Page 50 of Levi

It’s a worse instrument than mine by a mile, the action high, one string a hair flat, but it’s a guitar and my hands don’t care about the rest. I tune the flat string by ear without thinking about it.

I start playing one of my own songs, the words the label gutted for being too true, and I sing it low into a bonfire for a circle of drunk kids who will never know what they heard. No stage. No phones in my face.

Nobody here is looking for Lee Streeter. Nobody would know him barefoot in the sand. The posters haven’t gone up yet. They don’t even know he’s coming to town. All they hear is the crackle of the fire and my voice coming out rough, going out over the water.

It’s the purest the music’s been since I was a kid singing in a church choir. A few of them stop and listen. A girl says oh and nudges her friend. Her phone comes up, screen glowing in the firelight. She’s filming the bearded guy playing by the fire, because it’s a nice moment on a warm night and that’s what you do with your phone. I see it and I let it go. Nobody knows me. What’s there to film but a stranger and a song?

I play it out to the end. The last note goes out over the Gulf. I hand the guitar to the next set of hands that reaches for it, get up out of the sand and dust off my jeans.

I don’t stay long after that. I got everything I came for, and it wasn’t the beer. Most of it’s still in the can I set down in the sand. I lift a hand at the girl who asked about the house and walk back up the beach alone, the fire shrinking orange behind me.

I’m lighter than I’ve been in years. The sand is between my toes and the song’s still going in my chest. I want to tell somebody. One particular somebody.

I let the want burn off with the fire behind me.

Chapter 18: Dante

I tell myself it’s about the humidity in the house. It needs to be checked.

The day ran long, and it’s night by the time I clear the gate. A meter reading is a morning errand, not a night one. I do it anyway. Every number on that house is mine to know every day until Saturday. I have every right to be here any hour of the day or night.

I knock. Levi doesn’t answer. I count to thirty to be polite and use the code.

“Levi?” I call out.

The sliding glass door is pulled shut. That’s new. The kitchen’s empty. The pink box is where I left it yesterday, three donuts gone.

He’s not here. If he was, the door would be wide open.

I came to read a meter, and the meter is down the hall.

I check out the rest of the house while calling it a walk-through. The bed upstairs hasn’t been touched. Benji made it up Friday night, fourteen pillows in three sizes laid out in rows. Not one of them has been moved. He hasn’t slept in it. It lines up with the sectional downstairs, the throw bunched at one arm where he leaves it.

His duffel is on the floor, half-zipped, packed. I recognize the clothes I folded for him. He’s here for a month and he still keeps everything packed and ready to move in a hurry.

In the kitchen the only food I find is the snacks I drove him to buy. Chips, a sleeve of cookies torn open, soda going warm and flat on the counter. The key lime pie is gone now.

A month paid in full in a twenty-million-dollar house, and Levi only owns chips and a duffel bag.

I check the meter under the supply vent. Sixty-six. Not great, but nothing’s warped. That’s the reading, the one I drove out here for. I decide to tidy up a bit while waiting to see if the humidity goes down.

Starting with the kitchen, I sweep the cookie crumbs off the counter into my hand. I wipe the stone down. I bag the trash, tie it, and set it by the door to take out when I leave. I square the donut box to the edge of the island. I check the washing machine to see if there are any clothes in it. Nothing. Not in the dryer either. Nothing that needs folding. I check the meter again. Sixty-six. Five minutes and it hasn’t moved. I fold the cashmere throw that’s turned into Levi’s permanent blanket.

I’ve checked the meter three times for a number I already have. I’m folding a blanket in a house that gets professionally cleaned Friday.

Where is he?

The edge of his phone is peeking out from under the corner of a cushion. Wherever he is, the phone didn’t travel with him. I dig it out. It lights up under a cracked face and asks me for a code I don’t have. That’s the end of it. I put it back in the couch, screen down, the way it was.

I know he’s not here. The terrace door is closed. I’ve been watching that door all week.

Standing here now, with him gone and the Gulf right past the rail, the closed door says one thing only. He walked out. Closed the door. Went down the long wooden steps to the beach. Across the sand.

Toward the water.

My heartbeat picks up. I grew up on water in Miami. The calmness is the danger. There’s no surf at night to warn you, no line where the safe water quits. It doesn’t knock you down. It takes you out sideways, while you’re still feeling safe.

Someone who’s been drinking doesn’t feel the pull until it’s already pulled him past the point of no return.