Page 73 of Levi

I don’t let it sit long. Sitting in it is how you end up saying a true thing, and a true thing right now would cost more than I’ve got.

I get the door open and put a boot on the driveway. I make myself turn back and smile at him. “Congratulations again on the house, Dante.” I mean it, too, which is its own small misery. “It’s been a helluva week. Talk to you later.”

I shut the door and walk up the path with my head where I keep it when a night’s gone wrong and the crowd can’t ever know. Behind me I hear him sit a minute longer than he needs to before the SUV backs out, and the engine fades off down the street, and the gate closes on the sound of it.

Then it’s me alone in the fucking house again.

White and cold. Every door sealed shut because Dante closed them for the showing, the place holding its fancy staged breath, smelling like eucalyptus. I cross straight to the glass door and haul it back along its track, and the Gulf comes over the threshold the way I like it.

My body knows where the air is. That much of me’s still working.

But I can feel the rest of it going.

There’s no tequila in the house, and that’s the only reason it isn’t already in my hand. I’m honest enough to say it. A week ago, gutted like this, I’d have had the bottle off the counter before the gate finished closing, turned the night down to a hum, and ridden it numb into tomorrow.

That’s the familiar move.

And I can feel the old me settling back into the space behind my ribs. The one who runs on numb and keeps his bag packed by the door. Telling me he never left. Telling me last night proved it. That the bad thing under the floor is still under the floor, sober or not, and it knows my new address and where to find me.

And then my feet take me up the stairs. I go into the master and down onto my knees on the far side of the bed and drag the case out into the light. The Martin. I carry it back down the stairs, into the big room where the door stands open.

I drag a chair to the threshold and sit down half in the house and half in the night air. I set the guitar on my knee and don’t tune it. It doesn’t need it. I put my hand on the neck and start.

Not any song with a name.

I play whatever’s coming up out of me. What’s coming up is the balcony, and his hand flat on my back, and a cold coffee pot in an empty kitchen, and me in his doorway offering a game and a pizza, and the smooth kind sound of him saying it’s just the deal.

I’m not playing so much as bleeding out through six strings. The voice that comes out is the one from before all of it. It’s a mess, and it’s cracked. And I let it crack, because there’s nobody here to hear it break or even care.

It’s the most naked I’ve been in my life, except once, and the once was last night, and both times I couldn’t breathe.

I play it into the fog coming down over the Gulf, the worthless ache of it, a man singing the truest thing he’s got to nobody at all. And the part of me that started healing all week. The part that learned to want the food and laugh at Tex’s stories and write the line on the napkin. It’s not dead.

I can feel it isn’t dead.

It’s right here in my hands, working the strings instead of reaching for a bottle. But it’s cracked down the middle same as my voice, and I don’t know yet if a thing that cracks like this grows back or just learns to play around the gap.

I keep playing.

It’s the only thing left in this house that’s mine.

Chapter 26: Dante

I’m not clear of the gate before I’m dialing.

Saturdays are the day the year gets made for a real estate agent. I drive up 30A into the glare and I work the phones. I know what else the phones are for. To keep me from thinking about Levi.

Two answers to asked questions ride with me.

I’m good — from Levi, handed over at the door too fast, too smooth, and I took it because I wanted it to be true.

And I can’t tonight. From me. Out fast before his question finished. I’ve listened to a thousand buyers say can’t and mean won’t. I know the sound well and I made it.

I dial the first client before the gate closes behind me. The first call goes fine. I line a couple up for Sunday, a two-thirty and a four. Birmingham, new construction, they want a bunk room and I have exactly the thing. The second call I lose the thread halfway through. The woman asks about school districts and I come back three seconds late. I cover it. But I heard the gap and so did she.

Because the morning won’t leave me alone.

There’s only one way to fix that problem. I find the nearest big box electronics store, park crooked and go in.