Page 145 of Levi

I run the list while I shove toward the rail. None of it fits. It doesn’t matter. He’s losing it in front of the world, and I’m stuck behind a barricade and a wall of his fans.

Then the sky opens up.

A lightning bolt comes down close enough to whiten the whole field. The thunder is right on top of it, no time between, a crack I feel in the soles of my feet. The PA kills the music dead. A voice trained for this scenario comes over the top.

Ladies and gentlemen, due to weather in the area, we are pausing the show. Please move calmly toward the exits and your vehicles.

The crowd turns at once, and the rain comes down in buckets.

It’s the best thing that could have happened, and the worst.

Best, because now everybody is moving, and a man shoving against the current is no longer the only thing moving in the dark. Worst, because thousands of them stand between me and him.

The rain comes straight down in a sheet that kills the stage lights to a smear. The ground is already turning slippery.

They’ve got Levi now. I can barely see it through the strobing dark. There are hands on him, the crew taking him off the back of the stage toward the trailers.

I turn back around and go toward him. Sideways through a crowd that wants to carry me the other way, shoulder down, both hands up to keep from putting an elbow through someone.

A man falls down in front of me and I haul him up by the jacket without stopping. The rain is in my eyes. The VIP rope at the stage has gone slack from being trampled. A security kid in a soaked polo is trying to hold a line that no longer exists.

“Sir, sir, you need to evacuate, go that way—”

“I’m with the production.” I flash him the laminate on the lanyard. I don’t slow down enough for him to read any of it. “Artist services. They need me at the trailer.”

He’s nineteen, there’s lightning, and he’s got bigger problems than me. He lets me past the barricade. I stop running to keep from drawing suspicion. I walk fast past a golf cart loaded with cases. Two cops in ponchos. A group of guys on the crew wrestling a road box out of the wet. None of them is looking at me. All of them have a storm to manage.

The trailers are lined up behind a chain-link run somebody propped open to get equipment through. There’s a group gathered at the third one. Handlers, a medic, a young woman with her phone in one hand and her hair plastered flat, doing crisis at the top of her lungs.

“—no, Lee’s not talking to anyone, get me the bus, where is the bus—” She sees me and stops talking to whoever is on the phone. “You. You’re the— the realtor, the video guy—”

“Where is he?”

“He won’t— he’s not—” She’s young, and out of her depth. She goes back to the phone conversation. “We can’t get him in the bus, he won’t move, he’s—”

“Let me. I can help.” I’ve already moved past her.

Levi’s right inside the trailer door, on the floor. Back to the wall, knees up, the hat gone, the pearl snaps dark with rain or sweat.

His eyes are open, fixed on nothing in the room. His breath comes in little sips at the top of his chest, none of it getting down to where breath goes. His hands are flat against the floor like he’s holding the world down by sheer will.

A handler reaches for his arm, and Levi flinches off the wall hard enough to crack his shoulder against it. The handler backs off. I kneel down on the floor beside him where he can see me.

“Hey.” I don’t dare touch him yet. “It’s Dante.”

Nothing.

Only little sips of air, his eyes wide.

“Levi.” The word I’m allowed to use that no one else here can. “Levi. It’s me. I’m right here. You don’t have to do anything. Just look at me. Look in my eyes.”

The name catches. He isn’t back yet, not fully, but his eyes drag off the middle distance and find my face. They hold. For one second there’s a person behind them again, reaching. His mouth opens. What comes out is barely words.

“Can’t— the air— there’s no—”

“I know.” I don’t. I have no idea how terrible it must feel. But I know the next thing to do. “Air. We’re going to go get you some. Right now. Can you stand if I’m under you? I need to get you out of here. You can get more air outside.”

He can’t answer. He gets a fistful of my soaked shirt, and that’s answer enough.