Page 120 of Levi

“But…”

“I had a hard night there, and I’m not going to lie to you about it. The lights came up, and a man with your face walked out and took that stage like he owned the ground it stood on. Opened his arms to a screaming field like it was nothing. My heart almost stopped when you smiled and they threw you up on the big screens. Benji turned to me and yelled, ‘Who the fuck is that?’ and I told him I didn’t know. I felt like you had been stolen from me.”

“Dante—”

“I stood there the entire show trying to make the two of you the same person, and I couldn’t do it. The woman next to me had your face on her shirt and cried through every song, screaming a name that isn’t yours. Everyone there got exactly the man they came for. Except me. I was there for you, the Levi I know.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say. I should’ve told you.”

“Even if you had, it wouldn’t have prepared me for that. For what it’s worth, Benji had the night of his life,” I say, to let him off the hook. “Lost both heels by the first encore and made me carry him out of the field on my back. He knows all your choruses now. Sings them wrong with total commitment. He’s a new fan.”

The laugh comes up out of him loud and unguarded, and for a second the kitchen holds the morning I’m trying to make last.

“Where are you headed next?” I ask.

“Don’t know yet. I find out when it all gets set.”

“Set by who?”

He shrugs. “The schedule. I stopped trying to plan ahead for anything a long time ago. I go where they tell me and never think about it.”

Not a who. A what. The schedule decides and he gets told. The light of the morning drains off him when he says it, and I watch it go. He doesn’t own a single hour of his own day. Someone else holds all of it.

His phone goes off on the table.

He glances at the screen. Between one ring and the next he disappears somewhere I can’t follow. Everything I watched in him come unwound all morning pulling tight again. He looks at it a second too long. Then he stands, turns half away from me, and answers.

“Yeah.”

I only hear one side of the conversation. It’s enough.

He listens a long time. “Wait. Hang on. It’s where?” A long pause. “TMZ. How bad?” He listens longer. “What time?” He stares at the floor. “Where am I doing them?”

Them, he said. More than one of whatever he’s doing.

“I know. I know, Freddie,” he says, all fight gone out of him. “I’ll be there.” Then the topic must change, and he shuts down in a different way. “What about him? Same guy from the house. That’s it.” Another pause, longer. He glances over at me with pain in his eyes. “There’s nothing to it. No, I’m telling you it’s nothing.”

He closes his eyes and drops his head, holding the phone in his hand.

And there’s the same position in him I’ve seen before. Once. Freddie standing over him, screaming into the top of his bowed head, Levi taking it, before I crossed the room and put the man into the wall.

The same posture. In at the shoulders, down at the neck, a grown man shrinking back to the size these people keep him at.

I don’t move while I work out what the call is about. It’s not difficult. The video is out. What Levi did at the Roadhouse, because he couldn’t stand to watch a man put his hand on me, is on a screen now with his name under it.

He puts the phone down. He’s already half gone.

“Your face is in the video,” he says. “Freddie recognized you. The video shows me clearly hauling that guy up, and you’re in the back of it pulling me off him. Your name’s already on a jail slip next to mine. Now your face is in a story with mine.” He shakes his head slowly. “I walked my mess straight to you.”

“Levi, stop.”

“Dante—”

“That is not yours to carry. Whatever happens, I’ll deal with it. What happens next?”

“Freddie has interviews with the press already set up for this afternoon.” He sighs. “I knew this wouldn’t last long. I need to go. I’m sorry. Thank you…for everything.”

I drive him back to the beach house without argument. The leisurely morning I’d hoped we would have is gone. The closer we get to the house, the more of him fades away. By the time the house is in sight, he’s disappeared back behind the public face.