Page 31 of Levi

The party bus drives up with the bass blasting through the walls for a party of one. White, eighteen seats, a strobing purple light spilling out underneath. The kid’s barely twenty-one if he’s a day, cap on backward, sandals. I climb up into all that empty space and take the bench closest to the door.

“Just you, huh,” he says, already pulling the door closed behind me.

“Yep.”

“Is the music okay?” he asks. “It’s on a soundtrack. Sorry if it’s not your type.”

“As long as it’s loud, I don’t care. Turn it up.” I hand him the cash. “Here’s two hundred and I’ll give you the rest when you pick me up at midnight.”

“Okay, I’ll be there waiting for you,” he says.

We roll out through the gate. One man and a nightclub on wheels, headed up the coast to a bar I only know because the barbecue came in a bag with its name on it.

The Roadhouse sits high above the Gulf, buzzing into the night. The lot’s full of trucks and motorcycles, a few fancier cars that don’t belong. Monday night and it’s still alive, music through the open doors. Somebody’s moving around in a room upstairs over the bar. I don’t give it a second look.

Tyler pulls off, and leaves me in the parking lot. The smell gets me first thing. Hickory smoke and old beer soaked into older wood. The same smoke that was in the bag hours ago, which is half of why I’m standing here. Inside, it’s low ceilings and wood paneling, Christmas lights left up year-round. Every surface scarred and burned, ringed white from a hundred thousand glasses. The jukebox is playing Skynyrd. I like it already. Definitely my kind of place.

I take the stool at the far end, wall at my back, the bar open in front of me, every door in the room where I can see it.

The woman behind the bar is already giving me the once-over every bartender runs. Determining how drunk I am and how much trouble I’ll be before I’ve got a leg over the stool.

“What can I get you, honey?” she asks, leaning closer.

“Shot of tequila.”

She pours it tall and sets it down. I take it in two swallows.

“Another.”

She pours again and says nothing about the speed of it. She’s worked a beach bar long enough that I don’t crack her top hundred.

“Want to start a tab?” she asks.

“Cash.”

I lay two twenties on the bar. She makes change and drifts down to a couple arguing over whether mahi-mahi or grouper makes the better fish taco. I let the bar do the work the bottle usually does alone. The noise. The heat off all the bodies. Skynyrd handing off to Creedence. The track in the back of my skull is getting quieter. The bar is warm and loud, and for once the warm and loud is winning, which is the best bargain I’ve gotten for the cost of two drinks in a long while.

A bearded man built like a doorway comes through from the kitchen. Six and a half feet of him, the bar’s name stretched across a black shirt, and I figure that’s the Tex the sign’s bragging on. He gives me the one look, watching for when the quiet one turns into the loud one. I don’t give him anything to notice. The bar fights were in Dallas and Atlanta, a couple years ago and a worse version of me back then.

The bartender lady brings the fourth shot before I ask, sees the glass dead and fills it. Minutes later, a basket of seasoned fries slides in front of me.

“On the house, honey,” she says. “You might want to slow it down.”

I eat a few even though I’m full, because waving off food a woman set down for you is plain rude. Her ‘honey’ keeps catching in my ear. Nobody’s called me something nice in a long time without a hand out right behind it.

The crowd thins out like it does on a Monday, people with alarm clocks and somebody to go home to. By last call there’s four of us left. My tab’s run maybe forty dollars across the night. I lay a hundred-dollar bill on the wood and push it at her.

“That’s too much, honey,” she says.

“No, ma’am. Keep it.”

“Thank you, I’m Sheila if you come back around.”

I’m not too drunk to forget my Southern manners. She folds it into her apron and doesn’t argue, because she can see that fight’s a loser.

Besides, it’s easy to be loose with the cash tonight. Dante needs me gone all day Saturday so he can sell an expensive house. A guy with that much riding on an empty house will pay to keep it empty.

“You good for a ride?” she asks when I stand up.