chapter 5 Levi
Dante and Little Blondie completely erased me from the house while I was gone.
New flowers on the dining table, purple as the ones I killed, fussed into a fancy arrangement.
The lemons are back in their bowl. The rug that drank my tequila is gone altogether, and the sectional has been slid sideways to hide the bare patch where it used to lie.
You’d never catch it unless you’d spent a night on that couch with your boots on.
The front door stands open behind me, afternoon heat pouring in across the white marble, and the AC fights it without breaking stride. I pull it shut. The terrace is the side of this house that matters. I slide the glass back and the Gulf air comes over the threshold, thick and warm as bathwater.
My phone is right where I left it, jammed down deep in the couch. The battery has slid into the forties. Two missed calls and four texts, all from Freddie.
Freddie: Confirm arrival.
Freddie: Tracker shows you in. Confirm.
Freddie: Call me before five.
Freddie: LEVI.
That last one is Freddie’s version of shouting.
I know what happens next. Ignore Freddie for a day and you get texts. Ignore him for two and Janice starts pricing flights, and then some polite man in a golf shirt is standing in this driveway, sent down to lay eyes on the asset.
A visit is the one thing I can’t afford. A visit means somebody from Nashville talks to the rental agency. The agency mentions the listing. After that, the crack I’m standing in closes up like it was never here.
I’ll call him. But not until I’m prepared.
I empty the fold of cash from my front pocket onto the kitchen island, then dig the rest out of the zip pocket in the duffel. I lay the bills out on marble that has never once been asked to hold money this small.
Six hundred and seventeen dollars.
I count it twice and it comes up the same both times. Two weeks left before the country music bash and six hundred and seventeen dollars of cash to run on. The bag of weed in my duffel is lighter than I’d like, and weed in a strange town is a cash business with a stranger’s markup.
The credit cards upstairs are no help. They’re the label’s cards with my name embossed on them, and every swipe files a report telling where I was and what I was doing.
Cash is the only currency that keeps its mouth shut.
I sit down with the phone and build the man Freddie needs me to be. Sober enough to be boring, parked right where the app says. It’s not a hard part to play. I’ve performed worse material. I hit Freddie’s number.
He picks up half a ring later. “There you are.” No hello. Hello costs seconds, and Freddie bills by the minute.
“Yep, here I am.”
“Tracker said you landed last night. A text would’ve been courteous.”
“Phone died. I slept in this morning.” Half of that is true, which is a strong average for a phone call with Freddie.
“Talk to me about the set list.”
“Starting it tonight,” I say.
“Tonight? The label calls me Tuesday morning, Levi. I’d like that conversation to be dull.”
“Tell them I’m dull as a church mouse. Tell them not to worry.”
“How’s the house?”
“Big. Cold.”
“For sixty grand a month it can be any temperature it wants. You staying put? Staying out of sight?”
“You bet. I’m looking at the water right now.”
Which is true. I’m standing at the glass with the Gulf laid out in front of me, and the dashboard on Freddie’s desk agrees with every word I’m saying. The trick to lying to Freddie is to never actually do it.
“Anyone down there know who you are?” he asks.
“Not a living soul.”
True again. I’m two for two. The only people on this coast who’ve seen me up close looked straight at my face and saw nothing worth googling.
“While I’ve got you on the phone,” I say, like it just wandered into my head, “I need some walking-around cash down here. I’m about out.”
“You don’t need cash. You’re not leaving the house. That’s the agreement.”
“What about tips for food deliveries?”
“Tips are in the app. Use the credit cards if something comes up.”
Well, there you go. The next two weeks, settled in two sentences, and Freddie believes he just solved my problem for me. I let it go. Pushing turns a question into a tell.
“Two weeks,” Freddie says. “Show up clean and know the songs. Don’t make me get on a plane this week. I’m not a beach guy. I’ll be there for your performances and not before.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
He’s gone before the sentence ends. Goodbyes are billable too.
Freddie is managing a man who’s parked at this house, practicing his songs, bothering nobody. Lee Streeter is exactly where we put him.
I wish him luck with that man because I’ve got a month to spend with the other one. Levi. The other one is hungry, for starters. The last thing I ate was that loaf of staging bread last night, and it feels longer ago than that.
I square the cash into a fold and put it back in my front pocket, where money this serious belongs.
The refrigerator holds exactly what it held last night.
Two rounds of soft cheese wrapped in butcher paper, set there for a buyer to peek in and conclude that whoever lives here eats well.
There’s a sticker on the white one. The sticker says twenty-two dollars, for a cheese the size of a hockey puck.
I told Dante this morning I didn’t care for the cheese.
That was the truth at the time. The truth has since been revised by my cash situation.
I peel the paper back and eat the cheese standing up, with my fingers.
This cheese costs Dante four percent of my entire cash net worth at the moment, and I’m not wasting it.
Standing here with the AC blowing on my neck, I run through the rest of my assets.
I start with the booking. This house is the one thing on this coast that a man with a twenty-million-dollar listing needs and can’t have while I’m in it. Every crew and every buyer goes through me now. The view from this end of a deal is outstanding.
And then there’s Dante. The fancy man himself. He offered his name first today and tied it to Monday morning, so it wouldn’t look like giving. I paid mine back. We left the last names off, and so far, that’s the deal between us.
He isn’t on Freddie’s payroll. He’s probably never heard of Lee Streeter. On this coast, that makes him rarer than the cheese I just ate.
I got a long look at him today while he was busy managing me.
Tour buses teach you poker, and poker teaches you to spot a man playing his cards face up on purpose.
The shoes are Italian and the expensive cologne gets where he’s going half a step ahead of him.
Not one hair on his head moves. He’s got a strong hand, shown slow.
But nobody gets dealt a hand that perfectly clean.
He staged himself years before he ever staged a house, and that’s the tell he doesn’t know he’s showing.
I pick the paper sack up off the island. Outside, the evening is starting without me, and I intend to catch up.
The Gulf is out there in the dark, working the sand the same as it was last night. I sit down on concrete that’s still holding the afternoon and pull my boots and socks off.
The terms say nothing gets smoked inside this house through Saturday, so here I am, a model tenant outside. Dante should see me now. He’d be proud.
I roll one thin from the bag. The breeze comes off the water and carries the smoke over the railing, away from the glass.
The bottle gets two pulls and a rest. Tonight the tequila has one job, and it’s a small one. Turn everything down a couple of notches and leave it running. You don’t play a long game blind drunk. Night one was for arriving, and as of tonight, I’m here on business.
Way down the row of white houses a pool pump hums. Eleven o’clock on a Saturday night in the most expensive sand in the Florida Panhandle, and not one window glowing with a person in it.
They bought the view and left. I’m the only living thing on this street, and I’m not even supposed to be the one living here.
Most Saturday nights, somebody has been pointing me at a stage or an after-party. Tonight nobody on this earth is pointing me anywhere.
Freddie thinks he knows where I am. What he knows is only where the phone is.
Dante knows where I am, and doesn’t know who.
It isn’t a big pot, but it’s the first one that’s mine.