Page 21 of Levi

“Then say the liquor store is part of the deal, Dante. Out loud. I want to hear it.”

“It’s part of the deal,” he says. “But if you’re drunk at a showing or you smoke inside that house, the deal is off. Anything that costs me Saturday, the deal is off.”

“Fair enough.”

“I know it’s fair,” he says. “I wrote the terms.”

“You wrote the breach clauses.” I put my sweating head back against the seat. “I wrote everything else.”

“You wrote a grocery list and called it a contract.”

“Yep. Best deal I’ve closed in years.”

He drives the next mile without saying a word. We pull into a grocery store off the highway and he parks.

“Go in,” he says. “Get what you need for the week.”

I hesitate, my hand on the door. “You’re not coming in with me?”

He turns to look at me. “No, why would I? I’m not your personal shopper. I’ll wait here.”

“Some host you are.”

“I’m not your host either.”

The cold air hits me just inside the entrance, and I stand there for ten seconds with my buggy because I can’t remember the last time I bought my own groceries. In Nashville, there’s a delivery service. On tour there’s catering, and hotels bring trays to the door. The last time I picked out my own food, I was seventeen and my mother sent me to the Piggly Wiggly for milk and eggs.

I don’t know what a week of food looks like or what it costs anymore, because food has always just arrived. They have a deli counter here, though. Right up front. Sandwiches I understand. You point at ingredients, somebody makes you a sandwich and hands it over. That’s a system I can operate like a pro.

I walk up to the counter. “Give me an Italian, a turkey, a ham, a roast beef, a meatball, and one of whatever you’d make for yourself.”

The deli man stares at me for a second. I’m ordering six sandwiches early on a Sunday morning, sweated through and sunburned, so I understand the look. He doesn’t recognize me though, so there’s that to be thankful for.

“Having a party?” he asks. “Or going fishing?”

“Party of one. Just me.”

While he builds them, I push the buggy through the store and shop like a teenager. Five bags of chips and a key lime pie. Oreos and a rope of beef jerky. Four two-liter Cokes riding in the child seat. No water, because the house has a sink and an icemaker, and nothing that might need cooking, because I don’t cook. Everything in the buggy can be eaten straight out of the package, no plate and no plan required.

I follow behind other people to a line where there’s only machines and no workers. I watch a minute and realize I don’t have a fucking clue how to ring up my groceries. The last thing I need to do is draw attention to myself by being an idiot. I back out of line and wander down the store until I spot one checkout with an older lady doing the scanning.

I pay attention as she scans each item so I’ll know how to do it myself next time. The register says an even hundred dollars, and I pay it from the fold of cash riding my front pocket, feeling every bill go. Feeding yourself costs a lot of money, and I add that to the list of things Nashville never taught me. The fold is down to five hundred and seventeen dollars.

Dante steps out when he sees me coming and opens the back. I load the bags, and return the buggy.

“What did you buy?” he asks, when I return.

“Food.”

He reaches into one of the bags and comes out with a sub. He reads the sticker, puts it down, comes out with another one, and then a third.

“You bought six subs,” he says. “Why?”

“You going through my bags hunting for contraband, or just nosy?”

“Answer my question,” he says.

“I might get hungry. I bought them for the week.”