Page 108 of Levi

Alright, then. I get the family back and not the man. I’ll take the deal. It’s more than I came in with and I’m grateful for it.

In the mirror I catch Little Blondie sliding off his stool, handing Mickey the binder, looking my way.

Then a guy sits down next to Dante.

I can’t hear what he says. That’s the problem with the mirror. It hands me the picture and keeps the sound, so all I’ve got is bodies, and I’ve made a study of this particular one. I know Dante’s tells better than I know my own right now.

Guy leans in. Says something. Dante sets his jaw the way that means no thank you and goes back to his drink. Guy puts a hand on his arm. And Dante shifts his weight, half an inch, away. The brush-off I’ve felt myself, the polite wall going up. The guy scoots his stool in closer and leans to murmur low against the side of Dante’s face, and Dante leans back out of it, and the guy’s fucking hand is still on his arm.

Here’s what I can’t get a grip on, sitting in the corner I picked for its back wall, in a bandana, having needed a damn disguise just to walk in the door.

That guy just walked up to Dante. He walked up to a man he wanted, in a room full of people, and sat down close, and put a hand on him. Easy, like it costs nothing, like it’s simply allowed.

No survey of the exits. No disguise. No twenty-five years of learning to want with the sound turned off.

He saw a man he wanted and he reached, in the open, in the light, and the worst that can happen to him is a no. That’s his risk. A no. He doesn’t even know there’s another kind of price on it. He never will.

And I’m off hiding in a corner I picked for its back wall, wanting the same man so bad it’s been sitting on my chest all night like a… and I have never once in my life been allowed to…

The guy touches him a third time, puts his hand on Dante’s shoulder. And it’s not a hit-on anymore, it’s the not-taking-no, the hand coming back to touch Dante after two hints.

Dante’s entire body has gone rigid in the glass, him done being patient.

I’m watching a stranger refuse to hear no off the only person I…

Fuck, no.

I’m up.

One second, I’m on the stool and the next I’m out of it and moving, and some animal that’s been holding still for twenty-five years has stood up out of its own held breath and started across the room.

And I know, even as I’m moving, that I’m about to do the unforgivable, in the one sacred place. I’m about to torch the belonging I walked in and won back. This is Tex’s bar and these are Dante’s people and there’s a phone in every pocket in the room.

I know all of it.

And it doesn’t slow me one step. Even the family I just got back isn’t heavy enough to keep me in the seat watching that man touch Dante.

Nothing is.

My hand comes up on the way across the room and drags the sunglasses back down over my eyes. I catch it even as I do it. The disguise reflex firing on pure muscle memory at the exact second I’m about to do the least anonymous thing a hiding man can do. I leave them on and keep moving.

I come up on the guy’s other side and I hear myself say it, in a voice I didn’t know I still owned, “He said he wasn’t interested.”

I didn’t hear a word of what Dante said. Not one. He might have said anything. But his body said it and that’s enough for me.

The guy turns on the stool and looks up at me. “What the fuck’s it to you, buddy?”

I’ve got his collar in my fist and I’ve pulled him up off the stool before he’s done asking. I’ve done this before. That’s the joke of it, the piece nobody will ever get right. There’s a list of nights like this one.

Lee Streeter, troubled again. Lee Streeter, another scene.

Every one of those other nights was a man drowning, going under, taking a swing on the way down.

This is the first time in my life I’ve come up out of the water swinging toward somebody. Sober. Clear-eyed. My heart in my fist where the despair used to be.

The first fight I’ve ever been in that meant a goddamn thing.

I’ve got him up on his toes and my arm’s already cocking back when Dante’s between us. He moves fast. He’s got my arm, and he’s in the space between me and the guy, and he’s broken the grip before my fist’s gone anywhere. His shoulder turned into my chest, his hand flat and hard on my sternum, putting a room of distance back between me and the guy I had by the throat. He doesn’t say anything. My fist comes down. The guy slides back into his stool, swearing, fixing his collar.