Page 87 of Levi

I can’t explain it in a text. All I can do is ask.

Levi: Please don’t decide anything yet. Give me one day. Let me tell you in person. Please.

It’s nothing. I’m a fella who lied by leaving things out. Now I’m asking him to trust me one more day. I know exactly how thin that is. It’s all I’ve got. I send it.

Sent.

The little word sits there under the gray bubble. No dots.

I stand there holding the cheap phone, watching the screen not change. The dots don’t come. They’re not going to come. I keep watching anyway.

Watching the screen is the last thing left that feels like reaching for him, and I’m not ready to stop.

Chapter 32: Dante

I walk into the Roadhouse still shaking. Benji’s off his stool before the door shuts behind me. Then I see his face. He’s not surprised I’m upset. He knows something.

“I’ve been calling you for an hour.” He’s got my arm. “Where’s your phone?”

“In the car. Benji—”

“Come upstairs.” His hand’s already steering me toward the back. Away from the floor. Away from Sheila down at the taps. She’s stopped pouring. She’s watching me like she already knows the worst of it and I don’t.

She catches my eye as we pass. “Baby,” she says, “I recognized his face. I’ve been reading men’s eyes for thirty years to know when to cut ‘em off, and I knew his the second they put that poster up.” Whatever’s on my face stops her. “I’m sorry, baby. Go on up. Benji’ll show you.”

The apology in her voice is the first bad sign. Sheila does dry, unbothered. An apologetic Sheila is a bad omen.

Upstairs, the laptop’s already open on the little table, turned toward the chair Benji set for me. He doesn’t make a speech. He loves me too much to drag out whatever’s coming. He just says, “I’m so sorry. I tried to get to you before you—” and he doesn’t finish that either. He turns the screen toward me.

It’s a poster. A flyer, the kind they staple to a telephone pole. The Panhandle Country Bash, starting tomorrow. The face on it is the face I left in a living room an hour ago. Clean jaw. Cut hair. The stranger wearing Levi’s eyes. Except now there’s another name under it. The name isn’t Levi.

Lee Streeter.

Everything in me locks.

That’s why he looked wrong. My brain stuttered on it in the doorway and Freddie’s screaming rolled over it. They weren’t hurting him. They were turning him back into this.

This stranger.

Levi’s beard came off because Lee Streeter doesn’t wear a beard. His thick hair got cut because this is how Lee Streeter wears his hair. They assembled a stranger out of the guy I thought I knew.

And now I know the finished product’s name. From a flyer.

“How long has this poster been up?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.

“The flyer went up this afternoon around town,” Benji says. “A promotional guy for the Bash came by and dropped a stack off. Some of Sheila’s regulars already had it on their phones before I’d even seen it. I called you over and over, Dante. Kept getting your voicemail. I drove to your apartment, didn’t find you. Came back here and started building you the file. If you were going to walk into this blind, you weren’t going to walk into it standing at the bar finding it out off a stranger’s phone.”

“I’m not even sure what I’m looking at,” I say. “Who is he? What is he?”

“He’s—” Benji’s scrolling, and the screen fills with him. Photos. A stage the size of a town. Magazine covers. A list of songs I’ve never heard. “Dante, he’s huge. He’s a country music star. Sells-out-stadiums huge. I went down a hole on it for an hour. He’s been at it since he was seventeen. There’s eight years of this guy, and all of it’s enormous.”

He’s still scrolling, fast, like if he stops, he’ll have to look at my face. “He’s had a tour, Dante. Forty-one cities. Well, that one was last year. There were several others over the years. And these numbers under the songs. They hit the top of the charts. All of them. Every time one releases, it goes straight up.” He nudges the laptop a half-inch toward me, like the angle will help me understand. “That’s him at an awards show.”

I don’t say anything. I’m looking at a man I’ve never met.

He’s wearing the face of the man I know. Knew. Never knew.

“It’s him.” Benji knows what I’m thinking. “I sat here an hour trying to make it be someone else. It’s crazy, right? I didn’t have a clue and I know you didn’t either. I hate country music. Same as you. Never listen to it. Fuck country music. I don’t know who Lee Streeter is. The name means nothing to me. Have you heard of him?”