Page 156 of Levi

Tex stands in the middle of his kingdom with a big smile on his face.

Dante’s beat the bus there. He’s at the corner table with Mickey when we come in. The night demands one hard thing from me. I have to look straight at the man I’m crazy about and act like he’s nothing to me.

Dante does the cold act beautifully. He gives me a bored quarter-glance you’d hand any famous fella who wandered into your bar, then goes back to his phone.

That look is, I swear to God, the hottest forty-five degrees of indifference anybody has ever aimed at me.

Mickey lifts his beer an inch off the table when he catches my eye. The closest a sheriff’s deputy gets to a wink. His wheels are angled to keep the room in view, the empty seat beside him holding for Benji.

Tex comes across the room. He greets me the same as he does every time, like an old friend.

“Well, look what the tide washed in.” He slaps me on the shoulder and then he clocks the rest of them, a busload of road-worn musicians filing in behind me with nowhere to be. As I watch Tex I realize he’s just been handed a captive audience that has to sit and eat while he talks.

Nobody ever gave Tex a finer Tuesday. He raises his voice to the room. “You’ve come to the right place. Don’t worry about menus. You’re eating brisket tonight, every last one of you, and I don’t want to hear a word about hurry or salad.”

“Sounds good, Tex,” I say. “Bring it on. Tab’s mine tonight, all of it.”

“Music to my ears,” he says.

One of my backup singers halfway down the line makes the fatal mistake of asking how long a brisket takes. I should’ve warned them not to ask Tex questions before we unloaded off the bus.

“Funny you should ask.” Tex plants himself at the head of the table where they can all see him and makes no move toward the kitchen. “Trouble with people these days is they’re all in a hurry. You can’t hurry a brisket. You hurry it, all you got is a dried-up roast. Took me nine years and a smoker named Big Bertha that runs hotter’n hell to learn it. My granddaddy taught my daddy and he taught me. My granddaddy, now, he kept a hound called Pete. Laziest animal the good Lord ever bothered to finish. Slept clean through two break-ins, a tornado, and the night the barn burned to the dirt. Couldn’t hunt, couldn’t guard, couldn’t do a blessed lick of anything but lie in the sun and pass gas. And Granddaddy doted on that worthless dog like a third son.”

While he talks, the food moves fast around him. Sheila and Benji work the long table from both ends, and Stormy comes behind, setting down paper plates of tuna dip and crackers to hold everybody over till the brisket Tex won’t rush is good and ready. Stormy slides one in front of me and grins like we’re sharing a secret on the way past.

Tex never breaks the sentence. “He used to tell me a dog’s worth isn’t in what he does for you. It’s whether you’d still keep him on the porch when he’s no use to you at all. He said it about the dog. Took me till I was thirty to work out he wasn’t only talking about the dog.” He points down the length of the table. “Eat up. We’ll keep the plates coming.” He squeezes my shoulder on the way to the kitchen.

Tex just aimed his story at me without once looking my way. A worthless old hound who kept his spot on the porch for no reason except somebody wanted him on it. I’ve been working to earn my place since I was seventeen. I’ve never once been kept around for no reason at all. My eyes get hot for a minute and then I eat, and let Tex’s next story roll over the table like I belong here.

Then the night turns into the hottest game I’ve ever played.

I’m working the room the way Lee Streeter is supposed to. Black cowboy hat tipped just right, big grin, hand on shoulders, posing for pictures with somebody’s cousin from Alabama. Signing napkins like they’re autographs.

But my eyes keep cutting across the bar to Dante.

He’s leaning there with a whiskey, sexy and more handsome than any man has a right to be, pretending we’re strangers. Pretending he doesn’t know what my mouth tastes like at two in the morning or how I sound when his fingers are wrapped around my cock. The burner phone stays low against my thigh, buzzing every few minutes like a secret I can’t quit touching.

Dante: You keep looking at me. Strangers don’t stare at strangers like that. People will talk.

I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling and fire back one-handed while a guy shows off his daughter’s name inked down his forearm.

Levi: Can’t help looking. There’s a rude man here ignoring me.

Dante: Keep the hat on. You take it off and I might forget I’ve never met you. Levi doesn’t wear a hat.

Levi: That all it takes to get you going? Taking off my hat?

Dante: You know exactly what it takes. I’m the only one in this bar who knows what your voice sounds like when there’s no microphone. And no clothes.

Levi: You better behave.

Dante: Here’s a better idea. You finish being Lee Streeter. Sign your napkins. Then you get in my SUV, and I show you how rude a stranger can be when no one’s watching.

Levi: Tell me now.

I watch him read it, head down, thumbs flying.

Dante: Ask me in the parking lot and I’ll put every filthy word of it in your ear. Twice.