Page 42 of Levi

“Is there going to be a problem?”

“Not at all.”

“Have there been any incidents?”

“No.”

My short stint in the Bay County drunk tank didn’t hit my record. Nobody at the Bay County Sheriff’s office has reason to tie my real name, Levi Mason, to Lee Streeter. Not yet. But once the face is on every pole, somebody in that station could remember me. That is a problem for later, not today.

“Keep it clean, Levi. Ten days, then press and appearances into the show. I need you sober, professional, camera-ready. That’s the job.”

“I know what the job is, Freddie. I’ve been doing it for years.”

“Do you? The last three times I handed you the job, you showed up drunk. Memphis, you threw a monitor off the stage. Knoxville, you didn’t show. Dallas, I pulled you out of a bar fight forty minutes before doors. I’ve given this talk seven times. I don’t have an eighth time in me.”

“I hear you.”

“If you can’t do the show, tell me now. I’ll pull your name before the announcement and we’ll sort the contract. But if your name goes on that poster and you don’t show, or you show up like Dallas, the label drops you and your deal’s gone. That’s not a threat. That’s just the numbers.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Sober and rehearsed?”

“You bet.”

I can hear him breathing. I’m a bet he placed a long time back, and the odds were great until they started sliding.

“Get some rest,” Freddie says. “I’ll send the updated set list by Friday. There may be changes. The label wants to open with the single.”

He hangs up. No goodbye.

Ten days until everything here blows up.

I think about the poster that’s going up with my clean jaw. The photographer told me to tilt my chin and drop my shoulders. Dropping the shoulders was a performance too because they haven’t dropped since I was a kid.

That photo of me is going up on poles. In storefronts. On the screen at Pier Park where they’re building the stage. Every person I’ve crossed in the last week will see it. The lady bartender, Sheila, who called me ‘honey’ and fed me fries. The big man, Tex, behind the bar. The cop who picked me up on Front Beach Road.

Dante.

He’ll look at Lee Streeter’s face and see the man who’s been sleeping on his floor, and he won’t be thinking, “that guy’s famous.” It’ll be “that guy’s been lying to me.”

I told him my name was Levi. That much is true. Levi is the name my mother gave me before everybody else took the rest. Lee Streeter is the lie.

In ten days, the truth of it won’t matter, because the lie will be louder.

I pull the throw up tighter around my shoulders. The first real line I’ve written in years came because I was sober, and I was sober because a man in cognac leather shoes told me no and stuck to it.

Somebody left a door open so I could breathe.

I don’t write it down.

Chapter 14: Dante

I can’t get past the fact I put my hands on Levi in anger this morning. I’ve sat across closing tables from men who came in swinging insults. I have never once given them my voice back.

Lose your temper, lose the room.

The pillow I dropped by his head last night is still on the floor of the second bedroom. The blanket is beside it, folded back into the square. I go in to pick them up and don’t.