Page 33 of Levi

The police station is too bright, phones going and a radio crackling somewhere down a hall. A tired woman behind a counter takes what’s in my pockets and drops it in a plastic tray — a few crumpled bills, Dante’s business card. She doesn’t ask many questions. She’s done this a thousand times, and I’m just one more drunk who’ll be gone by morning.

“You got a phone on you?” she asks.

“No, ma’am.”

She looks at the tray, then at me. “Anyone you can call to come get you? We can hold you till you’re sober and cut you loose, or you can call someone now. Your choice.”

I look at the business card in the tray. “No, ma’am. There’s nobody.”

They walk me back to a holding cell and the door rolls shut behind me, metal into metal. Two men in it already. One asleep on the bench, one against the wall with his eyes shut, waiting like he’s done this before. Neither looks up.

I take the floor, back to the wall, knees up, where I can see the cell door and every foot of ground between it and me. The panic gives a little once the door is in my sight.

“Are you sure you don’t want that phone call?” the booking officer says through the window an hour later.

Every number I’ve got lives in a phone shoved in a couch cushion. I don’t know one of them by heart. Having people means somebody else keeps the numbers.

But there’s one number I’ve memorized because I’ve looked at that business card a hundred times since I stuck it in my back pocket.

DANTE REYES - Licensed Real Estate Agent, Florida

When I lifted it out of a box at his apartment, I told myself it was about having one number down here that doesn’t report to Freddie. Didn’t figure I’d need it this fast.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll take the call after all. Thanks.”

The phone’s bolted to the wall. I dial the number from memory. My hands are steady, the one thing tequila’s never taken from me, muscle memory from holding a guitar through every level of drunk there is.

Two rings before he answers. “Dante Reyes.”

Not hello. He answers his business line at two in the morning like there’s a million-dollar deal on the other end of it.

“I need you to come get me.” I’m trying hard not to slur my words.

“Who is this?”

He knows it’s me. I can hear that he knows.

“It’s Levi. I need you to come get me.”

“Where are you?”

“Bay County Jail.”

“For what?”

“Nothing that’ll stick. Drunk and walking.”

“Levi, why are you calling me? Don’t you have someone else you can call?”

“My phone’s at the house and I didn’t know anybody’s number. They’re all in the phone.”

“And yet you have mine?”

He has a valid point. I don’t tell him how I got it. He can figure it out on his own.

“Answer the question, Levi.”

“Are you coming or not?”