Page 104 of Levi

I play a long time starting with the napkin songs. A couple of half-verses that’ve been sitting at the back of my throat for weeks, waiting on me to be home enough to let them out.

Nobody’s recording it. Nobody’s fixing it. The songs are unfinished and all mine, and I haven’t felt this much like a person in so long that I have to stop in the middle of one and sit there with my hand flat on the strings. Not because the hands went dead this time. Because my chest’s gone full, and it’s the good kind of full, the kind I’d forgotten.

The courier comes a little before noon.

I hear the car and my body goes stiff. Somebody’s here.

What did I do? My heart starts flying. I know what I did. Who am I kidding.

But it’s a kid in a polo shirt with a clipboard and a flat envelope. He needs a signature. I sign my real name, he gets back in the car and is gone.

It’s cash inside the envelope. Two thousand banded up, twenties and hundreds. No note.

This isn’t about the cash at all. It’s that Freddie folded.

Every dollar came down through a hand that could close, came as a favor, a permission. I learned to ask small and be grateful for what I was given.

This morning I didn’t ask, I demanded.

I sit back down on the floor, the cash in one hand and the guitar still warm across my knee, and I look at the two of them. The money I was never allowed and the song I couldn’t touch.

Both of them mine now.

Chapter 40: Dante

The Roadhouse is three deep at the bar by eight.

I came to not think. That’s why I’m on the stool at the near end, by the kitchen pass, working a bourbon. To be in a loud room full of people who make sense. A night off from the one problem I can’t solve. Benji’s next to me. Mickey’s next to him, chair pulled to the rail, his hand on Benji’s knee.

“There’s a cooler in a truck bed out in that lot and a man standing next to it who’s sure he’s fine to drive,” Mickey’s saying. “I could write tonight’s report from my desk right now. Out-of-town plates, somebody’s brother-in-law, a fight by midnight over a bar stool.”

“Listen to him,” Benji says to me. “Mickey can’t turn off cop mode. We went to dinner the other night. Lovely place, candles, sunset. I look up from the menu and my fiancé is running threat assessment on a table of retired dentists talking about dental implants. Dentists, Dante. One of them was wearing a cardigan. I’m trying to plan the most beautiful wedding this coast has ever seen with a man who asked me if our string quartet had been vetted. They’re four women from the Pensacola symphony. The cellist is seventy-one. What is she going to do, Mickey? Tell me. What is Dolores going to do?”

“It’s always the ones you don’t suspect,” Mickey says. “You can’t be too careful.”

“It’s exhausting being married to you and we’re not even married yet. Dante, back me up. Tell him a wedding doesn’t need a security detail.”

“Let the man count exits if he wants to,” I say. “He’s earned the right.”

“See,” Mickey says. “Dante agrees with me.”

“Fine,” Benji says. “Neither of you are invited to the cake tasting anymore.”

Sheila comes down the bar and leans on her elbows to look straight in my eyes. “You still mad at me about the tasting menu, baby?”

“I love you,” I tell her. “You’re my family. How could I ever get mad at you?”

She pats my hand. “The expression on your face when I handed you the bill was the most fun I’ve had in years. Plus, it got a big laugh out of Levi. Something tells me he hasn’t been doing much of that lately.”

“I’m not here to talk about Levi,” I tell her.

“I knew that before I walked over here, baby.”

Benji takes the wedding planning book out, a heavy tabbed binder, three inches of it, color-coded, a ribbon marking the seating chart. He opens it on the bar and Mickey’s hand comes off his knee to hold the corner flat, automatic, like they’ve done it a hundred times.

“Now, about the rulings,” Benji says. “I made rulings at two in the morning and you’re both going to hear them. One. The ceremony is out there on that deck at five-forty-two, because sunset is at six-oh-three in October. Twenty-one minutes of light that makes everyone look like they’ve been in love their whole lives, and we’re getting married in the middle of it. Five-forty-two. Not five-forty-five. If Tex runs long, I have a signal worked out with the harpist to cut him off.”

“Tex will run long,” Mickey says. “I’ve told you this a million times. Trying to squeeze Tex into a time limit is impossible. You’re setting yourself up for failure timing the wedding down to the minute.”