Page 125 of Levi

It isn’t even cruel. That’s what’s got a hand on my throat. Nobody out there means Dante any harm. They found him fast. Somebody freeze-framed the back of the video, the arm hooked around me, hauling me off that stool. Somebody else matched the face to a real estate sign on 30A. By afternoon he’s got a name.

Dante Reyes.

The hashtag #whoisthisguy is trending under a thousand thirsty little variations of the same noise. Who is this? Where do I buy a house from him? Please tell me he’s single. I’d let that man sell me anything. Not one of them is thinking the word that would end my life.

Gay.

They’ve got no idea they’re pulling a pin.

Then the locals start slowly filling in the parts the internet can’t find. A gal named Mary Beth, who worked the front desk at county lockup the night I came in. She recognized Dante right away. Who wouldn’t? It’s not as if he has a face that’s easy to forget. As it turns out, Mary Beth is glad to help put the puzzle pieces together for all these folks who are dying to know.

“Oh, him,” she tells anybody who’ll listen. “The realtor guy. Sure. I recognized him right away. He’s the one drove down at two in the morning and signed out a drunk fella they pulled off the road. Real polite. Didn’t ask a single question.”

Mary Beth doesn’t mean any harm. She’s just telling a good story. But anybody interested could hear the question sitting under it, the one a small town can’t help but say out loud sooner or later.

Now why would a handsome fella come get somebody out of a drunk tank?

Then the party bus kid pops up out of nowhere and talks. That one I can’t laugh at, because the bus kid is telling the plain truth, and the truth is the saddest thing.

He gets on the local radio morning show, having the time of his life, and he tells it like the best story he’s got.

“So this guy calls the party line for a pickup, right? I roll up to this insane house in Alys Beach and it’s one dude. One. Pays cash. Bandana around his hair, sunglasses on at night. Blue jeans, boots in July. Climbs up into the empty bus by himself, rides out to Big Tex’s Roadhouse. Just him and all those purple lights flashing and the music blasting. I didn’t have a clue it was Lee Streeter. Now I feel kinda bad though because I was supposed to go back and get him at midnight, but I bailed. No clue how he got back home that night.”

The kid laughs, the hosts laugh, and the radio station posts the clip all across their social media. Lee Streeter, sad and alone, renting a nightclub on wheels to haul himself to a dive bar.

The world thinks it’s hilarious. Superstar with no friends and too much money, being a weirdo. And what I’m looking at is a snapshot of exactly how alone I was that night.

Piece by piece they’re building the story, all these strangers with their separate little true facts, none of them meaning any harm. Together they’re painting the exact picture the label spent a fortune making sure nobody ever painted. There’s no statement to kill it, because it isn’t a leak. It’s just people telling true stories about a sad night, and you can’t put a gag order on a fucking town.

And every thread of it runs back to me and Dante.

Dante’s in this deep, his name, his face, his career cracked open. All because I couldn’t keep my ass on a stool and watch a man put his hand on him. I couldn’t control myself and Dante is trending today all across the internet.

Here’s the cut that won’t quit bleeding. I’m able to own my half. The world’s version of my night is survivable. Hell, maybe better than survivable. It’s damn near lovable. Drunk star, lonesome, sad, a little wild, parties by himself, what a character. Poor guy needs some love. Fans will eat it up.

Freddie can spin that. But Dante doesn’t get a version to spin. Dante stands in the middle of #whoisthisguy with his mouth taped shut, taking every hit, unable to say one word back, because the only word back is the one neither of us can afford.

He bleeds in public and stays quiet. I bleed in public and get applause.

The headlights come up the drive a little after the press lets me go. I know whose they are before the engine cuts. Freddie doesn’t knock. He lets himself into the house like he lets himself into everything that’s mine, with the angry voice now.

“Do you have any idea what my afternoon has been?” It isn’t a question, so I don’t answer it. “Three publicists. A crisis attorney. A man at the label whose entire job is making sure people like you don’t end up exactly here.”

He sets his phone on the marble between us, screen up, a clip frozen on it, the kid from the party bus in a backward cap, mid-laugh.

“There’s a video of my client grabbing a stranger in a bar. Fine. A bar fight I can paint. You’d had a few, it photographs as passion, boys will be boys. Then, while I’m putting that fire out, a child on a morning show tells the world he dropped Lee Streeter at a bar, was supposed to come back at midnight, and bailed. And a woman at a county jail desk tells the same internet that the good-looking realtor from the video walked in at two that same morning and signed out a drunk they’d pulled off the highway.” He raises his eyebrows at me. “No one out there has put those two stories in the same sentence yet. I put them in the same sentence as soon as I heard them.”

I don’t say anything.

“Please tell me you didn’t get arrested the night you took that bus. Because I suspect you did.”

Lying to him just moves this conversation to tomorrow, after he’s called the county to confirm. “Nobody arrested me. They pulled me off the highway and put me in the tank till somebody came and took responsibility for me. No charge, no booking. There’s only a signed sheet and a ride home. That’s all.”

“Only a signed sheet.” He picks the one thing out of it that bleeds, same as always. “There’s a piece of paper in a county building with your legal name on it. And next to your name is his. Right? Correct me if I’m wrong.” He closes his eyes for exactly one second, which from Freddie is a scream. “None of which I knew. Any of it. I’m finding out what you’ve been up to the same place the tabloids are. On my phone.” He folds his hands. “You’re going to tell me how you spent a full night, on a party bus, at a bar, in a drunk tank, without a single person who works for me catching wind of it. Where was your phone?”

I don’t argue. I get up off the stool, cross the marble to the couch, and I show him. I work my fingers down into the deep seam at the back of the cushions, past where a hand wants to go, down to where the couch swallows phones.

“My phone went down in here.” I dig, to show him how far. “Slid out of my pocket that first night, dropped clean down. I tore this place apart looking. Didn’t turn it up till the next morning.” I straighten. “For one night I had no phone. No car app, no contacts, no way to call a soul. I went stir-crazy alone in this house. I had cash on me. I did one stupid thing with it. One night. I was back on the ten o’clock call the next morning, same as always. It wasn’t a big thing. It’s only a big deal now because the internet decided it was.”