Read an Excerpt
The Lives I’ve Lived
Author’s Note and Chapter One · David J. Masters
Author’s Note
I have sometimes looked back over my life and wondered how so many different lives could have belonged to the same person.
I was once a boy growing up in the foothills of Virginia, where the world I knew was measured by mountains, rivers, swinging bridges, berry patches, and the small house I shared with my grandmother. Years later, I found myself in Washington, D.C., working inside law firms and courtrooms in a world that could hardly have been farther removed from the one in which I grew up.
There were other lives as well.
There were years when Key West became part of my story, years when art became much more than something I loved to do, and years when a business called Master Pieces grew from an idea into something larger than I had ever imagined.
There were people I met along the way whom I never expected to know, places I never imagined I would see, successes I worked hard to achieve, mistakes I made, chances I took, and moments that seemed ordinary when they happened but became important only after enough years had passed.
Today, my life is considerably quieter.
I work nights as a concierge in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida. During the long stretches when the building becomes still, memories sometimes return without invitation. One leads to another, and before I know it, I am somewhere I haven’t been in many years.
Those memories became this book.
I have not written them because I believe my life was more important than anyone else’s. I have written them because it was mine—and because, looking back, I realize I did not live only one life.
I lived several.
These are the lives I’ve lived.
Chapter One
Night in the Lobby
To look at me now, you would probably think I lead an ordinary life. You wouldn’t be wrong—at least not from the outside. But the truth is, I’ve lived several lives, and some days I’m still not entirely sure how they all fit together.
There was a boy in the foothills of Virginia who knew the smell of honeysuckle and fresh-turned earth, who could tell where spring water might be found in the woods, and who knew that if he stood still long enough, what first sounded like silence wasn’t silent at all. There were jar flies in the summer, crickets after dark, frogs calling from somewhere beyond the house, an owl in the distance, and every so often, the bark of a dog carrying across the valley.
There was a grandmother whose smile could somehow make everything feel right, although the boy never thought to wonder why. He only knew that when she was near, he was safe.
There were unforgettable evenings in Key West years later, sleeping beneath a pontoon boat after the music had finally faded and convinced that youth would last forever. There were years spent inside Washington, D.C., office towers and courtrooms, where long days blurred into even longer nights. Later came the years when I unlocked the doors to Master Pieces, the art studio and gallery that proudly carried my name, hanging paintings on the walls and welcoming students who had traveled from across the country to study with professional instructors.
Finally, there was St. Petersburg, Florida, where I found myself behind the desk in a quiet condominium lobby, watching another kind of life pass through its doors.
Somehow, all those lives have led me here.
Today, I spend my nights in the lobby of a high-rise condominium in downtown St. Petersburg, working as a concierge while most of the city sleeps. Most evenings begin in much the same way. I button a clean shirt, slip my key fob into my pocket, lock the door behind me, and step into the hallway outside my condominium.
The building where I live stands directly across the street from the one where I work, so my commute lasts a little more than a minute. It is a pleasant walk, especially after sunset. The Florida air is usually warm and still, carrying just enough salt from the bay to remind me that the water is only a few blocks away. Streetlights glow against the palm fronds lining the sidewalk, and by the time I make that short walk, downtown has usually settled into that in-between hour when the restaurants are closing their kitchens and only a few people remain out, walking dogs or finishing a last conversation on a bench. It bears no resemblance to the dark mountain roads I once walked as a boy, and yet something about that quiet, unhurried stretch between two buildings feels strangely familiar.
Ahead of me rises a tower whose residents have purchased more than beautiful views. They have purchased privacy, security, and the quiet assurance that someone will always be downstairs if they need help.
That someone is often me.
I cross the street, tap my key fob against the reader, and step into the lobby.
“Good morning,” I call to the concierge finishing the afternoon shift.
It is our standing joke. Night people have always lived by a different clock.
I walk behind the desk, set down my backpack, and tuck it into a storage room concealed behind what appears to be a solid wall. Unless someone showed you exactly where to press, you would never know the door was there. My dinner goes into the refrigerator, my coffee cup waits on the counter, and before long I am asking the concierge about the shift that is ending.
Those few minutes of conversation become the bridge between two shifts: who called downstairs frustrated, whether any deliveries arrived late, and whether there is anything unusual I should know before the building settles in. Most evenings, there isn’t much, and somehow that is exactly the way everyone likes it.
Once the handoff is complete and the afternoon concierge heads home, the building becomes mine for the night.
I start a fresh pot of coffee, settle behind the desk, and read through the daily and weekly concierge logs. Most entries are routine—maintenance notes, deliveries, reminders, and questions waiting for answers—but every now and then, a small detail hints at how the night ahead may unfold. After that come the emails from residents and management, each one answered or filed away before I make my first walk around the property.
Outside, the city has already begun to slow.
I make my way around the block, checking the restaurants, storefronts, and entrances that surround the building, making certain every door is locked and every gate secured. It rarely takes long, and most nights reveal nothing unusual at all. Still, routines have a way of uncovering the little things people overlook, and over the years I have learned that it is often the smallest details that deserve the closest attention.
When I return, the lobby greets me with the same quiet elegance it has every night. The air conditioning meets me first, a cool hush after the thick Florida night outside, and the lights have been dimmed, softening the polished marble beneath my feet. After dark, the expansive windows reflect more of the lobby than the city outside, creating the illusion that the room stretches farther than it really does.
Water spills gently from matching fountains on either side of the desk, their steady rhythm blending with background music drifting almost unnoticed from hidden ceiling speakers. Most nights, it is a collection of familiar songs from the 1980s, soft enough to become part of the silence rather than interrupt it.
The hours settle into their familiar rhythm: a round of cameras, another walk through the building, a flashlight moving across empty corridors, doors checked, elevators waiting. Then, every so often, the front doors open and the outside world arrives with someone coming home.
A resident may return from dinner at one of the waterfront restaurants, the soft evening air following them inside for a moment before the doors close again. Another might arrive dressed for a charity event or a private gathering, stepping across the marble floor with the last traces of the evening still clinging to them. Sometimes a couple comes in after a concert or a night at the theater, speaking quietly as they wait for the elevator.
They offer a smile, a nod, or a brief greeting. I return it, make sure they have what they need, and watch as the elevator doors close behind them. Within seconds, they are rising toward homes high above the street, where lights glow behind wide windows overlooking the bay.
Then the lobby settles again.
The fountains continue their gentle spill of water. The music drifts softly from the ceiling speakers. The elevators grow still, and the building returns to its nighttime rhythm.
It is during those hours, when most of the residents are home and the city beyond the glass has quieted, that the lobby feels most like my own. Not because I own it, of course, but because I am the one awake to watch over it.
There is a particular kind of quiet that comes after midnight. I knew another kind once, long before I ever saw a condominium tower or a city skyline.
As a boy, I would lie in bed at Grandma’s house with the window beside her Singer treadle sewing machine left open. Air seemed to move easily through that window, and I could feel the breeze as I lay there. Outside, the valley kept talking to itself in a language I’d stopped needing to translate. There were plenty of sounds, yet somehow I could still hear the quiet beneath them.
Grandma would already be asleep, and I knew she was there.
That was enough.
I didn’t have words for the feeling then. A boy doesn’t necessarily stop to name such things. I only knew that I liked lying there, listening to the night and feeling the breeze through the open window, until somewhere among those familiar sounds, I peacefully fell asleep.
I have never quite known that same kind of quiet again; the silence here is different.
Sometimes an old song playing softly overhead catches my attention and takes me somewhere else. Other times, nothing causes it at all. A memory simply arrives.
That is the peculiar thing about memory. It does not always knock before entering, nor does it arrive in any sensible order.
One night, I might remember a crowded dance floor, neon reflected on wet pavement, loud music spilling into warm night air, and strangers who somehow became friends before sunrise. Another night, I might find myself thinking about a pair of stiff shoes I dreaded pulling onto my feet as a boy, or Grandma’s smile, or the smell of her house, or crickets along the dark country road leading to the Boggs place.
There is no reason one memory should arrive instead of another —they simply do.
Some nights, shortly after midnight, I still feel a faint echo of the man I used to be—the one who thought midnight meant the evening was only beginning. He remembers crowded rooms and music loud enough to make conversation nearly impossible. He remembers staying out until morning because going home seemed like such a waste of a perfectly good night.
Now midnight finds me straightening brochures no one will likely pick up, pouring another cup of coffee, and glancing across the security monitors.
Oddly enough, I don’t miss the old life the way I once thought I would. I remember it fondly, and I’m grateful for it. But these days, I’m drawn more toward stillness than noise.
Perhaps that was always somewhere in me.
Long before the nightclubs, courtrooms, office towers, gallery openings, and everything that came afterward, there was that boy lying beside an open window in Virginia, perfectly content to listen.
At some point, this desk became something more than a place to work. Between interruptions, I fill notebooks with ideas for future books, sketch compositions for paintings that may never leave the page, and sometimes find myself revisiting moments I hadn’t thought about in years.
The lobby doesn’t summon them. It simply gives them somewhere to arrive.
Years spent in offices and courtrooms eventually gave me the freedom to choose this job rather than depend upon it. I came here to stay active, meet people, and earn a little extra money. Instead, I discovered something I hadn’t expected: a rhythm that suits this season of my life.
There is comfort in quiet responsibility, peace in routine, and surprising clarity in the hours after midnight, when the world finally stops asking so much of you.
I don’t look back on my earlier lives with regret, nor do I see them as chapters I somehow outgrew. The clubs, the law offices, the galleries, the classrooms, the friendships, the mistakes, and the victories all belong to the same story.
Each one belonged to me while I was living it.
And somewhere underneath all of them remained that boy from Virginia.
He didn’t know what he wanted to become. He only knew that someday he wanted to become someone—to matter, not only to himself, but somehow to other people as well, to make something of himself and find his own way in the world.
He wanted things, too. There is no point pretending otherwise. He wanted a beautiful house, money, cars, and travel. He wanted to see the cities and airplanes, hotels and restaurants, beautiful homes and well-dressed people he discovered in the pages of books and old magazines, the kind with photographs that made distant places feel almost close enough to touch.
Books and magazines were how he traveled before he could go anywhere himself, showing him a world beyond those Virginia mountains.
He didn’t want to escape Grandma. He didn’t think of his life with her as something he needed to escape. That little house was where he felt safest. It was home.
He simply knew there was more, and he wanted to see it.
Someone walking through this lobby tonight might see only an older gentleman working the overnight shift. There would be no reason for them to imagine the boy who once wandered through snowy Virginia woods carrying an axe in search of the perfect Christmas tree, or the young man who later slept beneath a pontoon boat in Key West.
They would know nothing of Washington offices that stayed lighted long after dark, or of the years when paintings carrying my name hung on gallery walls. They would see the man standing in front of them.
Perhaps that is all any of us ever see of one another: the present.
We rarely know how many lives someone had to live before reaching the one in which we happened to meet them.
My journey certainly never followed a straight line—it twisted and doubled back, and sometimes one life seemed to end before I had any idea what the next one would look like. There were places I deliberately set out to reach and others I stumbled into almost by accident.
Looking backward, I can see connections I never could have seen while living them. But I am reluctant to make too much sense of it.
Life was never as orderly as memory sometimes tries to make it, and memory itself is even less orderly.
Tonight, perhaps, it is Virginia.
I can see Grandma’s smile. Her eyes seemed to sparkle when she talked, and there was something about that smile that gave me a feeling I still have difficulty explaining. Peace comes closest.
I can smell honeysuckle. I can hear the jar flies working themselves into that shrill July pitch, the one that always meant the heat had truly settled in. And I can see a young boy following his grandmother toward a berry patch on a Virginia hillside, listening to her soft, unhurried voice as she moves ahead of him.
The berries hang heavy and dark against the green, almost black in the shade, staining fingers and lips before the pail is even half full.
The boy has no idea where his life will take him.
For the moment, he doesn’t need to know.
Grandma is just ahead. And he follows.
Continue reading The Lives I’ve Lived
Memories of Key West
From Memories of Key West · Abridged for the website
The story begins in Kansas City, where life feels easy and full of possibility—until one quiet morning, a single question and a brand‑new Cadillac set everything in motion.
Chapter 1
The Cadillac
Some lives begin with a simple question: Which way?
At that time in my life, I lived in downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Not just lived there—I was part of it. There was a sense of belonging that didn’t come from ownership or roots, but from being there. I was there, fully there, moving with the city instead of just existing in it. I hadn’t earned it with years or family or property; it was as if simply showing up day after day, walking those streets and breathing that air, was enough to let the city claim me for a while.
[…]
I found a job with a company that produced artwork by sandblasting images onto mirrors and glass. Even now, I can still see those pieces in my mind—the way light caught the etched surface, the contrast between the clear glass and the soft frosted image, how something ordinary could suddenly look elegant simply because of what had been placed upon it. There was something particular about that work. It had delicacy, but also precision, and it stayed with me visually in a way I didn’t appreciate at the time. I didn’t have the language then to explain why it fascinated me—that you could take something plain and, by removing just the right bit of surface, reveal an image that had been invisible all along.
I worked in the office as a bookkeeper, even though I’d never really been a bookkeeper before and had very little training. Yet there I was, doing it, and somehow it worked. No one questioned it, and I didn’t either. That was how things seemed to happen then. If something needed to be done, I did it. If a door opened, I stepped through it. I didn’t stop to ask whether I was qualified or prepared enough. I just moved into whatever life set in front of me. The numbers lined up, the ledgers balanced, and that was proof enough. Competence, in those days, felt like something you could grow into on the job, not a requirement you had to meet before you began.
My apartment was on an upper floor of a building that had once been a hotel and had been converted into apartments. It wasn’t fancy. It wasn’t meant to impress anyone. But it was comfortable, and more than that—it had a view. A view I never got tired of. The hallway still carried the echo of its hotel days—long, narrow, a little worn at the edges, with doors that felt like they’d opened onto a hundred different stories before mine.
At night, I’d sit by the window and look out over the city lights of Kansas City. They stretched out in every direction—small points of light at first, then larger clusters, then whole sections of the city glowing against the dark. Looking out over them, everything below felt alive in a quiet, distant way, as if the city were breathing on its own, separate from me, yet somehow still connected. I liked knowing that while I sat there in the dark, other people were starting their nights, ending their shifts, falling in love, making mistakes—all of it happening at once beneath that soft electric glow.
Sometimes I’d sit there a long time without moving, just watching, letting the stillness settle in around me. Those moments didn’t seem dramatic then. They were quiet, private, the kind someone else might not have noticed or remembered. But I remember them. I remember sitting in the dark with the city spread out below me, as if life itself were waiting just beyond the glass, just out of reach. I didn’t think of it as loneliness; it felt more like standing in a doorway between two rooms, not quite belonging to either one but somehow content to linger in between.
Next to my building was a place that hosted big‑name concerts. I found that out by accident. One evening, I raised the window just slightly, and there it was—the faint sound of music drifting into my apartment from somewhere beyond the walls.
At first, I thought I was imagining it. But I wasn’t. The more I listened, the clearer it became. Music carried on the air, moving across the distance, finding its way into my apartment as if it belonged there. It didn’t arrive sharply. It floated, softened by distance, made dreamlike by the dark. Sometimes I could pick out a melody I recognized, sometimes only the thump of bass and the rise and fall of voices, but it all threaded itself into the quiet of my little room like a secret invitation.
After that, I did it on purpose. I’d raise the window just enough, sit there in the dark, and listen. Music in the air, city lights below, and the feeling that life was wide open in front of me. Looking back now, I can see how much of that time in my life was shaped by that feeling—not certainty, not security, but possibility. And at the time, that was enough. More than enough. I didn’t know what I wanted yet, but I was sure it was out there somewhere, just beyond the next turn, the next song, the next open door.
Most nights, though, I wasn’t home. I was out. Kansas City had a rhythm then—especially at night—and I found myself moving with it. The city changed after dark. It loosened. It brightened. It took on another life. Streetlights cast long yellow pools on the sidewalks, and even the older brick buildings seemed to lean in closer, as if they, too, were listening for what the night might bring.
One place I remember well was a nightclub called Talk of the Town. Disco was big then. Not just popular, but everywhere. The music had an energy that didn’t ask permission. It pulled you in whether you wanted it to or not. You could feel it before you even stepped inside—the beat, the movement, the anticipation building just beneath the surface. Even from the parking lot you could hear it—that steady thump‑thump‑thump like a second heartbeat, promising that, for a few hours at least, you could forget whatever waited for you in the daylight.
Inside, it was a different world. Lights moving. Music pulsing. People dancing as if nothing else existed beyond that moment. It was exciting just to listen to, and even more exciting to be part of it. There was an electricity to those places in those years, a feeling that the night itself might open into anything. You didn’t go out just to pass time. You went out because something might happen. A conversation. A meeting. A surprise. A shift. I can still see strangers leaning close to speak over the music, laughter flashing as bright as the spinning lights, how easy it was to believe that one more song, one more drink, one more dance might change everything.
I didn’t make much money, but I made enough to go out more often than I probably should have. And many nights, I didn’t even pay for my drinks. Someone had already bought them. That was just how things went back then. Things appeared. People appeared. Nights unfolded without much planning, as if they were already in motion before you ever stepped into them. It all felt strangely effortless. I didn’t question the generosity or the coincidences; I just stepped into them, trusting the river of good fortune to keep carrying me along.
Before Kansas City, I’d lived in Virginia and had a friend there named Beau. We stayed in touch now and then, but not in any steady way—just enough to know the connection was still there. At some point, I’d given him my address. I never expected to see him again like that. Our friendship lived mostly in brief phone calls and the occasional letter, little threads thrown across the miles, never quite woven into anything more.
One Saturday morning, there was a knock on my door. Not loud. Not urgent. Just a knock. I remember thinking it was probably nothing—a delivery for the wrong apartment, a neighbor, the sort of small interruption you forget before the day is over.
I opened it… and there stood Beau, grinning—as if no time had passed at all. Just like that.
No phone call. No warning. No letter saying he was coming. He’d just shown up. And somehow, that made perfect sense. It fit the life I was living then. Even something that unexpected felt natural.
Beau had sold his house, bought a brand‑new black Cadillac, packed some clothes, and headed my way. That was all it took. That was reason enough. No overthinking. No long explanation. Just movement. Just deciding and going. In another kind of life, people might have called that irresponsible or impulsive. To us, in that moment, it felt like the most reasonable thing in the world.
That evening, we went out for drinks and dinner. We laughed. We caught up. It felt as if no time had passed at all—like we’d just seen each other the week before instead of however long it had been. Some people are like that. They step back into your life and the distance between then and now disappears. Sitting across from him, I felt the old ease settle back into place, the way a well‑worn jacket slips over your shoulders—familiar, comfortable, without effort.
The next morning, we sat with coffee in hand, talking the way you do when there’s nowhere you have to be. No schedule. No urgency. Just conversation moving naturally from one thing to the next. It was easy. Unforced. The kind of morning that doesn’t seem important while it’s happening, but later you realize everything turned on it. The sun came in at an angle through the window, catching the steam rising from our cups, and if there were any warning signs in that quiet, I didn’t see them—I wouldn’t have recognized a warning sign then unless it came with a neon arrow and a disco ball.
And then I said something simple, offhand—something that didn’t feel important in the moment. Something that wasn’t planned.
“Let’s go somewhere.”
Beau looked at me for a moment—not confused, not surprised—just considering it.
“Where?” he asked.
“I don’t care,” I said. “Just somewhere. Just drive. Let’s just let the moment take us wherever we end up.”
And that was it. No plan. No destination. No real thought beyond the moment. It wasn’t rebellion. It wasn’t recklessness. It was simply the most natural next thing to do. That was how life felt to me then. Why not go? Why not see what was out there? The question underneath it—What if we stayed? What if we didn’t go?—never even crossed my mind.
I packed a few clothes into a suitcase. Not much. Just enough. I walked out of my apartment—leaving behind what little I had—and didn’t give it much thought. There was nothing there I felt the need to hold onto. That may sound strange now, but at the time it made perfect sense. I wasn’t thinking in terms of loss. I was thinking in terms of movement.
I closed the door behind me. And that was that.
I was living entirely in the moment.
There was a kind of quiet certainty in me then, one I never questioned. Somehow, things had always worked out, and I believed—without needing proof—that they would keep doing so.
So I closed the door… and stepped into whatever came next.
I climbed into Beau’s Cadillac. The door closed with a solid, heavy sound—not like other cars. This one had weight to it. Presence. It wasn’t just a sound—it felt final in a way I didn’t stop to think about then, but I can recognize now. Inside, the smell of new leather filled the space. Clean. Rich. Unmistakable. Even that felt like part of the adventure—the newness of it, the sense that we were stepping into something before it had even begun, like walking onto a stage before you know your lines and trusting the words will show up when you open your mouth.
Beau started the engine. There was a quiet power to it—not loud, not aggressive, just steady and ready, like it had all the time in the world to get wherever it was going. He put the car in drive and looked over at me.
“Which way?”
At first, I said west. It felt right in that moment. So we went west. And for a while, that was the direction we were going.
But somewhere along the way—maybe forty‑five minutes later—I felt something shift. It wasn’t a thought. Not exactly. More like a feeling. Something pulling in a different direction. I can still remember how natural it felt to change course, as if turning around was no more significant than continuing forward.
“Let’s go east,” I said.
Beau didn’t question it. Didn’t hesitate. He just turned the car around.
And in that moment—without knowing it, without planning it, without understanding what it would become—everything changed.
We didn’t know where we were going. We only knew we were going.
And just like that… we were gone.
This is where the road to Key West begins. The rest of the story is in Memories of Key West.