Page 99 of Levi

“I never lied to you about the money,” I say, because I’m done leaving things out. Somewhere between the back seat and his kitchen I decided the not-telling is the only crime I’ll cop to, and I’m not committing it twice. “I told you the credit cards were tracked. I told you I couldn’t touch a dime without it pinging somebody in another state. True, all of it. The only thing I ever asked you to pay for was my supper and drinks, that one night, and I told you why. Everything else you did on your own.”

“You let me do those things.”

There’s no give in him, none, and I understand I’m facing the exact scenario I dreaded. An honest hand doesn’t stand a chance here. I knew this would happen. It’s terrible to be right. All I can do is just keep telling the truth.

“I should’ve told you. That’s what I did wrong. The not-telling. Every day I didn’t say it, I told myself I was buying one more day of being somebody you might like. I’ve never had that in my life, and I couldn’t make myself give it up. It was selfish and I’m paying for it. I was holding on to time as long as I could. That’s the confession. It’s not pretty, but it’s honest.”

He doesn’t say anything. Then he turns to the sink, sets his hands on the edge of it, and says it with his back to me.

“You know what the worst part is, for me? It’s not your name.” He stays level. “I took you to the Roadhouse. I sat you down with Tex. With Sheila. With Stormy. I walked you into the one place here that’s mine, and I put you at a table with my people. And I told them, just by bringing you, that you were good. That you could be one of us. And they took you in right away. Tex liked you. I could tell. Stormy spent a day writing up a special menu for you. Sheila planned out an entire fourteen-course event. And you let them—” it cracks off the word and comes back quieter “—you let them sit there liking a man who doesn’t exist.”

I stand there and take it. Underneath taking it, some part of me that’s gotten sharper is trying to work out a question. Because this is too big. I know betrayal and I know embarrassment, and I’ve watched men get angry for a hundred reasons since I was old enough to duck. The size of this though, the crack in his voice over somebody he could’ve just been done with. This is bigger than me embarrassing him at the bar. Another emotion is under the hurt, driving it, and he isn’t saying it and maybe can’t.

“I do exist,” I say. “The guy who slept on your floor, that’s not a costume, Dante. I’m that guy. Me. Levi. Standing right here. The costume’s the other one. Lee Streeter is a performance. He’s not me. You know me.”

He doesn’t answer that. He asks another question instead, still at the sink, not even able to look at me.

“How long have you been with this Freddie? What is he to you?”

“He’s my manager. That’s all.” And then, because I’m done leaving things out, I give him the rest of it. “My dad signed me over to him when I was seventeen.”

That turns him around. “Seventeen?”

“Yes.”

I can see him fighting to keep hold of the mad and not managing it, his jaw working. The fact I was seventeen. A kid signed over by his own father. Owned for eight years. You can’t keep your grievance pure against that. It leaks.

“How does a father—” He stops. Starts over, harder, like he’s mad at the question for softening him. “You’re a grown man now, Levi. You’re not seventeen anymore. You let him control your own money, your own phone, and you just — why? Why would you let that happen?”

“I know.” It’s all I’ve got and it’s true. “You’re right. It’s all I knew.”

“Don’t do that.”

“I’m not doing anything. You’re right. I should’ve told you. And I should’ve stood up to him. You’re right about every part of it.”

I’ve got no argument. He hasn’t said one wrong thing. And I watch the fight go out of him. There’s nothing to push against. He’s swinging and I’m not blocking. I’m just standing here agreeing, owning all of it, and you can’t fight somebody who keeps telling you you’re right. It takes the wood out from under the flame.

“Stop saying that I’m right.”

“It’s true, though. What should I say?”

He’s close to me now. I don’t know when that happened. Somewhere in the swinging-and-not-blocking we ended up a foot apart in his little kitchen. Whatever he’s been holding down all night is right here in the eighteen inches between us, and so is whatever is underneath, and they’re both crackling.

His breath’s gone. Mine’s gone. An hour ago, he held my head in his lap in a parking lot and ran his fingers through my hair while I came apart. The memory of it is in the room with us. I reach for him, for his waist, to close the foot of air, to put my hand on the one solid part of him I can reach.

“No. I can’t.” He steps back, fast, before my fingers reach him, and my hand closes on nothing. Hand up, half between us, like he’s stopping himself more than me. “I can’t do this. I can’t — no.”

He turns and goes down the little hall to his room and shuts the door.

He shut the fucking door.

That one’s on purpose, or near enough. He knows I can’t be in a closed-up room. Knows I need the door open, the sightline, a way out. He breathed me through the floor once, knowing it.

And he turned it against me.

In his hurt he reached for the one thing he knows I need and he shut it. For Dante to do that says a lot. He used the thing he learned about me to get a hit in below the belt.

Damn, that stings.