Page 32 of Levi

“Yes, ma’am. I’ve arranged a pickup.”

Tyler and the party bus are coming back at midnight for his last hundred. I believe it because it’s decent money on a slow weeknight.

Outside, the lot’s gone silent. No white bus, no strobing purple lights. I stand at the edge of the pavement at the street and wait.

Ten minutes later it hits me. Tyler took two hundred for a Monday night and drove home, because two hundred’s a good night. He’s not coming back for me. Nobody crosses the county at midnight in a gas-guzzling bus for one drunk in a bandana. The hundred I promised him is still in my pocket. It’s the only part of this that worked out, and it only worked because I got stiffed.

I start walking.

It’s fifteen miles back to the house if it’s a foot, and I start in on it at half past midnight. The only other thing to do is sit on a curb till the sun comes up, and the sun comes up with people in it, and people have phones. Walking’s the lesser evil. I take it.

The tequila’s got my legs moving at about seventy percent, and the boots are grinding into the blisters from Sunday’s walk, the ones that had just started to heal. I feel them open again, oozing wet inside my socks.

I keep going, because the only thing waiting for me if I stop is the very thing I left the house to get away from in the first place.

A car comes up behind me and the wind of it pulls at my shirt. I don’t step off the pavement. I should. Drunk and dressed in black on an unlit road, I should give the cars more room.

I don’t have it in me to care that much tonight. Not caring isn’t the same as wanting something to happen. It’s the part of me that’s run right down to empty.

The road up ahead is a stretch under construction, orange barrels and torn-up asphalt, no lane lines painted. I’m halfway through it when the blue lights come up behind me. One short whoop. A spotlight hits me from behind.

I stop and turn into the cop’s light.

“Where are you headed?” he asks me after stepping out.

“Home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Alys Beach. It’s on 30A.”

He’s not buying it. Can’t blame him. I certainly don’t fit the look of the Alys Beach clientele.

“That’s fifteen miles, sir,” he says anyway. “You been drinking tonight?”

I could lie. I’ve had experience lying to cops in multiple states. A good lie needs a steady voice and a straight back, and eight tequilas on a basket of fries didn’t leave me much of either.

“Yeah. A little.”

“Got an ID?”

“It’s in my back pocket.”

I reach for my license slow. Reaching fast at a cop at one in the morning is how a bad night turns into a worse one. He takes the license, reads it in the dome light, types it into the laptop on his dash.

“You’ve got some history.”

“Yes sir.”

“And here you are walking a construction zone in the dark, drunk, in black clothes.”

“That’s accurate.”

My license’s notable history makes the call for him. He isn’t nasty about it. He just steers me toward the car with a hand on my shoulder and asks, “Can you behave if I don’t cuff you?”

I tell him yes. I mean it. I’ve got no fight left in me tonight.

He lets me ride in the back with my hands loose in my lap, watching the town slide by through the window grate.