Page 105 of Levi

“I’ll handle Tex,” Benji says, waving a hand. “He promised he’d keep it short. All he needs to say is…dearly beloved, we’re gathered here…blah, blah, blah.”

Mickey turns and raises an eyebrow at me like he expects me to step in and do something. All I do is shrug.

“Two,” Benji continues. “The aisle runs the length of the deck. Thirty-eight steps. I walked it four times. Thirty-eight steps is twelve seconds for the music to build and enough time for every person in those chairs to be crying before I’m halfway down, which is the purpose of an aisle. Three. There will be a display cake and an eating cake. The display cake is for the photographs and the eating cake is for the reception, and before either of you objects, this is not extravagance, this is logistics. You can’t photograph a cake at five that guests are eating at nine. I’ve seen what this humidity does to buttercream.”

“How much is the cake nobody eats?” Mickey asks.

“Irrelevant.”

“Benji.”

“It’s not a cake nobody eats, we’ll stick it in the freezer and eat it for weeks, one slice at a time. It’s a photography asset with a service life, and when the wedding album comes back, you’re going to apologize. Four. The send-off. We’re doing a formal send-off for us even though we’re only going upstairs to the loft same as we do every other night.” He flips to a tab with a fabric swatch clipped to it. “Sparklers are a fire-code violation and glow sticks are a rave, so I found battery tapers that don’t look like a vigil. That took nine vendors. At full dark, everyone lines the deck rail with a candle, and Mickey and I go down the ramp to the red carpet placed on the beach and out under two hundred little lights while everyone we love loses their minds. And before anyone says one word about the ramp, the ramp is not getting plywood and a prayer, which is what every venue on this coast thinks a ramp is. I’m having it custom built. Cedar. Wide enough for the two of us side by side, wrapped in lights the whole run, and it stays for the Roadhouse when we’re done. It will be the most beautiful ramp in the state of Florida and every other venue should be embarrassed.”

“I asked for plywood,” Mickey says.

“And you got me instead,” Benji says. “Deal with it.”

His highlighter gets away from him mid-flip and rolls up the bar, out of reach. Before I can move, Mickey’s hand leaves the binder, palm flat on the wood, and he pushes himself up out of the chair — up, holding, easy — stretches the length of a stool to catch it, and lets himself back down slow. No shake in his arm anywhere. He hands it over and takes his corner of the binder back.

Benji takes the highlighter. “Also, while I have witnesses.” He doesn’t look up from the binder. “This man has therapy twice a week that I fought an insurance company for, and he still comes home and does whatever he likes. There are parallel bars in that loft. I had them installed. Stormy bolted them into the floor. And Mickey won’t touch them, because he’d rather lock the chair in a doorway and haul himself up on the trim.”

“Bars are in the corner,” Mickey says. “Door’s on the way to the kitchen.”

“The door frame is not equipment.”

“Held so far,” Mickey says. “What about the rice?”

Benji frowns at him. “What rice? Please tell me you don’t mean rice for throwing on us in our send-off outfits? That went out decades ago. Guests throw bird seed but we’re not doing that either. Not with Sheila’s aggressive pet seagulls swooping over our heads, screaming. Now, where were we?”

He flips back to the seating chart.

“Which brings us to the chart, where we still cannot put my aunt Lorraine next to your sergeant. I have a lifetime of data on Lorraine at open bars. At my cousin’s wedding she gave a toast no one asked for, in a tuxedo jacket she hung in the coat closet in case a toast opportunity arose. Lorraine will propose to that man by the salads, and he’s married.”

“Lorraine’s a catch though,” Mickey says.

“He has a wife, Mickey.” Benji turns to me. “Dante, do you hear what I’m marrying?”

“You picked him,” I say.

“You’re right, I did and I’d do it a million times over. He’s perfect, it’s a nightmare.” Benji kisses the side of Mickey’s head and goes back to the binder, and for a second, smoothing the chart flat with one hand, the show drops off him. “I’ve built these weddings for years for other people,” he says. “Down to the minute, for strangers, and then I drove home. I get to keep this one.” Mickey’s hand finds his knee again and squeezes.

Benji picked a man who counts exits in a room full of dentists and he’s marrying him on Tex’s deck in twenty-one minutes of good light.

These are the people I chose, and who chose me right back. It should be enough to keep my mind clear. The bar crowd’s loud and spending money two-fisted. The deck doors are open to the water. For about an hour it works and I don’t think about Levi.

Then a man walks in the front door.

Chapter 41: Levi

The driver lets me out at the edge of the Roadhouse lot, and he’s back on the highway before I’ve got the door shut, because I told him not to wait. I’m a man who tells drivers what to do now and watches it happen.

I stand in the gravel a second and look at the door.

Stay the fuck away from there.

Dante said it to my face, early on, and this is the third time I’ve walked up to a door I was told to stay clear of.

I came to find out if a place that took me in still wants me after I went off in the middle of it, or whether I burned that down too. That’s the reason I’ll cop to. The other one’s got dark hair and dark eyes and hopefully a stool at the near end of the bar. I came hoping to breathe the same air as him and probably not be brave enough for more than that.