Chapter 11 Levi
The air treatment worked to pull the weed smell out of the vents. Walk in now and you’d never know I was here.
The sliding glass door to the terrace is cracked open. Dante kept his word again. Apparently, he’s an honest man selling real estate, which is just about a miracle. I’d bet my last dollar on him doing what he says, and these days my last dollar’s not that far off.
My clothes are in the laundry room, folded on top of the dryer.
I left them swimming this morning, when I dropped three dishwasher pods into the washing machine and turned the floor into a creek.
The floor’s dry now and my shirts are stacked on the washer in a tight square, socks paired off.
Every shirt I brought with me, except the one I’m wearing and both pairs of jeans, folded with style.
This is Dante’s doing. He stood here and folded my worn-out shirts like he folds his own.
I’m waiting for the catch, because there’s always a catch. Everything handed to me since I was seventeen came with a price tag on it, said out loud or not. I look for it now. There isn’t one. Just my own shirts, squared off perfectly.
The laundry soap sits on top of the machine, turned to face me, the little picture of a washing machine on the label pointed at the fool who couldn’t tell it from a dishwasher. That’s as close to a note as Dante leaves.
I go hunting for the pie. I can’t believe I left all the sandwiches out after I took the photo for Freddie.
Dante thinks I’m an idiot and I keep proving him right.
The pie’s still in the tin with two slices gone.
I’d have eaten it cold over the sink and called supper done.
But there’s a bag on the middle shelf that wasn’t there before.
Brown paper, folded over twice, grease soaking through the bottom. Red letters across the front.
BIG TEX’S ROADHOUSE.
Inside is half a rack of ribs gone dark with sauce, and under them two squares of cornbread wrapped on their own, enough for a man twice my size. No note. Just the food, and plenty of it.
Dante left me a bag of ribs and didn’t mention it once in the car when I said I was eating the pie for supper. And here it is, the meal he wanted me to have, sitting cold on a shelf for me to find.
This makes twice he’s fed me today.
I take the ribs out to the terrace. The Gulf is loud past the railing and the concrete still gives back the day’s heat.
The cornbread is sweet and dense. I finish both squares standing at the rail.
Then I eat the ribs with my hands, straight off the bone, cold from the refrigerator. They’re delicious.
The last time I tasted ribs like this, it was with a backyard smoker and a paper plate at a church supper in Tennessee.
It’s weird how a smell or a taste can take you straight back somewhere, whether you want to go or not.
I let the memory go as fast as it comes.
When I’m done, I put the bag back in the refrigerator to save a few for lunch tomorrow, then think about the rest of my night.
Saturday’s bottles died over the weekend. I kill the little bit that’s left of Sunday’s pair, tipped straight up for the last mouthful, and that’s the supply gone. The last of the weed went with the ribs, out on the terrace. Now there’s nothing left in the house that turns the noise down.
Up it comes, slowly at first.
I’m stone cold sober now. Underneath the sounds of the AC cycling and the waves crashing, the track is cranking up.
I need to get more. Tequila, weed, anything that ends the next hour before it gets going. The liquor store is a ten-minute drive up the road and it might as well be in Tennessee. I won’t call Dante, because he told me no twice already today and I’ve got a little pride left, not much, but a little.
Eventually, I get a stupid idea. I’ve got cash and nothing smart left to do with it.
I dig the cracked phone out and skip past the ride apps to the local pages, the buy-sell-trade groups where people unload jet skis and hunt for babysitters.
Halfway down, somebody’s running a party bus.
Bachelorettes and birthday crawls. Call or text for immediate pickup.
There’s a photo of a white bus with purple lights underneath it like a UFO that serves drinks.
I call the number.
A kid answers over his own music. “Gulf Coast Party Bus.”
“I need a pickup. From a house on 30A, out to Big Tex’s Roadhouse and back.”
“Big Tex’s, yeah, we run out there all the time. Minimum’s two hours, two hundred an hour.”
“Three hundred, round trip, cash. Two hundred now, the last hundred when you bring me home at midnight.”
A pause while he decides whether I’m a joke. The numbers settle it.
“My name’s Tyler,” he says. “When do you need the pickup?”
“Now,” I tell him.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Give me your address.”
I change into clean clothes, wrap a bandana over my hair and slide on sunglasses. In the mirror I’m nobody in particular. Could be a tourist, could be a local. Lee Streeter needs a stylist and a stage to exist, and I’ve got neither, which makes this the safest I’ve looked since I arrived.
I leave the phone screen down, pinging the tower so Freddie’s map keeps me home and asleep. I take cash and the license that means nothing to anybody down here. Dante’s card is already in my back pocket. I walk out to wait.
The party bus drives up with the bass blasting through the walls for a party of one.
White, eighteen seats, a strobing purple light spilling out underneath.
The kid’s barely twenty-one if he’s a day, cap on backward, sandals.
I climb up into all that empty space and take the bench closest to the door.
“Just you, huh,” he says, already pulling the door closed behind me.
“Yep.”
“Is the music okay?” he asks. “It’s on a soundtrack. Sorry if it’s not your type.”
“As long as it’s loud, I don’t care. Turn it up.” I hand him the cash. “Here’s two hundred and I’ll give you the rest when you pick me up at midnight.”
“Okay, I’ll be there waiting for you,” he says.
We roll out through the gate. One man and a nightclub on wheels, headed up the coast to a bar I only know because the barbecue came in a bag with its name on it.
The Roadhouse sits high above the Gulf, buzzing into the night. The lot’s full of trucks and motorcycles, a few fancier cars that don’t belong. Monday night and it’s still alive, music through the open doors. Somebody’s moving around in a room upstairs over the bar. I don’t give it a second look.
Tyler pulls off, and leaves me in the parking lot.
The smell gets me first thing. Hickory smoke and old beer soaked into older wood.
The same smoke that was in the bag hours ago, which is half of why I’m standing here.
Inside, it’s low ceilings and wood paneling, Christmas lights left up year-round.
Every surface scarred and burned, ringed white from a hundred thousand glasses.
The jukebox is playing Skynyrd. I like it already. Definitely my kind of place.
I take the stool at the far end, wall at my back, the bar open in front of me, every door in the room where I can see it.
The woman behind the bar is already giving me the once-over every bartender runs. Determining how drunk I am and how much trouble I’ll be before I’ve got a leg over the stool.
“What can I get you, honey?” she asks, leaning closer.
“Shot of tequila.”
She pours it tall and sets it down. I take it in two swallows.
“Another.”
She pours again and says nothing about the speed of it. She’s worked a beach bar long enough that I don’t crack her top hundred.
“Want to start a tab?” she asks.
“Cash.”
I lay two twenties on the bar. She makes change and drifts down to a couple arguing over whether mahi-mahi or grouper makes the better fish taco.
I let the bar do the work the bottle usually does alone.
The noise. The heat off all the bodies. Skynyrd handing off to Creedence.
The track in the back of my skull is getting quieter.
The bar is warm and loud, and for once the warm and loud is winning, which is the best bargain I’ve gotten for the cost of two drinks in a long while.
A bearded man built like a doorway comes through from the kitchen.
Six and a half feet of him, the bar’s name stretched across a black shirt, and I figure that’s the Tex the sign’s bragging on.
He gives me the one look, watching for when the quiet one turns into the loud one.
I don’t give him anything to notice. The bar fights were in Dallas and Atlanta, a couple years ago and a worse version of me back then.
The bartender lady brings the fourth shot before I ask, sees the glass dead and fills it. Minutes later, a basket of seasoned fries slides in front of me.
“On the house, honey,” she says. “You might want to slow it down.”
I eat a few even though I’m full, because waving off food a woman set down for you is plain rude. Her ‘honey’ keeps catching in my ear. Nobody’s called me something nice in a long time without a hand out right behind it.
The crowd thins out like it does on a Monday, people with alarm clocks and somebody to go home to. By last call there’s four of us left. My tab’s run maybe forty dollars across the night. I lay a hundred-dollar bill on the wood and push it at her.
“That’s too much, honey,” she says.
“No, ma’am. Keep it.”
“Thank you, I’m Sheila if you come back around.”
I’m not too drunk to forget my Southern manners. She folds it into her apron and doesn’t argue, because she can see that fight’s a loser.
Besides, it’s easy to be loose with the cash tonight. Dante needs me gone all day Saturday so he can sell an expensive house. A guy with that much riding on an empty house will pay to keep it empty.
“You good for a ride?” she asks when I stand up.
“Yes, ma’am. I’ve arranged a pickup.”
Tyler and the party bus are coming back at midnight for his last hundred. I believe it because it’s decent money on a slow weeknight.