Free Levon's Night by Chuck Dixon Page A

laid out on the floor; world conquest in process. She hugged him about the waist, drawing him as tight as she could.
    “What will you do without me?” she said into the rough canvas of his coat.
    “I thought I’d read some of that Civil War book you gave me until I fall asleep,” he said and touched her hair.
    “Will you come have breakfast with us?”
    “I might still be too full from Mrs. Fenton’s meatballs. Besides, you’ll probably sleep in.”
    “Okay,” she said and released him.
    “Love you, honey” he said.
    “Love you back,” she said.
    Levon took the long walk to the truck, gunned it to life and headed away out the drive before the cabin and onto Mohawk Road. He hooked a right. The distance back to his place was equal either way he went around the lake. He’d go around the east shore tonight, taking it slow over the mounting snow. A full scale blizzard was in effect. A thirty mile wind was blowing the white flakes against the truck like millions of tiny missiles. He drove with the fog lamps on and the fully lit rack of LEDs he’d installed on a bar above the cab.
    He hadn’t told Merry the whole truth. There was no way he was going to get any sleep with her out of the house. He decided to make a big old thermos of coffee and spend the night completing the plumbing to the Hoffert’s new kitchen. By morning he hoped to have the soil pipe connected and the PVC for the garbage disposal, dishwasher and ice maker in place for when he installed the appliances still crated in the Hoffert’s garage. The Civil War book Merry bought him was a very thoughtful gift but proved slow going for him as he stopped to think on the errors made by both sides. By the Union at the beginning of the war and by the Confederacy toward the end. Too many parallels. He’d see it through to the end, though, only because Merry gave it to him.
    Levon decided that he would have rather fought under Lee than the Union. It wasn’t just his Alabama heritage. Lee was the more talented commander and Levon had an affinity for lost causes.
    He crawled by the bungalow behind the Christopher residence. The main house was a sprawling Cape Cod on a grand scale seated by the lake shore. The bungalow set across the road was a simple A-frame. The lights were on inside. Nate’s snow machine sat at the foot of the drive. The toolbox sled he rigged up was hitched to the rear of it. Nate would be working on the water heater in the utility room down in the daylight basement. Levon thought about stopping to ask if he needed help but drove on. He was about talked out of the evening even though all he did was mostly listen at the Fenton’s dinner table.
    The Christophers were a late middle-aged couple. He was legal counsel for an entertainment company in New York. She did something in news for a television network. Neither of them seemed like the artsy type. Maybe the hippies, as Nate referred to them, were family friends.
    Levon rolled on toward the Hoffert house, his mind moving to the problem of properly angling the soil lines in the constricted space left to him by the cabinet design the Hofferts had chosen.

 
     
    Eighteenth entry
1/19
----
    M is away visiting. Funny how she fills the house somehow.
    Going to work the kitchen some more.
    Snow falling harder.
    Wind picking up.
    Two more feet by morning.

 
    19
----
    Nick Esposito thought his wife was crazy for wanting to come up to the lake house in the winter. He thought he was even crazier for agreeing to it.
    “What’s wrong with Florida?” Nick said.
    “
Everybody
goes to Florida when it gets cold,” Jessie said.
    “You know there’s a good reason for that,” Nick said.
    Here they were in deepest Maine, snowed in until Good Friday probably. Plenty of food in the freezers. Nothing for him to do but read, watch movies and, when Jessie wasn’t watching, lose money playing on-line poker.
    “What are you in the mood for?” Nick said. He was standing at the shelf system packed with