Page 74 of Levi

The prepaid phones are on a rack in the back, behind the cases and the chargers. The cheap end of the aisle. Forty dollars. No contract, no account. A month of minutes you pay for at the register, and no one anywhere has your name. I stand under the fluorescent lights. A man who moved twenty million dollars of real estate before lunch, squinting at the fine print on a forty-dollar phone. I buy it. The kid at the register doesn’t look up.

Then I sit in the lot and set it up. The AC’s going full against ninety-five degrees coming up off the asphalt. My tie is loose and the little phone is propped on the steering wheel. I thumb through the setup screens one at a time. Language, time zone, the slow stupid carousel of a device built for someone who’s never owned a phone. It takes forever. And with my hands doing busy work, the night gets its turn.

I touch people. It’s the first language I ever had. In my mother’s kitchen, no one crosses the room without a hand landing on someone. Hugs, kisses. It’s how I say what English makes heavy.

Levi, I’d touched exactly once. A fistful of his collar and a refrigerator at his back. Since then, I’d kept my hands off him entirely. My hand on him was never going to be casual. I knew better all week.

Last night I did it anyway.

I told myself it was because of the ice. The ice wasn’t the reason. I said it out loud first, to give him a warning. Then I put my palm on his bare back, and the connection between us locked into place like I knew it would.

He flinched. I’d given him reason to. Then he stayed steady under my hand. He felt it same as I did, and both of us knew what had been said by me touching him, and there’s no unsaying it now.

That’s why my answer, ‘I can’t tonight,’ came out of me at a dead sprint. I was running from whatever is happening between us.

The screen’s asking for a time zone. Central. I keep going. I activate the minutes off the card from the register. I get it to the home screen. No apps, nothing on it. Then I put one number in it. Mine. Dante. I type my own number into the contacts, and that’s the address book. One name. I take out my own phone and put the burner’s number into mine, so it’s there when it lights up.

It’s done.

The crushing weight that’s been sitting on my chest since I left the apartment this morning lifts and I can think straight again. Whatever else happens, the next time Levi is alone in that house at three in the morning, there’s a line out with my phone number in it.

I set the little phone on the passenger seat and pick mine back up. I call the Birmingham couple back about the four o’clock. This time I don’t lose the thread once.

By the time I’ve worked through the list, the sun is setting and I have a legitimate reason to drive back out to the beach. To deliver a phone to Levi. He has a way to reach me now if he needs to.

I pull up the drive, cut the engine, and get out into the evening. Somewhere off in the dark toward the beach a guitar is going. A chord carrying on the night air after a hot day, there and then gone. Probably a Saturday night bonfire down the beach.

I knock, wait the polite thirty seconds and let myself in the front.

The house is dark. One lamp burning somewhere deep in it, the big glass black. The AC is roaring its head off, cooling the Gulf of Mexico. That’s the war he’s been fighting all week, and I’ve quit refereeing. Clear across the main room, the sliding glass door to the terrace stands wide open. He comes barreling in through it as I walk in the front, like he’s only now hearing the door.

He’s off. I catch it in the half-second before he gets his face straight. He comes in from the terrace hollowed out, a rawness around the eyes he tries to hide. His normal easiness takes a minute to arrive. But I caught the first version.

“Hey.” He pulls up when he sees it’s me, and there’s a question all over him. “What’s going on? Something wrong with the house?”

“Nothing’s wrong with the house.” I lift the bag so he can see it’s an errand. “Brought you something. Sit down a second.”

“You drove all the way back out here to bring me something?”

“I did.”

“On a Saturday.”

“Sit down, Levi.”

He sits, wary of why I’m here. I take the phone out of the bag and hand it to him. He turns it over in his hands like it might explode.

“It’s a burner phone,” I say. “A throwaway. Not connected to any account or credit card.”

“I can see that.”

“Forty dollars at the register. Cash. The kid ringing it up didn’t even look at me.”

“You bought a burner phone. In fancy clothes and a tie.”

“I loosened the tie first. The phone is for you.” I sit down on the arm of the chair across from him. “There’s no name on it, no plan, no bill. No card on it, so there’s nothing to follow. It can’t be tracked. No apps. No one anywhere knows it exists.” I nod at it. “One number in it. Mine. You need anything, any hour, you call me and I’ll come. It doesn’t show up on a single screen but the one in my pocket. The phone is clean.”

The rest of it doesn’t get said out loud — and it dials 911 same as any phone, so if a night ever goes the way last night went and I’m not down the hall…