Page 131 of Levi

When he finally comes, I stay on him through every pulse, swallowing everything he gives me, not wasting one drop of it. Only then do I crawl back up his body and drop my forehead to his shoulder.

His arms tighten around me. “Now I’ve got you right where I want you,” he says.

Chapter 50: Dante

Two days have passed since the video. The showing’s Saturday, the buyer flying in again from Atlanta, and the house has to be perfect. I’m there now with a punch list, doing the part of this job that’s closest to janitor, working room to room, while Levi is off being managed elsewhere.

I’m on the kitchen floor, checking under the sink when the front door opens. For half a second, I think it’s Levi, back for something he forgot.

It isn’t.

Freddie walks in, hunting for Levi, and finds me instead. He’s freshly pressed, unhurried, dressed for a city instead of the beach.

Levi told me about their conversation last night. What Freddie has confirmed, what he suspects but can’t prove. And the standing order Freddie gave Levi before he left.

If the realtor’s nothing, be sure he stays nothing.

“Where’s Levi?” he asks, soon as he spots me. “Why are you in this house?”

I come up off the floor without hurrying, the phone loose in my hand. “This house is for sale. I’m the listing agent. No one’s here except me.”

I’m sure by now he’s already run a deep background check on me, and every property I list came up with it. Even if Levi hadn’t told him about the house being for sale, Freddie would’ve found out anyway.

He knew I had a legitimate right to be in this house before he opened the door. The surprise wasn’t the house. It was me in it.

We stand there staring, sizing each other up. Two men who make their living seeing through people, each one giving the other a closed face.

He walks the living room slowly. He pretends to look at the furniture and glances at me sideways instead. “Levi speaks well of this coast,” he says. “Says the locals have been kind to him.” He pauses, leaving a space he expects me to fill. I don’t. “Some of them very kind.”

“It’s a friendly place. Small town vibe with incredible views.” I close the cabinet under the sink and thumb to the next photo on my list.

He stops at the sectional. Sets one finger on the back of it. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Reyes, because you seem like a sensible man.” His voice drops into something warmer, confiding, a worried party letting a helpful local in on a private trouble. “I worry about Levi. Down here on his own, no people around him. There’s a history. I’m sure you’ve caught some of it. The night at the jail. That isn’t new. The drinking isn’t new. Neither’s the suspended license. He’s been a handful for a long time, and the people around him keep a close watch for his own good. It’s a kindness most folks never see.”

He’s building a frame out of true facts, bent at every joint. He’s not telling me Levi’s a drunk; he’s inviting me to agree that Levi’s a drunk, watching to see if I’ll take the other side of it. Because a realtor who signed a stranger out of a drunk tank doesn’t argue about that stranger’s character with Freddie. Only someone who knows him would do that.

“His history’s not my business,” I say. “This house is.”

I’m a realtor staying in my lane. He clocks my face, moves on.

“It’s his appetites that keep us up at night, frankly.” Lighter now, man to man, a little rueful, like we’re two men who understand how it goes. “Between the bottle and the women, he keeps a full staff busy. You know the type. Can’t be left alone in a nice house for a weekend without it turning into a situation.”

There are no women. Benji put the manufactured girlfriends in front of me. The stadiums, the magazine shots, the women hanging on his arm. Freddie’s floating a lie he made himself and watching my face to see if I blink. If I’m nobody, the women mean nothing, and I nod. If I’m more than that, the women are a threat to me, and he’ll see the flinch.

I give him the nod. “Wouldn’t know,” I say. “I don’t follow the tenants home.”

This one costs more than the first one. The first one I just had to swallow. This one I have to help carry the lie. I do it and I hate it.

He goes silent. Whatever he wanted off my face, he didn’t get.

“One more thing, since I’ve got you.” He glances around the room. “Has he done any damage to the place? I’d hate to get a bill at the end of the month with surprises in it. He can be a little destructive when he drinks.”

The list on my phone is open in my hand. The damages. The physical record of a man who can’t be sealed inside a room. Real charges. The kind I pass up the line to the seller on every listing, because it’s the seller’s money, the renter owes it, and reporting it is the job.

“No,” I say. “Nothing I’ve seen. He’s been no trouble to the property. Easy tenant.”

I shake my head while I say it, the list lit up in my hand. Here’s the third lie. I lie to him about his own bill. He’s building a case that Levi is a liability who breaks what he touches. I’m holding the proof in my hand, and I’m covering it.

He nods slowly. He can’t argue a single piece of it.