Page 36 of Levi

Down the hall his breathing goes slow and even. There’s another person in the dark with me.

I can’t remember the last time I had that.

Chapter 12: Dante

I wake at five-thirty, no alarm, no transition. Asleep and then not. My body’s done this since I was twenty-two and decided the day starts when I say it starts, and I say it starts at five-thirty. Every single day.

The apartment is silent. The screen door’s still open, warm air pushing through against the AC that fought it all night. Through my open bedroom door, I can see down the hall to the second bedroom.

I don’t check on him. I know what I’d find. A man on the floor between boxes of yard signs, wrapped in my blanket, pillow under his head. Same as the last time. Same as the time before.

The cafetera is on the counter where I keep it. The one personal thing in this apartment that means anything. A Bialetti my abuela put in my hand before I left for college, because she couldn’t stand the thought of her grandson drinking American drip coffee. Cuban coffee isn’t a preference, and my tía Rosa would disown me if she saw the drip machine I keep for guests who don’t know better.

I fill the bottom with water, pack the basket with Bustelo, ground fine and tamped firm, and set it on the burner. The flame catches. I stand there barefoot in shorts, watching the pot, listening for the first hiss of steam through the coffee.

Within two minutes the apartment smells like Cuban espresso. It fills the kitchen and the hall and probably the second bedroom where a man is asleep on my floor for the third time in days.

I pour two cups. Small and dark, strong enough to restart a dead engine. I drink mine at the counter and the coffee is right, bitter and dense, exactly what my mother’s kitchen smells like at six in the morning in Coral Gables. I can picture them in my mind, my father reading the paper and my abuela already on the phone with someone in Hialeah, arguing about something that happened in 1987.

I have a home there.

The Panhandle isn’t home. It’s the second place. The Roadhouse, Benji and Mickey, Tex and Sheila and Stormy. I chose them, they chose me, and the choosing is different from having family but not less.

By six I’m feeling uneasy. I want him up and out.

He doesn’t need to be at the house until ten, by his own word, but I don’t run my morning on his clock. I’ve got a closing to prep and a day of my own to get to. I gave him most of my night, he doesn’t get the day too.

I refill his cup because the first pour went cold. Then I go to the second bedroom and stand in the doorway. He’s what I imagined. On the floor, blanket to his chin, pillow under his head.

“Get up. Time to go.”

His eyes open. “What time is it?” His voice is loaded with gravel and tequila.

“Six. Move it.” No coddling from me today.

He gets up slow and stiff. The floor doesn’t forgive a body that spent last night sitting in a holding cell. He goes to the bathroom, the faucet runs, and I go back to the kitchen.

I set his espresso at the edge of the counter where the hall meets the kitchen, where he’ll see it coming out.

He comes out. He sees it. He looks at the cup, then at me, and his face gives me nothing.

“Here, it’s coffee,” I say. “You look like you need it.”

He looks at the cup like it might be a trick. “You fixing me now?”

“I’m getting you upright. Drink it or leave it.”

He shakes his head. “We need to go. I want to stop at the liquor store.”

“At six in the morning?”

“It opens at seven.”

“No. We’re not stopping at the liquor store, Levi. Never again.”

“You made a deal, Dante.”

“You broke it when you called me from a jail cell at two this morning. No liquor store. Don’t bring it up again.”