Page 41 of Levi

A line shows up in my head out of nowhere.

Somebody left a door open so I could breathe.

I don’t write it down. Writing it down makes it real, and real means I’m writing again. I haven’t written a word of my own in years, telling myself all the while that the music I was singing was still mine.

But the line won’t leave. It fits the chords like they were poured under it. I sing it, and my voice cracks on “breathe,” and the crack sounds exactly like the line feels.

Then I stop before the emotion drowns me. I put the guitar back in the case and close the latches, but I don’t push it under the bed. I leave it out where I can see it. I sit on the cold floor beside it and let myself feel the ache in my chest, plain and real. I don’t reach for a bottle or a joint to make it stop.

The gate buzzer goes off downstairs, and a text comes in a second later.

Your Dasher is at the gate.

I put on my sunglasses and go down to meet them. The driver’s a kid in a Mustang with a primer-gray door, and he hands the bag over without looking up from the screen in his other hand.

I set it on the island. The smell hits before I’ve got it unpacked. Grease, butter, coffee. My appetite is coming back.

I eat standing at the island, the way I eat everything in this house. Eggs first, then bacon, then hash browns shoveled in with a fork that’s too heavy and too nice for the job. I tear into the biscuits I didn’t think I wanted and want them most of all. I don’t slow down. I drink the orange juice in one go, too sweet, too cold, and I don’t care. Every container scraped empty.

When it’s all gone, I stand there a second, hands flat on the cold stone, fuller than I’ve been in a long time. Then everything catches up. The food, the night I didn’t sleep, the hour I just spent being a person instead of a product. My eyes won’t stay open.

I make it to the couch. The soft throw is still bunched at one end, the one I lifted off Dante that first day and never gave back. I pull it over my shoulders and lie down facing the open terrace door, where I can see the room and every way into it.

The line plays on the back of my eyelids, set to the chords, and I’m too full and too tired to fight it. I close my eyes and sleep. The kind where you surface every few minutes to check the room and count the open doors and go back under.

The phone rings later and it cuts through everything. I come up on one elbow, heart already going, and grab it off the coffee table.

The screen says one word. FREDDIE.

Freddie doesn’t call. Freddie texts. A call means the plan changed, or I’m the problem, or he wants my voice in his ear to hear how far gone I am.

I answer. “Hey, Freddie.”

“How are you doing, Levi?”

Levi. Not Lee. When it’s business he calls me Lee. When he’s assessing damage, he calls me Levi. The name is a thermometer.

“I’m good. I’m fine. Resting after eating a big breakfast.”

He knows I just ate breakfast because the credit card activity showed him the DoorDash order. I play along as if I don’t know that.

“Have you been practicing the set list?”

“Yeah. Every day.”

I haven’t opened the email with the set list. I don’t know what’s on it.

“Good.” Freddie’s voice is the same temperature it’s held as long as I’ve known him. The temperature you keep when you manage situations instead of people. “I need to let you know the lineup goes public in about ten days. Then it’s straight into press and the show. The Panhandle Country Bash announces on every platform. Posters in Panama City Beach and along the coast. Press to the local outlets and the country trades. Your name and your face will be everywhere.”

“Ten days is late,” I say. “They’ve been selling tickets since spring.”

“They’ve been selling tickets on a lineup you’re not on. Their headliner walked with a back injury eleven days ago and they came to me on their knees. That’s how you got a slot you did not earn this year, and it’s why everything is bolted together with tape. They announce you late, they announce you loud, and every ticket they’ve already sold gets better overnight. Nobody down there knows you’re coming, Levi. That’s the play.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“The photo’s the one from the Rolling Stone session last year. White shirt, guitar. Marketing approved it.”

“Okay,” I say.