Page 13 of Levi

He reaches for the door and stops. “Just so we’re clear. The terrace door is going to be open the entire time I live here. I’m telling you now so you can plan your life around it. I’m not shutting the damn door.”

“When the workers arrive, it closes. Ninety percent humidity comes off that water every night, straight through the opening and into the floors. A house like this runs climate control around the clock for a reason.”

“Then the floors and I’ll suffer together for fresh air.”

“They’re twenty-million-dollar floors.”

“Not my twenty million.” He says it light, but the hand on the door handle hasn’t moved. “The door stays open. That one’s not on the table. I’m not asking, I’m telling you.”

“Crack a window. Same air, a fraction of the damage.”

“No. The door. All the way open. Every night I’m in that house.”

“Anything walks off, it’s my signature on the report,” I tell him.

“Nothing’s walking off. I’ll be watching the door. Besides, who would want to steal a damn thing in that house?”

“Help me understand why a door is the one thing you won’t move on.”

“No.”

“It’ll be open when you’re gone and closed when you get back.”

He looks at me across the console. “Alright, as long as I’m not here,” he says, and gets out. He hauls his duffel out of the back and tucks the paper sack under one arm. He’s three steps toward the house when I lower the window.

“Dante,” I call out, loud enough to reach him.

He stops and turns halfway, the sack riding his hip.

“My name,” I say. “For Monday. It’s Dante.”

He doesn’t answer. Long enough that I start to wonder if names are a negotiation too.

“Levi,” he says.

No last name. I don’t chase it. Half the money on this coast is a first name basis and a wire transfer, and I’ve closed every one of them.

He lets himself in, and the front door stays open behind him.

I back out with the windows up, and the best listing of my career standing wide open behind me.

Chapter 5: Levi

Dante and Little Blondie completely erased me from the house while I was gone. New flowers on the dining table, purple as the ones I killed, fussed into a fancy arrangement. The lemons are back in their bowl. The rug that drank my tequila is gone altogether, and the sectional has been slid sideways to hide the bare patch where it used to lie. You’d never catch it unless you’d spent a night on that couch with your boots on.

The front door stands open behind me, afternoon heat pouring in across the white marble, and the AC fights it without breaking stride. I pull it shut. The terrace is the side of this house that matters. I slide the glass back and the Gulf air comes over the threshold, thick and warm as bathwater.

My phone is right where I left it, jammed down deep in the couch. The battery has slid into the forties. Two missed calls and four texts, all from Freddie.

Freddie: Confirm arrival.

Freddie: Tracker shows you in. Confirm.

Freddie: Call me before five.

Freddie: LEVI.

That last one is Freddie’s version of shouting.