Page 41 of One Last Verse

Dante’s gaze followed me. “Come on. I drove all the way from the West Side.”

“You should have called first.”

“I did. Asshole hasn’t picked up his phone since last century.” He stared down at the tip of his cigarette and ashed it into the planter near the chair. His manners were nonexistent. Just like his compassion and sense of brotherhood.

“I don’t want to be the middleman. If you need to talk to him about something, don’t ask me to take messages.”

“Come on,” he groaned in frustration. “You’re already the middleman. You’ve been one for a while now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I brushed him off.

“I’m not that stupid, Cassy. I understand you more than you think. You’re a young, idealistic, full-of-drive, never-bitten-in-the-ass-by-the-big-guys-before woman who thinks the world is still worth saving. I know he was open to my offer because of you. Because you agreed with me the first time around. Because you’re scared for him. Because your judgment isn’t clouded by all the love he’s been feeding on all these years. He’s so fucking terrified of letting all the people who worship him go because he still thinks he needs to keep making them happy in order to validate his existence.”

My heart leapt into my throat. I turned to face him and took a step in his direction.

“Guess what?” Dante’s gaze roamed my face. “He doesn’t. He just doesn’t see it. But I do. I have for a while now. You do too.”

“And what do you see?”

Dante slipped his cigarette back in his mouth and took a long drag. “The world can’t be saved, darlin’. As long as there are people like Lilly, your father, or my parents. The world is going to burn one day. We probably won’t be here for the final countdown, but who’s to say we need to carry its weight on our shoulders until our dying days. Especially if we systematically contribute to the reduction of our own term here, on this planet. Frankie-boy made history. He’ll be fucking forever remembered. Now it’s time he takes it easy.”

Worry and confusion pulled at my chest. This conversation was more than I’d bargained for. “Why are you here, Dante?”

“I didn’t have anything to do with the label’s decision to fire Frankie-boy. I stood by my original offer. I want to keep writing music with him. We make good shit together.”

“Made,” I corrected.

“That’s only if he wants to play the victim.”

“I don’t think victim is the right word here.”

“It doesn’t have to be.” A grin flashed at me.

I rolled my eyes. Dante’s attitude was a crossbreed of narcissism and arrogance, a whiny illegitimate baby of two really horrible personality traits that could never figure their shit out, but my feet remained fixed.

“If you want to be upfront, let’s be upfront.” I crossed my arms on my chest and waited.

“I’m a what you see is what you get kinda guy, darlin’.” He put out his cigarette against the cement block the planter sat on and left it there. “Frankie-boy should at least get an ashtray.” I heard him mutter.

“Whose idea was it?” I asked.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about, short stuff.” Dante gave me a lazy shrug, leaned back in his chair, and switched legs.

“The cocaine,” I whispered.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think it goes all the way back to South American indigenous people. They didn’t have lessons on recreational drugs in my high school. So I can’t be too sure.”

“Very funny.”

“I was just trying to make you laugh. You look tense.” The corner of his mouth tipped up.

“I wonder why.”

Dante continued practicing his self-serving smirk on me. I continued to wait for his confession. We weren’t going anywhere.

“You didn’t answer my question. You wanted to be honest, then be honest.”

“Which question? You asked a whole lot.”

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