Chapter 10 Dante
The work crew’s van is waiting at the gate when I return from the apartment. Tex’s bag of ribs is riding in the back, next to a humidity meter. By Saturday I need solid proof the weed smell is gone. Jonathan Mitchell doesn’t buy opinions.
The crew wants the outside sealed and the inside left alone. I pull the sliding glass door shut. Seven hours, starting now.
I walk into the kitchen and spot four sub sandwiches sitting on the kitchen counter, warm as the room.
Levi bought six yesterday and ate one or two.
The rest he didn’t think to refrigerate.
The kitchen already reeks of spoiled meat or mayonnaise.
I throw them in the trash and carry the bag outside to the trash bin at arm’s length.
Tex’s bag of ribs goes on the middle shelf of the refrigerator. There’s half a rack and a double order of cornbread, because Stormy always packs extra. I don’t leave a note.
Benji’s hydrangeas are wilting in their vase. Days of Gulf air and they folded. The flowers go on the list with the baseboard. Everything in this house is rapidly dying, costing me money or both.
I set up in the living room and start pulling comps for Saturday. Jonathan’s client is a divorcée with a settlement. Women like her don’t buy square footage. They buy a feeling, and the feeling is that nothing has ever gone wrong here. I have until Saturday to install it in this house.
Then I hear a strange noise coming from the hallway.
Water has a sound when it’s somewhere it shouldn’t be.
The laundry room is where it’s coming from.
I run toward it. Foam is coming out of the machine’s seal and crossing the tile, six inches deep at the threshold.
The commercial Miele washing machine is German, engineered like a vault. Right now, it’s blowing bubbles.
On top of it sits a box of dishwasher pods.
Levi’s clothes are in the machine. He loaded a wash, dropped in dishwasher pods, pressed start, and walked out to the curb. The pods are stored under the kitchen sink. The liquid detergent is eight inches above the washing machine. He picked the one that required a walk and a hunt to find.
I cancel the cycle. The seal gives up another gallon of water when I crack it.
The staging towels are Egyptian cotton, forty dollars each, and now they’re mops.
I get down on my knees in good shoes and push foam toward the drain.
The shoes are from a shop in Coral Gables where the owner knows my name. They will not survive this.
Daniel, the head crew member, leans into the hallway. “The tenant again?” he asks.
“Yes, the tenant.”
He shakes his head and goes back to his work. Forty-five minutes gets the floor dry. The baseboard nearest the machine has gone soft at the bottom. It comes out this week. I add it to the note of damages on my phone.
The bottle of detergent is the size of a toddler and has a picture of a washing machine on the label. I rerun the load with the right soap and set the bottle on top of the machine, label out, so this never happens again.
Daniel packs up at noon. The system stays sealed until five. I check the humidity meter. Fifty-one percent and falling, the first thing in this house to behave since Benji and I left it Friday night.
The dryer buzzes. I fold his clothes on top of the machine.
Worn t-shirts, socks matched into pairs.
Four minutes, start to finish. The jeans take longer.
They come out warm, worn soft at the knees and the seat, faded pale down the front of the thighs where years of him have rubbed the denim thin, broken in to the exact shape of the man.
I fold them with more attention than anyone folds a stranger’s jeans, and I notice myself doing it.
Everything he has here fits in one load.
A sixty-thousand-dollar rental and one load of laundry. How does that make sense?
At four-thirty I slide the terrace glass open. I told him the door would be open when he returned. I keep my word, even to a guy who pays me back in damage. I lock up behind me and drive to the apartment.
The front door is propped on my kitchen chair again. Inside, every door stands flat to its wall.
He’s exactly where I expected. On the floor of the second bedroom, in the gap between the flyer boxes and the wall, the cashmere throw he still drags around, pulled to his chin.
Six feet of Tennessee mountains folded into eighteen inches of floor.
Asleep in a room full of yard signs. Breathing slow and deep.
For a split-second, I consider letting him sleep a little longer. Then I remember the washing machine.
I call out from the hallway. “Levi. It’s five.”
His eyes open without a single flinch this time. He sees me, sits up, and the cashmere comes with him. He looks better than he did when I dropped him off this morning. I don’t ask what a floor has that a sofa doesn’t.
“Five already.” It comes out thick with sleep. “House survive the crew?”
“The house survived the crew. Your laundry’s another conversation.”
“My laundry? Did everything get washed?”
“We’ll talk in the car.”
On my way out I pick up the kitchen chair and set it back at the table. He comes down the stairs behind me with the duffel.
“You put dishwasher pods in the washing machine this morning,” I tell him when he gets into the SUV. “The laundry room flooded.”
“The pods were under the sink,” he says, no apology in it. “Pods are pods.”
“No, they’re not. The washing machine detergent was in the cabinet above the machine. There’s a picture of a washing machine on the bottle.”
“Huh. I must’ve missed the tour of the soap aisle.”
“The washing machine detergent sat eight inches away. You crossed the kitchen and went under the sink to find the one wrong box in the place.”
“I found the candy-colored ones. That’s a packaging problem if they all look the same.”
I don’t say a word.
He sighs loudly. “Alright, I’ll be sure to read the pictures next time,” he finally says in that deep Tennessee twang that almost makes me want to forgive him.
That’s the problem with the twang. It comes out deep and rolls right past my judgment. He either has no idea he’s doing it or he knows exactly.
“There won’t be a next time. The right soap’s on top of the machine now. Label out. Today’s damage might run into the thousands if water seeped into the floor.”
He shrugs. “Put it on the tab.”
“What makes you think there’s a tab?”
He throws me a quick glance. “A man with your shoes always keeps a tab.”
I let that one go because it’s accurate.
“Your sandwiches went in the trash this morning. They sat out all night. They spoiled. They weren’t safe for you to eat.”
He looks at the window. “Right,” he says, to the glass more than to me. He doesn’t explain. “Did the pie survive?”
“Yes. The pie is in the refrigerator.”
He turns and smiles at me. “Then I’ve got enough food for supper.”
“Pie isn’t a meal.”
“It is tonight. Pie’s got eggs, fruit, dairy. Three food groups a doctor would sign off on.”
“No doctor is signing off on that.”
I keep my eyes on the road to keep me from giving him a lecture.
“Stop at the liquor store before you take me back,” he says as if the thought just occurred to him.
“I will tomorrow. I’ll be back at ten in the morning for the humidity check.”
“Our deal says you’ll take me to get supplies. Even tequila. Remember?”
“The deal gets kept tomorrow,” I say.
“That’s not keeping the deal.”
“Neither was causing more damage to the house that I had to clean up.”
“The flood was an accident,” he says. “This is you punishing me for it with the one errand I actually care about.”
“It’s not punishment. It’s a schedule. I spent my morning on my knees in the suds instead of pulling comps for Saturday. Tomorrow, you get your liquor store.”
“A schedule that slides every time I inconvenience you isn’t a deal. It’s a leash with better manners.”
“Then stop yanking it from your end, Levi.”
He waits a mile before speaking again. “Where does a man buy weed around here?”
My foot comes off the gas in shock and then goes back. “No, Levi.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“The broker with a potential buyer smelled your weed from the foyer on Saturday. The crew sealed the house seven hours to get the smell out of the ducts. The buyer walks through in days. You’re asking me to help you restock the problem while I’m in the middle of racing against a ticking clock to fix the problem. ”
“The terrace is mine. I can smoke out there. That was the deal you made.”
“The terrace is ten feet from the intake vent,” I tell him. “That smoke has never once stayed outside.”
“It’s a no then?”
“It’s a no,” I tell him. “There will never be a time when I will help you get weed.”
“Big words for a man whose month depends on me being agreeable.”
“My month depends on that house being clean. Not on you being happy. Learn the difference.”
“Then I’ll figure it out on my own.”
“Levi.”
Neither of us says anything else. I take him to the house. He grabs the duffel and shuts the car door without a sound. When I check the rearview mirror at the gate, he’s still standing in the driveway watching me.
I cross the highway for what seems like the hundredth time today and let myself in.
The pan of leftovers in the refrigerator is lighter than I left it.
The foil is creased back on a different line than mine.
There’s a washed fork in the dish drainer.
I told him to eat anything he found in the kitchen.
At least now he has decent food in his stomach.
Key lime pie is not dinner. Or supper, as he calls it. Must be a Tennessee thing.
I change into shorts and a faded t-shirt. I eat the rest of the beef cold, straight from the pan. Probably the same way he did. Cold rice and beef, eaten standing, is a crime in Miami. I commit it anyway.
On the way to the bathroom for a shower, I pass the second bedroom. In my mind, the gap between the boxes and the wall now holds the place of a man who isn’t in it.