Chapter 4: The Box

My apartment was the top half of a duplex in Echo Park.

It had a creaky staircase, a landlady who hated my music, and a kitchen table I had bought for forty dollars.

On Tuesday at eight in the evening, somebody knocked on the door with one knuckle.

I knew the knock.

I opened the door anyway.

Devon stood on the landing with a cardboard box in his arms.

His hair was wet from the rain, and he had not shaved.

"I brought your stuff," he said.

I looked in the box.

My mug with the chipped handle was in there, and my reading glasses, and a hairbrush, and the green scarf Lexi had worn.

"You brought the scarf," I said.

"It was in my car."

"It was on Lexi's neck on Friday."

"She borrowed it." He looked away. "I told her to give it back."

I took the box out of his hands and put it on the floor.

"Is that why you came?"

"No." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I need your notebooks."

I stared at him.

"Excuse me?"

"The black ones. The lyric books you kept in my studio."

The words came out rushed.

"Hank says Lexi's song has lines from something you showed me once."

"He wants the books so he can prove where it came from."

"Where it came from," I said.

"He says you gave it to her."

I started to laugh, and I covered my mouth, because the laugh was ugly.

"You think I gave away 'Gold Room'?"

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