Page 126 of Levi

Every word of it is true except one. The phone didn’t fall into the cushions. I left it here on purpose and walked out without it. Lost is the lie. I sell the incident with my hand buried in the dark of that couch like I’m showing him a wound. A phone could vanish down there forever.

He looks at the cushion and back at me. He can’t prove I’m lying. A phone really does disappear into a sofa like that. A bored guy with no phone really does do a dumb thing with cash. The facts are clean. He hates how clean they are.

“What about the realtor?” Yeah, this was never about the party bus. Everything circles back to Dante. “You told me he was property management, checking that you weren’t throwing parties. The internet tells me he’s a realtor, and his face is on half the signage. I have also met the gentleman personally. He put me into a wall for speaking to my own client.” Nothing moves in his face when he says it, which is how I know it still burns. “And now I learn he was signing you out of holding cells at two in the morning before I’d ever laid eyes on him. Walk me through what you know about the realtor.”

“There’s nothing to walk through.” I don’t rush it. Rushing it is the tell. “First day here, the guy told me straight out the house was for sale. Said he’d checked with property management and I could stay, since the booking was paid and non-refundable. Not a big deal. So when he came around to check on the place, that’s what I figured he was. Property guy, realtor, whatever. I didn’t ask to see a license. He gave me a card that first day, in case I needed anything. It was the only number on me that wasn’t trapped in a phone I’d lost. At two in the morning, in a holding cell, I called the one number I had. A stranger drove out, signed the paper, did the decent thing. That’s all of it.”

“You’ve been sleeping in a house that’s on the market for sale?”

“It was that or a hotel with a lobby.”

He can’t argue the lobby and he knows it. “That’s a conversation I’ll be having with the booking agency. Let’s talk about the guy throwing me into the wall.”

“You were screaming into the top of my head. He minds the property, he heard a disturbance on it, and he handled it like a bouncer. You want to sue him, sue him.” I keep it level. “How am I supposed to know his thought process? Caught me by surprise too. He’s the realtor. Property guy, whatever. He’s nothing.”

Freddie doesn’t say he believes me. He runs through everything again, and it comes out clean every time. The lost phone, the cash, the cell, the card, the decent stranger, all of it locked.

Dante is a pattern though, and Freddie never forgets a pattern.

“From now on that phone stays in your hand,” he says, already moving for the door, the crisis filed down into a schedule. “It rings, you pick up. I don’t care what you’re doing or who you’re with.” He pauses with his hand on the frame, not turning around. “This realtor. Reyes.” He says the name like he already had the file pulled, because I’m sure he did. “If he’s nothing, see that he stays nothing.”

Then he’s gone, the door easing shut, the car backing down the drive.

There’s a thought that comes for me after that, and I can’t get it clear to the end. The obvious move, the one that sounds noble, is to take myself out of it. Let Dante go. Quit costing him. Stop dragging a good man through my mess.

The worst night I ever had on this coast is the night he came for me.

I think about that night the world’s busy turning into a punchline, and what none of them will ever get is that it was the best worst night of my life. I went out because the quiet in that house was killing me and I couldn’t be alone in it one more hour. A guy so lonely he rented a bus. But that’s the night I ended up in a cell with one card in my pocket.

The two phones sit on the couch beside me, and they couldn’t be more different. One is Freddie’s line, the official number that tells me where to stand and when to be sorry. The other’s forty dollars of plastic a man built me in a parking lot, one number in it, and when it lights up it’s the only thing that means anything.

It lights up while I’m holding it in my palm like he knows I’m thinking about him.

Dante: Soon as it’s dark I’m coming for you. Meet me two houses down, the empty lot on the Gulf side. Don’t let anyone see you leave the house. I’ve got the rest.

After a day of people telling me what to be, reporters, handlers, Freddie’s office running its mouth through every channel it owns, here’s Dante who’s already thought of everything. He isn’t asking me to hold it together, he’s just coming. His face is plastered across the country tonight on my account and he’s not panicking. Instead, he’s trying to take care of me.

And it’s smart, where he’s picking me up. Anybody watching this house tonight is watching the front of it. The gate, the drive, the lit windows. Nobody watches a vacant lot two doors down. I don’t need to walk out past the guard or the keypad.

I put both phones in my pockets, and when the light’s gone, I move. I keep to the deep shadow along the sea oats. The beach below runs open to anybody with feet. I learned that the night the teenagers came up off it. But there’s nobody on it now, and I’m almost gone.

The white SUV is sitting in the empty lot with its lights off. I open the door and climb in. He doesn’t say anything for a second.

I tense up. Oh God, here it comes.

And then he reaches over, puts his hand on the back of my neck, just resting it there, the warm weight of his palm. “Hey,” he says, rubbing his thumb on the back of my neck. “I got you. Buckle up. You’re okay.”

The heat of his palm runs straight through me and stays there. I’d trade every screaming crowd I’ve ever stood in front of to keep the weight of his hand on my neck.

I start in anyway, before we’ve cleared the gate. “Your face, Dante. I’m sorry. It’s everywhere. I’ll fix it, I’ll get Freddie’s people to bury the realtor angle, I’ll—”

“You’ll do nothing.” He says it calmly, eyes on the drive. “My face has been everywhere since about two this afternoon. You know what’s happened to me? A flood of new showing requests, plus a voicemail from a woman in Destin who wants me to marry her.” A dry sideways look. “Apparently, I’m unfairly good-looking. I’ll find a way to live with the insult.”

“But Dante—”

“Stop, Levi. You don’t get to manage this for me. I’ve been managing my own exposure since before you knew my name. I’m good at it. Tonight you’re going to sit in that seat, relax, and let me drive. That’s the one job I’ve got for you.”

He drives with one hand, keeps the other one on me, my neck, my shoulder, my knee, moving but always coming to rest somewhere. I turn to look out the window. I can’t watch the side of his face and hold myself together at the same time.