Chapter 19 Levi
Days spent alone in a house this size and I’ve started talking to the appliances.
The icemaker drops a load every forty minutes like it’s punching a time clock.
That’s forty minutes more purpose than I’ve got.
By now, I even know the thread count on the bathroom towels, because there’s a little card beside them, like this is a fancy hotel.
I wish it was. At least then, I could ring the front desk with a made-up excuse to send somebody up to talk to me for three minutes.
Thursday, I watched the Gulf run its one trick for about six hours. By Friday the white walls have started leaning in.
The cash situation isn’t helping my mood. The next dollar with my name on it lives on the far side of the Bash, behind a rope Freddie’s standing guard at.
When I hear Dante’s SUV in the drive a little before noon on Friday, I’m at the door like a dog that heard the leash come off the hook. I hate that I’m glad he’s back here.
He knocks once and lets himself in, already wearing the professional Friday version of himself.
The clothes, the good shoes, the cologne turned up.
Tomorrow a woman from Atlanta decides whether this house is worth the asking price, and Dante dresses for the day before the day. Maybe he’s practicing.
He fills a doorway like he holds title on every room behind it. Shoulders squared, chin level, already moving furniture with his eyes.
“Get your stuff,” he says. “I’m taking you to the apartment. Crew’s an hour out. By tomorrow morning this house has to look like no one ever set foot in it, which means everything you own and every crumb you’ve dropped is gone before they start.”
Days of conversation with an icemaker have left me a little wild around the eyes. I like his place, but the word apartment means a smaller box inside the box I’m already standing in. Better, sure. But still four walls and me, alone for hours.
“I’ll go,” I say. “One condition.”
He’s already heading toward the kitchen to start erasing me. He stops. “Condition? You already agreed to go.”
“I agreed to leave. The terms of leaving are a separate negotiation, and we’re having it now.” I lean on the island so he can see I’m in no hurry. “You of all people should respect a man reading the fine print.”
“There’s no fine print. Grab your bag. We don’t have time for this.”
“There’s always fine print. You taught me that.
And that was before I started going stir crazy by myself in this house.
My condition is you take me to the Roadhouse tonight and drop me off.
For sunset and a couple of hours. I’ve been losing my mind in here and I’d like to stand in a room with people who aren’t me before I forget how it’s done. ”
I watch the word Roadhouse land. He locks up the way he does, and I know exactly which kitchen he’s standing in right now, because I’m standing in it too. The last time the Roadhouse came out of my mouth, this man lost the only fight with himself I’ve ever seen him lose.
I said it anyway. I could’ve asked for any bar on this coast. I want to see what he does with the name. If I’m lucky, he might even shove me against the refrigerator again.
“No,” he says. “Not there. Anywhere else. There’s a place in Seaside, there’s—”
“I don’t want a place in Seaside.”
“The place in Seaside has a wine bar. Live guitar on the patio, small plates, nice crowd. More your speed.”
Live guitar.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. He’s trying to sell a guitar bar to me and he’ll never know why that’s funny.
“I’ll pass on the fancy pants wine bar. What would possibly make you think that was my speed? A guy half-ass playing cover songs while the room talks over him is my personal idea of hell.”
“It’s a popular place. Tourists love it.”
“It’s a waiting room with wine. For the record, I don’t like wine either, Dante. Have you not been paying attention? Tequila or beer. No wine.”
“Levi.” Just my name, and a sigh after it. “The last time you were at the Roadhouse, I got a call to come get you out of a holding cell. Do you understand that I can’t—” He stops himself. “It’s mostly bikers and locals. It’s not your scene.”
“You don’t know my scene.” I let that go before it becomes a sentence I can’t finish.
“And you can say it straight up. I can handle it. You don’t want me at the bar where I got loaded and walked down the middle of a highway.
That’s fair. I’d feel the same.” I hold his eyes.
“But here’s what you’re not considering.
That night I was there alone without a ride home.
Tonight you’re dropping me off and picking me up.
I’ve already met the people there. They’re good people. I won’t misbehave.”
He’s quiet while he thinks it over.
“One more thing,” I say. “I need you to cover my tab. I’m getting a little low on cash.”
“Low on cash? How is that possible? You haven’t been anywhere. I saw the wad of cash you were carrying in your front pocket. You don’t have a credit card?”
“I have lots of credit cards. They’re tracked too. Every swipe gives a report about what I’m doing or buying, and a bar tab gives the loudest one.”
“The loudest how? What do you mean?”
He’s not letting it go.
“Where I am, how long I sat there, what I drank and how much. A tab’s a diary somebody else gets to read.”
I need to stop talking before I explain the mess to him. “Bottom line is I’m low on cash. That’s the condition. You want me out of here, you’re buying me supper and a few drinks at the Roadhouse at sunset. I’m a cheap date and it’s a good deal for you to take.”
He looks at me a little too long, and I watch him add tracked credit cards to the list he keeps on me.
“You can’t cause trouble there,” he says. “I mean it. One time was—” He doesn’t finish it. Once was enough for him at the county jail before dawn, signing me out.
“Believe it or not, I’m not a trouble guy.” Which is true these days, whatever the paperwork in three states says about it. “I drink, I tip, I keep to myself. Ask the woman behind the bar. Sheila. She cut me off nice that night and called me honey while she did it. That’s more than most.”
“She cut you off because you were headed for trouble. That’s hardly a character reference. That’s a professional keeping a drunk from getting worse.”
“Same thing you’ve been doing all week,” I say. “Maybe I just bring it out in people.”
“Two drinks,” he offers. “And whatever you want to eat.”
I’m surprised he opened negotiations that high. I’ve still got the one muscle in me that never went soft. Somebody opens with a number and everything goes simple and mine. I don’t even want the extra drinks. I want the game.
“Do you mean a two-drink minimum? And does whatever I want to eat include shrimp?” I grin, begging him to play the game with me. He’s not amused.
“Yes, to the all-you-can-eat shrimp,” he says. “You need to eat more than you do anyway and I won’t deny that. I meant a two-drink maximum. I’m not taking any chances with you tonight.”
“All-you-can-eat’s a dangerous thing to promise me when I’ve been living on cookies.”
“Then eat, Levi. Please. That’s the one item for tonight there’s no limit on.”
“Five drinks, all the food I want, including dessert,” I counter.
“That’s the same ask with a bigger number,” he says.
“You lowball, I highball, we meet in the sensible middle, everybody drives home telling their people they won.” I spread my hands. “This is supposed to be the fun part. Has anybody ever told you you’re no fun?”
“Three drinks,” he says. “That’s a hard limit for me. Game’s over. No more than three. You order a fourth, the bartender calls me and I’ll be there before you can drink it.”
That stops me. Because I hear what the number actually is. Three isn’t a bar tab. Three is the line he’s drawn between a night out and the night he already lived through one time before.
“The bartender calls you at four drinks?” I turn it over. “You’re close with her? The woman behind the bar? Sheila? You know her personally?”
“Yes,” he says.
He’s not telling me everything. There’s something about the Roadhouse he doesn’t want me knowing.
“You know the big man personally too?”
“Yes, everyone, so if you misbehave, they’re calling me.”
“Three drinks, seriously? You’re driving a hard bargain for a man begging me to leave his house.”
“I’m not begging. I’m running a deadline. You’ve clearly never had one.”
“Oh, I’ve had deadlines. Big deadlines. Bigger than yours. I just always had somebody sweating them for me.”
“Do we have a deal?” He’s getting tired of me now and that’s not a place I want Dante to go.
“I’ll come for you at sunset to drop you off at the Roadhouse.
I’ll need to stay here at the house working until it’s perfect.
It might be late before we’re finished. And I’d rather you stay at the apartment tonight than here if you’re agreeable to that.
Once the house is staged it has to hold exactly the way we leave it, and it can’t do that with a man sleeping in it. ”
I fight to keep my face straight so my eyes don’t light up.
A night at his place. Where the pillow smells like him turned down to a quarter.
And he’ll be there, sleeping down the hallway, with the door open.
Same as before. He might even make me one of those tiny little cups of coffee.
If I behave. I want that damn cup of coffee this time.
“Yeah, sure,” I say as if it’s no big deal. “If it helps the crew.”
“It will,” he says.
“To be sure we’re clear.” I count it off on my fingers, because making him stand here is half the fun. “You take me to the Roadhouse. Three drinks. All the food I want. And a big tip for the bartender lady, Sheila. A real one, not your kind of tip.”
I don’t know what his kind of tip is. But I could guess.
“I tip twenty-five percent,” he says. “On the pre-tax total.”