Page 57 of Levi
“I’m working out my night. What’s left to do yet.”
“It’s not your night you’re worried about.” He’s turned in the seat, watching the side of my face. “You’ve been wound up since the word Roadhouse left my mouth this morning. Loosened up for about a minute when we got to arguing about shrimp. Then I said the name again and you went right back to holding your jaw tight.”
“It’s just a bar,” I say. “That’s it.”
“Right.” He settles back, already decided to enjoy his evening. “But relax. I gave you my word. Whatever’s in there you’d rather I didn’t notice or find out about, I’ll walk right past it and go find my three drinks and a shrimp.”
“Sheila’s behind the bar. She knows the deal.” I should unlock the door and let him out of the car. “Eat anything you want. Three drinks. I’ll take care of the tab.”
He’s already getting out. He stops, half-turned, and looks at me, because he negotiated every one of those words himself hours ago and we both know it.
Then he grins. Slow and full, aimed right at me.
“Yes, sir,” he says with a wink. “I’ll be a model citizen.”
He shuts the door and walks into Tex’s. Broad back, clean shirt, jeans sitting right. The confident roll of him walking straight into my family. I watch him clear the threshold, and the doors take him.
Chapter 21: Levi
The doors swing shut behind me and the Roadhouse takes me in like it remembers me. It’s got no business doing that. The first time I walked out of here I ended the night in a cell.
The jukebox has a slide guitar going. And behind the bar, there’s Sheila, the woman from that night. Gray hair, reading glasses shoved up into it, a rag over one shoulder. She has me made the second I clear the door.
It’s not the look she gave me last time. This one stays on me a beat longer. Warm, and welcoming.
“Well,” she says, when I make my way to the bar. “Look who’s vertical this time.”
“I’m reformed,” I tell her. “Mostly.”
“Okay,” she says. She either doesn’t believe me or she doesn’t hold it against me. “Do you know the deal Dante laid out, or you want to hear it from me?”
“I lived it once already today from the man himself but I don’t mind hearing it again,” I say. “Three drinks, all the food I want, and you sound an alarm if I get greedy.”
“Sounds about right, honey.” She’s already got a glass in her hand. “What’re you starting on?”
“What would you suggest? What’s good?”
“Everything. I wouldn’t allow it in here if it wasn’t good.”
“Then a beer. Whatever’s the coldest.”
She pulls it and slides it across, and tips her head at the open doors at the back of the room. “Sun’s fixing to go down if you want to catch it. We just got the deck put back from last year’s hurricane.”
The deck is new. Pale boards and fresh-cut rail, none of it weathered into the gray everything else out here turns. I carry my beer through the doors into the last of the sunlight.
And then I do something I can’t remember doing in years.
I find a spot at the rail with the sparkling Gulf spread out in front of me going to gold, and I hold the cold glass, and I just stand there.
No stage rushing at me in two hours. No bus idling at the curb. No phone aimed at the side of my face.
The night isn’t pointed anywhere and neither am I. The beer can wait. The sun’s fixing to set, and I intend to watch it happen.
The big man I remember seeing from before is already down at the far end of the rail. Tex, the man from the sign out front. A second blond guy comes out of the kitchen with two beers and hands one over. Smaller, a dish towel hanging off his shoulder. The big one puts an arm around him without looking, sure of where he’d be, and the smaller one’s head settles onto his shoulder like it’s got a reserved seat there.
I see it, and then I give them the rail and put my eyes back on the water. The sun touches the Gulf and goes under fast, quicker at the end than you’d ever guess, the show done in about a minute.
When it’s gone, the two of them set their beers on the rail and clap. They just stand there and applaud the water like it pulled something spectacular off.
