Page 25 of Levi

“It will be.”

He gets out with the sack, head down, walking slow. He’s halfway to the house when I lower the window.

“Hey, Levi.” He turns around. “Eat all the subs. Don’t let them go bad.”

“I know how sandwiches work, Dante.”

“You bought six of them this morning. I’m not confident you know how any of this works.”

He goes inside, and the front door stays wide open behind him.

The Roadhouse lot is thin for a Sunday afternoon, a few bikes and Tex’s truck around the side. Inside, the bar is cool and half empty. Sheila is doing inventory with a clipboard. Benji is at the bar with his laptop open to wedding spreadsheets, and Mickey is beside him in his chair, free hand resting on Benji’s leg.

Benji looks up. “How’s the tenant today?”

“Fed and liquored up.”

Benji raises his eyebrows at me and waits. He’s better at waiting than any closer I’ve ever worked against.

“He grocery-shops like a twelve-year-old,” I tell him. “Six subs, a key lime pie and four big bottles of Coke. Chips, beef jerky.”

“Sounds like a junk food junkie like me,” Benji says. “Does he not know how to grocery shop?”

“No idea. Maybe not.”

“That’s someone who’s been taken care of his entire life,” Benji says. “You can see it on him. Someone’s always been there to catch him.”

“Or handled. There’s a difference.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Taken care of means someone loved him. Handled means someone needed him functional.”

Benji closes the laptop. “Which one does he seem like to you?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. He’s a tenant with a paid booking, and in five days he’s invisible and the house gets sold. Then I don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“Right. What else did you find out?”

“He learned to drive at fourteen in Tennessee and won’t say why he doesn’t now. A problem with his driver’s license. A long story, per the man himself.”

“Well, that’s three things you know about him,” Benji says. “He flinches awake. He won’t be in a room with a shut door. And his story’s a secret.”

“Don’t start, Benji. I came in to talk about the wedding timeline. Not about him.”

“No, you didn’t, but I’ll allow it this time only because I never get tired of talking about the wedding,” Benji says, and lets me go the way a cat lets a lizard go. To play with later.

Sheila sets an unsweetened tea in front of me. Tex comes out of the kitchen carrying a paper bag with grease spots already forming on the bottom, and plops it on the bar in front of me.

“Ribs,” he says. “Half rack, extra sauce. Stormy packed double cornbread because the guy sounds like he needs carbs.”

“What guy?”

“The sub sandwich guy. The one eating deli sandwiches when there’s a smoker on this property. I have ears. Big ears. I was listening from the kitchen. The kitchen made ribs, and these ribs need a home.”

“Tex, I’m not delivering ribs to him. He’s taking up too much of my time as it is.”

“Nobody asked you to deliver ribs. What you do with the ribs is your business.” He wipes his hands on his apron, and on the way back to the kitchen he says, “Man’s got to eat somewhere. Big Tex’s is somewhere.”